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I've never been much for the word "tribe." It sounds too insular in 2018, the kind of term (see also "zeitgeist", "heteronormative", and "schadenfreude") thrown around by barely literate postmodernists with their heads in the clouds believing what they tell each other as the real world passes by.

That's not to say it isn't an accurate description of science media.

We certainly have tribes: There are progressive ideologues in large media corporations denying reality as they frame science belief (and denial) through their politics; there are academics who believe the public simply have a deficit of information and showing them some Powerpoint slides will fix it; we have zealots who believe every skeptical question must be met with fire and brimstone. 

Heck, we have...

Last month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which operates under the auspices of the U.N. World Health Organization, announced it would solicit comments from interested parties prior to holding an Advisory Group meeting in November to propose revisions to its Preamble.

The preamble articulates the mission and methods of the IARC Monographs program and an update has been long overdue. The Monographs program has been embroiled in controversy brought on by questions regarding its assessments of cell phones, acrylamide, formaldehyde, red and processed meat, coffee, and the herbicide glyphosate. That last one may have been the last straw. The World Health Organization, of which IARC is a part, disavowed their methodology, as...

Australian Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg met recently with his state and territory counterparts. Top of their agenda? The recycling crisis precipitated by the China “ban.”

States and councils around the country have been struggling since the imposition of import restrictions that exclude 99% of the recyclables that Australia previously sold to China.

Hopes are high that the federal government will step in and take a clear role. Proposed solutions include investing in onshore processing facilities and local markets, incentives or mandates to use recycled content, and grants and rebates for innovative approaches that go beyond recycling to designing for prevention and reuse.

But what is the ban and why is it such an issue?

What is the...

Most mental health professionals would agree that if one could assign DSM V criteria to elements, zinc's diagnosis would be easy:

Code F31.9, Bipolar I disorder, current or recent episode unspecified.

There are a few reasons that I believe this diagnosis is valid, and I will discuss them below. First, the fun stuff. The minerals in which zinc is found are both fascinating and spectacular. 

 

Selected zinc-containing minerals. Photos:  1. 911 Metallurgist   2. ...

It never ceases to amaze me how easily people can be manipulated into worrying about nothing simply because the "nothing" is portrayed as (but really isn't) scary, while at the same time pay no attention to a "something" because it is portrayed as healthy (which is just as wrong). There can hardly be a better example of this logicakl disconnect than the silly July 12th hit piece in the Times (1) about the "horrors" caused by tiny amounts of phthalates in mac and cheese packaging, and yesterday's CNN report about the increase in the number of poison control...

As if there weren't enough confusion in the universe of food vernacular (natural, GM-free, Earth-friendly...) there is a real word with real meaning that most people haven't even heard of—semisynthetic. And it has saved thousands of lives. 

There can be no better example of what semisynthesis can accomplish than Taxol, a cancer drug that is the first line treatment for ovarian cancer, and is also approved for about a dozen other cancers, usually the ones that are most difficult to treat. The drug is on the World Health Organization list of essential medicines. It's that important.

The story of how Taxol became a drug is fascinating, and also illustrates the power of synthetic organic chemistry, without which the drug would not be available. Taxol was first isolated from...

The blog of the Washington Post on January 5, 2009, posted an item by Jennifer Huget noting ACSH's picks for the previous year's biggest health scares:

That story's just one of 10 health stories from 2008 identified as "hoaxes" by the American Council on Science and Health, a nonprofit group of scientists and physicians that advocates a common-sense approach to maintaining good health.

ACSH insists that claims about the health impact of products, chemicals and other substances and practices be supported by sound science, preferably published in peer-reviewed journals. If the science seems shaky -- by dint of ineffective study design or data...

Does empirical reality matter? Or, to borrow a term from the title of a folklore journal, do modern minds live in a sort of "mythosphere," concerned only with their own perceptions?

As ACSH president Dr. Elizabeth Whelan has lamented, activist Erin Brockovich received an award this week from the Harvard School of Public Health even though it is only in the movie named after Brockovich that she's advanced public health -- in the real world, Brockovich's anti-chemical crusades are not based on good science.

But does anyone really care? In the public imagination, Brockovich is a hero, and to most people's minds, the true villain is always someone (perhaps an ACSH staff member) who deflates a myth,...

Ever wonder why the American public is so ill-informed about issues involving science such as evolution, genetic modification of food crops, stem cell research, and homeopathy or "alternative medicine"? Some scientific issues seem settled in the public's mind. There is no serious question as to whether the earth revolves around the sun, even though not too many centuries ago one could be burned at the stake for promoting proscribed ideas on this issue.

Tragically, the scientific issues about which the public is most severely misinformed are generally those with public policy implications. Indeed, there are activists groups whose ideological agenda is furthered by public misinformation. But there are other, less deliberate reasons for public confusion. Scientific ignorance is...

Hair analysis is an ostensibly diagnostic procedure that is a major part of alternative medicine. Among promoters of alt-med, those likelier to proffer hair analysis are chiropractors, naturopaths, physicians who routinely use chelation therapy, practitioners of orthomolecular medicine, persons who style themselves "nutrition consultants," and companies that provide laboratory services directly to the public.

For What Might Hair Analysis Be Useful?

On its website, Nutri-World Hair Analysis Inc. (NHA), in Palm Desert, California, quotes former U.S. Sur-geon General C. Everett Koop: "Eight out of ten Americans are dying of diet related conditions. The time for action is now!" The company states:

...