Illumination 2.0

 The discussion around Twitter bans is hot, mostly with regard to specific accounts that provide dangerous false information.  But what about accounts that appear to be legitimate users, but somehow are coordinated accounts posting false or misleading information?  One false-information source alone is not much influence, and one can be singled out, reported or appropriately banned without consequence.   But does the mass posting of a common false claim from dozens of accounts provide a false sense of consensus where none really exists?  It's right from the Goebbels playbook-- tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.  It works because repetition and the perception of broad support from a number of supposedly independent accounts provides the illusion of truth.  This barrage occurred following news that Oxitec mosquitoes were being released in the Florida Keys.  Repetition of a common message from multiple accounts that appear to be i...

 Over the last week the trolls are back, and polluting social media with more anti-Folta nonsense.  I won't even touch on it.  Nobody has looked at it, nobody really cares.  It gets few likes, retweets, etc., and those that do show some love to the filth are in the defamation network.  It's dead. But sadly I need to always play defense.  Now that these allegations are forever placed in findable space, I must reluctantly respond.  I teach students, I work with kids, I lead community initiatives, and when someone claims that I'm issuing "threats" I unfortunately have to provide my perspective. First, Carey Gillam.  She tweeted this, this week: Carey is one of very few people on my "do not Heimlich" list.  She is one person that I believe is truly evil, and takes pleasure in harming others.  When I begged her to leave my family out of some online slander, she doubled down and went after someone very close to me.  I appealed to her as a...

 In 2015 the anti-science, scientist slander machine called US-RTK provided my emails and a story to New York Times reporter Eric Lipton.  As stated by Lipton on the 9/17/2015 Kojo Nnamdi Show on NPR, (USRTK leader) "Gary Ruskin handed me a story and wanted me to publish it." The result was a gross misrepresentation of me and my motivations to teach science. To them, it was all part of a corporate cabal to misinform the public in exchange for grant money.  Time has shown that none of it was true.  Still the story lives on the internet, forever attached to me in a Google search.  And folks from USRTK keep it alive and well.  Last week Stacy Malkan, a USRTK henchtwit, continued to post links to the Lipton story, at least to the documents that supported it, plucked from their context for easy re-interpretation. Yes, that's what I do.  I talk to folks about communication, which has a significant component of psychology.  How do people process informa...

 Wolves in sheep's clothing?  It is an interesting question because I've never seen a sheep wearing clothes.  I guess what it really means is that if  a wolf could skin a sheep and wear the wool to basically be a trojan horse. Something like Silence of the Lambs. I've always suspected that a number of apparent "good guys" of consumer advocacy are really just anti-biotechnology interests. Their recent activities have confirmed my suspicions.  Over the years I have watch the Organic Consumers Association and the Center for Food Safety rail against biotechnology as it applied to crops. They falsify evidence, bend the truth, and vilify scientists. You can go to their pages and read that I'm a booze-swillin', wife-beatin', child harassin', drunk-drivin' a-hole that is paid by Monsanto to lie about science. Because I teach science.  Now that their nemesis Monsanto is no longer a thing, these groups must be falling on hard times.  Their most recent ta...

A safe and effective vaccine has been developed to meet a public health threat, in months instead of a decade.  It is the amazing confluence of molecular biology, medicine, and and influx of money, all colliding to install community immunity to a highly transmissible and potentially harmful virus.  I receive my first shot today, the Moderna mRNA vaccine. I'll get it today at 5:40 pm at the Publix grocery store on 91st Street.   For most this event marks the end of a threat to health, the potential to maybe rejoin others and life returning to normal.  But to me it means something more. I t is another gorgeous application of a technology I have studied for almost a lifetime.  I first learned of recombinant DNA technology in 1977.  I was 10.  The concept was always intriguing. It was amazing that we could potentially fix medical problems, correct genetic errors, enhance traits in plants.... simply my adjusting the basic instructions in the molecular ...

  One of the joys of publishing a scientific manuscript is the correspondence from the journal that the paper has finally been accepted.  Peer review and high journal standards are a slow and deliberate maze to navigate that stand in the way of sharing your prized work. There is one monumental publication in the hundred plus I’ve authored where the research, writing and review processes became a delicate managerial dance between negotiation, combat, finesse, psychology, and arm twisting. This week we celebrate its 10 year birthday, with two sturdy gin and tonics for every piece of birthday cake.   The publication of the woodland strawberry genome in February of 2011 was the culmination of efforts from at least 77 scientists.   It was a battle from the beginning, and story that few people know and the rest tried to forget. Somehow I became the manager of the project, so the successes and frustrations are still a little fresh even after a decade. The genome seque...

 I read the tweet and immediately was overcome with a vacant, empty feeling.  It was a cold and heartless castigation, aimed at hurting someone that was already down, someone experiencing monumental anguish. Now, they were piling on. Cold, cold hearts.  A radiation oncology resident named Dr. Sara Bertran Ponce was expecting a child.  She was 14 weeks into the pregnancy and all was well.  She received the COVID19 vaccine and proudly shared the experience in an interest to encourage others to do the same. The following quotation appeared on a Vox.com story about the safety of the vaccines during pregnancy.  Inspiring, courageous words of Dr. Ponce, guiding others to follow her expertise to protect others.  Her twitter stream showed the words of a public advocate, someone dedicated to public health.  And the #vaccineswork hashtag was certainly raising the blood pressure of many that see the COVID19 vaccines as a threat to their bankrupt movement....