Featured in Weekly Newsletter
Gene editing opens the door in Indonesia to dramatic advances in sustainable farming but skeptics remain
Like other developing countries, Indonesia is facing a familiar dilemma: how to feed a growing population while protecting its extraordinary biodiversity ...
Promise & Peril—AI’s Open Questions: Year in Review
Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept. It is already embedded in how we grow food, diagnose disease, manage ...
Viewpoint—Mifepristone birth control pill: Congressional right-wingers and RFK, Jr. HHS who raise doubts about the safety of the treatment ignore reams of science
[On January 14, 2025], the Senate held its first health committee hearing of the year. The topic? Whether mifepristone, the medication commonly ...
2026 will decide the legal future of the herbicide glyphosate—and could alter the shape of global agriculture
2026 is set to be a pivotal year for the fate of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and other ...
Chemophobia & Monetized Activism: Year in Review
Chemophobia — the reflexive fear that “chemicals” are inherently dangerous — stokes public anxiety about health and the environment. It ...
Viewpoint — Lysenkoism 2.0: RFK, Jr. is more dangerous than the 1930s Soviet scientist Trofim Lysenko, whose crackpot views killed millions of people and set back Russian science for decades
We don’t need to look to dystopian authoritarian theocracies portrayed in science fiction novels and movies to know that it ...
Viewpoint: America’s upside-down, upside-down food pyramid is bad science
Health Warning: Like every other Food Pyramid released in the last two weeks, this article is satire. Although most of the ...
Disinformation Attacks on Food and Farming: Year in Review
Global farming and food policy is under intensive attack from an alliance of left-leaning environmental activists and the ideologically mushy ...
Viewpoint: For the developing world, ‘nature-friendly’ organic and regenerative farming lags in production and sustainability
Across the UK, we face an extensive and growing set of land-related environmental targets - spanning climate change mitigation, biodiversity ...
Viewpoint: Tampering down hysteria on ultra-processed foods
The term ultra-processed food (UPF) has become so common — and so charged — that many people feel a sense ...
Multiple wives or husbands is a scourge on society? Science suggests hidden advantages of polygamy and polygyny
In July 2025, Uganda’s courts swiftly dismissed a petition challenging the legality of polygamy, citing the protection of religious and ...
Deadly Rise of Wellness Grift: Year in Review
Over the past year, the MAHA-based wellness industry has emerged as a direct threat to public health. Robert F. Kennedy ...
Suicide by chatbot
It is a sad fact of online life that users search for information about suicide. In the earliest days of ...
Viewpoint: Organic proponents are wellness vaccine-skeptic grifters but with better branding
The organic industry is a multi-billion dollar cash cow (get it—I love a good pun) that is based on zero ...
Vaccines Under Fire: Year in Review
Ideological misinformation is the most destabilizing force to public understanding of science. Nowhere is this more evident — or more ...
Legislating hesitancy: Anti-vaccine lobbying is dismantling state-level vaccine protections
As vaccine exemptions spread and courts are weaponized in the name of “medical freedom,” preventable childhood diseases are roaring back—with ...
There is no clear evidence (yet) that microplastics is driving soaring under-50 cancer rate increase, but they are a serious and growing health threat
Links between environmental exposures and increases in cancer rates take time to emerge. They range from community-wide disasters, like the ...
Viewpoint: Chemophobia infects the Washington Post: A case study of a reporter snookered by science-denying environmentalists
In the latest Washington Post scare story on the dangers of plastics, with the innocent title: These kitchen items may be ...
Politicization of Health & Science: Year in Review
Ideology-driven misinformation is a grave and growing threat to science and society. False claims spread faster than facts; confusion has ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr.’s ‘useful idiots’: His 6-point plan that undermines U.S. health policy rolls along
It seems like ancient history now, but it was really only three months ago that I first wrote a post ...
Glyphosate’s climate dividend: Weedkiller reduces greenhouse pollution equal to taking 21.8 million cars off the road each year
This paper estimates the annual global carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions from the manufacture, distribution and farm level use of ...
Europe pursues three different regulatory paths in efforts to open the gates to agricultural gene editing
The landscape of agricultural innovation in Europe is undergoing its most significant transformation in decades. New Genomic Techniques (NGTs)—including highly ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr.’s cronies offered global vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit $1 million to debate the safety of vaccines. He said no. Why? They’re disingenuous and nuts
Several years ago, people representing RFK Jr., who at the time was head of the anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense, ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr.’s Denmark vaccine schedule delusion—Why it would be a health disaster in the U.S.
It’s official. CNN confirmed that the Department of Health and Human Services was planning to announce an overhaul of the ...
Viewpoint: Killing children, RFK, Jr.-CDC-Trump administration’s plan to roll back hepatitis birth dosing will skyrocket cases and lead to preventable diseases
On December 14, 1999, a previously healthy infant was admitted to a Michigan hospital with diarrhea and jaundice. Within hours, ...
Organic food consumer snapshot: Okay benefits but only if cost premium is under 5%
Understanding what truly drives consumers to choose organic or locally produced foods requires looking beyond assumptions and into real behavior ...
Viewpoint: The functional medicine scam—Its ‘board certified’ practitioners peddle unnecessary tests and useless supplements
"Board certified" is a common and persuasive credential, particularly in medicine, often implying a recognized level of expertise. However, this ...
