Ideas Spread Faster Due to the Source more than their Quality - So Much for Science's Meritocracy

By Chuck Dinerstein — December 17, 2018

In 1962 Everett Rogers wrote the Diffusion of Innovations trying to explain how good ideas spread through society and culture; nearly sixty years later we still are trying to understand how information diffuses. Some suggest that it is a Darwinian survival of the fittest, good ideas percolate to the top; bad ideas dying from lack of results and support – a meritocracy of thoughts. Others suggest that structural elements in our culture make some ideas more fit - elements that are based more on eminence than evidence. You would anticipate that the scientific method would be a meritocracy, but it is increasingly clear in studies of scientific funding that the rich get richer irrespective of the quality of their work and thoughts. Is Big Science, academic, public science we fund, built best evidence or best eminence – a study takes a look at the issue from an epidemiologic point of view.............


Using an epidemiologic approach, the researchers described the “quality” of a paper on how often it was cited, how infectious were those papers. Ideas from more eminent institutions spread to more institutions and were cited for longer periods than similarly “infectious” quality papers from less eminent institutions. Ideas that were less infectious coming from mid-level program’s stalled and died, while similar mid-quality ideas from the distinguished institutions took far longer to be abandoned if they were at all. The eminence of an idea’s origin provided a structural advantage irrespective of quality. That should be no surprise given that most faculty came from these institutions – you might consider these eminent institutions as a like of intellectual Typhoid Mary........To Read More......

 

Whatever Happened To Science?

By Michael Shaw — December 13, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

 

For the Baby Boomers, born under the halo of victory in World War II, and into the 1950s, one of the key themes was the promise of Science. Electrical power—courtesy of splitting the atom—would be so plentiful that consumers would simply pay a flat monthly fee, and the discovery of the structure of DNA meant (somehow, although this was never fully explained) that a cure for cancer was just beyond the horizon. The successful rollout of the Salk/Sabin polio vaccines would further demonstrate the great humanitarian power of Science, and its unblemished search for Truth.

However, as the 1960s played out and the public’s respect for all manner of once-cherished institutions began to crumble, Science too was put under scrutiny. Its great promise and past accomplishments now forgotten the accounting was done, and on the bottom line were frightful weapons systems, nuclear waste, and napalm. Notably, confidence in Science continues to erode, even though more money than ever is being spent on it.

So, what went wrong?

A succinct answer would be to quote St. Paul: “For the love of money is the root of all evils, and some people in their desire for it have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.” (1 Timothy 6:10)

Under the rubrics of LBJ’s Great Society, federal spending started to increase…dramatically. Not left out of this seemingly endless fountain of money was scientific research. Colleges—public and private—were re-christened “research universities,” and the quest for federal dollars was on. Science would soon be transformed from the search for truth to the search for funding.

The besieged granting agencies needed some means to work through all the requests, and human nature being what it is, tended to favor projects that were timely, or as researchers would put it—”sexy.” Thus, it should come as no surprise that in the mid-1980s UCLA would obtain one of the biggest grants it ever received for the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS). Bear in mind that as frightening and tragic as AIDS may be, it was never even remotely a leading cause of death in the US.

Given the sheer amount of research being performed, more scholarly journals would arise to publish the findings. Before long, the overall quality of work would diminish—and the “publish or perish” dynamic would reverse itself. Instead of nervous academics calling the journals to see if their submitted works will be accepted for publication, the journals were now calling the researchers desperately looking for articles to publish!

Meanwhile, science editors of popular media, acting as if the world of big-time science had not changed, were still dutifully summarizing the latest findings published in the peer-reviewed literature, apparently believing that these so-called “peers” were unaffected by how the entire process had been corrupted. More than that, over-hyping of these results—well beyond the findings of the cited papers—would become far too common. Sadly, the over-hyping would spill back into the technical journals themselves, whereby conclusions would be drawn that were not supported by the data presented. This is a working definition of “junk science.”

No doubt, this unholy alliance between the popular media and scholarly publications spawned the never-ending flow of sensationalistic results, especially those pertaining to human health effects. As such, a bizarre codependency was created between greedy researchers, technical journals, the popular media, and all sorts of fear entrepreneurial fund-raising groups.

Now, all that was needed was a method to produce “sexy” results without having to engage in actual empirical science—you know, the kind that requires real experiments with real observations, and real measurements. In college, we used to call this “dry-labbing” but now the academic scientists call it “modeling.” In modeling, you start off with a few measurements and then extrapolate these into some sort of (usually) sensationalistic finding. Full marks if you figured out that the model can easily be tweaked to produce the results you desire.

Climate change polemics, of course, are derived from such “science,” as are all sorts of health scares such as the famous “15,000 people die each year because of secondhand smoke.”

You’d think that some true scientist, somewhere would speak out about this abuse. And they will…just as soon as they finish their next grant application.

Reposted with permission for the author. The original post can be found here.

Exposure to pesticides a risk factor for Parkinson s? Not so fast!

ASCH Staff @ American Council on Science and Health

A new study published in the journal Neurology tries to suggest that there may be an association between exposure to pesticides and solvents and Parkinson s disease. Even the study authors are blatantly aware of the shortcomings of their study when they say, the evidence is limited, or at least inconclusive, because of lack of definitive agreement between cohort and case-control studies. Yet that didn t stop them from publishing it. This meta-analysis was based on 89 prospective and case-control studies considering a range of chemicals pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides, solvents, organophosphates, paraquat, and DDT, among others and their relation to Parkinson s. After analysis, researchers concluded that risk of developing Parkinson s was increased by 33 percent to 80 percent due to exposure to these chemicals.

The analysis was a first-rate mess. Conclusions from the included studies were not in agreement the majority of the time, and even higher quality studies showed statistically significant associations for solvents, paraquat, and well-water drinking but they also found reductions in Parkinson s for exposure to insecticides, farming and well-water drinking.

How can something well-water drinking both increase risk of Parkinson s and also decrease risk? The answer: garbage science. As if to prove this point, the case-control studies differed in terms of study quality and size and in the prospective studies, estimates of exposure were not determined in the same way. And secondary causes of Parkinson s were completely ignored by the authors.

ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross says, This is a prime example of a bad study; it could be used as an illustration in a college text on how not to do epidemiology. First of all, there was so much variation between studies, a point even the authors are aware of, that definitive conclusions cannot be made. And results were clearly contradictory as pointed out in the well-water example previously. The one good point made by study authors was that no association was found between DDT and Parkinson s.

ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom points out that the entire premise is biologically implausible. He says, There is no way that you can lump these substances together and draw any type of valid conclusion. They are all chemically different, work by different mechanisms, and each one is processed in the body in a different way. This is like saying since a cannon ball is round and kills people, all other round objects are dangerous. He continues, According to this logic, perhaps the Department of Homeland Security ought to think about banning Nerf Balls.

Publish and perish: Scientific fraud on the rise

No TIME for Accuracy, Posting Shameful Milk-Parkinson's Story 

Don't Believe Everything You Read From EWG About Pesticides on Food

How to commit scientific fraud

Retraction Buzz Starts Around NEJM Article On PM 2.5 Air Pollution and Mortality

By ACSH Staff — July 9, 2012 @ American Council on Science and Health
 

A researcher whose work was supported by the Federal government, among others, has agreed to retract two of her papers published in 2009 in the pages of Environmental Health Perspectives and the Journal of Biological Chemistry, respectively.

Dr. Mona Thiruchelvam, a former assistant professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry, New Jersey (UMDNJ), committed research misconduct by fabricating data, according to an investigation by the university and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Research Integrity (ORI). The ORI, which announced its findings on Thursday (June 28), determined that she falsified cell count data supporting her thesis that certain now-rarely-used pesticides might have increased the risk of Parkinson s Disease among exposed workers.

All too often, says Dr. Ross, it seems that researchers in fields focused on finding toxic effects of chemicals including pesticides are willing to play fast and loose with the scientific method in order to support their tenuous theories. This case, of course, is unusually appalling, given the exposure of the misconduct. And unfortunately, I d bet that this researcher s fraudulent studies will continue to be cited long into the future as supportive evidence for a link between pesticides and various diseases, despite the revelations of falsified data.

ACSH s Dr. Ruth Kava notes, too, that this kind of misconduct is doubly perturbing because of the wasted money and time other researchers will have spent trying to duplicate or further expand upon the fraudulent data.

Thanksgiving Dinner Chemical Terrors In Every Course - 'Organic' Or Not

By Josh Bloom — November 17, 2017 @ The American Council on Science and Health

The traffic on Thanksgiving is killer. If you happen to be driving to Aunt Wilma's in Connecticut you will find this out for yourself. But what about when you arrive? Which is riskier? The trip or the meal (1)?

Of course, there is no right answer here, but one thing is for certain: Unless your Thanksgiving meal consists of distilled water, you are going to be eating some toxic chemicals, and it doesn't matter whether the turkey is "organic" or not. Or anything else in the meal. So I thought it might be sort of fun to take each course and arbitrarily select one of many chemicals that is in that course. Then let's take a look at what the professional chemical scaremongers have to say about each. Bon appétit!

First course: Wine (sulfites)

Wine contains hundreds of chemicals with ethanol (a known carcinogen) being the most obvious. But it also contains sulfites, especially red wine. Sulfites are a form of sulfur dioxide and are commonly used as preservatives for dried fruit. Since all preservatives are evil, it should come as no surprise that the Natural Resources Defense Council, a.k.a. "The Empire of Ignorance," doesn't regard sulfites so highly. A 2013 article entitled "USFDA Allows Chemicals in Food Despite Lack of Toxicity Testing" by Jennifer Sass, who fancies herself as a toxicologist, (2) has all kinds of icky things to say about sulfites:

• Sulfites were banned by FDA in 1986 for use on fruits and vegetables that are eaten raw
• They are also approved by EPA as pesticides.
• They induce allergy-like reactions in many people.
• When FDA approved their use as a food additive in the 1970s, sulfites were deemed to be Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) and exempted from FDA premarket approval requirements. 
• Sulfites are called ‘food additives’. In other contexts, the same chemicals may be considered industrial chemicals or pesticides

Jennifer Sass, NRDC, 2013

Uh oh. Better ditch the wine. What can you drink? Maybe this?

Second course: Fruit plate (monosodium glutamate, a.k.a., MSG)

Regardless if you went for either the wine or the Mountain Dew, now it's time to cleanse the palate before the meal! And what better way to do so than with a delicious platter of fresh fruit? Except fruit has all kinds of chemicals in it. Hundreds of them. And good luck finding a fruit that does not contain glutamic acid, which is just another form of monosodium glutamate (MSG), depending on pH. Let's see what the professional ignoramuses in the Environmental Working Group, an organization that is wrong more often than a weather forecast, have to say about MSG.

EWG's 2016 "Wellness Chat" features an article entitled  "The Importance Of Nutrition In Cancer Prevention" by Jocelyn Weiss, Ph.D. Weiss, who really ought to know better given that she is the Assistant Director of Clinical Research at Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center in New York.

Yet, that didn't stop her from these doozies(emphasis mine):

"Monosodium glutamate, MSG, present in packaged foods under many names, can trigger headaches and other allergic symptoms... If you do not recognize or cannot pronounce ingredients on a label, there’s a good chance you should not eat that product." Jocelyn Weiss, Ph.D. writing for the Environmental Working Group

Uh oh. Weiss has apparently watched too many episodes (that would be one) of the Food Babe because she parrots Vani Hari's incredibly ignorant statement that the ability to spell or pronounce a chemical somehow is somehow correlated with the safety of the chemical. (See: The Food Babe Hath Spoken, And Subway Bread Will Still Suck).

 “When you look at the ingredients [in food],if you can’t spell it or pronounce it, you probably shouldn’t eat it.” Vani Hari (the Food Babe) Source: Subway: Stop Using Dangerous Chemicals In Your Bread

What little credibility Weiss and EWG may or may not have had, it just went out the window. Don't eat something you can't pronounce? Let's pronounce this: DUH.

Third course: Home-baked bread (acrylamide)

Acrylamide is formed whenever starch and amino acids are heated together (See: Cooking Up Some 'Toxic' Chemicals; The Maillard Reaction). Since many foods contain starch and amino acids, it is not surprising that we have been eating a steady diet of acrylamide since 300 B.C., when Egyptians first baked bread. So, it's absolutely astounding that there is anyone still alive on earth, assuming that "Crazy Joe" Mercola is right, something which happens about as often the simultaneous occurrence of a solar eclipse, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and a single flight to LaGuardia Airport landing on time.

Acrylamide, a cancer-causing and potentially neurotoxic chemical, is created when carbohydrate-rich foods are cooked at high temperatures, whether baked, fried, roasted, grilled or toasted."Crazy Joe" Mercola, "When You Heat Natural Plant-Based Foods You Can Get Cancer-Causing Acrylamide"

Fine, skip the bread. At least you can have some turkey, especially if it's an organic turkey, which we all know is devoid of all chemicals. Or is it?

Fourth course: Turkey

Let's assume that your turkey was raised and prepared under ideal conditions. No antibiotics, hormones, plastic wrappers, or inhumane conditions.

Said turkey will still be jam-packed with tryptophan, the amino acid that gets converted into serotonin and makes you sleepy. (Except, it doesn't. It's your Aunt Gertrude talking about her bunions). OK, it doesn't make you sleepy, but it's a naturally occurring amino acid, so what could possibly be wrong with it (aside from it being a chemical)? When is a reputable source needed to address complex scientific and medical issues, who amongst us wouldn't turn to a supplement company for the truth? It's a good thing that supplements-and-health.com exists. The Case Against Taking L-Tryptophan Supplements is nothing if not even-handed and accurate. Surprising too! Even the most astute scientists and doctors are woefully unaware that tryptophan has a few teensy problems:

• Drowsiness
• Nausea
• Headaches
• Impaired Liver Function
• Higher Risk For Eye Damage 
• Disturbed Protein Metabolism And Impaired Brain Function
• Eosinophilia-Myalgia Syndrome
• Severe Inflammation
• Promotion Of Cardiovascular Events
• Cancer Initiation & Promotion

OK. There goes the turkey.

Turkzilla: Image - imgur

I figure that at this point between impending starvation and Aunt Gertrude's bunions you are in one lousy mood. But fear not, there is always dessert, or in this case, just dessert.

Fifth course: Apple pie (formaldehyde)

Formaldehyde occurs naturally in a variety of fruits, including apples. So, there's gonna be some of the stuff in apple pie. How bad is it? When it comes to chemistry, pharmacology, and toxicology, it would be hard to find a more authoritative source for than the aforementioned Food Babe:

Formaldehyde is one of the most highly toxic substances on earth. It is linked to allergies, brain damage, cancer, and auto-immune disorders.
Vani Hari (the Food Babe)

Source: You Won’t Believe Where Silly Putty Is Hiding In Your Food

She's pretty much dead on if you ignore the 10,000 (or so) chemicals on earth that are more toxic. And the fact that a small amount of formaldehyde is actually required for the biosynthesis of amino acids. Or that it is metabolized within minutes in the blood and then cleared from the body.
Well, I'm sorry to report that you just drove 3 hours to eat nothing, but not for naught. Fasting is good for you! And has more cred than the "Dean of Derangement," Andrew Weil?

(If you want to know why I turned Weil into a Pez dispenser you'll have to read "It's World Homeopathy Week! All 8 Days Of It.")

"At one time, I experimented with fasting one day a week as a useful physical and psychological discipline. Many people experience a clearer mental state and increased energy after a short-term fast." [Psst. It obviously didn't work]
Dr. Andrew (Pezhead) Weil

If I don't stop now it will be Christmas before this damn thing gets done. And we at Council sincerely hope you live until Christmas. But beware. Phony scares don't end in November.

NOTES:

(1) If you dare, you can read about Aunt Wilma's turkey. See: "Exploding Turkeys Or My Aunt Wilma's? Pick Your Poison"

(2) I fancy myself as Barry White, but I'm pretty sure this is false. 

 

IARC Retraction Watch Begins: They Faked Images In Controversial Claims

By Hank Campbell — October 25, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has a new leader, an Old Guard insider named Dr. Elisabete Weiderpass, who promised not to change the status quo, which means they remain stuck with an old problem; credibility.

While for its first 20 years they were a much-needed voice of reason that stood up to activists claiming that some new chemical of the month was a carcinogen because it could kill rats, for the last 10 IARC have been the source of ridicule among the science community. And that is because the environmentalists whose hype they once exposed played the long game and wormed their way inside.(1) Today, thanks to letting them hijack that science body, we are told to believe that a weedkiller can cause cancer and deli meat is as bad for you as plutonium or mustard gas. Such claims are literally baloney.

But media who love centralized authoritarian bodies and veils of anti-corporate credibility have gleefully reported each more cosmic claim from the French organization during that time. They have even touted media press releases distributed prior to actual reports as fact. Though IARC decisions do not consider risk (to determine a hazard they allow papers that show 5 orders of magnitude, so one dose of a compound is the same as 10,000 to them) the WHO group will mention risk dozens of times in media claims in their press releases.

There is just one problem they face: Every few years, a new crop of journalists enters the field, and not only might they not be in the bag for your brand of activism, they might be neutral and wonder why no one turns their gaze on the manipulations of supplement hucksters, alternative to medicine purveyors, and environmental lawyers. And some scientists who engage in public outreach are critical thinkers about studies everywhere, like molecular biologist Leonid Schneider and microbiologist Dr. Elisabeth Bik, who have called out groups who do this and also journal editors who enable them with a desire to publish provocative claims that will bring international media links.

A recent analysis of both journals and IARC involvement, titled WHO Cures Cancer In Photoshop, went into detail about the cultural flaws that allowed IARC to lose its way but more broadly about how easy it is to duplicate or reuse or slightly change graphics to look original in a science study. Some of the inferences I don't agree with - the involvement of a private sector scientist does not sway results by default, that is Cui bono? conspiracy signaling - but the overall examination is sound. (2)

Schneider is not alone in being concerned that IARC is trapped in the past using a methodology that is easily exploited by activists with nefarious agendas and patience, like Professor Martyn Smyth of Council for Education and Research on Toxics (CERT) (3) or Dr. Chris Portier of Environmental Defense Fund. They used 21st century strategy to infect a stodgy 20th century institution, which creates ad hoc working groups based on having friends inside, refuses to be transparent, and has no rules for the study of each compound. It has become just statisticians finding things to correlate to cancer. As Dr. Angela Logomasini of Competitive Enterprise Institute notes in the Washington Times, "The working groups are free to focus on myriad small-scale studies with implausible results. That can lead to cherry-picking that serves the biases of working group members."

It certainly has. Look at two California court cases, on coffee and on weedkiller, and the first thing you will find are two IARC participants mentioned above, Chris Portier and Martyn Smith, who have been paid by attorneys to help them sue companies.

Is there hope? There certainly is. The American Council on Science and Health Board of Scientific Advisors was part of a group of four people called on to testify before the U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee about IARC and we recommended Congress use its financial leverage, and the credibility U.S. backing grants, to rein the rogue statistical body in.

The only opposition we faced on that panel was Natural Resources Defense Council's Dr. Jennifer Sass, who argued IARC's closed door mentality and lack of transparency about its working groups should remain untouched. That was the opposite of what she claimed in 2002 and when that was noted she could only reply, "2002 was a long time ago."

In many ways, this is true, and IARC should consider shucking off the parts of our past that no longer have validity in 2018.

NOTE:

(1) If your career goal is to get a fat paycheck as an expert witness or as a consultant at an environmental NGO, today there is a clear roadmap. First, write provocative epidemiology papers linking harmless things to health effects - it can be miracle vegetables creating eternal life or scary chemicals taking years away. Second, become a Washington insider and get a title, any title, from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). If you are good with media and share the correct political proclivities, use that title to get quoted frequently in the New York Times. Soon enough, a litigation group like Earthjustice or Environmental Defense Fund or Center for Biological Diversity will start offering you money. And if you are really good at political maneuvering, you will get a slot on an IARC Working Group, where you can get the chemical you wanted banned all along subjected to a review. Once that is complete, you can claim to be a U.N. expert on the chemical you want banned while signaling to trial lawyers you are ready to "play ball", and then the expert witness checks will start coming in.
(2) "Apparently, by re-using certain western blot bands, a potential prevention therapy for cervical cancer can be established. Amazing research, done by WHO scientists at IARC, with public support."
He pulls no punches. You should read it.

Attention @PNASNews @jbiolchem @J_Immunol @ASMicrobiology @PLOSPathogens @JExpMed @ACasadevall1 Look what @IARCWHO published in your journals. https://t.co/PhM33CET8l
— Leonid Schneider (@schneiderleonid) October 11, 2018

(3) Despite its lofty name, CERT is not a council at all, there is no 300-person Board of Scientific Advisors like we have, it was instead created by Metzger Law group to have a non-profit to act as a front for lawsuits against companies - if it exists outside paper at all it now it seems to be "run" by a politically

PNAS And Microbiomes: Will They Publish A 'Study' About Bee Chakras Next?

By Hank Campbell — October 18, 2018@ American Council on Science and Health

Over the last 15 years, PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has gone into serious decline. An organization once so prestigious Carl Sagan, the most prominent scientist in America, was unqualified to be admitted, is now scrambling to stay relevant. They recently announced they are going to cease print publication, but austerity is not their problem, embrace of junk science is.

There is no other way to categorize a recent paper suggesting the microbiome of bees may be at risk due to science.

Want to believe that hurricanes with female names are more dangerous because men are sexist? That was PNAS. Want to believe that black people look "blacker" during bad economic times? PNAS again. When Facebook manipulated user news feeds as a social experiment PNAS had no issue publishing the results. Had those claims been in obscure journals, none of them would have made their way into the New York Times, Washington Post, or other popular political newspapers that dabble in science.(1) Yet they did get in, and PNAS has remained relevant thanks to journalists who love to write about provocative claims they want to believe.(2)
And then there is the microbiome. Over the last century, there were 3 articles per year about our natural gut flora. Starting in 2011 we began to see three per day despite there being little more known about what good or bad might be for an average individual. Yet journalists love it, and supplement companies love it, and yogurt companies love it, and therefore some academics are going to write about it.

And if you really want to get media attention, use the pop science microbiome fad, throw in bees and chemicals, and then get it in PNAS.

PNAS, microbiome, bees, and glyphosate: The recipe for a mainstream media feast

Despite spending a fortune on ad campaigns and email blasts to journalists, activists have been unable to convince the public that bees are in decline when data show they are fine.(3) A recent PNAS paper avoids that pitfall by suggesting they are only not in decline yet. And if you believe any change must be a bad thing, then you are certain to believe glyphosate, a key ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup, could be the cause of change. The compound is in fashion for media again because a jury in California recently said that if a company can't prove that a chemical didn't cause a man's cancer, then they must pay trial lawyers $289 million.(4)

That's a perfect storm for PNAS so they recently published a paper noting glyphosate is changing the bee microbiome. You read that right, get those bees some probiotic yogurt.

Or not. First, the levels of glyphosate they used are not real world. Bees are not diving into vats of chemicals and swimming for 12 hours. And if they did do that, the response to higher doses of a chemical should be more change, yet in this paper low doses had more change. That is homeopathy, not science. Second, how do they know change is bad? Even the foremost expert in the bee microbiome is scientifically equivalent to being the tallest person in a room full of leprechauns. No one really knows anything yet.

In reality, it would be worrisome if a chemical did not change the microbiome of bees. Or yours. Or mine. I ate some delicious cinnamon bread from Trader Joe's while I wrote this. My microbiome changed, my hormones changed. Food and drink do that. But if I want to scare you, I could say Trader Joe's cinnamon bread contains an Endocrine Disrupting Chemical. Which is what anti-science conspiracy theorists like Pete Myers and a tiny cabal of political journalists (weirdly centered in the New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute run by someone who should know better, Perri Klass, M.D.) do.

As Dr. Josh Bloom noted, "Although the relative composition of the bee gut biome may have changed, none of the eight bacteria measured was eliminated. And there was no difference in the total number of bacteria in either the high-dose, low-dose, or placebo groups."
What is most telling to biologists; Roundup can only affect the shikimate pathway in plants. It can't do anything to you or me. Believing it does is like embracing chemtrails or that government is out to get your precious bodily fluids.

The next phase: Chemicals are changing human chakras (also available for bees and mice)

But I don't want activists to lose hope. Their efforts to claim insects birds bees wild bees bees are dying erratic changing is going to be aided as long as some academics want media attention. And activists can continue to move the goalposts to create media buzz some academics will want to capitalize on. If this latest stuff about a changing microbiome does not work, they can next contend GMOs neonics glyphosate are changing their chakras.

Or they can insert any popular chemical. I will make it easy for them with a simple chart showing which chakra will be changed by what common chemical. You are welcome, Greenpeace.

There is no question the woo contingent is where the money is at. A recent conference on "transcendental meditation" had Yogic Flying Instructors (though none have ever been filmed actually flying) but also Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, and Katie Couric. The audience listened to militant anti-science cranks like John Fagan (5) spout nonsense such as "the rapid reversal of the U.S. food system from broad acceptance to widespread rejection of GMO foods correlates with a sharp increase in coherence in U.S. collective consciousness, when a large permanent group of TM practitioners was assembled in Iowa, USA.”(6)

That's right, he said they meditated in Iowa and more people nationwide bought organic food, $2 billion in activist groups promoting their corporate donors had nothing at all to do with it.
PNAS, you can do better.

NOTES:

(1) I have gone after them before. An article I wrote in the Wall Street Journal criticizing their policy that allowed Academy members to be pre-selected to do peer review for their friends and hand walk studies into publication forced them to change that policy. I first noticed it because of a 2002 paper by activist Tyrone Hayes, which claimed a weedkiller was essentially making male frogs more feminine. It got into the New York Times and thus got a special EPA panel called but the EPA wasn't able to use the study that got the panel called because the Berkeley professor refused to show his data. How did it get published if no peer review looked at data? The pre-selected reviewer was Hayes' friend and Academy member David Wake, whose wife chaired the department Hayes is in. No impartial reviewer ever saw it. And no one has been able to replicate the work of Hayes.
(2) Despite its decline, PNAS still has some cachet, the way Popular Science does even though they have become more of a lifestyle blog than a science magazine, Bonnier Corporation, the parent of Popular Science, Field & Stream, and numerous other publications, has to pay the bills but this is a bit much.

(3) Bees do have large periodic die-offs, those have been recorded for as long as records of bees have been kept (~1,000 years) and when one occurred in the 1990s, activists blamed sprayed pesticides. So science did something terrific; a seed treatment, when plants are most vulnerable to pests, based on a natural insecticide. Yet when another blip happened, activists blamed those. To no avail, bee numbers rebounded nicely. Then they claimed that wild bees were being harmed, which was at least clever, since there are ~25,000 species (we don't even know exactly how many) of bees and only 7 have hives so wild bees can't be counted, but even the staunchest supporters of environmental groups in the United States balked at that.
(4) The plaintiff will only get about $20 million of that $289 million, if it is not overturned. It's good to be a trial lawyer.
(5) Fagan created HRI Labs, which recently conducted a test that detected glyphosate in urine and then co-wrote a paper about it, with Paul Mills, who is a graduate of, you guessed it, the very same Maharishi University of Management in Iowa.
(6) Dear Mr. Seinfeld - you are a legendary comedian. Your job is to be skeptical and ridicule nonsense. Please tell me you were only there because the check cleared and you don't actually believe any of this nonsense.

"Unreasonable": Superior Court Judge Signals She's Going To Gut Glyphosate Cancer Judgment

By ACSH Staff — October 19, 2018, 

In a blow to trial lawyers hoping to profit from a sympathetic jury in San Francisco, not to mention organic trade groups and activists at the University of California San Francisco, Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos has shown she is likely to grant Monsanto's request for a new trial in the case they lost brought by trial lawyers who claim a weedkiller which can only affect the shikimate pathway in plants somehow caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma in a human.

In the first trial, an attorney from Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman assured jurors they would "change the world" if they found Monsanto liable. Brent Wisner painted a picture of terrified corporate executives lamenting a decision against them. suggesting the science community knows it is wrong and was worried about being caught. Though it was pure theater, it worked, and despite it being impossible for a weedkiller to have a cancerous effect on human biology, they awarded an alarming $250,000,000 in punitive damages, because the left coast jury believed the company knew that the product could cause cancer and warned no one. And that seems to be what concerned Judge Bolanos, who noted there was no "clear and convincing evidence" of malice. Which is legalese for 'the jury got it wrong.'

In reality, the company would not warn people about cancer because it would be illegal. It is false advertising and they can't be compelled to lie on a label any more than they could claim Roundup cures cancer. The entire scientific community has proved glyphosate only acts in plants. The only group that suggests otherwise is a cabal of statisticians at the U.N., and one of them, Chris Portier, was outed as being a consultant for an activist group which was lobbying against glyphosate. He even signed a contract with trial lawyers out to sue over glyphosate before the IARC finding he helped manipulate was released. How did they know it would go in their favor? Critics believe Portier tipped them off so he could collect a check.

The ruling was scientifically an abomination but the behavior of the jury since has been even more bizarre. Three jurors have written the judge to tell her she would be wrong to overturn it, and have made numerous media appearances, which is uncharacteristically aggressive. But the lawyers, armed with a support network of trade groups for a sector that competes against companies like Monsanto, have made that part of their strategy. The fact that Organic Consumers Association, the trade group which provides the bulk of the funding behind Baum Hedlund allies U.S. Right To Know, is prominently egging on the jurors may be a concern for the judge.

“I have never heard of jurors after the fact picking a fight with the judge over judicial rulings,” said Dr. Val Giddings, a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington.

The plaintiff, Dewayne Johnson, contracted non-Hodgkin lymphoma and was convinced that sporadic use of glyphosate in the weedkiller Roundup caused it, but a study of 55,000 full-time agriculture workers who used the herbicide found no evidence it increased risk of cancers. The American Council on Science and Health submitted an amicus brief for the pro-science side.

'GMO Free USA' Attacks World-Famous Biochemist Bruce Ames

 By Alex Berezow — September 21, 2018  

 

Microbiologists and toxicologists are quite familiar with the Ames test. It is literally textbook science that is taught to students all over the world.
 

The Ames test is brilliant in its simplicity. It was designed to assess how mutagenic (and therefore, potentially carcinogenic) a chemical might be. The test uses a bacterial strain that was purposefully mutated so that it is unable to grow on Petri plates that lack a particular nutrient. Every once in a while, bacteria spontaneously mutate back (so called "revertants") and are able to grow again. This is the natural background rate of mutation.


In the Ames test, this natural background rate of mutation is compared to what happens in the presence of a specific chemical. If the chemical is a mutagen, it will increase the rate of mutation; if it is not, the mutation rate will not change. And it's easy to see if a chemical is a mutagen: More bacteria will grow.
(See figure. Credit: Wikipedia/Histidine)

As mentioned above, this test is so well-known, that it is taught to students and employed in laboratories all over the world. The inventor, biochemist Bruce Ames -- who was once an advisor to ACSH -- is a world-famous and award-winning scientist who helped lay the groundwork for modern carcinogenicity studies. As a result, he is one of the most cited scientists in the world. He never won the Nobel Prize, but he probably should have.

GMO Free USA Attacks Bruce Ames

None of that matters to the anti-GMO crowd, however. A man who is internationally lauded for his contributions to science is entirely written off. "We aren't impressed by industry apologists," GMO Free USA said.

Industry apologist? What did Dr. Ames do to deserve that smear? Nothing. He believes that people shouldn't worry about trace chemicals in their food or the environment. He once wrote a paper underscoring this: 99.99% of the pesticides we eat are made by the plants themselves.
For the crime of using evidence-based science to tell people to calm down, he's been painted as a villain by the anti-GMO movement.

Do Not Debate the Deliberately Ignorant. Defeat Them

It's one thing to debate a person who doesn't know any better. At least in theory, they can be convinced once they are shown the error in their thinking. But it's an entirely different matter debating a person who is deliberately and maliciously ignorant.

How do you debate somebody who insists against all evidence that 2 + 2 = 17, vaccines cause autism, and GMOs cause cancer?

I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that it is simply not possible. Some people are entirely immune to facts and knowledge. They cannot be reasoned with. So, the solution is not better science communication or more education funding, as is commonly asserted.

No, the solution is just to defeat them. Defeat them politically, and defeat them financially. In the arena of ideas, we must ensure that anti-GMO, anti-vaccine, and other anti-science activists are resoundingly humiliated and their lies tossed into the dustbin of history.

In Alaska, Getting Mumps Is Preferable to Getting Vaccinated

By Alex Berezow — August 23, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

The MMR vaccine protects against three viral diseases: measles, mumps, and rubella, hence it's name.

We have already seen the devastating consequences of people choosing to forgo vaccination. Measles cases are occurring all over the country. Most infamously, a measles outbreak occurred in 2014-15 at Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth. Currently, Europe is experiencing a massive measles outbreak, which has infected more than 41,000 people and killed 37. Amazingly, Italy has made it even easier for parents to skip out on vaccines.

A new report from the CDC indicates just how incomprehensibly stubborn and stupid our society has become.

In May 2017, somebody from out-of-state visited Anchorage, Alaska. This person brought along a little friend, known as the mumps virus. Soon after, seven more people had mumps, so the Alaska Section of Epidemiology reminded all Alaskans to be sure to be up-to-date on their MMR vaccinations.

Did they listen? Of course not. By mid-November, there were 56 cases of mumps. Once again, Alaska's public health officials told people to get vaccinated, especially if they hang around large groups of people. Specifically, they suggested the MMR3 vaccine. (MMR3 is the third dose of the MMR vaccine; typically, children receive two doses, assuming their parents aren't anti-vaxxers.)
Did their warning work? No. By the end of December, the number of cases had grown to 138, and all of Anchorage was then recommended to get the MMR3 shot. Surely, surely, people paid attention to that... right?

Wrong. By the end of February, there were 247 cases of mumps. Exasperated, Alaska recommended that all citizens receive the MMR3 jab. You can probably guess what happened next. As of July 31, nearly 400 people have been infected.

For the FOMO crowd, fret not. Almost certainly, mumps will be coming to a community near you.

Source: Tiffany A, Shannon D, Mamtchueng W, Castrodale L, McLaughlin J. "Notes from the Field: Mumps Outbreak — Alaska, May 2017-July 2018." MMWR 67 (33): 940-941. Published: 24-Aug-2018. DOI: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6733a6
 

Science and Environmental Litigation

By Chuck Dinerstein — August 21, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

The judiciary frequently acts in its role as a counterbalance to executive and legislative action and non-action. A new article in Nature Climate Change finds patterns of climate change litigation identified in the Sabin Center for Climate Change database, a part of Columbia’s School of Law. As it turns out, there are some instructive patterns, and we begin to see the role of Science – with a capital S.

The Who and Why of Litigation

Who files these cases? - Environmental non-government organizations were the largest plaintiff, initiating 42% of cases, industry followed at 30%, with city, state and federal government involved in about 11%.  The Sabin database contained 838 cases from 1990 to 2016.

• 46% dealt with atmospheric environmental issues especially coal-fired power plants
• 8.5% dealt with energy efficiency or renewables
• 4% addressed water quality
• 8% raised concerns about biodiversity

The courts were asked to address the reduction in greenhouse gases, to assess responsibility for environmental impacts and as a way to change both corporate behavior and public debate (the latter presumably through policy).

For those interested in keeping some form of score, in those cases involving atmospheric environmental issues, the courts more often sided with the “anti-regulators.” On the other hand, “pro-regulatory” litigants won more often when the cases involved issues of energy. And whether it was an NGO or an industrial group acting as plaintiff, they were generally less successful than the defendants. The authors felt that this might reflect both weaker cases and the courts more often deferring to the judgment of state officials.

The Who and the Where

To file a court case, the plaintiff must have “standing,” a legal term that establishes that the plaintiff has suffered some injury [1] or that there is a causal relationship between the defendant’s actions and those injuries. In establishing standing, NGOs often found that collaborating with local stakeholders was helpful. If the NGO could not demonstrate “their” injury, then an alliance with a local community group who had suffered injury got them a seat at the plaintiff’s table. These collaborations were not limited to the NGOs; industrial litigants found that joining forces with other large business within the sector with also in their interest. The authors suggest that these collaborations helped to demonstrate a larger group of concerned citizens, helped to mask disagreements among the stakeholders and in some cases gain otherwise unavailable legitimacy.

The where of litigation is referred to as venue - the jurisdiction in which the case is heard. The plaintiff’s goal is to identify the most favorable court for hearing their case. Delaware is home to many corporations because its corporate laws frequently favor their concerns, which has resulted to more corporate litigation in that state which in turn creates a large body of case law to serve as precedence. California is a more favored venue when statutory concerns are pivotal, because of their strict environmental rulings and the case laws that have flowed from those decision. And in both instances, prior case law often provides a sense of how the courts may act.

The role of science

Unsurprisingly, both NGOs and industry felt that scientific evidence was an essential factor in the court’s ruling. Equally unsurprising was that the litigants offered differing evidence and used it in differing ways. The “pro-regulatory” litigants, the NGOs, used their scientific evidence to establish a causal link between the defendants and the injury. This could serve two purposes, first to warrant their standing before the court and then to substantiate the environmental effects causing the injury.  The “anti-regulatory” litigants also found the same two uses; using the “dismal science” of economics to demonstrate their economic injury, and the environmental science to refute the claims of the plaintiffs.

The researchers did not review the court transcripts, so what science and how it was presented remains unknown, but from studying the Court’s written judgments they found that scientific evidence was cited in roughly half the cases; it made no difference whether it was for or against regulation.

So what can we conclude? Everyone brings their own “scientific evidence” to the table; that their evidence differs is not a flaw in the scientific method, it is a feature. Scientific theory and evidence represent are a best current approximation, and there is always an unknown element. So our evidence will differ, only time and further replication will push us towards the “right” answer. As the authors write:

“The results turn on factors such as the roles courts think are appropriate for the judiciary in influencing important environmental, social and economic policy questions, how they react to scientific evidence that relates to climate change presented before agencies or during civil trials and what remedies they are willing to impose.”

The question we need to ask is whether a courtroom is the best venue for that discussion. The courts act on these matters because the other branches of the government are unable or unwilling to have this discussion; I think that those other branches are as able as the courts so that just leaves unwilling.

[1] Injury does not have to be physical, it can be emotional or anything that reflects a form of damage.

Source: Strategies in and outcomes of climate change litigation in the United States Nature Climate Change DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-0240-8

Disorder In The Court - A Supernaturally Dumb Lawsuit Over The Word 'Natural'

By Josh Bloom — August 15, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

The terms "natural" and "organic" have spurred a cottage industry in which companies and internet sleazebags compete to suck money out of the thoroughly manipulated and misguided American public. And it's been a smashing success!

For example, how many of you know that organic foods:

1. Are grown using chemicals -  pesticides and herbicides. To be certified organic, farmers are permitted to use chemicals from a different list, all of which have their own properties, including toxicity. 
2. Offer no additional nutritional value than their conventional counterparts.
3. Cost a whole lot more than their conventional counterparts.

And did you know that:

1. Lead is natural
2. So is uranium
3. And so are dioxins (1)

So, let's just call this a mini-lesson about how useless and confusing the two terms are. Too bad Alexandra Axon doesn't read ACSH or she'd know how scientifically ridiculous her lawsuit against Florida’s Natural and its parent company, Citrus World Inc.

Or is it?

Or perhaps she does know. The Brooklyn woman is suing the company as part of a class-action lawsuit by The Richman Law Group, against the juice maker, claiming that the presence of trace quantities of glyphosate in the juice means the claim "natural" cannot be used on the label.

Hmm. Glyphosate. Monsanto. It's only natural to sniff out a hidden agenda when lawyers smell a fat payday against Monsanto (2). And that's the case here. There have been more than 300 cases filed against the company in a San Francisco federal court by cancer victims who claim that the chemical caused their cancers.

And who can blame Axon for wanting a piece of the action? On August ninth a California jury ruled against the company and awarded $289 ( $39.2 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages) for failing to warn Dewayne Johnson, a groundskeeper, who claimed that the herbicide caused his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, about the risk of cancer from glyphosate. The only problem is that glyphosate does not cause cancer, something that my colleague Dr. Alex Berezow wrote about last year (See Glyphosate-Gate: IARC's Scientific Fraud).

Despite the overwhelming evidence against the carcinogenicity of the chemical, when you follow the formula:  The name Mosanto + Any chemical or product + Any California jury + California anti-chemical Craziness.

The verdict is virtually guaranteed to be determined in advance: Defendant is doomed regardless of evidence, lack of evidence, whether the defendant even had cancer, or whether the day of the trial ends in "Y."

But this article is not about cancer. It's about how ridiculous the Brooklyn "natural" claim is. In the suit, Axon claims that Florida’s Natural Growers orange juice should not contain the term "natural" because it contains minuscule amounts of glyphosate. How much? An independent lab determined that the juice contained 5.11 nanograms per mL. Is this a lot? A little? Does it matter? Let's do some math. Perhaps it will even be correct (3).

• 5.11 nanograms = 0.0000051 mg. This is the amount of glyphosate in 1 mL of the juice.
• 8 ounces = 237 mL 
• So, one 8-oz glass of the OJ will contain 0.0012 mg of glyphosate.
• The LD₅₀of glyphosate in rats is about 2,800 mg.
• So, it would take 233,333,333 glasses of OJ to get enough glyphosate to kill a rat (4).
• That's a lot of #%#%#ing OJ

So, the orange juice isn't going to harm anyone or anything, but is it "natural?" This is a rather existential question because although the EPA doesn't list a maximum allowable quantity of glyphosate for orange juice, it does for oranges - 0.5 ppm, which is 100-times more than the amount found in the OJ. Which means: If the OJ isn't "natural", neither is the organge. Which also means: Nothing on Earth is "Natural".

Because with the right analytical instrument something man-made will be found in every food on earth. Do you see how silly this is?

But it gets sillier. Also in the suit are claims that the OJ cannot be called natural because of "deaeration, the process of removing oxygen as a preservative; blending and long-term storage."

 

Well isn't that interesting? Mixing the juice, sucking out the oxygen, and putting it in a carton also means it cannot be natural. Which makes me wonder about milk. 





"Not Natural" because they were Pasteurized, mixed and put in a carton.



So, neither is...

Not Natural......Because it's in a container.

Photo: Modern Farmer.

Nor is...

Not Natural...because the milk is being collected in a pail!

 

So, the only way to drink truly natural milk would be...

This article is obviously stupid, but I couldn't think of a better way to describe what is going on in the court in Brooklyn.   So I had to write it................ Naturally.

NOTES:

(1) Dioxins are formed by volcanoes and forest fires. They were in the environment long before any human roamed the earth.
(2) Sorry, Monsanto haters, you'll need a new placard. The company was recently bought by Bayer.
(3) But more likely not. I use math in my articles from time to time. I don't believe I've ever gotten it right, even once. Go ahead. Shoot me down. I'm used to it.
(4) There is no LD₅₀ data for glyphosate humans, but the very low toxicity is consistent in other animal models. There have been fatalities from intentional exposure of the chemical, but these deaths are attributed to other ingredients that help the chemical get into plants.

The New York Times And Chemicals - Amateur Hour Once Again

By Josh Bloom — August 12, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

It's a good thing that the New York Times has the resources to hire someone to cover for its "chemical expert" Nick Kristof, who is qualified to write about toxicity because he is... a lawyer.

Nonetheless, Kristof believes that he is knowledgeable enough to write about chemistry and toxicology, something he does fairly often. He is clearly not (See Why I Don't Write About Pottery From The Ming Dynasty And Nick Kristoff Shouldn't Write About Science).

Kristof's replacement last week was Niraj Chokshi, who sports a B.A. in psychology, and Chokshi tepped up like a trooper. Otherwise, we might have been deprived of a recent article on a really lame scare about chemicals in crayons. It is not clear which of the two is less qualified to be writing about toxicology.

As the "newspaper of record," you'd think that the Times might be able to afford, let's say, a scientist to write about science, but the paper has shown no inclination to do so. Instead, we get "the newspaper of the broken record" - devout amateurs who simply parrot the words of other know-nothings, like the Natural Resource Defense Council, Chokshi doesn't help his credibility much by going to just about possibly the worst source for information of any kind, especially science - the United States Public Interest Research Group. Rather than wade through libraries of evidence to support this, I think I'll just rely on American Council president Hank Campbell. He knows firsthand:

"I worked there in the late 1980s and they were wrong on every single issue - except a bottle bill instead of mandatory government recycling. They were right on that then, and they'd still be right today; government recycling is a fiasco. But aside from that, if there was an environmental fad they created a campaign about it. From nuclear energy to acid rain, they claimed we were doomed unless people gave us money."   American Council president Hank Campbell, August 9, 2018

Given the background of the reporter and the quality of his source, one might expect that the science wouldn't be so hot. One would be correct. It's the same old song - claiming that the presence of a given chemical tells us anything about its health hazard. This fallacy is commonly used but it is dead wrong, especially when the discussion does not include dose or exposure.

In the article Chokshi  speaks with Dev Gowda, one of the authors of US PIRG's new "woe is me" publication entitled "Safer School Supplies: Shopping Guide." (Gowda has a B.S. in psychology and a law degree. Are you picking up a theme here?). Here are some more absurd claims that are found in the Times article:

"United States Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, which had an independent laboratory test 27 back-to-school products. Four tested positive for dangerous chemicals."

There ya go. The usual - kids, dangerous chemicals, tested positive. Straight from the NRDC playbook. "Tested positive" means that the chemical is detectable, but says nothing about how much is there. With advances in analytical methods over the past few decades, minuscule quantities of chemicals are being "discovered" just about everywhere. The chemicals have always been present but in the past, the instrumentation was not sensitive enough to detect them. Now it is. Are these products now more dangerous because we now know about the chemicals in them? Really silly.

“It’s insane for us to be finding asbestos in kids’ products, whether it’s technically legal or not, and parents shouldn’t have to worry about this in 2018."

The Green Crayon
From Hell. Image:
HalloweenCostumes.com

What's really insane is the thought that parents have to read this tripe and worrying about nothing because we do not know if Gowda is talking about one pound of asbestos or one molecule:

"Of the crayons tested, one, a green Playskool crayon, tested positive for trace amounts of tremolite, a form of asbestos."

Whatever that means.

"One of those compounds, benzene, is a known carcinogen and was found in a package of six magnetic markers purchased on Amazon and produced by The Board Dudes, a brand owned by Mattel."

Yes, benzene is a carcinogen. But if you don't want to be exposed to any of it stop breathing. Gasoline can contain a maximum of 0.62% benzene, some of which gets into the air. Is this more or less than what was found in one package of The Board Dudes? Who knows?

"In another set of tests, the public interest organization examined three three-ring binders for phthalates, a group of chemicals added to plastics to make them flexible, some of which may affect human reproduction or development."

No, they don't. (See American Academy Of Pediatrics Goes Crybaby Over 'Scary' Chemicals)

"Since the scientific evidence strongly suggests that risks to humans are low, phthalate regulations that have been enacted are unlikely to lead to any marked improvement in public health."  Michael A. Kamrin, Phthalate Risks, Phthalate Regulation, and Public Health: A Review, Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part B: Critical Reviews, 12:2, 157-174 (2009) DOI: 10.1080/10937400902729226

In another horrific development:

"Four markers were sent to the laboratory, and two dry-erase ones tested positive for a group of compounds often found in petroleum products and known as B.T.E.X.: benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene."

Uh oh. More nasty chemicals. But..."... and none [were present] at levels considered worrying by toxicologists, according to the report.

What a relief.

So, this article, which probably terrified mothers all over the country is a big fat nothing. It is a psychology major interviewing another psychology major with a law degree who represents US PIRG - a group with not a single scientist on its staff page.

All the news that's fit to print?

Hardly. Just a  bunch of ignorant chemophobic nonsense.

NOTES:

(1) NRDC recently used Kristof (!) as its sole source of science in an embarrassingly ridiculous Facebook video, which equated the pesticide chlorpyrifos with the Nazi nerve gas Sarin (See NRDC's Hitler-Pesticide Video Worthy Of Joseph Goebbels).

Increase in Childhood Cancer Is Not Due to Pesticide

By Alex Berezow — August 9, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

Like the word "chemical," the word "pesticide" has been hijacked and then unfairly demonized.
Scientists use the word pesticide to refer to "any chemical, generally used in an agricultural setting, that can be used to kill another unwanted organism." Pesticides can be natural or synthetic, and they can be used to kill plants (herbicides), insects (insecticides), fungi (fungicides), or rodents (rodenticides).

Society uses the word pesticide pejoratively, assuming that anything that can kill another organism can also kill humans. This is almost never true. It is biologically impossible for some pesticides, such as Bt toxin, to harm humans. And the pesticides that can harm humans are used at such low concentrations that their presence has no effect on us.

Despite this, the word pesticide continues to carry a lot of negative emotional baggage. It's little wonder, therefore, that pesticides have been blamed (usually incorrectly) for all sorts of problems, from environmental pollution to cancer. Nothing is more emotionally charged than pediatric cancer, and pesticides have been blamed for that, too. But is it true?

Increase in Childhood Cancer Is Not Due to Pesticide

A new study published in The Lancet Oncology examined the incidence of pediatric cancer from 1991 to 2010. It was a gigantic study that included 1.3 billion person-years. (One "person-year" is an epidemiological term that refers to one person being studied for a period of one year. Ten person-years could be one person studied for ten years, two people studied for five years, five people studied for two years, etc.) The study found:

During the past three decades, incidence increased by about 1% per annum for all cancers combined and this increase affected most major diagnostic groups, including leukaemias, lymphomas, and CNS [central nervous system] tumours. However, in the past decade, incidence appears to have stabilised overall and for the major diagnostic groups in European populations.

In other words, pediatric cancer rates have stabilized after a period in which they were increasing. Why were they increasing?

To put it bluntly, we don't really know. The authors propose that improvements in diagnosis and reporting likely explain some of the data. People with bizarre agendas insist that pediatric cancer is due to Wi-Fi, cell phones, or chemicals, but that is total nonsense. Though it was not the goal of this analysis to investigate etiology, it does provide a hint that pesticides are probably not responsible for pediatric cancer, either.

In an accompanying commentary, Belgian cancer epidemiologist Philippe Autier writes:

Another contrast across European regions concerns the use of pesticides in agriculture. In 2014, the quantities of pesticide sales per capita were about three times greater in Spain, Italy, and France than in Sweden or the UK. If increasing cancer incidence trends were due to pesticides, dissimilarities in incidence trends for leukaemia and lymphoma would be expected between European regions, which was not the case.

Put another way, if pesticides cause pediatric cancer, then countries that use more pesticides should have more cases of pediatric cancer. But they don't. Therefore, pesticides probably don't cause pediatric cancer.

The bottom line is that more research is necessary to uncover the causes of childhood cancer. But eliminating unlikely candidates, such as pesticides, is an important step in unraveling the mystery.

Source: Eva Steliarova-Foucher, et al. "Changing geographical patterns and trends in cancer incidence in children and adolescents in Europe, 1991–2010 (Automated Childhood Cancer Information System): a population-based study." Lancet Oncology. Published: 8-August-2018. DOI: 10.1016/S1470-2045(18)30423-6

Source: Philippe Autier. "Increasing incidence of cancer in children and competing risks." Lancet Oncology. Published: 8-August-2018. DOI: 10.1016/S1470-2045(18)30498-4

You'll Need To Re-Use That Cotton Shopping Bag 7,100 Times For It To Make Environmental Sense

By Hank Campbell — August 6, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

Companies left and right are banning plastic straws because ocean critters are important - with no evidence getting rid of plastic straws is really helping marine critters at all. While I shake my head at that, I am not surprised. The free market has spoken, companies respond to what consumers think they want. When activists and endocrine disruption magicians claimed BPA might be doing... something... the science community knew that if a chemical binds to estrogen 1/20,000th as well as actual estrogen, it is not doing anything, it is just a harmless trace chemical, but I was not surprised ConAgra took it out of their cans. The public were told they wanted that. The market responded and the cost was passed along to consumers.

I was also not surprised that environmentalists did not suddenly rush to buy Manwich without BPA lining in the cans, and the company laid off 1,500 people due to its higher costs and flat revenue.

Do you want a paper straw that won't work or a permanent one that will never be cleaned? The movement may be temporary. We may see a migration back to straws after the hype dies down, just like we saw a migration back to butter after food lawyers like Center for Science in the Public Interest could no longer hide that trans fats were not healthier because they came from plants. Even the U.S. Congress has undone flawed policies, like their boondoggle with corn-based utensils instead of plastic from 2007-2011. (1)

Before straws this year, there was a war on plastic bags, brought about by, you guessed it, environmental press releases and carefully staged photos of garbage. Now poor people have to pay for bags, a regressive tax, unless they can foot the upfront cost for buying bags. But how often do people really wash their bags? Ever? Well, rarely, a study found. Even the most casual cleaner knows you don't want meat drippings on your counter promoting illness the next time you make food, but most won't think about it in bags. And if you keep them in your trunk the bacteria could increase 10X.

But it's for Gaia.

Except it isn't. A recent study found that a cotton bag will need to be reused 7,100 times (2) for it to make sense from a Life Cycle Assessment environmental impact perspective. 7,100 times means that if you go grocery shopping once per week (and you shouldn't go more often because that's bad for the environment too) you will have to use that bag for 136 years.

As Dr. Trevor Thornton, Lecturer in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at Deakin University phrased it, "Our assumptions about what is environmentally friendly don’t always stand up to scrutiny."

Which means we should scrutinize first, and waste money on alternatives later.
NOTES:

(1) In Science Left Behind (with Dr. Alex Berezow, before either of us were at the American Council on Science and Health) I wrote about the Congressional cafeteria replacing plastic utensils with compostable, corn-based environmentally terrific alternatives after Democrats gained control of the House in January, 2007. Environmentalists cheered. The Congressional buildings were miserable. The utensils broke and melted easily. Congressional accountants were baffled. The cost was incredibly high, and the utensils had to be shipped on giant, emissions-belching trucks to Virginia to be composted. When the House switched hands again in 2011, the outgoing head of the committee recommended to his replacement that they switch back and Rep. Lundgren of California did. Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi then claimed Republicans were giving people cancer with styrofoam and killing the environment with plastic.

(2) "Organic" cotton is even worse for the environment due to older production requirements in order to use the label.

CRISPR-Created Foods are Different than GMOs. It's Wrong for Anti-GMO Activists to Pretend They're Not.

By Chuck Dinerstein — April 3, 2018

Monsanto, perhaps to rebrand itself, and certainly to remain a leader in agricultural biotech has helped establish and fund Pairwise Plants a start-up using CRISPR-Cas9 technologies to modify seeds. They have given the new company money and their vice-president of global biotechnology to head the start-up, so this is a strategic business move not simply hedging their bets. This is important because CRISPR-Cas9 may genetically modify a crop, but it doesn’t necessarily result in a genetically modified organism, the dreaded GMO. To understand how that can be, we need to understand both genetic modification and federal regulations.

Mutagenesis...........To Read More....