science and policy

The New York Times has done something that it very rarely does: It wrote an editorial in support of biotechnology. Unfortunately, the newspaper has a long history of spreading misinformation about GMOs and chemicals, which seriously undermines the important message in its pro-vaccine editorial.
The Oregon Democrat recently wrote a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar, claiming that his Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force, formed in 2016, was corrupted by big pharma money. The task force was charged with reforming the CDC's disastrous 2016 opioid guidelines. Sen. Wyden claims that two respected physicians in the group had conflicts of interest. Instead, perhaps it's time for the lawmaker to look in the mirror.
There aren't many things today that unite both sides of the political aisle, but leave it to some environmental activists to achieve the impossible. There's bipartisan opposition to a proposed Colorado law that would severely curtail fracking in the state.
Germany serves as a wonderful example of how to do everything – everything wrong, that is – when it comes to energy policy.
The online news arm of this journal s a solid source of information. However, it reprinted an article from E&E News that stated green energy is the way to go and the environment is full of scary chemicals. Associating itself with this outlet was a dubious decision, and one that may prove damaging to its reputation. 
The University of California, San Francisco is hosting documents acquired by anti-chemical, anti-pharmaceutical, and anti-biotech activists. This is not "transparency" but propaganda. Taxpayer-funded propaganda.
In the grand tradition of misidentifying problems and offering proposals that won’t work, the city council of Washington, D.C. wants to force manufacturers of flushable toilet wipes to change the label to “non-flushable.” This is wrong.
In California, Robin Hood robs from the poor ... and gives to the solar industry.
Air pollution in China has a substantially negative impact on public health. But with the exception of central and southern California and the upper Midwest, the United States has extremely clean air. And in fact, most regions in this country would not benefit from tighter air pollution standards.
For a continent that (bizarrely) prides itself on turning away from religion, Europe has ironically replaced it with all manner of postmodern nonsense and pseudoscience. Welcome to the New Dark Age.
Since nobody really knows what postmodernism is, it's becomes a nebulous concept that poses an existential threat to science and technology. How so? Because it's largely characterized by a rejection of objective truth. This is antithetical to scientific inquiry.
For the first time, President Trump is giving a speech to a joint session of Congress*. Since the President has a habit of keeping us all guessing, here is a wish-list of things we would like to hear Mr. Trump talk about.