Psychics, homeopaths, magic soap buyers, anti-vaccine and anti-energy people, they all share one thing in common - no, no, not the same political party (good guess, though!), they embrace organic food.And if you don't also embrace their giant swath of superstitious crackpottery, they might depart in a huff. read...
read moreImagine a scenario where a group of people get together to frame the debate about science and even set out to conspiratorially place papers in highly-respected journals, selecting the ideal names to have on the paper and which publications would be most likely to publish it.It must be those evil corporate chemical shills again, right?Not this time, it was the International Workshop On...
read moreFrank Priestley, President of the Idaho Farm Bureau, notes that some consumers will benefit from GMO labeling laws - if those consumers are organic farmers and have an audience so educated by advertising that they will pay almost any price for 'health'.No one was as surprised as farmers that a GMO warning label law, almost identical in verbiage to the California version written by the lawyer who...
read moreCan homeopathy actually work if someone knows it is a placebo? What if, for example, a skeptical Science 2.0 group was told they got a placebo and that nutritionists were getting medicine? Would we feel better anyway?(1)Of course it's possible, it just wouldn't be due to magic water. It's a mystery of biology why some people just feel better taking something. That is why homeopathy still exists a...
read moreIn the first decade of the the new millennium, there was a lot of hand-wringing about the cutting of science journalism jobs at mainstream news outlets. The groundswell of support was...okay, it was nonexistent, really just limited to science journalists. No one else cared. read...
read moreBlack holes aren’t black. Warner Bros.By Alasdair Richmond, University of EdinburghNote: this article has spoilers.In Interstellar’s near-ish future, our climate has failed catastrophically, crops die in vast blights and America is a barely-habitable dustbowl. Little education beyond farming methods is tolerated and students are taught that the Apollo landings were Cold War propaganda...
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