Illumination 2.0

Can politics shape science into disrepair?  Can government decisions harm people and long-term progress?  These questions were answered in the tragic story of Nikolai Vavilov.  The story is told by Dr. Jules Janick, Emeritus Professor from Purdue University.  In the second half the film "Science Moms" is discussed with Natalie Newell.  The complete episode can be found here , or anywhere you consume podcast media!

The manufactured hyperbolic connection between canola oil and Alzheimer's Disease is a perfect example of how a grain of research is extrapolated to wild new proportions.  Read the story here on Genetic Literacy Project  

The herbicide dicamba has been implicated in substantial off-target movement and crop losses.  But what is the whole story?    I wrote this article for Real Clear Science with Cameron English. 

I posted this article over on Medium .  It shows how a set of experiments in mice prone to Alzheimer's like brain pathology were wildly misinterpreted to create a sensational headline that the media promoted everywhere. 

Misinterpretation of Science Extrapolates a Bogus Claim The headlines are remarkably clear — if you eat canola oil, you’ll soon not remember that you ate canola oil. The media exploded with their interpretation of a peer-reviewed scientific report in the cleverly named journal  Scientific Reports . The spate of internet articles from any Google search indicates the link between canola oil and leaky mental gaskets is as clear as canola oil. The news is pretty damn certain this stuff is brain poison! The scientific paper has a rather different view. But wait, canola oil has been touted as a healthy oil with a composition similar to olive oil. How can this be true in light of the new findings? The answer is pretty simple. The news media took the liberty of overstepping the data actually presented in the scientific report in  Scientific Reports . What did the paper actually say? First, what is canola oil? Like all things Canadian it is a friendly version of something el

Problems caused by off-target migration of dicamba herbicide have created great divides across agriculture. Between companies denying culpability to farmers damaged and academics in between, the situation has horrible optics for agriculture.  Those looking in see unintended consequences, uncertainty, and all of their worst nightmares coming true.  The effect will be slower registration of future (desperately needed) herbicides and other farm inputs, and perhaps increased skepticism of claims about the safety of modern agriculture. To add clarity to the situation we discussed what is happening with agronomist Karen Corigan.  This week's podcast.  \

In this week's podcast MIT  Technology Review 's Emily Mullin talks about gene therapies for pets.  While technologies to treat genetic diseases have been slow to reach humans, they have been deployed in animals to demonstrate their efficacy.