Search results

Want to advocate for a food you want to sell or criticize a competitor? There's a study for that.

It was another week of us doing what we do best: separating health scares from health threats. So when we get pushback from those in the health-scare business – a shifty faction that includes academic journalism professors and a former bureaucrat who insists checking your email will give you brain cancer – it's time for us to get busy.

1. A student at Emerson College has gone John Birch Society, alleging he just sort of knows fluoridated water must be bad for us because he read it somewhere on the Internet and thinks being contrarian to accepted science and medicine is journalism. Well, it is. Shoddy journalism, anyway, and the world is already deep in that.

A new paper touting great news is sure to be embraced by the organic customer base. There is just one problem: The research was funded by industry, the very thing organic consumers say is wrong with industrial farming. Organic food corporations and trade groups are clearly a lot more like 1950s Big Tobacco companies than Big Tobacco is today.

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.

In part two of our series on the Lancet's descent into ideological activism, we look at the journal's proposal to "transform" global dietary habits and protect the planet from the ravages of animal agriculture. Is there any evidence to justify this campaign against meat production and consumption?

It's that time of year again - The World Science Festival is in town. Every year since 2008, the WSF has brought cutting edge science programs to the city. The events range from large ones, set in the grandeur of Lincoln Center to one-on-one marine biology lessons on a fishing pier while wearing a pair of waders. If you love science and are looking for something to do this weekend, then check out the website at www.worldsciencefestival.com to take a look at the 50 different events.

This piece first appeared in the New York Post.
On Friday, the judge in the Ground Zero health-claims case tossed out the recent settlement agreement, citing concerns that the deal wasn't fair to plaintiffs.

This award needs to go to a media outlet that has credibility (in some people's eyes, anyway), yet consistently gets the science wrong, likely for ideological reasons. Using those criteria, the Times was the runaway winner. There isn't even a close second.

The New York Times smeared a company at the request of an organic food lobby. Instead of behaving like responsible, skeptical journalists they chose to act like a PR firm. Such is the state of affairs at America's self-appointed "Paper of Record."

The recent excellent article by Josh Bloom, “NYC Pol Uses Phony Cancer Scare & ‘Children’ to Ban Glyphosate in Parks,” talks about the scare tactics used by a council member in New York to ban glyphosate (Roundup) from city parks. I’m taking a deeper dive looking at how the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and our EPA determine whether or not glyphosate causes cancer. A flawed process leads to flawed science, which like radioactivity – stays around forever!

Here's some of what we've been up to over the last few days, regarding outreach, making our science-based case and engaging with the media.

Opinion piece alleging that artificially sweetened sodas are as likely to cause obesity as sugary drinks is not remotely a scientific study, despite the headlines implying that it is.

Earning a living in science has been "uneven" (let's be kind) over the past 15 years. In 2008, in the middle of what would be known as the Great Recession, a chemist with the pseudonym Chemjobber started a blog about finding science jobs. He is now widely followed and we thank him for speaking with us about his experience.  

The credibility of the peer review process has come under vehement attack.
Scientists who receive no-strings-attached financial support for their research from demonized industries -- tobacco, pharmaceuticals, and food, among others -- are no longer deemed trustworthy.

NYU physicist Alan Sokal thought very little of the research performed by his colleagues in the social sciences. To prove his point, he wrote a paper that used plenty of trendy buzz words but made absolutely no sense. As he later explained, Dr. Sokal wanted to find out if a humanities journal would "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."

Two studies look at how you can use words to spin non-significant findings into published studies, and how falsified data spreads unchecked from one meta-analysis to another.

Once the weapon of choice for prepubescent teens, cyberbullying is now deployed, with ruthless efficiency, against PhDs who have committed the unspeakable crime of conducting research on, and publicly advocating, GMOs. The goal is straightforward: Biotech scientists must be destroyed professionally. Failing that, they must be destroyed emotionally. 

A recent study found that moderate alcohol consumption — even one drink a day — could shrink your brain. The explosion of context-free headlines predictably followed. Let's dive a little deeper and examine what most reporters missed.

April 2, 2008 -- New York, NY. scientists' ties to indus

Are you aware of the concept of the three gates? Most simply, before you speak or – in my case, write – let your words pass through three gates. Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?

Roundup can only affect the shikimate pathway in plants, so how can it be argued the weedkiller harms bees? By invoking the mystical, ill-defined "microbiome." What's next, their chakras?

In a comprehensive review of bisphenol A (BPA) published in the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology, the German Society of Toxicology (GST) analyzed about 5,000 studies and concluded that, “[BPA] exposure represents no noteworthy risk to the health of the human population, including newborns and babies.” But this report may come as some surprise to the (unfortunately) very few readers who will learn of it, consider

If we want the Environmental Protection Agency to protect Americans from true health hazards, it needs to be reformed so it stops inventing health scares.

Statistics is difficult, and choosing the proper tools becomes more challenging as experiments become more complex. That's why it's not uncommon for large genetics or epidemiological studies to have a biostatistician as a co-author. Perhaps more biomedical studies should follow suit.