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Impossible Burger: FDA Scoffs As Center for Food Safety Lawyers Lose Another Battle Against Science

Impossible Burger: FDA Scoffs As Center for Food Safety Lawyers Lose Another Battle Against Science

Dec 21 2019 | comment(s)

Center for Food Safety, an organic industry-funded activist group, tried to stop the Impossible Burger from being "approved" by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on the grounds that it is, you know, based on science.

That it is a plant, and therefore uses no meat, and therefore is more ethical and means less emissions than ranching, according to proponents, did not matter, because the organic food industry can't grow if science does; they truly fund deniers for hire to block out things like genetic engineering.

But not all genetic engineering. They are fine with mutagenesis, plant strains created using chemical and radiation baths, they are even happy those are certified organic - only with 80 synthetic exemptions that can still carry the organic label.
'Torture': Vegan Couple Charged With Murder After Son Dies From Malnutrition

'Torture': Vegan Couple Charged With Murder After Son Dies From Malnutrition

Dec 20 2019 | comment(s)

Ryan Patrick O'Leary, 30, and Sheila O'Leary, 35, only fed their kids raw fruit and vegetables and their 18-month-old son starved to death. According to the police report, the child weighed only 17 pounds, what a healthy seven-month-old would weigh but was starvation for a child nearly two years of age. The child was born in their home and had never seen a doctor. 

A Lee County Grand Jury has indicted the couple, charging them with first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter, child abuse, and two counts of child neglect. It was simple torture, according to authorities.
Unmanned Starliner Delivery Vehicle Fails To Reach Correct Orbit

Unmanned Starliner Delivery Vehicle Fails To Reach Correct Orbit

Dec 20 2019 | comment(s)

NASA has spent $7 billion on a program to launch humans from the U.S. and end reliance on Russians to get to the International Space Station, but an important test for Boeing hit a snag.

The Starliner is hoping to compete with SpaceX, which already had a successful docking earlier this year.

NASA wants to outsource more of this kind of thing but the program is two years behind schedule, which along with chronics overruns and delays on programs like the James Webb Space Telescope has led to renewed concerns that NASA is no longer equipped to do big programs and should stick to smaller experiments like cute robots on Mars, while outsourcing advanced technology to contractors, the way they did in the 1960s.
Philippines Approves Golden Rice

Philippines Approves Golden Rice

Dec 19 2019 | comment(s)

Lacking any corporate overlord with highly paid attorneys, environmental groups have been able to keep Golden Rice - genetically engineered to produce more beta carotene, a precursor to Vitamin A, necessary for healthy living - from being approved in countries where malnourished kids are common.

No longer. Philippines has shucked off Western neo-colonialists and their White Savior rhetoric about protecting poor people from science and approved Golden Rice. 
Charles Dickens Wrote A Christmas Letter To A Shipping Company That Ruined His Turkey

Charles Dickens Wrote A Christmas Letter To A Shipping Company That Ruined His Turkey

Dec 19 2019 | comment(s)

This morning I took a shot on Twitter at Skybound Games, which is a presumably small company that wants to make a go of it in comics and custom collectible stuff, but are now on their third missed date for something I ordered and have also irked fans of another collectible product.

Good thing for them I am not Charles Dickens, The Man Who Invented Christmas, because if I were, people would be reading my letter 150 years from now. 

Dickens is, of course, the author of "A Christmas Carol", which not only rejuvenated his career after a few flops (and over the skepticism of his publisher, because it was a relatively minor religious holiday, and adding in ghosts was garish in their minds), it made Christmas the phenomenon it is now.
Britain's The Guardian Has A Real Gullibility Problem When It Comes To Science

Britain's The Guardian Has A Real Gullibility Problem When It Comes To Science

Dec 16 2019 | comment(s)

The Guardian is a left-wing newspaper in the U.K. and so it's no surprise that they cop to a lot of the issues that left-wing people in the UK agree with - all modern biology leads to Frankenfoods, all energy except solar and wind are bad, vaccines causes autism (they seems to have finally reversed course on that one), and while I noted in Science Left Behind that kooky progressives believe in a lot more woo than the normal public - from psychics and ghosts to UFOs - I didn't think they thought chemicals were traveling back in time.
Neanderthals Were Dumb, Camels Store Water In Their Humps, and 15 Other Science Facts No Longer True

Neanderthals Were Dumb, Camels Store Water In Their Humps, and 15 Other Science Facts No Longer True

Dec 06 2019 | comment(s)

Science changes over time, that is no secret. We used to think we understood black holes, and that wasn't really true, and unless we use Dark Matter as a vague black box like aether, 100 years from now what we believe today in that regard will likely be regarded as quaint.

Even on more terrestrial topics, as our understanding gets greater the facts change. We once weren't sure what set off the dinosaur extinction, now that is known, but there are still lots of mysteries. And Darwin's evolution led to an Upright Man understanding of homo sapiens, where Neanderthals had underdeveloped brains and Cro-Magnon was us, the next step, but now science has shown that evolution is a lot more random and fickle than that, just like it should be. 
Congratulations To Radiolab Host Robert Krulwich On His Retirement

Congratulations To Radiolab Host Robert Krulwich On His Retirement

Dec 05 2019 | comment(s)

Robert Krulwich, "the man who simplifies without being simple", has announced he is retiring, at least from his recurring gig at RadioLab, where he has been for the last 15 years.

Not many people graduated from Columbia Law School and then immediately quit to cover the Watergate hearings as a journalist but Krulwich has lived his life the way he approaches science. At an obtuse angle, searching for a better way. 


How A Social Media Lie Avoids Condemnation - Repeat Offending Early And Often

How A Social Media Lie Avoids Condemnation - Repeat Offending Early And Often

Dec 05 2019 | comment(s)

Sometimes lies on social media get immediate condemnation and sometimes they are even spread by people who should know better - X is a fascist or even entire science websites are fascists.

How does that happen? Four experiments with participants from Prolific Academic and Amazon Mechanical Turk, published in Psychological Science, provide some insight. The quicker a lie can be made to "go viral" the less blowback due to being unethical it will receive. Seeing a fake-news claim times reduced how unethical participants thought it was and even to share that headline when they saw it again—even if it was clearly labeled as false and they disbelieved it.
Just Correlation: Don't Fall Prey To NIEHS Weak Association When It Comes To Hair Dye Products

Just Correlation: Don't Fall Prey To NIEHS Weak Association When It Comes To Hair Dye Products

Dec 04 2019 | comment(s)

A new paper warns us all that hair dye and other products have been linked to cancer - minority women impacted most.

There is one huge reason not to take it seriously, if you accept chemistry, biology, or toxicology: The senior author is from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which for the last decade has competed with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and Ramazinni Institute (Picchiatello) for how best to erode confidence in science and health among the public, by using statistics to undermine scientists.
Court In France Bans Two Products With Sulfoxaflor After Environmental Lawsuits

Court In France Bans Two Products With Sulfoxaflor After Environmental Lawsuits

Dec 04 2019 | comment(s)

Though deemed safe by French science bodies, sales of the Transform and Closer brands were suspended by a French court at the request of environmental groups in 2017 anyway. Now they have made the ban official, siding with claims that sulfoxaflor may be able to harm bees.
FDA Warns About Hepatitis A Outbreak From Blackberries At Fresh Thyme Farmers Markets

FDA Warns About Hepatitis A Outbreak From Blackberries At Fresh Thyme Farmers Markets

Dec 03 2019 | comment(s)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is investigating a multistate outbreak of hepatitis A illnesses potentially linked to blackberries from the grocery store Fresh Thyme Farmers Market in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wisconsin.

As of today, CDC reports 16 illnesses, with the most recent illness onset date on November 15, 2019.
Is Dogor A Dog or Wolf? When It Comes To This 18,000-Year-Old Siberian Critter, Science Can't Tell

Is Dogor A Dog or Wolf? When It Comes To This 18,000-Year-Old Siberian Critter, Science Can't Tell

Nov 29 2019 | comment(s)

Most people know that domesticated dogs and wolves share a common evolutionary tree, and that the branches were entangled for quite some time, but nothing drives that home more than a two-month-old canine puppy found in the permafrost of the Belaya Gora site in Siberia.

Is it a dog or a wolf? It was a male and radiocarbon dating gave the age range but DNA sequencing has been unable to determine the species.

Relax About Your Diet For Thanksgiving

Relax About Your Diet For Thanksgiving

Nov 27 2019 | comment(s)


This week you have likely been deluged with fast-talking influencers on television talking about how to stick to your diet this holiday season. They don't know what they are talking about, next week the same group of thin, hurried, fast-talking, overconfident people will be making gift recommendations.

Calories are a marathon, not a one-day spring. If you are fat, binging for one day didn't cause it, it is the chronic overeating that did. I lived in Manhattan, with some of the best Italian food on earth. Somehow I gained 10 pounds? There was no mystery, it was eating stromboli every day and pretending it was a treat rather than a lifestyle.
More Like Wishcycling: Aspirational Recyclers Don't Want To Read This

More Like Wishcycling: Aspirational Recyclers Don't Want To Read This

Nov 22 2019 | comment(s)

Much of recycling is aspirational, and we choose to believe it works because we don't want to feel worse knowing it is a scam.

In the 1980s I worked as a fundraiser for an environmental group, Public Interest Research Group.  PIRG had all of the predictable anti-science activism points, which was a challenge since part of the region I covered contained a whole lot of people working at Westinghouse Nuclear, but I would concede they were goofy when it came to nuclear energy, yet argue they were absolutely right that a bottle bill - a refundable fee on top of the cost of a bottle - was better for everyone than government recycling.
This Real Life Buckaroo Banzai Jet Car Went So Fast Its Paint Peeled Off

This Real Life Buckaroo Banzai Jet Car Went So Fast Its Paint Peeled Off

Nov 20 2019 | comment(s)

Land speed records used to be a big deal, in 1984’s “Buckaroo Banzai: Across The 8th Dimension”, the hero completes brain surgery because he has to drive his jet car to impress the Department of Defense, while his secret mission is to discover a portal to another dimension.

Now, it is not such a big deal. While everyone knows Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in a jet, few can tell you who broke Mach 2 or how fast planes can go today. And so it goes with cars.
Standards Of Identity, And Fighting Confusing Food Labels - Some Hope FDA Might Still Be On The Case

Standards Of Identity, And Fighting Confusing Food Labels - Some Hope FDA Might Still Be On The Case

Nov 20 2019 | comment(s)

if we're ever going to know if marijuana does anything important, we need reference-grade marijuana for scholars to study. NIST has reference-grade peanut butter so it makes sense that with so many marijuana claims (and obvious harm when mixed with chemicals to use in vaping devices, as recent hospitalizations and deaths showed) to separate hype and woo from science there needs to be a way to study it empirically.
Apollo 11 May Have Been First On The Moon But Apollo 12, 50 Years Ago Today, Was Funniest

Apollo 11 May Have Been First On The Moon But Apollo 12, 50 Years Ago Today, Was Funniest

Nov 19 2019 | comment(s)

On November 19th, 1969, Apollo 12 landed on the moon, but most people from the era don't remember much about it. Apollo 11, sure, a giant leap for all mankind, and Apollo 13 was the most successful failure NASA ever had, it got a movie made about it, but that leaves Apollo 12 a memory.

And that's too bad. Because they were the funniest Apollo crew, according to this NPR spot.
The Detox Project Hopes To Get Rich On Deception The Way Non-GMO Project Has

The Detox Project Hopes To Get Rich On Deception The Way Non-GMO Project Has

Nov 19 2019 | comment(s)

Want your food to contain a toxic chemical, as long as it's been given a wink-wink approval by industry lobbyists, trade groups, and manufacturers?

Of course not, yet that is exactly what you get when you buy Organic food. Inside USDA, the Organic industry has carved out a special niche for itself and it knights 80 groups that can sell organic certified stickers, allowing them to simultaneously monitor their clients while taking money from them and being reliant on selling stickers. Can you say 'conflict of interest'?
Africans Don't Want To Give Away Their Data To Western Scientists For Free - They're Not Wrong

Africans Don't Want To Give Away Their Data To Western Scientists For Free - They're Not Wrong

Nov 15 2019 | comment(s)

Wealthy western academics working at billion dollar institutions funded by trillion dollar governments are frustrated that African countries don't want to give away their climate data.

They're not wrong for wanting a piece of the pie, especially from Europeans. Europeans often take data from Africa and use it for colonial purposes, like keeping Africa reliant on European goods by scaring people about science that would give Africans a level playing field.(1)