Illumination 2.0

When scientists Monday-morning quarterback the lack of public acceptance of any technology, the usual conclusion is that we fumbled the communication. From refrigerators to in vitro fertilization, from antibiotics to biotech, rocky beginnings can be blamed on the fact that nobody bothered to simply talk to concerned people.  Over the years scientists and science communicators, sociologists and psychologists have kibbutzed about this problem, and clearly we have determined that the right kind of information did not flow through the right channels in the right way.  Communications efforts were confined to big companies talking to farmers, and nobody talking to the public.  One possible strategy would be to have science students engage in proper, evidence-based discussion.  It would provide solid, publication-backed science-- and do it in social media and newspaper comments sections, the places where these conversations were taking place. We've discussed this is a...

This week's podcast is on rice domestication. Rice represents a huge amount of calories consumed on the planet, and it has an amazing history. This is worth a listen, with Dr. Susan McCouch from Cornell University. 

This week I was stunned by an article in Mother Jones .   Author and Senior Editor  Kiera Butler wrote an article about the IARC decision against glyphosate, and how the panel knowingly omitted data from a massive study that did not support the panel's predetermined conclusion that links the herbicide to cancer.  Scientists and regulatory agencies have long recognized that glyphosate is benign relative to other week killers, and extremely safe at levels used. Activists claim that it is a deadly poison and its immense toxicity is covered up by a deep cabal between companies, regulators and every scientist and farmer in the world.  Keeping readership trust in the long term requires discussion of of evidence when it is blatant or insurmountable.  The comments section is priceless, including claims that Monsanto paid for this article. Mother Jones has a history of supporting less-than-scientific positions, including work that they have written about...

The world is poised to hate gene editing technologies, much like they hated refrigerators, cars, open heart surgery and in vitro fertilization.  There has not be a revolutionary technology yet that consumers haven't rejected first, and asked questions later.  Except stuff Apple sells.  So when a  paper came out last year claiming massive off-target effects of CRISPR-based gene editing, the critics went ballistic.  The scientific brain trust at Mercola.com jumped on the news story, as to the biotechophobe the genetic sky was falling.  But to the rest of us we looked carefully at the paper and had a lot of questions.  Mostly, it appeared that what the researchers were calling "off target changes" were not changes from gene editing at all, but instead were just natural sequence variations found between mice.  Bee. Eff. Dee.  One year later, the paper has been retracted .  But the damage has been done.  This revolut...

The discussions around agricultural technologies, especially herbicides, are nuanced and complex.  So if someone gets the basic information completely wrong, why would you trust them?  Such is the case of a Minority Staff Report prepared for congressional members of the Committee for Science, Space and Technology.  That's right, these are the same folks that extol the realities of anthropogenic climate change, now "preparing" a document that has activist fingerprints all over it.  It is a lot of the same-old same-old conspiracy nonsense-- that herbicide science is a corporate scam where regulators are paid dupes and all of the scientists in the world are corporate liars.  The scientists that make D.O.A. claims that are not supported by ggood science are not described as inept or soft, instead they are heroes, slienced by a well-organized corporate machine.  The whole thing is embarassing, and a reason why I'll never write a check to the Democratic Par...

This week I had the honor of speaking at the Annual Postdoctoral Career Symposium at the Texas Medical Center.  I'm not sure if that's what it is actually called, but this place in Houston features medical schools associated with Baylor College of Medicine, Texas A&M Medical, Rice University, University of Texas Medical School, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston Methodist Research Hospital, and University of Houston.   Such concentrations of research also are anointed with a concentration of postdoctoral researchers.  Postdocs can easily become a lost class in any university.  They don't get the attention  of undergraduate and graduate students and don't enjoy the same access as faculty. Pay is typically awful, and postdocs are running out of time to start families before they transition into a career or old age-- whatever happens first! My mission was an extension of what I do at the University of Florida, give some love and guidance to this und...

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...