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Screen Shot 2015-05-27 at 2.28.31 PMThis week saw the unfortunate passing of Vice President Joe Biden s son Beau, who succumbed to brain cancer. What happened to Beau, who was just 46 years old, is a sad reminder of just how far we are from having effective treatments for many deadly cancers, in particular brain cancer.

It however is not a sad reminder for everyone. For those who oppose superfluous things like logic and reason, Beau s untimely passing is a golden opportunity to remind everyone that Monsanto is killing us all. The person who always seems to be out in front of this quack-pack is Mike Adams, who wrote (...

Social media platforms shouldn't be trusted to censor scientific “misinformation.” As we've reported in recent months, such efforts by tech companies like Facebook are crippled by partisanship and double standards. The result is that some users (usually major media outlets) are allowed to botch the science with impunity, while others are silenced for committing the slightest of offenses, real or imagined. See my April story Follow The Science? How The Media's Hypocrisy Undermines Critical Thinking In The Age Of COVID for more on this.

Facebook safeguards the feelings of anti-GMO activists?

Right on cue, Facebook has offered...

The latest in health news: The myths on high protein diets, Glyphosate ruling ignores the science, & Dr. Ross' latest op-ed on Science 2.0.

1. Discussing Vermont's bizarre and arbitrary GMO warning label law, set to take effect July 1st, Congressman Bob Gibbs of Ohio takes the evidence-based approach, and notes that thanks to biotechnology, the lives of the world's poorest are being saved - and the lives of everyone are being made better:

Numerous studies have been conducted to analyze the safety of GMOs. Countless reports show that GMOs are perfectly safe for humans while the American Medical Association even states “there is no scientific justification for special labeling of genetically modified foods.” The National...

The recurring joke in science when the Ebola craze consumed American media was that all the wealthy elites in California, Oregon and Washington who denied vaccines due to concerns about autism, would make sure their families were first in line for a new vaccine.

While rich coastal parents knew they could avoid risk for their special snowflakes, while still protecting them from whooping cough (pertussis) by counting on herd immunity among the peasants, they knew that wouldn't work against Ebola. And there is no herd immunity against the Zika virus, so lots and lots of activists who believe they are buying organic food "with no pesticides" are going to be absolutely slathering themselves in chemicals real soon.

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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...

The AAAS, which stands for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is one of the foremost pro-science organizations in the world. Not only does it advocate for good science and science policy, it publishes the prestigious journal Science, read by millions of scientists around the world.

Unfortunately, AAAS has gotten a bit weird in recent months.

A warning flag popped up in June 2018 when the general news arm of Science republished an article from an environmental activist website which repeated some dubious claims about "chemicals." At the time, we warned that this "very strange editorial decision... could...

Pesticides & HealthAt the behest of a Democratic member of a House committee, the General Accounting Office prepared a report on the manner that the FDA and the USDA handled evaluations and reporting on pesticide residues on our food. Dr. Ross had some rather strong opinions on the subject, which we encourage you to read here. In sum, he felt (after reviewing the GAO report) that the FDA and the USDA s Food...

1. Dr. Alex Berezow set off a Seattle firestorm last week when he announced that misguided policies, which had led to a surge in homelessness (and therefore drugs and crime) had caused him to buy a house outside the city. In the Seattle Times, Alex notes his ongoing concern, and that when he asked the City Council member he voted for to provide insight on how they will address the problem, she compared him to Hitler. Not easy to take for a guy whose grandparents were fortunate enough to survive Germany under the Nazis.

Seattle used to pride itself being an equally nice but more practical version of Seattle. Now it is a very...

For the better part of six years, anti-GMO groups circled the wagons around a single message: the weed killer Roundup (glyphosate) causes cancer, specifically Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (NHL). Their efforts culminated in roughly 100,000 lawsuits against Bayer. The biotech giant lost the first three cases that went to trial. Though the damages were substantially reduced in each instance, the company is still on the hook for millions of dollars and is trying to settle the remaining cases.

With the Roundup gravy train potentially running out of steam, the lawyers and activists are moving on to a new target, the herbicide paraquat. There are 157 cases...