Illumination 2.0

This week’s podcast is a discussion with Dr. Christine Lattin, a postdoctoral researcher in the Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Center at Yale University. Dr. Lattin examines stress responses in house sparrows using live imaging so that birds can be studied over and over through time. However, Dr. Lattin has become a target of activists that have engaged malicious, personal attacks against her and her research.  The harassment has intensified into very personal acts of defamation and intimidation for this early career scientist.  We discuss the extreme measures she takes to ethically conduct her research and how her own personal reconciliation of how animals are important to research.  We then discuss what it is like to be the subject of an activist defamation campaign and personal attacks, and how to not just survive it- how to turn it into something positive. The discussion is powerful and emotional, and hopefully will stir further awareness of how scientists are attacked

Twitter can be a great tool for rapid review and dissemination of thoughts, criticism, and media.  However, about six months ago Twitter revised the program so that the @usernames did not count against the 140 character limit.  At that point a culture of strategic, well worded posts between a few users changed.  Twitter went from useful to intolerable.  Now there are threads with 40 users involved, sparring endlessly about issues like GMO, vaccines and climate. These are now good science allies arguing endlessly with people known to be disruptive agitators with no interest in actual science.  Please stop entertaining them.  I've blocked the trolls, so now I sit and watch well-intentioned people that have the science right pop up on the thread one after another, arguing with trolls.  I see one side of the argument, but that's all I see.  Hundreds of posts, one after the other.  Now I'm missing valuable messages that I want to see, because I'm watching one

Last week the New York Times' Stephanie Strom published a report that there were meaningless levels of the herbicide glyphosate identified in ice cream-- Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. Turns out that the organization that paid for the tests, Organic Consumers Association (OCA), has been trying to "force" (their word) Ben and Jerry's to source organic milk for some time to no avail.   I reported here that such pronouncements are counter to the accepted methods of scientific publication, and that in absence of methods, replication and statistical treatments no sound conclusion could be made.   I hypothesized that the report might be payback for not sourcing organic milk.  To the casual bystander this is rather low, and it is not looking good for the Organic Consumers Association. OCA is a relentless science-free religion exploiting the organic halo and all of its innocent presumptions.  OCA does not support organic production or farmers directly, they simply despis

This week's podcast covers the Ben and Jerry's controversy spawned by a non-peer-reviewed report in the New York Times. Is this extortion for failure to play by activist rules?   Listen here.  

I do a few podcast interviews, but this one with Ania Kay was strangely important.  This episode of the Health Files Podcast was recorded in April, long before the discussions of genetic engineering as an agent of good, as shown in the film Food Evolution .  I think this is one of my favorite interviews so far.  As readers of this blog know, the movie Food Evolution spurred a sharply polarized response. Scientists are excited to have benevolent use of technology highlighted, while others call it "propaganda" , suggesting that it is disingenuous to not talk enough about the downsides of technology.  In this podcast I do just that-- strengths, weaknesses, limits, risks, and benefits. This is how I believe most scientists discuss the topic, as science! I think this would be a good one to listen to for anyone formulating their opinion on the topic, as it reflects a range of issues and evidence that underlies them. 

The boring saga of the Berkeley 45 continues , as several more have now emerged to ensure that their denial of fundamental science and deep scientific consensus is codified in the archives of time. At the same time, those on the science side of the discussion make a critical mistake-- piling on to a grad student, presumably the one that led the charge.  Grad students make mistakes, we all do.  Our job as leaders should be to reach out, help them correct, and at worst, simply inspire their elevated thinking by doing the right thing.  Unfortunately lots of folks have fallen into the trap of an eye for an eye.  She stuck her neck out in a poorly-advised way and now is being singled out and pummeled on blogs and in the Twittersphere in a way that could ultimately affect her long-term career options. Some think that this is appropriate, that if she is going to make claims that run counter to science and besmirches the credibility of scientists she disagrees with, then she des