Stronger Plants, Stronger Science, and Stronger Communication
From GMO Pundit Blog The French (and other Europeans) are currently exporting disease to the United States in the form of measles infections. This post attempts to put on the record where this problem comes from. It comes from beliefs in complementary and alternative therapies as a substitute for conventional medical treatment (CAM). We start…
Read More “Fashionable and frightening French fables about disease” »
Here is some interesting weekend reading for you. Peter Kareiva, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy, wrote an essay questioning the strategies of environmentalists and conservationists. He argued that their movement is failing – both in its goal to protect ecosystems and helping people to recognize their dependence on those ecosystems. He is also challenging…
Read More “Kareiva: Scientist, Conservationist, & Pragmatist.” »
Written by Steve Savage When asked, “Do you want foods that contain GMOs to be labeled?” most US consumers say, “Yes.” To those unfamiliar with the food system, this sounds like a simple request. The reality is that GMO labeling would be very complicated because it involves “negative identity preservation in low value, commodity channels.”…
Written by Steve Savage In a recent email exchange about the merits of mandatory “GMO labeling,” I was asked this question: “Why shouldn’t we be able to know what foreign genes are in our food?” It seems like a reasonable question to most people. After all, we are the customers; don’t we have a right to…
Read More “What Should We Know About Foreign Genes In Our Food?” »
Answers to the wrong questions. The moral message of this short story, taken from Paul Offit’s inspiring Autism’s False Prophets, is that fuzzy thinking about biology and human health can easily lead people and activist movements to do well intentioned, but tragically dangerous and stupid things. Lyn Redwood is a nurse practitioner who lives in…
The biological study of human behaviour can teach us a lot about ourselves, and Robert Trivers has just written a book Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others (Allen Lane, Penguin Books 2011) from which we can all learn deep insights about ourselves and our fellow humans. Yes fellow humans, some of…
I think it’s safe to say that most folks have had experiences with lice. Every entomologist I’ve ever met (including myself… buy me a few beers and I’ll tell you) has at least one entertaining pubic louse story. Head lice are a childhood rite of passage, with most kids being infested at one point or…
Read More “Do OTC Head Louse Treatments Work? Part 1: Mechanisms” »
Hi, I’m Ariela. I am studying nutrition sciences (dietetics) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I have a bachelors in sociology from UC Davis, and I am interested in the sociological aspects of people’s lives, especially food and culture. Hanukkah started last night at sundown, and I thought it was particularly relevant to talk about…
On Twitter yesterday, @seekblunttruth shared a link with @franknfoode that I thought deserved greater scrutiny. The link is to an ISIS post* titled Bt Crops Failures & Hazards. Others may spend some time criticizing ISIS itself, and that criticism may be worthy, but here I’d like to focus on the post. I’ll let you check out the post content yourself,…
Times are tough for science communicators right now. We’re in the middle of a funding crisis, and folks are still taking advantage of grants for personal gain. There are domestic terrorist organizations which target graduate students doing animal research which is especially terrifying to me because I’m a graduate student doing animal research. Although there…