Search

An example of how organic agriculture gets hyped by the media:

I am quoted in a story in the May 31 Los Angeles Times ("Organic Farms Viable Despite Lower Yields, Study Finds") about a new study in Science, also published today a study comparing organic, biodynamic, and "conventional" farming systems in Switzerland. Too bad the reporter, Emily Green, who interviewed me for an hour on Wednesday, decided to ignore my strongest points. While she mentioned my argument that the study didn't compare modern no-till farm systems and so is a comparison between the latest organic and the "old-school" conventional methods she didn't explain that or include any of my subsequent points. She ignored the fact that no-till achieves the same improvements in soil structure,...

Chicken is a significant source of foodborne illness. In addition to my wife, whom I trust the most, the CDC, our FDA and USDA, and the UK’s National Health Service all “currently recommend against washing raw chicken before cooking due to the risk of microbial transfer through splashed water droplets.” Much of this guidance was based upon a study in which red food dye in water assessed the splash associated with chicken cleaning. Still, no microbial analysis was performed on the splashes.

“This provides the first experimental evidence that washing raw chickens can lead to significant cross-contamination in a home kitchen.” [2]

A study in the current issue of the Physics of...

Antibiotic R&D had a particularly bad year starting with The Medicines Company who abandoned their antibiotic R&D efforts and sold their antibiotic assets to Melinta late last year right after getting approval for vabomere. This year both Sanofi and Novartis abandoned their antibiotic R&D efforts and divested their clinical and preclinical assets.

...

The war on science has at least three fronts.

First, there is the widely reported political war on science, widely and erroneously believed to be waged exclusively by conservatives, when in reality, progressives are just as eager to throw science under the bus when it suits their agenda. As a general rule, when science and political activists clash, the activists usually win.

Second, there is the legal war on science, in which unscrupulous lawyers use scientific uncertainty against science to score jackpot verdicts and settlements. All a lawyer has to do is accuse a product of causing cancer, and many companies are willing to fork over cash just to make the lawyer go away, even if the product doesn't cause cancer. Precisely...