Ronald Bailey
Viewpoint: ‘Responsible research and innovation’ — Activist doublespeak for blocking technological innovation
No sensible person could favor irresponsible research and innovation. So RRI—"responsible research and innovation"—may sound like an innocuous idea. As it takes ...
Viewpoint: Will crop biotechnology breakthroughs usher in a new ‘Green Revolution’?
A recent spate of crop biotech breakthroughs presage a New Green Revolution that will boost crop production, shrink agriculture's environmental ...
Lab-grown meat promises to cut water and land use by more than 96%. Why are US regulators dragging their feet in approving this ‘sustainable innovation’?
Future Meat Technologies announced [recently] that it can now produce 1,100 pounds of meat daily from animal cells grown in industrial-scale ...
Persuasion machines: AI can now debate humans. We still win — for now
Stand aside, Siri and Alexa. An IBM team led by artificial intelligence (A.I.) researcher Noam Slonim has devised a system ...
Genetically modified AquaBounty salmon hits US markets after two decades of regulatory delays — and it’s already sold out
Way back in 1995, biotech company AquaBounty began the process of seeking regulatory approval from the Food and Drug Administration ...
Viewpoint: FDA took 24 years to approve fast-growing GM salmon. Let’s hope lab-made meat, dairy hit the market sooner
[Numerous] startups are pursuing the production of cultured meats including Israel-based Future Meat Technologies and Dutch companies Meatable and Mosa ...
Will Biden Administration preserve Trump USDA’s science-based crop biotechnology rules?
"Listen to the science" was an oft-heard riposte in political debates about how the government should respond to the COVID-19 ...
Viewpoint: Activists aim to block GM chestnut tree by hyping potential risks and ignoring real benefits
For more than 30 years, the American Chestnut Foundation (ACF) has been engaged in a privately financed program .... to produce ...
Viewpoint: Bayer caved to anti-science trial lawyers by settling glyphosate-cancer lawsuits
Bayer, the German pesticide and seed company, has agreed to establish a $10 billion fund that aims to resolve current ...
US birth rate hits record low—and that might be a good thing
The U.S. total fertility rate has dropped to below 1.73 births per woman, according to a new report from the ...
EPA wants scientists to share their data: Will it promote government transparency or threaten public health?
"The Trump administration is preparing to significantly limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine ...
Viewpoint: Hectoring Americans to go vegan will do ‘almost nothing’ to combat climate change
Eating meat is bad for the climate—or at least that was one of the main conclusions highlighted in a flood ...
No Bee Armageddon: US honeybee colony numbers stable for 25 years. Thank capitalism?
Warnings of an impending "bee apocalypse" became widespread in 2006, after some commercial beekeepers reported the mass disappearance of worker ...
Viewpoint: Gene-edited kids are no riskier than the non-edited variety
"The introduction of genetic modifications into future generations could have permanent and possibly harmful effects on the species," a group ...
Viewpoint: Despite anti-GMO opposition, poor farmers will finally plant ‘life-saving’ golden rice
Golden Rice which has been genetically engineered to have higher levels of the vitamin A precursor beta-carotene is finally about ...
Viewpoint: UN should reject a proposed ban on gene drives
A draft resolution would revise the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity to call on governments to "refrain from" releasing organisms containing engineered ...
Could green benefits of biotech crops win over ‘ideological’ environmentalists?
A new study in Nature Sustainability reports that “[e]xtensive field data suggest that impacts on wild populations would be greatly reduced through boosting yields ...
‘Stupidity-inducing environment’: Are we getting dumber?
People are getting dumber. So concludes a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS): Using military conscription data ...
Fears of ‘designer babies’ are surfacing again
"What we're seeing is a fast slide down a very slippery slope toward designer babies," warned Marcy Darnovsky. … What has alarmed ...
Home biohacker: Creating deadly human pathogens ‘is not that easy’
Using the handy tools sent in [the ODIN’s Genetk Design Kit], I was set to re-engineer some nonpathogenic E. coli ...
FDA lightens up on ‘outrageous’ direct-to-consumer genetic information ban
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) head Scott Gottlieb is reeling in his agency's outrageous four-year ban on direct-to-consumer genetic testing. Under the ...
Viewpoint: Confirmation bias, conflicts of interest plague ‘science’ behind glyphosate cancer claims
Anti-biotech activists hate the herbicide glyphosate, sold by Monsanto under the brand name Roundup. Those activists won a victory in ...
Are predictions climate change will reduce crop yields wrong?
Those of us who try to monitor the torrent of climate change studies frequently come across various projections that just ...
Swedish scientist edits DNA of healthy embryos—Should the public worry?
[On Sept. 22,] an NPR report, "Breaking Taboo, Swedish Scientists Seeks To Edit DNA of Healthy Human Embryos," stokes the ...
Ronald Bailey: Legal vultures use activist claims about glyphosate for ‘bogus’ Quaker Oats lawsuit
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Activists are now using ...
CRISPR’s gene-edited crops might provide an opportunity to revamp biotech regulations
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Thanks to entirely specious fears about ...
Nassim Taleb calls Reason’s Ronald Bailey an ‘idiot’ after backing out of GMO debate
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. . . [A]nti-GMO alarmist ...
Nassim Taleb ducks out of debate on GMO safety
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Nassim Taleb. . . NYU ...