Illumination 2.0

Sloppy Journalism Continues to Tarnish the Perception of Food Safety and the Processes that Produce It The daily reports about how agriculture is killing us are certainly alarming. However, when I carefully examine each report the sensational headlines never seem to match reality. The claims originate usually from either unpublished reports, or re-interpretations of legitimately-published work where the conclusions have little to no relationship to the scandalous headline. Today’s example came to me via Twitter when I read the post to the left. Pesticides associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS; Lou Gehrig's Disease) progression? Okay, I’ll take a look at the data and see what they authors found.  The referenced study is here. The authors analyzed 167 cases of ALS, measured blood levels of select compounds, and then monitored disease progression. The authors found associations between levels of specific organic compounds and the progression of disease. But

In light of recent events, I decided to visit my blog from September 6, 2015, the day that Eric Lipton's article was published.  Here it is again for you to compare and contrast against claims made by Lipton and others. That is all.  1. What is your relationship with Monsanto? I have no formal relationship with the company.  Friends, former students, colleagues from previous jobs work there.  They once made a relatively small donation to my university to cover travel/production costs of my science communication program in August of 2014.  The entire original amount was reallocated to a campus charity. Monsanto does not fund my research and never has. I have spoken at the company twice about science communication and enjoyed collegial hospitality. As is clear by emails, I'm glad to share thoughts and opinions with them on science communication. I hold no formal capacity in this regard. I do this with any company and show no special favor to Monsanto. 2. What is y

I hate like hell giving screen-time to Paul Thacker.  He has shown a persistent mission to hassle me, dig endlessly through my emails and other records, and then construct kook conspiracy theories and false associations.  Today is his latest installment is his proof that I am not an independent scientist, and just a paid industry hack like him.  He shared this today on Twitter.  His goal?  To erode trust in a public, independent academic scientist with a strong record of public service-- because I'm changing hearts and minds about science.  That must be stopped.  From Paul's Twitter feed 2/11/2019 Paul posted this today.  Glad I unblocked him.  And nice of him to publish a document with my social security number, address and phone number fully visible. So what is this W-9?  Sometime in mid 2014 I received a phone call from Lisa Drake, someone I never met before.  She worked in Colorado and had a role in customer contact, etc for Monsanto.  She said that f

The website from yesterday is gone.  Access denied.  Despite the fact that this was our central scientific organization making a major blunder, the internet was strangely silent, and it made me uneasy.   This situation is nothing but bad optics, but the criticism had to be levied, because it was the truth. Damn the torpedoes.  But it was enough time for at least a subset of the anti-technology movement to grab it and run with it.  I'm holding my breath and hoping for a clarifying statement that acknowledges the findings of the awardees, but frames them within the limitations of the experiments performed. I'm also waiting for the claims that this was the secret hand of Monsanto, infiltrating the AAAS corps of lackeys, and having the page pulled.  We indeed live in strange times. I'm glad that scientists in places like Sri Lanka examine public health issues, formulate hypotheses and test them as they can. We just need to keep it real. If we ar

I humbly ask this question.  What am I missing?  Tonight I read the press release for the AAAS about the 2019 Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award, going to two Sri Lankan physicians / researchers that apparently confirmed a deadly causal connection between a kidney disease (Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Origin; CKDu) and the herbicide glyphosate. Congrats, congrats! Wow, I must have missed this.  Certainly a concrete link would be big news, and if AAAS is awarding someone for this research it must have been a prominent publication.  But I scan the literature almost daily and never saw this.  The names of the awardees seemed strangely familiar.  Then it hit me... this was the 2014 paper where they looked at hard water consumption in Sri Lanka and then suggested a tie between CKDu, heavy metals and glyphosate.  The paper presented a hypothesis.  There were no data.  There were no experiments.  It was a decent  hypothesis that could be tested.  At the time the anti-ag

I grew up in Chicago in the 1970's, and even in a massive city we had our choice of just a few major media stations.   WGN was a staple on television and radio.   I used to get up long before the sun and there was nothing on television except for the Farm Report.  Orion Samuelson and Max Armstrong were familiar figures on radio and TV.  I'd listen to or watch them daily, even though I had no connection to farming.  I was a kid, and it was something live and local.  Years later I run into Max at national conferences and I always appreciate his stories.  Today at the Independent Professional Seed Association in Indian Wells, CA, he told a great story I have to share. Max Armstrong shares an amazing story about the power of personal connections in telling the story of agriculture.  He was uber-ing from the airport to the hotel.  He and the driver carried on a conversation, and the driver mentioned that he had already driven someone to the same hotel earlier in the day

Welcome to 2019, and one thing that remains constant is that scientists engaging the public will continue to be targeted for harassment and attempted reputation harm.   The good news is that it is not working as well as it used to.  People are disgusted by their tactics, and only a handful of true-believers acknowledge their sites as credible.  But for those on the fence I thought it might be nice to post how a website like SourceWatch uses a Wikipedia-mimic interface to spread false and/or misleading information about public scientists.  Don't get me wrong, this is not crying victim.  I'm actually is screaming empowerment.  I spent the time to correct the record, something anyone can check.  Please look into their allegations and mine, and see who has it right.  This is published by the Center for Media and Democracy.  Sadly, such pages actually threaten democracy by providing a forum for false information that makes evidence-based decisions in policy issues more chall