Illumination 2.0

The videos released by Stonyfield Organic are patently offensive.  They use children to produce false statements about well-understood scientific topics, which misleads the consumer, but also has potential to harm children.   This has drawn the ire of an increasingly large scientifically adept food and farming community, and many have taken to the Stonyfield Facebook page to voice their discontent.  Ten years ago you would have seen Rob Wager, Prakash, Anastasia, Karl, @mem_somerville and a few others weighing in.  The scientific comments would be buried in a sea of shill accusations from a series of facade accounts (and Ena Valikov). It makes my heart happy to see scientific traction catching on. The comments come from hundreds of people -- farmers, moms, students -- all presenting reasoned rebuttals to Stonyfield's bad science campaign.  And it is changing minds. How do we know? Because the soft, accurate and kind comments are being systematical...

Nick Saik set out to produce a full-length documentary about food and farming technology. Food Evolution did it first, and did it well.  So to avoid a redundant effort Nick is transforming those videos into short features.  Check out his work, and listen to him describe his efforts on this week's podcast. 

The language below is provided by the campaign to defend Britt Hermes. You may know that Britt Hermes, who is an international skeptical campaigner about naturopathy, is currently being sued for defamation. Britt used to be a naturopath herself, but she now spends a lot of time and effort exposing naturopathic practices, including on her blog “Naturopathic Diaries”. She’s been taken to court in Germany by US-based naturopath ‘Dr’ Colleen Huber, who is claiming that Britt has defamed her on her blog. Huber is a critic of chemotherapy and radiation therapy in cancer treatment. Instead, she uses ‘natural’ therapies that include intravenous infusions of vitamin C and baking soda. The international skeptical community is concerned that the case against Britt may have the effect of silencing a major campaigner against unproven and disproven ‘medical’ practices, through the imposition of considerable legal costs. For this reason, the Australian Skeptics have set up...

Do the attack articles really help a cause?  When a scientist is paid by the state and does their vast majority of research from State, Federal and small fruit industry funds, why foment hate against them?  Here's a love letter I got today, and my response.  Do you really hurt your causes by tarnishing the people that work for you, that are paid with your dollars and are working for the greater good?