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If you are educated by Google, you see Deniers for Hire have called us a "pro-industry front group" - Greenpeace, Mother Jones, NRDC, U.S. Right to Know, and SourceWatch, the whole cabal. The problem with their argument (other than the fact it is ad hominem) is that, if it really was true that ACSH is a corporate shill, we would have to be really, really bad at it, given our content.

What is the broader health media community saying about the new nutrition guidelines? We took a look around the country, and the internet, and here are some of the most popular sentiments, from the intriguing to the batty.

Rather than rehash the disclosure of conflicts that led to the downfall of the now-former Chief Medical Officer at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, consider how this episode reflects a more common problem of "entitled" powerful people. Here are two remedies that don't require investigations and can possibly help correct medical research's vacillating integrity dilemma.

The notes of physicians are now freely available to patients. Is medical innovation fueled by theory or experiments? Another consideration in the Wuhan leak story, what are the limits to eminence over specific expertise? Finally, the nose knows - in this case how the receptors of smell are challenging lock and key.

"I plan to serve beef for my Christmas dinner," [Secretary of Agriculture Ann M.] Veneman said, "and we remain confident in the safety of our food supply."
Responded [former USDA veterinarian Lester] Friedlander: "She might as well kiss her (behind) goodbye, then."
From an article by Steve Mitchell of UPI, December 23, 2003

The New York Times objectively reports on how the news media, politicians and science were wrong about "crack baby" epidemic. But they never apologize to their readers or accept responsibility.

Three well-known anti-GMO groups have attacked the New York Times for publishing a generally excellent story about crop biotechnology. Natural News, for example, called the article "pure propaganda masquerading as journalism." Unsurprisingly, Natural News is wrong.

A review of 100 news media articles on new cancer drugs found that about one-half described the subject drug in a superlative tone that was generally uncalled for and likely to generate false hope.

When the recent publication of a paper in Nature Methods claimed that using the CRISPR-Cas9 technique may cause unexpected mutations to occur, you might say that produced a collective gasp in the scientific community. But those who discovered CRISPR-Cas9 are not taking this criticism lightly – and they're fighting back.

Everyone is perpetually confused about how often nutrition experts change their minds about the health impact of consuming eggs. In the past several weeks alone, two powerful studies -- of course, contradicting each other -- were published in major medical journals. One states that eggs will prevent heart attacks; the other that they will lead to heart attacks and death. What's the real message? ACSH advisor Dr. David Seres explains.

Last month, a jury rejected arguments by two National Security Agency workers who claimed that their brain diseases were caused by a magnetic tape-erasing system they used in the course of their work. The judge dismissed some of the plaintiffs' arguments as junk science and the jury rejected the rest, to the delight of the defendant, Electro-Matic Products Co., manufacturer of the tape-erasing system. This was a victory for science and the legal system, which have both been abused in recent decades by people stoking fear of electric and magnetic fields.

This piece first appeared in the Washington Times.
A new scientific McCarthyism is alive and well in America today. Nowadays, the inquiring mantras come from journal editors and government panel chairmen. It goes like this:

Oklahoma, which badly botched a number a number of executions by using experimental methods that were scientifically flawed, has decided to use nitrogen asphyxiation instead. A look at the chemistry and physiology of a more-humane method of capital punishment. 

There's been a lot of controversy over Janet Jackson revealing her breast at the Superbowl, which must make Madonna and Britney envious (though Madonna is cleaning up her act in some ways: she has reportedly quit smoking and is trying to get Britney to do likewise). The real booby prize for Celebrity with a Bad Idea should go not to poor Miss Jackson, though, but to...actress Pamela Anderson.

A busy week for our health and science journalists, who were picked up by a range of media outlets across the political spectrum. Here's how some of our reporting was referenced.

Only half of Americans and few scientists believe in alternative medicine, but we're all paying to study it.

From a relatively small $2 million per year operation in 1992, called the Office of Alternative Medicine, a behemoth has grown now known as NCCAM, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Its funding has grown even more rapidly than the popularity of alternative medicine has and is now soaring over $100 million a year.

It's no surprise when an activist group trots out a lone, non-peer-reviewed study in an effort to bolster its case, but you would think that government regulations rest on a stronger scientific foundation. Guess again.

I take you behind-the-scenes as a judge for the Miss America's Outstanding Teen scholarship competition. 

What if someone offered to sell you water that promised to contain extra oxygen? And what if they promised it would hydrate you three times more than ordinary tap water consumed by peasants that didn't have your wealth? Wouldn't that make you a better parent? Shouldn't you buy it? Of course not, since it's all nonsense.

What topic can embroil one of Britain's leading scientific journals, various newspaper, TV and radio commentators, as well as the Royal Society British counterpart to our National Academy of Sciences in heated controversy? The culprit, at least at first glance, is genetically engineered potatoes. But the real question underlying this latest skirmish in the bioengineering wars is 'what constitutes good science?'

The recent reporting on Flint's water crisis by CNN's Christiane Amanpour has a tenuous grasp of the data and the reality. 

1. Dr. Gary Null, one of the Four Horsemen of the Alternative (along with Oz, Chopra and Weil), is now most famous for hosting a conspiracy theory radio program and producing straight-to-video movies funded by organic food groups.
Environmental Working Group has never produced a science study but they have overturned 500,000 biologists, according to Null, while the US EPA, which just cleared glyphosate of weird claims made by an IARC Working Group that was hijacked by an Environmental Defense Fund consultant, is secretly suppressing damaging data about Monsanto. 

Who's smarter, an 85-year-old billionaire in terrific health or a "sue and settle" activist group that undermines science?

A non-scientist thinks he has discovered that GMOs contain formaldehyde.