Impostor participants are people who fake data in order to take part in health research or are automated computer ‘bots’ which mimic human behavior and responses. As claims get promoted in journalism about harms related to PFAS in water, weedkillers causing cancer, or food coloring causing diabetes, lawsuits by predatory lawyers have become big business, and it won't be a surprise if...
read moreIn the early days of Science 2.0, blogging did not get a lot of institutional respect. Public outreach was a waste of time, academics were often told, leave that to science journalists and the PIOs at schools who write press releases.It seemed archaic. Anyone who knows how much of science is government-funded, about a third of basic research, knows that means it is political. Which means you...
read moreOver 40 years ago, President Ronald Reagan, the most pro-science president of the 20th century, proposed a lot of bold initiatives. A Superconducting Super Collider was one goal, a big boost for government funding of basic research was another, and he also laid out a Strategic Defense Initiative. A missile defense system. That last one was dismissed by Democrats in Congress and media corporations...
read moreDisinformation and misinformation are common tactics and in the 2008 they entered the social media realm. Senator Barack Obama came from behind to overtake Senator Hillary Clinton to secure the Democratic nomination and then used the 100% greater funding he got by reneging on his promise to limit himself to public financing, as his opponent Senator John McCain did, to pour money into social media...
read moreNFL Biosciences is has a Marketing Authorization Application for a smoking cessation technique derived from an allergen treatment in the 1970s that has been quietly used as an unauthorized smoking cessation tool for 10 years. A lot like vaping pens were before the Obama administration tried to claim all tobacco was as harmful as cigarette smoking, an actual carcinogen.And it works better than...
read moreThough organic™ farmers sell bucolic imagery of hoeing by hand and sunsets over fields of corn, it is just marketing to the gullible. All farmers who make more than enough money to pay their real estate taxes(1) are high-tech gurus. They use real-time data on the health of their land and their crops, they want to use just enough product to get the most food with the least environmental...
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