Two recent studies on the health of bumblebees and links to neonicotinoids were published simultaneously last month in sister publications of the prestigious science journal empire Nature.

Both examined closely similar scientific questions, with somewhat different experimental methodologies. They had one big difference: The study that found that neonics caused no serious issues was ignored by the media while the one suggesting a bee-apocalypse was widely played up as “definitive.’

Let’s unpack what these studies actually showed, and reflect on why the studies have been reported on so differently.

Type “BPA” and “toxic” into Google and you get more than 500,000 results, many detailing how this chemical additive, which is used to strengthen plastics and line metal cans to prevent food poisoning, is disrupting your endocrine system and slowly killing you. It’s in your urine! It’s in your blood!

The first Google page is dominated by dire warnings of imminent health catastrophes, some even linking to articles on presumably legitimate websites, such as Newsweek, Mother Jones, Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC): Infertility. Destroys your body. Impotence. Heart Disease. Cancer.

The court case over whether ExxonMobil may have deliberately downplayed the potential dangers of global warming is heating up. Eleven attorney generals have filed a brief in US District Court in Manhattan supporting a lawsuit by Exxon to halt a probe by their peers in New York and Massachusetts.

The line between deliberately manipulating a story and poorly reporting the facts is perilously thin.

During Sunday’s Oscars, what is colloquially called the United States’ ‘paper of record’, the New York Times, launched an advertising blitz positioning itself as the highbrow ethical responder to the spate of so-called ‘fake news.’

“The truth is hard…to find…to know,” the ad, widely circulated now on YouTube, proclaimed somberly.

Jonathan Lundgren, a US Department of Agriculture currently on leave facing misconduct charges, says the government is suppressing information about the dangers of pesticides, which he believes are endangering the health of bees around the world.

"We can think of scientific knowledge as a consensus of experts."
--Naomi Oreskes

"There is a tendency among public intellectuals who are entirely reasonable in some areas to descend into the promotion of pseudoscience in others.
--Debunking Denialism, on Oreskes