Science 2.0

Thanks to public shaming of wealthy progressive elites on the coast, and even pressuring the Governor of California to accept science the way he long claimed he does and ban the arbitrary exemptions that led to some schools with only 25 percent of kids - the ones with Republican parents - vaccinated, America's anti-vaccine movement is in decline.That leaves France, where over 40 percent of its citizens believe vaccines are unsafe, as the world leader of the anti-science movement in general, and vaccines in particular, show results published in EBioMedicine.

Are bees in peril or not? It's difficult to know, because the moment science declares one thing not an issue (example: neonicotinoid targeted pesticides), environmental groups move the goalposts and declare something else is the problem. When honey bees were shown to be unaffected, groups proposed that wild bees were the big concern, and if amateur record-keeping and a Bayesian estimate agrees, they declare the science settled. If a world-class entomologist does a good, controlled study of bees, it is ignored.

Though Britain has consistently been part of formal European trading, it was with some hesitation that they entered the European Union (EU) in 1993, and they famously balked at adopting the Euro currency in 1999.During that time, fears about giving a lot more than they get have been realized. Some claims have been that science in the UK would be impacted by Britain's exit from the EU - "Brexit" for short. So is that fact or hype?

Organic farming should be in a Golden Age. Organic marketing groups, and the junkyard dogs they pay to attack scientists (1) finally got mandatory labeling on conventional food, the public is already spending $13,000,000,000 on organic food in the U.S. alone, and margins have shown to be much higher.I have long wondered why everyone doesn't switch to organic farming.It's that pesky free market. 

Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin recently signed Federal Law 358-FZ, which bans genetic engineering of plants and animals for the indefinite future.

In response to an overtly science-hostile bill by the state government in Vermont (1), the U.S. House of Representatives preemptively passed a softball GMO labeling law in 2015. Anti-science groups (Friends of the Earth, NRDC, Union of Concerned Scientists, et al.) and their paid Deniers for Hire (Sourcewatch, US Right To Know, every other organic trade rep) were understandably apoplectic, because it was not going to handicap domestic agriculture and thereby make the organic food process more attractive.(2)

The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) says it doesn't know if coffee causes cancer or not, a switch from 1991 when the agency said it did.That is bad for people who want to trust IARC's recommendations -- because its reasons to reverse course on coffee are no more valid than its reason to have declared it possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B) in the first place. And the coffee claims are no more valid than any other claims the agency has made about the hazards of common things.

For decades we have been told that salmon is good for us, for everything from heart health to brain function. And we should eat more of it.But if more people actually listened to those dietary recommendations, they would run squarely up against environmental activists and the media outlets (i.e. Mother Jones) and anti-science Deniers for Hire (i.e. SourceWatch) they fund. 

For what seems like decades, it has been open season on scientists and corporations by environmental non-profit corporations and the PR groups they fund to be their hatchet men, like SourceWatch and Mother Jones. Libel? No problem, Lisa Graves at SourceWatch will do it. Spinning stolen funding proposals provided by a fired employee as actual conspiracy events? Mother Jones will oblige.

While watching the Stanley Cup match on Saturday, the first period ended and legendary sportscaster Bob Costas appeared on the screen with the Lexus Intermission Report.It made me chuckle seeing an overt corporate placement because the day before, a blogger at the political website Mother Jones named Tom Philpott had asked me on Twitter what I thought of a new EPA paper on the herbicide atrazine.Be interested to hear thoughts on EPA atrazine report from @HankCampbell and @JonEntine https://t.co/5XGVg0iR7V

Earlier this month, the U.S. Energy Information released a report projecting that by 2040, world energy consumption will have grown by 48% from 2012 levels.  That sounds like a terrific advancement for developing nations.  We worry about water in other countries, we worry about food, we worry about education and culture. Every single one of those is resolved with affordable energy. Energy is the great equalizer and America's second most important strategic resource after, obviously, food. 

The news that the Department of Defense had found a woman in Pennsylvania with a strain of E. coli carrying the gene mcr-1, the first time plasmid-mediated resistance to colistin (MCR) has been found in the United States, should have brought calls to action, because MCR creates resistance against colistin, a powerful antibiotic seldom prescribed due to side effects that remains effective as a last resort.Instead it brought political posturing. Democratic Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (NY-25) immediately demonized farmers and drug companies - again.