We were involved in a number of events outside policy in January, since one administration was winding down while one was beginning.
1. Dr. Julianna LeMieux taught a 10-day course on citizen science at Bard. The liberal arts school requires that all freshmen students, from film studies to photography, take a science course. That makes for good citizens in the 21st-century and we're proud to have been involved in making sure that young people learn the difference between health scares (and at that age, they are going to be more inclined to believe propaganda paid for by activists) and actual health threats.
2. Prior to that, Dr. LeMieux was in Philadelphia to participate on a panel at the Northeastern Plant, Pest and Soils Conference (NEPPSC) titled "Communicating with Non-Science Audiences" and afterward was at Rockefeller University for a panel on gene editing.
3. Dr. Alex Berezow was on the nationally syndicated Michael Medved Show to discuss the growing problem of drugs in society. He got the best introduction you can ask for:
"We'll be right back with a big, big IQ and a big, big brain, my friend Alex Berezow."
We at the Council may never hear the end of that.
4. Dr. Berezow also taped a segment for the Wonderful World of Stu (The Blaze) dealing with food scares, though that won't air until April.
5. On the Boston Globe-run site Stat News, Drs. Josh Bloom and Alex Berezow wrote about how, thanks to flawed federal policies, people are smart to hoard opiods.
That group isn't always on the side of science. A few days later they ran an anti-GMO diatribe by a Friends of the Earth campaigner who has a masters degree in city planning and who cites anti-science economist Chuck Benbrook, known fraud Seralini, and epidemiological buffoons at an IARC working group hand-picked by an environmental activist.
They may be woo too much of the time but they published us, proving that even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
However, if you want real science 100 percent of the time, and never any quackery to generate pageviews and staunch the financial bleeding like at STAT, please continue to read here.
6. National Review scribe Wesley Smith has noted that what should have been strictly a science march quickly devolved into a partisan politics one. In case the worrisome trends Alex Berezow saw did not make it obvious enough, the as-yet-unknown backers scheduled it to happen Earth Day, which was famously created by eugenics proponents and doomsday prophets to occur on the 100th birthday of Lenin.
7. Last week I did a podcast with Julie Gunlock of the Independent Women's Forum on the legacy of Rachel Carson and her novel "Silent Spring." Okay, it wasn't really a novel, though it started with a fable, but it was not a science book either. However, there is no disputing its cultural impact. Every environmental group today is hoping to write something and create a ban, whether the science warrants it or not.
8. In Psychology Today, Dr. Jamie Wells co-authored an article on how the nomination process of General James Mattis for Secretary of Defense, fake news, and poison in alternative medicine could lead to better communication across cultural boundaries. It sounds confusing but it works.
Have a great week. Here's a sneak peak at the new science awareness initiative we are going to be rolling out:
