Illumination 2.0

Preaching to the choir, the first episode makes a critical scicomm 101 mistake.   I was pretty psyched to hear that Bill Nye was part of a new series, Bill Nye Saves the World .  The Netflix show promised to bring a science to a popular audience, and would not shy away from hot-button issues.  This kind of science programming is important. We live at a time where the very process of science must be applied more vigorously to analyzing critical issues-- yet politics, belief and popular culture push back to limit its application or the results it brings.  Last night I watched the climate change episode-- and here is my review.  Preface First of all, let me state that I appreciate what Nye brings to the table. He is an established, visible personality that clearly has an audience. His brand resonates with many science enthusiasts, and it does with me too. His following is loyal, which is why any criticism of The Science Guy earns you harsh flames from pa...

Today I posted some rather positive news. Students from my lab visited a school and taught six kindergarten classes how seeds grow, and we provided a seedling to over 150 students.  Each plant was in a test tube and could be planted in the garden later.  The idea is to get kids to connect to science and grow healthy food in their homes.  The materials were paid for from my science outreach program.  A tweet about planting seeds with grade school kids ignites a hate storm.  But on the eve of the Science March, the idea of kids participating in STEM is apparently a threat to many.  This, along with a comment from a Purdue faculty member about my  talk yesterday ignited the hate.  Undisclosed kickbacks?  So I posted a link to my funding history, which includes no funding from Monsanto.  Zero.  Then Gary Ruskin, from the industry-sponsored front group US-Right To Know, posts a letter from Monsanto to me obtai...

You need to be eating more Specialty Crops. What's a "specialty crop"? This week's podcast is a wonderful conversation with Politico Senior Food and Ag Reporter Helena Bottemiller Evich!

This week's Talking Biotech Podcast is an interview with Dr. Paul Vincelli and Dr. Carol Mallory-Smith from Oregon State University.  Dr. Mallory-Smith has studied gene flow in grasses, and has charted the movement of transgenic creeping bentgrass genes in wild populations.  This is an important story to know, as it frames an important risk in the cultivation of transgenic crops. 

* (Asterisk up front)  I like whiskey.  This is not a rant against booze, it is a rant against misplaced risk and consumer deception.  I saw this tonight in the Twitterverse and it just about blew me away. There is a potential that this is a POE or April Fool's Prank. There is no comparison between the risk associated with biotech-plant-derived ingredients and the alcohol in beverages. Bad marketing angle to get people critically evaluating the risks of what they are consuming when you sell a known carcinogen.  Bourbon is made from fermenting corn, rye and barley, so I guess some genetically engineered corn could make its way into the mix. But over the last twenty years there is not one case of GE corn being a health risk-- and no clear way that it could be and not be realized pretty quickly.  We're talking a perfect safety record.  On the other hand, Wild Turkey proudly touts plenty of ethanol.  Ethanol is the alcohol that delicio...

It has been well established that the activist group US-RTK advances it agenda by using public records requests to obtain emails from public academic scientists at great taxpayer expense.  They then selectively pass stories along to willing (lazy) journalists that see an easy story and a quick paycheck if they publish the story that US-RTK wants told.  We've seen it several times already.  Thacker and Seife wrote a story about me that was false and retracted.   The New York Times and Eric Lipton wrote a damaging, libelous piece about me that time has shown holds minimal truth. Other stories are written by people on the USRTK payroll, posing as unbiased reporters. All of these stories started with USRTK passing along the emails to journalists. Journalists failed to do their own homework, instead, ironically doing the bidding of a well-financed activist group. Some did the homework but decided to perpetuate falsehoods.  Still others saw through the attack and...

This story summarizes recent work in my department by my friend and colleague, Dr. Mark Settles. Full story at The Conversation .  Driving down a country highway in the Midwest can seem an endless ribbon flanked by green walls of corn, neatly planted in stately rows. But who would guess that a plant that feeds a planet might hold clues that could help us better understand, or perhaps cure, insidious human diseases? Recent research  from Dr. Mark Settles at the University of Florida describes a deep evolutionary link between the processes that govern cell identity in a kernel of corn and those that turn a blood stem cell into a cancerous threat to human life. Over my three decades as an academic researcher, I’ve been constantly amazed at how discoveries about fundamental cellular processes in plants parallel, or sometimes precede, discoveries in animals. While we share remarkably similar genetic blueprints, plants and animals are obviously quite different. Learning h...