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Bees Shouldn’t Become The Next ‘Fake News’ Victim

The line between deliberately manipulating a story or poorly reporting the facts is perilously thin, and often based on the subjectivity of the reader.

During Sunday’s Academy Awards presentation, the United States’ ‘paper of record’, the New York Times, launched an advertising blitz positioning itself as the highbrow ethical responder to the spate of so-called ‘fake news.’ “The truth is hard…to find…to know,” the add proclaimed, somberly.

It’s a powerful message, one that the public and the media should reflect upon—including the leadership at the Times itself. That a journalist...

Let's Not Forget The War Against Bacterial Resistance

While other public health stories, such as opioid overdose deaths, medical insurance for Americans, new cancer therapies, and Gwynneth Paltrow's vagina dominate health news at this time, bacterial resistance to existing antibiotics quietly marches on. But thanks to PBS, it's not so quiet. The network's PBS NewsHour series “Stopping Superbugs," is not about overblown, silly scares like phthalates in mac and cheese, hexavalent chromium,...

The Top 16 Junk Science Stories of 2016

Junk science is everywhere. Just today, it was reported that President-Elect Donald Trump had a meeting with the anti-vaccine fraud Andrew Wakefield, who claimed that Mr Trump is "open-minded" about the issue.

This is why our mission is so important. People in power often have a poor grasp of science. If journalists and advocates don't speak up for good science, cranks and quacks will take over.

As part of our ongoing effort to eradicate pseudoscience, here is a list of the top 16 junk science stories we debunked in 2016.

#16. Olympic athletes should not be cupping. Remember seeing those...

A $289M Hit Job on Science in Jackpot Verdict on Monsanto's Glyphosate

Jurors in California have awarded $289 million to a man who claimed that his cancer was due to Monsanto’s herbicide glyphosate, even though that is biologically impossible. Even the judge acknowledged that there was no evidence of harm. Yet, trial lawyers manipulated a jury’s emotions and the public’s misunderstanding of science to score another jackpot verdict.

The plaintiff, Dewayne Johnson, claims that glyphosate gave him non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that occurs when the immune system goes awry. There are three major problems with this claim.

First, as stated above, glyphosate does not cause cancer because it does not harm humans. It is an herbicide, so it is only toxic to plants. There is no known biological mechanism by which glyphosate could cause cancer,...

My Christmas Wish: A Day of Sanity

I met a friend at a coffee shop in Seattle today. We covered a lot of ground in the short time we had together -- politics, the state of our nation, the state of our city.

We don't see eye-to-eye on many issues. But what we have in common is a respect for each others' intelligence and intentions. We also share a desire for truth rather than ideology to prevail. By doing our best to rely on facts and to acknowledge our own sources of bias, we can have productive conversations despite our disagreements.

After my friend left, an elderly gentleman approached me and said (paraphrased), "I overheard you talking about politics. You both listened to each other and responded. That's not usual for this city, where it's bash, bash."

It's not just Seattle; it's all of America...

Media Should Have Far Less Confidence In Meta-Analysis Claims Than They Do

Do you think video games have led to more violent attacks by young people? You are not alone. Lots of people do. It was in every major newspaper because a meta-analysis once showed it was so. But then another meta-analysis showed that belief is false.

Journalists gushed over both claims(1) even though one was suspect to anyone who understands the nature of selection bias in meta-analyses. So let's discuss what a meta-analysis is and what it can and cannot do.

What meta-analysis is: It is just what it sounds like, an analysis of analyses, which is better than a literary criticism of literary criticisms, though in...

The Death of Science Journalism

Journalism isn't what it used to be.

Decades ago, it was a widely respected career. Every night, people would gather around their television sets to watch the nightly news. There weren't many options to choose from, and Walter Cronkite was easily the most famous. He was so influential, that a myth widely believed to this day circulated about him: When Cronkite declared the Vietnam War a stalemate, President Lyndon Johnson supposedly remarked, "If I've lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America."

He never did say that, but the kernel of truth at the heart of the myth still rings loud and true: There was a time when Americans...

Your Donations At Work: Our Media Links Last Week

The American Council on Science and Health was hard at work last week separating health scares from health threats.

But sometimes people in the health scare business fight back. That includes academic journalism professors, a former bureaucrat who insists checking your email will give you brain cancer, and more. So some of our media links are bizarre but, if we didn't include our detractors, we'd be just like them. And we aren't.

1. First, I'll put up to the positive links, then we'll get to the usual anti-science smears.

Newborn screening needed for sickle cell anemia in Nigeria - The Eagle Online

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Infographic: The Best and Worst Science News Sites

A common question I hear again and again is, "How do I know if a news story is fake?" There is no easy answer¹. It helps to be well informed, and it requires a conscious suspension of credulity combined with a gut instinct honed over years of experience.

If journalism as a whole is bad (and it is), science journalism is even worse. Not only is it susceptible to the same sorts of biases that afflict regular journalism, but it is uniquely vulnerable to outrageous sensationalism. Every week, it seems, an everyday food is either going to cure cancer or kill us all.

One thing experience has taught us is that some news outlets are better than others. Some journalists really do care about reporting the news as it is rather than the way they would like...

New York Times: Pseudoscience and Sleeping with Sources

The Gray Lady has gotten raunchy in her old age. News has just broken that the New York Times's national security reporter, Ali Watkins, was sleeping with a source who worked as an aide to the Senate Intelligence Committee. That source has now been arrested as part of an investigation into leaks of classified information.

It's long been known that journalism, like the legal profession, attracts its fair share of agenda-driven sleazebags who prioritize half-truths and personal ambition over honor and veracity, perhaps none more so than the New York Times. Back in 2003, Jayson Blair, a reporter for the NYT, resigned because he plagiarized and...