Discover
Conflicting principles: Are anti-GMO groups abusing public records transparency laws?
A succession of stories in recent weeks involving scientists and open records requests have anguished many who cherish two ideals: academic ...
Did Bill Nye, the anti-GMO guy, just flip? After visiting Monsanto? Stay tuned
The 'Science Guy' has not yet announced how his views about GMOs have changed--he has been a skeptic for years--but ...
Online game teaches synthetic biology
On its surface, it looks like just another science puzzle game. In reality, the game is part of a broader ...
Keith Kloor on Bill Maher, vaccines and GMOs: “Nobody makes liberals look like asses more than Maher”
Bill Maher, the comedian and host of his own HBO show, is God’s gift to conservatives. Nobody makes liberals look ...
Public skepticism on GMOs, climate change reflect misunderstandings of risk
The Pew Research Center released their annual Science and Society report (PDF), where they asked over 2,000 members of the ...
What if Ebola became endemic in West Africa?
Last fall as the Ebola epidemic continued unabated, experts started discussing something that had never before been bandied about: the ...
Why communicating the science risks of GMOs is so challenging
The science of agricultural biotechnology is a proxy battleground for many people with political or cultural objections to GMOs, much in ...
Questioning the hype around oxytocin, the ‘hug hormone’
A new study offers two reasons to be cautious about some of the claims made for the role of the ...
Seeing dragons? Woman’s strange condition that baffled neurologists
Here’s the medical case report in The Lancet: Prosopometamorphopsia and facial hallucinations from a team of researchers including the famous Oliver Sacks ...
Researchers challenge prominent theory on link between psychiatric disorders and genes
An important new study could undermine the concept of ‘endophenotypes’ – and thus derail one of the most promising lines ...
Rat study sheds light on question of human ‘free will’
New research on the neural basis of ‘spontaneous’ actions in rats could shed light on the philosophical mystery that is ...
Keith Kloor’s Discover: Will Bill Nye agree to debate Kevin Folta on GMOs?
At Discover blogger Keith Kloor's invitation, University of Florida plant geneticist Kevin Folta wrote an open letter to Bill Nye ...
Colorado liberal cognescenti reject anti-GMO extremism
Boulder is ... home to several world-renowned scientific organizations, as well as the University of Colorado-Boulder. It’s worth noting that ...
No Love in Boulder for Colorado’s GMO Labeling Proposition
Boulder is ... home to several world-renowned scientific organizations, as well as the University of Colorado-Boulder. It’s worth noting that ...
Rich and famous embrace Vandana Shiva, wealthy self-described savior of the poor
Vandana Shiva, a global environmental icon and champion of peasant traditions, has been the guest of honor numerous times in ...
Can people really inherit memories?
In December last year, researchers Brian Dias and Kerry Ressler made a splash with a paper seeming to show that ...
Cell contamination confunds decades of cancer research
In the field of thyroid cancer, 58-year-old Kenneth Ain is a star. ... In June 2007, all that changed. Ain attended ...
Oldest known cave art holds clues to history of human creativity
Humans are intrinsically artists. Cave paintings and hand-carved figurines found in France, Spain and Italy suggest that Homo sapiens were crafting 35-40 ...
How misleading headlines distort scientific studies
Last week I gave a talk in Brazil called Why Is It So Hard To Think About The Brain?, Well, no ...
National Academy of Sciences convenes panel to re-evaluate GMOs
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is embarking on a comprehensive study of genetically engineered (GE) crops. It will examine the historic development of ...
On GMOs, Union of Concerned Scientists skips the science
Several weeks ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists posted a hard-hitting rebuttal to a famous environmentalist, someone who is normally an ally ...
What’s the difference between denying the scientific consensus on vaccines vs GMOs?
The science on GMOs is as solid and authoritative as it is on vaccines. So why are liberal outlets like ...
Liberal thought leaders should be as harsh on extreme anti-GMO activists as on climate change denialists
When Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks, people listen. “Practically every food you buy in a store for consumption by humans is ...
NaturalNews’ Mike Adams asks anti-GMOers to kill scientists, supporters of crop biotech
Mike Adams, self-styled 'Health Ranger' behind what's called the world's #1 anti-science website, NaturalNews, has issued a call to action: ...
To acquire all blood diet, vampire bats lost genes for bitter taste
Vampire bats have lousy taste. But they’re not bitter about it. According to research published today in Proceedings of the ...
Little genetic variation alongside human behavior at fault for passenger pigeon extinction
The passenger pigeon is the poster species for human-caused extinction. From a population of between three and five billion in ...
GMO debate entrenched in 1980s narrative of ‘synthetic monsters’ and ‘mad scientists’ in Hazmat suits
I’ve explored the genesis and amplification of varied media narratives, from Jared Diamond’s collapse meme and Paul Brodeur’s power lines/cancer connection reportage to Vandana ...
Bacteria in isolation mutate more
Bacteria that have no friends don’t get sad; they get weird. When E. coli cells sense fewer other bacteria around ...
