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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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In late March of 2020, the Food and Drug Administration gave Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. The drug is already used off-label for diseases like arthritis and given how it behaves with human biology, it is plausible it might work on some with COVID-19. A peer-reviewed study found just that - but it was only epidemiology, and that is not how drug approval ever happens, any more than epidemiology alone should be how regulations happen at EPA or any policy-making group. 
People often adopt vegetarian or even vegan diets because they are told it will make them healthier, but the same epidemiological correlation that tried to link butter with heart disease claimed trans fats would prevent it, and now statistical links claim just the opposite. 
Researchers are on the hunt for a COVID-19 vaccine to eliminate the need for mask wearing and current limits on interpersonal gatherings (except protests), but a new model says it still may not help the world exit a lingering economic depression.
What do anti-vaccine believers have in common? A similar distrust in other settled science like GMOs and nuclear power, for one. And they all are more likely to share similar voting patterns, which means that even though only 20 percent of Americans hold negative views of vaccines, they have an outsized impact on policy. Because most of them are on the same political side.
Only 16 percent of Americans believe that Russia leapfrogged American scientists and successfully created a viable COVID-19 in a recent survey. They may be the same 16 percent who believe Russian propaganda sites like Russia Today and Sputnik when it comes to food: that Russia became the world leader in "organic" food with a press release saying they were; and energy, where Russia funds environmental groups to undermine natural gas so they can control Europe using a strategic resource while Germany can claim they have a larger percent of "renewable" energy domestically than would be possible if their energy was generated locally.
Try to imagine a world where people though wild lettuce was a status symbol and superior to lettuce grown on a farm; a salad would cost $400.

That is the problem with salmon. Elite customers want to know a laborer sweated for it, they insist if it is farmed it must be inferior but unlike organic certified pineapples or non-GMO rock salt, the naturalist fetish has real world consequences when it comes to the sea. Salmon are getting smaller, because they are spending less time at sea before being caught.