Month: June 2013
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Environmentalists Must Face Down the Anti-Science in Their Own House
How can environmental groups and media outlets maintain that they are advocates of science, and not ideology, when they engage in the anti-science Luddism of GMO fearmongering? The potential of this anti-science behavior to poison their credibility on global climate change is real, as there is an obvious comparison between their flawed risk assessment on…
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SCOTUS decision on gene patents is bad biology, and bad for science
I’m pleased the Supreme Court has decided to reject the idea of patenting genes, as such case law would be restrictive to scientific discovery and also just feels fundamentally icky. From a legal perspective, as far as I understand patent law (not a lawyer here), it also seemed to fail on the more basic level…
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Pollan and Bittman, the Morano and Milloy of GMO anti-science
Why do food writers think they are competent to evaluate the scientific literature? I know of at least two who, based on their tweets, clearly are not. One is Mark Bittman, who we have previously chastised, and now also Michael Pollan who has been a bit more coy about promoting anti-science related to GMO. Now…
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An apology, from America, for Alex Jones
Dear British friends, I am deeply ashamed, and mortified, on behalf of my entire country for the embarrassing phenomenon that is Alex Jones. I see you have learned now for yourselves, this disturbed, bizarre person, is quite possibly the worst guest you could have ever invited to be on a television show. I have enclosed…
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What is at the root of denial? A Must Read from Chris Mooney in Mother Jones
Chris Mooney has been exploring the basic underpinnings of denialism lately, with this latest article a good summary of the basic problems: In a recent study of climate blog readers, Lewandowksy and his colleagues found that the strongest predictor of being a climate change denier is having a libertarian, free market world view. Or as…