The Nation has published an excellent article on the U.S. government’s vendetta against James Risen, a New York Times investigative journalist. The campaign is part of a larger effort by the Obama Administrations to punish government whistleblowers and “intimidate other investigative reporters,” as Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg told The Nation. This week Risen gave a talk at…Continue Reading…
I’m betting you’ve heard or seen the big news, as reported on the front page of today’s New York Times: The United States and allies launched airstrikes against Sunni militants in Syria early Tuesday, unleashing a torrent of cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs from the air and sea on the militants’ de facto capital of…Continue Reading…
When I was interviewing Robert Kennedy Jr. for my recent Washington Post magazine profile, there was one charge leveled against him that he deeply resented. “I am not anti-science,” he insisted on numerous occasions, and my suggestion a year ago that he was anti-science perturbed him more than anything. After all, Kennedy, like many greens, embraces…Continue Reading…
In 2002, the global GMO discourse chagrined anthropologist Glenn Davis Stone: Western audiences have been bombarded with deceptive rhetoric, spin, and soundbite science portraying the wonders—or horrors—of the new technology. He blamed both the biotech industry and anti-GMO activists for exploiting food security concerns to advance their own agendas. The article, published in the journal Current Anthropology,…Continue Reading…
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…
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…
This week the New York Times published a profile of longtime climate skeptic John Christy. I found the piece perplexing because it contained no obvious hook or peg, as we say in journalism. There were no newsy events in Christy’s life that might have prompted a story about him in a prestige media outlet: No…Continue Reading…
On Twitter, a popular health advocate makes this observation: From 1997-2007, the first 10 years of GMOs, there was a 265% increase in ER visits due to food allergic reactions http://t.co/U1PlwBvpU5 — Robyn O’Brien (@foodawakenings) May 21, 2014 Pretty incredible, isn’t it? Here’s another correlation that will blow your mind. You can check out all…Continue Reading…
In the late 2000s, the notion of “clean coal” was widely panned. As Bryan Walsh wrote in a 2009 Time piece: currently there’s no economical way to capture and sequester carbon emissions from coal, and many experts doubt there ever will be. Critics in the Guardian and elsewhere dismissed “clean coal” as industry greenwash. But…Continue Reading…
Several years ago, well before Mark Lynas made his famous public apology for being an anti-GMO activist, I asked him in an interview to explain his change of mind. What prompted it, I wondered. His response: There was no “Road to Damascus” conversion, where there’s a sudden blinding flash and you go, “Oh, my God,…Continue Reading…