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A column in the November 28, 2005 Plastics News by Greenpeace co-founder turned scare-debunker Patrick Moore condemns the National Environmental Trust for trying to ban phthalates, which help make plastic in children's toys soft. He quotes ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross:
American Council on Science and Health medical director Dr. Gil Ross condemns the activist campaign against softeners.

Serious science writers don't follow the Huffington Post. But when Dr. Angela Logomasini of Competitive Enterprise Institute posts something, it's worth walking into the belly of the anti-science beast. Here's that, and a few other things we've been up to recently.

As we have done repeatedly, fellow debunker Michael Shaw has some things to say about Dr. Oz on his web page Shaw s Eco-Logic.
Here are a couple of examples from his piece The Merry Old Land of Oz, which appeared on the HealthNewsDigest site:

Unless he has a miraculous change of mind and heart, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will be remembered as a scourge on public health. He'll also be the Kennedy whose words and actions encouraged the spread of not only measles, mumps, and rubella but influenza and cervical cancer as well. What a legacy.

To make our society better informed, we have to fight back against the Fear Industry. We can do so by publicly identifying those people who spread misinformation. And then we encourage people to never listen to them again.

A study of elephants finds these massive animals get cancer at a far lower rate than humans. Researchers also found the reason: they have an astronomical number of copies of a vital gene. The news is interesting, but is unlikely to do more for improving human health.

In a study published in the Journal of the American College of Surgery, researchers debunked the myth that motorcycle helmets are associated with a higher risk of cervical spine injury. Helmeted motorcycle riders experienced a 22 percent reduction in the odds of this type of injury compared to non-helmeted riders.

Today, the only thing reliable about the collective media – both American and international – is how unreliable they are. Even on vital issues, like the coronavirus, they succumb to sensationalism and conspiracy theories. Is it any wonder, then, that more people are turning away?

Kawhi Leonard is intelligent, soft-spoken, modest and a thoroughly likable young man with an incredible work ethic. But during a recent interview the NBA star helped perpetuate one of the worst health scams around — that drinking alkaline, or high pH, water has health benefits. Should Leonard be called for a technical foul?
 

It’s bad enough when grown-ups use untested and unapproved supplements. But now, new research published in the journal Pediatrics found a surprisingly high rate of herbal supplement use among infants. The 2005 to 2007 study suggests that the prevalence of such use (including herbal teas) in the U.S. was between 3 and 10 percent.

Yale University researchers analyzed groundwater from 64 wells in several fracking-dense Pennsylvania counties where Marcellus shale drilling is taking place. In the largest study of its kind they found no association between fracking and well water contamination.

Apparently, the Huffington Post hasn’t caught up with the times. Nearly a year after The Lancet retracted Dr.

As the bed bug epidemic continues to spread through New York City and elsewhere, the EPA is now planning to commence research aimed at developing pesticide alternatives, especially genetic-based solutions, rather than allow DDT to be used. PBS NewsHour reported Monday that chemically-based anti-bed bug methods, particularly DDT, are “noxious but effective” and highlight the growing resistance of bed-bugs to more commonly employed pesticides. “DDT is not noxious.

In his Sunday column in the Montreal Gazette, McGill University chemistry professor Dr. Joseph Schwarcz wrote a commonsense article that effectively debunked the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) myth that the sunscreen additive retinyl palmitate causes cancer.

The Big Oyster and the Black Oyster King
Can Prohibition teach us about lockdowns and the opioid crisis?
When narrative overwhelms facts
Lessons from a child and a thief

The Cleveland Clinic remains mortified that one of their physicians, Dr. Daniel Neides, wrote blog post full of anti-science quackery. It has issued as strong of a rebuke as possible without firing him on the spot. Here's the full whiplashing by the Cleveland Clinic. 

A weekend retail therapy session turned into an ACSH topic when Director of Video Production Ana Simovska came across a California-made wallet with a Proposition 65 warning. Dr. Josh Bloom debunks the junk in the above video.

This item, which includes Dr.

As the debate over the origins of SARS-COV-2 rages, the case for silencing social media users grows weaker.

The Amish typically have very low vaccination rates for three reasons: First, in their culture, they have not been exposed to the overall benefits of children s vaccinations; second, they believe that vaccines may put their

Anyone who believes that vaccines cause autism shouldn't be in a position of authority. The fundamental problem with someone making such a claim is not that s/he is wrong. Instead, it reveals someone who's conspiratorially minded and lacks critical thinking skills. That's not the sort of person who should be in charge of anything important.

One of our core missions is to spread the good news about science as far and wide as possible. Obviously, we do plenty of that on the ACSH website, but we also regularly appear in various media outlets across the country. Here's where we appeared recently.

The uptake of the current COVID vaccine is running at about 7% of the U.S. population. Pfizer is taking a significant write-off. After the pandemic, our trust in vaccinations has reached a nadir. It's a far cry from our behavior concerning smallpox in 1947 when, over eight days, over 4 million New Yorkers were vaccinated. Or compared to 1961, when 90% of the at-risk population got vaccinated against polio.

Perhaps spurred by last week s seismic announcement by Sage Publications that it was retracting 60(!) papers from one of their journals, Science 2.0 founder Hank Campbell wrote a scathing

The link between autism and mercury has once again been debunked. Researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center conducted a large cohort study involving mothers and children in the Seychelles,