Science & Society

http://www.flickr.com/photos/royluck/with/6134108264/ I’ve posted a blog about why GMO labeling is basically illogical.  If you take the time to read the actual proposition, there are at least six more reasons that proposition 37 on the California ballot this fall is a really bad idea that voters should reject.   1.    This is asking for something that is a great deal harder than it sounds. Almost all GMO crops are commodity grains.  To understand what labeling these crop ingredients means means, think of a river.  When it rains, little rivulets…

This fall, California voters will be asked to vote on Proposition 37, a law which would require that all foods including “GMO Crop ingredients” be labeled as such.   There are many reasons that this isn’t a good use of governmental authority for mandatory food labeling.  A look at historical logic and precedents for labeling, and at the misleading messages this initiative would foster, should inspire Californians to reject it at the ballot box.   Labeling for a Known Hazard If a food is hazardous to some consumers, but not others(e.g. peanut allergy), then it makes sense to…

Science 'consensus' is a dirty word to the environmental community - some of the time.   When it comes to global warming, the science consensus is accurate but when it comes to food, biologists are in the control of Big Business and government lobbyists and the science consensus is out to kill us. What's the difference, scientifically?  None, the consensus and the evidence are far stronger regarding genetic modifications but activists and the organic corporations selling to them have a whole lot of financial interest in feel-good fallacies; that is why California's Proposition 37,…

Whenever 'the poor' and 'minorities' are invoked in the same headline, it's good to set your skepticism filter extra low or you will likely never get through the first paragraph of an article (umm, including this one) because the issue is rarely science or even policy, it is instead advocacy.(1) Oddly, when it comes to a really bad cap-and-trade idea, like for emissions, environmentalists claim it will help the poor and minorities.  Their lungs are more sensitive or something, no one can figure the science of environmentalists out. Yet today activists are claiming doing the exact same…

Funny how you can go from darling of the intelligentsia to pariah in a short amount of time.  As I have mentioned before, when he was at Scienceblogs.com and then Wired.com, a few of us used to joke that whatever we wrote was going to end up in a Jonah Lehrer column next week.  Now its August of 2012 and even the rumor that Lehrer (who resigned from The New Yorker last month) was back at another Conde Nast publication, Wired, got a hasty disclaimer from them. That's a legendary, Jayson Blair kind of plummet. Idea poaching was basically harmless.  We all get inspired…

If you've seen the rash of 'open late' advertisements for junk food, you probably thought it was appealing to some long-tail demographic of fat people who absolutely must have a taco at 1 AM. Nope, and it isn't for the usual 'males ages 18-54' or whatever demographic package advertisers usually go on about.  It's stoners. Hollywood never leads on issues, they try to jump on a bandwagon of popular culture, and in 2004 they did so with Harold&Kumar Go to White Castle. The movie was as complicated as it sounds; an office guy and his stoner friend set out to get burgers from White Castle…

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) came out in support of U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar's proposed plan for energy development in Arctic Alaska. By protecting extensive coastal plain habitat around Teshekpuk Lake, and the foothills around the Utukok uplands, the most important Arctic wetlands and migratory corridor for caribou and migratory birds would be conserved. A final management plan for the NPR-A may be issued by the secretary after a 30-day review but  the WCS lauds the proposal because it balances conservation, subsistence rights for Alaska Natives, and…

Recently several posts have played the "race" card and elicited all manner of responses, but at its root, the fundamental premise had not actually been examined.  Is "race" a valid concept? I know that many people will immediately experience a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of discussing "race" as pseudo-scientific, because they either have a vested interest in advancing their own "race", or because they wish to use it as a lever against other "races". However, the premise is quite simple.  If you can't actually define it in scientific terms, then it cannot be science. …

The US Food and Drug Administration says requiring special labels for foods that contain ingredients from genetically modified crops would be "inherently misleading" to consumers - that is exactly what proponents of GM food labeling are hoping for. People inherently side with the precautionary principle and there is no requirement that ballot initiatives be written clearly or well; the assumption is the public will figure it out. The American Medical Association agrees with the USDA and wrote two months ago, "There is no scientific justification for special labeling of bioengineered foods."…

It's easy to get depressed reading the criticisms of self-loathing types who demand a zero-defects culture.  If some weirdo neuroscience PhD student shoots up a movie theater, well, that is reason for a whole bunch of people to want to run out and ban neuroscience. And if you read anti-science people, the world is a scarier place than it was when we were huddled in caves, starving.  We have to ban Big Gulps and goldfish and golf and genetically modified food and vaccines; everything but triclosan, which actually may be bad for you. In their world, everyone in science is out to kill…