Earlier this year, two writers at Mother Jones noted: It’s easy to find bad information about the safety of vaccines on the internet. True, that. It’s also easy to find bad information about the safety of GMOs on the internet. What puzzles me is why liberal outlets recognize “bad information” about vaccines but not GMOs. (Grist is now a…Continue Reading…
A liberal publication (which I like and read) has a message for vaccine-hesitant parents. Vaccinate your kids, you ignorant whack jobs http://t.co/ngmTIZWAxp pic.twitter.com/TiBXz99Vxi — Mother Jones (@MotherJones) August 6, 2014 Alas, this is an incredibly ignorant and counterproductive thing to say. Whoever is running MoJo’s social media operation needs to get familiar with the latest…Continue Reading…
When Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks, people listen. I was on vacation when America’s most prominent scientist made news for railing against GMO fearmongers. “Practically every food you buy in a store for consumption by humans is genetically modified food,” he told a French interviewer. It was an impromptu, oversimplified response on a complex, hot-button subject, but…Continue Reading…
Nearly a decade ago, I wrote a profile of Richard Cizik for Audubon magazine. He was, at the time, a prominent lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals and a member of good standing among social and political conservatives. But Cizik’s views on a number of hot-button issues were evolving. In 2008 he was forced to…Continue Reading…
Earlier in the year, Roger Pielke Jr. was named as a contributing writer for Nate Silver’s newly re-launched FiveThirtyEight site. Shortly after that, Pielke, a climate policy scholar and political scientist at the University of Colorado, in Boulder, published an article at FiveThirtyEight headlined, “Disasters Cost More Than Ever–But Not Because of Climate Change.” Critics pounced immediately in…Continue Reading…
My colleagues in the media have taken notice of the execrable rant by Mike Adams, in which he likens some science writers and scientists to Nazis. To recap: The self-proclaimed “Health Ranger” said that certain publishers, journalists and scientists “have signed on to the Nazi genocide machine of our day,” which he identifies as the agricultural biotech…Continue Reading…
I recently discussed what is perhaps the most twisted, disgusting anti-GMO tract ever written. It’s by Mike Adams, who as Jon Entine said earlier this year, is “a titan in the booming alternative lifestyle business, running dozens of websites promoting ‘natural’ products, many of them bogus or dangerous, which he relentlessly hawks online.” The main communication…Continue Reading…
I really thought Mike Adams couldn’t write anything more possibly deranged than he already has at his Natural News website. (Readers of this blog have seen a freaky side of Adams.) Jon Entine has the scoop on his editorial output and alt-med empire. Entine’s piece, which Forbes cravenly took down (after Adams threatened to sue), asked if…Continue Reading…
My recent Washington Post magazine piece on Robert Kennedy Jr. has prompted numerous reactions in media outlets, on Twitter, and in the blogosphere. Generally speaking, readers have found the story both compelling and maddening. What folks seem to be divided on is how Kennedy comes off in the story. Laura Helmuth at Slate says I…Continue Reading…
Last September, Robert Kennedy Jr. and Mark Hyman received a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It pertained to a “report” that Kennedy, an environmental attorney and Hyman, a medical doctor, had sent to federal health officials on the dangers of thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative once commonly used in pediatric vaccines…Continue Reading…