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Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

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If you are still being paid and your job is so secure you can go on strike to demand that your employer not ask you to come into the office, you might think getting a vaccine is not only no big deal, but is a moral mandate more important than any other. You can dismiss people who are less enthusiastic(1) as vaccine deniers or something even worse for journalists and 94 percent of science academics; Republicans.

That's privilege talking. It's also untrue.
A recent report by the World Health Organisation on the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and resulting disease COVID-19 glossed over China - the country is not even mentioned until page 15 - but the rest of the world is not so easily bullied.
Last year it was announced that the Chinese government was going to pay for a third season of the Russian TV show "Better Than Us", a drama about an advanced AI robot that has a neural network bordering on free will, no limitations on killing, and drops terminology about family so often it could be in a Vin Diesel movie.(1) It was an odd move for a totalitarian regime historically afraid of culture they don't control centrally.
In the bizarre maze of modern cultural geopolitics, European progressives spend a lot of time rending garments about their history of colonialism, slavery, and exploitation while engaging in it - using financial blockades if former colonies do not comply.

If a small trading partner wants to export food to Europe, it cannot use any science that Europe bans, and European progressives have a level of control over science that American activists only wish they could attain.

There's one big big problem with that; it cripples small countries. They are already at a disadvantage that science can fix. Europe prevents them from using it.
When eco-terrorists destroyed a sugar beet field in Oregon a few years ago, the local organic industry group there said they were shocked anyone would be violent, even though the organic industry there demonized science daily. The attackers could not have been unknown to local groups, it is certain they were part of the community.

But how did they switch from misguided - mutagenesis chemical and radiation baths can be certified organic but GMOS are an abomination of nature - to violent?
NASA has told us that the James Webb Space Telescope, first funded in 1996 as a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, will miss its launch date again.

An astronomy site worries it's been delayed since 2014.

It's worse than that. It started getting delayed in 2002.