Science 2.0

Hank Campbell

Hank Campbell

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. Revolutionizing the way scientists Communicate, Part…
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Celery Juice Joins Acai, Quinoa, And Curry In Being Goop Endorsed "Miracle Foods" That Do Nothing

Celery Juice Joins Acai, Quinoa, And Curry In Being Goop Endorsed "Miracle Foods" That Do Nothing

I got a butter shaper for Christmas. I asked for one because I make lot of butter in a mason jar and then just throw it in tupperware but my friends sometimes want butter and it feels a little dismissive to just hand them tupperware.Imagine my disappointment when I read the instructions which stated that it needed to be treated with "Organic Coconut Oil." Butter used to be something almost everyone made and now it was the providence of uninformed hippies, it seems. Or maybe this company was trapped in 2016?

HPV Vaccine Did Not Lead To Promiscuity In Teenage Girls - Instead, Sexual Activity Declined

HPV Vaccine Did Not Lead To Promiscuity In Teenage Girls - Instead, Sexual Activity Declined

When the HPV vaccine was first introduced, there were a number of reasons people listed for being critical. Some were just corporate cynicism - a company that just lost $5 billion in a Vioxx settlement was working its way under the same vaccine halo as polio and smallpox, they said. Others argued that it didn't work very well. And then there was a more subjective cultural claim that protecting teenage girls against a future cancer by making sex seem safer would lead to promiscuity.

Dear Bud Light: Your Sugar Is Not Superior To Their Sugar - Yeast Can't Tell And Neither Can Humans

Dear Bud Light: Your Sugar Is Not Superior To Their Sugar - Yeast Can't Tell And Neither Can Humans

During the Super Bowl, you can predict there will be a lot of beer commercials. As a non-drinker, this always puzzles me - haven't fans already bought their beer? - but advertising is a trillion dollar industry and I instead run a small non-profit so I am certainly not going to debunk capitalism.However, I am going to debunk junk science and their suggestion that because they use one type of sugar to help yeast and their competitor uses another theirs is superior.

Forcing Other Countries To Ban Shark Finning: A Bipartisan Conservation Bill Back In Congress

Forcing Other Countries To Ban Shark Finning: A Bipartisan Conservation Bill Back In Congress

During the George W. Bush administration, American furniture makers had a crippling disadvantage. While American timber was tightly regulated, foreign supplies had no limitations on where their wood originated from, and could engage in destructive practices and undercut U.S. companies.President Bush solved that by modernizing the Lacey Act, which was the conservation brainchild of Republicans a century earlier and had been modified a few times since. Under the new law, if a supplier could not show a legitimate trail of legal acquisition, it simply could not come into the U.S. 

More Religious Belief Correlated To Lower Belief In Organic Food Claims

More Religious Belief Correlated To Lower Belief In Organic Food Claims

In a recent experiment, participants were asked questions to gauge how religious they were and then about their willingness to purchase a fruit cup. Half were told the fruit cup was organic and half were told it was gluten-free.People who were very religious had more favorable attitudes toward the gluten-free fruit cup and were more likely to say they would buy it than they would the organic kind.

Vegetarians Are Even More Okay With Eating Insects Than Omnivores Are

Vegetarians Are Even More Okay With Eating Insects Than Omnivores Are

For the last 20 years, insects have been touted as the next big thing in food, because they have a lot of protein and would be reasonable to produce at scale. And people who don't understand agriculture think land only suitable for animal husbandry could magically support amber waves of grain if we stopped eating steers.But are insects too icky? Perhaps to people who have never seen animals slaughtered but have killed an insect. However, people who claim to know a lot about animal welfare and food, vegetarians, are okay with insects. Zoologically, they are correct, insects are not animals the way they think of animals any more than sponges are, though all share the broad Animalia kingdom.

The First Photonic Quantum Computer Is About To Come To Market - You Read That Right

The First Photonic Quantum Computer Is About To Come To Market - You Read That Right

If you've read anything about computers for the last 25 years, you've read the hype about quantum computing and how it is going to be better and faster and with less heat and replace conduction-based chips and it will generally be awesome. And then nothing happens outside a lot of arXiv papers and some physics magic published in journals. Quantum computing has basically gotten the best marketing free pass ever, because it is always five years away and no one seems to get cynical.Now it's only two years away. 

If You Are Going To Communicate Science, Be Yoda Instead Of Spock

If You Are Going To Communicate Science, Be Yoda Instead Of Spock

Nothing killed science culture more than Spock from the 1960s television show "Star Trek." He was wildly popular because he was so logical and reasoned. Emotions did not enter into his decisions. Scientists flocked to that mystique and so a whole generation of scholars sought to be dispassionate and data-driven in their interactions with the public.

Terrible At Sports? Low Vitamin D Is To Blame. Or Not. Turns Out It's All Hype

Terrible At Sports? Low Vitamin D Is To Blame. Or Not. Turns Out It's All Hype

In 2015, I predicted that someone was going to end up in the hospital due to overdoses on supplements.But don't you always say they are useless placebos? a friend asked.No, they are not all placebos, but products sold as supplements that do something are either actual drugs, like kratom, and thus should be regulated as drugs, they are useless placebos adulterated with actual drugs, like many Internet erectile dysfunction and diet pills, or they are useless in normal doses but toxic at high levels. Like Vitamin D.