Discover
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 ...
Mark Bittman’s moderation on GMOs may be too late to rescue foodies links to fear tactics
For GMO opponents, it’s been a good news/bad news week. The good news: Vermont became the first state to mandate the labeling ...
DNA alphabet expanded, opens up new possibilities for synthetic drugs
Way back in Biology 101, we learned that DNA is encoded through the nucleotide pairings of adenine to thymine and ...
Indian farmer suicides: Compelling media narrative with no basis
In his Collide-a-Scape column, Keith Kloor quotes from The Economist’s Demography and Development blog, several months ago: Facts can be stubborn – and ...
Reuters, other science reporters often promote ‘false balance’ on GMO safety studies
GMO coverage in the media today is where climate change reporting was from the late 1980s until the early 2000s, ...
Mitochondria may be impaired in vets with Gulf War Sydrome
Doctors have struggled for decades to find a cause for a host of debilitating health problems experienced by veterans of ...
Fear and deception in anti-GMO efforts
The anti-GMO troops in the United States received some unwelcome news this week from Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of the U.S ...
Despite ethical issues, screen kids for low IQ because some treatment may be possible
There could be a way of predicting – and preventing – which children will go on to have low intelligence, ...
Algae suicide helps its relative and harms its rivals
You might say the benefit of staying alive is an actual no-brainer: even brainless lifeforms do their best not to ...
Anti-GMO activists have the ‘right to be manipulated’
The list of supermarkets, companies and restaurants hopping aboard the anti-GMO train keeps growing. Last year Whole Foods and Chipotle ...
GMOs and the skeptics: Will truth win out?
A social movement revolving around food and health concerns has made GMO labeling a galvanizing issue. The grassroots campaign to ...
Anti-biotech backlash attempts to reframe Green Revolution in negative light
Can we agree that the Green Revolution was, on balance, a good thing? You know, kinda like the industrial revolution. Yes, ...
How anti-GMO activists sell India ‘suicide seeds’ narrative
Over the past decade, the story of hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers being driven to suicide because of the failure of ...
Height might be hazardous to your health
In many areas of life, tall people seem to get all the benefits. On average, they earn more money. They ...
Are male contraceptives on the horizon?
Using a new approach, scientists have come up with a male contraceptive that has proven 100% effective in early test ...
In GMO French fry debate, conservationists sit on sidelines as ‘mob mentality’ poisons discussion
Activists who oppose genetic modification have the “advantage” because of the way they frame their arguments, writes Keith Kloor in ...
Sex and brain structure: Is this really about gender?
The news on December 3, 2013, read "Scientists discover the difference between male and female brains." Britain’s Independent actually made ...
New, fast sequencing process uses online databases to ID new viruses
It can take weeks or months to identify a new virus, but only days for one to kill, so researchers ...
Ancestry and bitter tastes
I do love me some sprouts! Greens, bitters, strong flavors of all sorts. I’ve always been like this. Some of ...
Your allergies may save your life
According to new research, allergies may have evolved in order to save lives by forcing sufferers to reject and expel ...
Anti-GMO ‘zombie myths’: Influential enviro leaders such as Paul Ehrlich spread propaganda
In his latest blog post, Discover's Keith Kloor addresses the spread of popular anti-GMO myths, such as the supposed rise in ...
Cancer cells evolve to outwit body defenses
Cancer is a disease of information, in which a cell becomes reprogrammed into a precision killing machine. In the consensus ...
Why I love genetics
A few years ago I had a discussion with a friend about our academic backgrounds. She is a neurobiologist by ...
Bad kids can’t blame their genes
A paper just published reports that there are: No Genetic Influence for Childhood Behavior Problems From DNA Analysis This is pretty ...
