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If there is a better example of what happens when junk science meets reality, good luck finding it. Look no further than today s New York Times article about how a misguided attempt to solve a non-problem turned into a real problem.

We have to give a shout-out to Levi Gadye over at io9.com for his informative article You Can Thank Genetic Engineering For Your Delicious Cheese. Unbeknown to most, GMOs are used to make about 80 to 90 percent of cheese

Why are there so many scary stories about common foods and products causing cancer? An excellent blog-essay explains quite a lot about how science (or science-y) journalism works. It may confuse or scare you, but not as much as the so-called research does.

Experts describe childhood obesity as the canary in the coal mine for chronic diseases. But too many parents are in denial about their children s weight and attitudes vary among different ethnic groups and income levels, among other variables.

Talk about a big job. Writing for the Canadian Press, Jack Dini s new piece, Chemicals Don t Trouble Oneself With the Facts, goes way past the title.

We wish we could say that an advanced academic degree leads one to respect scientific truth, but it ain t necessarily so. In a hard-hitting opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune, Ms. Erin Gallagher counters every point made by an anti-GMO professor (St. Xavier University assistant professor Tatiana C. Tatum Parker) in an earlier commentary. The Trib describes Ms. Gallagher as a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown and a work-from-home mom with a small garden business. She is an active member of the Will County Farm Bureau and is on a volunteer advisory committee for the

An op-ed in Forbes.com by James Conca notes the benefits of nuclear power in helping to ameliorate, to some extent, the disastrous drought now gripping California (and to a lesser extent, Oregon and Washington). Specifically, he notes the nuclear reactor at Diablo

A new Reuters survey confirms what those interested and involved in smoking and tobacco-related issues have observed: more and more Americans are using e-cigarettes and vapor products (vaping), to quit or reduce their consumption of deadly cigarettes.

ACSH s Director of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Dr. Josh Bloom, penned a glowing review of Pharmaphobia- How the Conflict of Interest Myth Undermines American Medical Innovation by Dr. Tom Stossel.

The bees are ok-- that s the message Terence Corcoran hammers home in his latest article for the Financial Post. The piece comes on the heels of Canada s Minister of the Environment, Glen Murray, announcing that the country will start doing more for the declining bee populations. However, as Corcoran explains exhaustively with data, this policy is not only unnecessary but may be harmful to the country s economy.

After six years on the air, Dr. Oz says he s making some changes to his popular TV show, viewed daily by millions. Following the media firestorm from that letter from physicians across the country, Oz has now admitted publicly he was wrong to endorse so many miracle weight loss pills. Most recently, he announced the addition of Dr. Michael Crupain to his staff. His duties would include (according to the press release) being

Two large data-mining studies show an association between the most common type of medication for heartburn and ulcers PPIs (e.g., Nexium, Prilosec) and heart attacks. This type of analysis cannot support cause-and-effect, but the data encourage prospective trials.

Anyone who has been paying attention recognizes that governmental dietary advice seems to change pretty often.

Yet another prominent anti-GMO advocate has come forward to publicly announce that he has reassessed his opinion on GMOs. Earlier this year, the co-founder of Greenpeace, Dr. Patrick Moore, did likewise, calling the campaign against genetic science baseless. Following shortly thereafter was Mark Lynas, who penned a New York Times op-ed titled How I Got Converted to GMO food this past

We talk about stupid stuff all the time. There is never a shortage. But, even with the inexhaustible supply of this commodity, once in a while we run into something that is off the chart on the right side of the Stupidity Bell Curve. This is no small feat.

New research found that a single dose of the bivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine (Cervarix) may offer a similar level of protection against the serotypes of HPV types 16 and 18, which cause 70 percent of cervical cancers as the current two and three dose schedules. The findings come from a new analysis of two large phase

Follow-up on two of our recent, important Dispatch items. California s Assembly has cleared the next-to-last legislative hurdle toward removing the state s non-medical exemptions for children s vaccinations. And an FDA panel has approved overwhelmingly a new type of cholesterol-lowering medication.

Rotavirus, which causes severe gastroenteritis, doesn t get the same degree of attention that others viruses like measles or chickenpox get, but it can be a troublesome infection especially for young children. The CDC lists a number of daunting statistics for children under 5. Rotavirus causes: 70,000 annual hospitalizations, more than 400,000 doctors visits and 200,000 emergen

Good news: New York State s smoking rate continues to decline, according to a news release from the office of Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Not-so-good-news: the source of these data and their reliability are suspect, and the reasons for any decline are unclear

The American Medical Association (AMA) the largest association of physicians in the United States has called for an end to non-medical exemptions for vaccinations. They argued that there is no scientific basis for non-medical (philosophical or religious) exemptions and these exemptions put the public s health at risk. AMA doctors

The NY Times has printed the truth about GMOs in Jane Brody s weekly column on health.

John LaMattina, the former head of R&D at Pfizer, tackles a timely and important topic in his Forbes piece today: What is the best way to do oncology research? And, can it save money as well as lives?

Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer. An estimated 73,800 new cases of melanoma, and almost 10,000 deaths, will occur this year. And now researchers have found that rates of melanoma have doubled over the past 30 years, according to a report by the CDC.

A new study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, which never encountered a health scare it didn t exaggerate, tries ever so hard to link ambient radiation exposure to childhood cancer, but fails.

California seems to get all the attention when it comes to the anti-vaxx movement, but the epidemic of non-medical exemptions exists in other states too, and in many cases it s worse. In fact according to data from 2012, Cali