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France Defies Trump By Accepting Science For The First Time This Century

France Defies Trump By Accepting Science For The First Time This Century

May 21 2025 | comment(s)

A whistleblower revealed a shocking document written by the French Ministry of Agriculture to the European Commission.

In response to America retaliating against Europe by placing tariffs on European goods the way European has them on American goods, the French government declared that for the first time this century they wanted 'access to innovation' - which means modern science and technology.

They want food sovereignty, and most bizarre of all from the French, fair competition. All things France has historically opposed in the name of the Green Deal and their Farm to Fork Idyll.
Who Paid For Prostitutes First, The Human Or The Monkey? The Chen Paper Turns 20

Who Paid For Prostitutes First, The Human Or The Monkey? The Chen Paper Turns 20

May 21 2025 | comment(s)

It is often joked that 'prostitution was the first profession' and, that it is not a profession aside, the sentiment may be true. Someone with a lot of food and the ability to prevent it being taken may have worked out a deal with someone who had no food but willingness to satisfy a different basic need. It would still mean food gathering was the first profession but that's not as funny.

Lots of animals barter and steal and fight, humans are not even very good at it compared to most creatures, but the anthropological consensus is that humans are the only species to understand 'money.' Money is a token whose actual value may be negligible but with intangible value that is not only agreed upon by a larger community, it is fungible. It can be traded for many goods.(1)
Does Global Warming Cause War?

Does Global Warming Cause War?

May 20 2025 | comment(s)

A new paper suggests that the world's largest polluters remain safe from the environmental damage they help create and the countries least to blame face the greatest threats because of, oddly, violent conflict.

This is counter-intuitive but it is the same argument we used to read about "virtual water". Those arguments are fine in a spreadsheet, it gets advocates worked up, but fails in the real world as readily as most economic projections do.(1) The authors argue that they correlate armed conflict and the environment.
Instead Of Genetically Engineering Bedbugs, EPA Should Re-Evaluate DDT

Instead Of Genetically Engineering Bedbugs, EPA Should Re-Evaluate DDT

May 19 2025 | comment(s)

In the 1950s, the global infestation of bed bugs was nearly eradicated, thanks to the pesticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, popularly known as DDT.

Due to outcry from environmentalists and concern about Rachel Carson's Silent Spring(1), and over the objections of scientists, the attorney who had been appointed to run the new Environmental Protection Agency created by President Nixon, William Ruckelshaus, banned it.(2)
RIP Richard Garwin, 'The Only True Genius' Fermi Ever Met

RIP Richard Garwin, 'The Only True Genius' Fermi Ever Met

May 19 2025 | comment(s)

Richard Garwin, who died on May 13, 2025, at the age of 97, was sometimes called “the most influential scientist you’ve never heard of.” He got his Ph.D. in physics at 21 under Enrico Fermi – a Nobel Prize winner and friend of Einstein’s – who called Garwin “the only true genius” he’d ever met.

Food Jihad: Terrorists Use Hunger As A Weapon

Food Jihad: Terrorists Use Hunger As A Weapon

May 18 2025 | comment(s)

Over the last decade, there has been growing international focus on the role of food in conflict, particularly in Africa. The continent has seen an increase in jihadist terrorism in several regions.

Violence, like that exercised by terrorist organisations, is linked with food security conditions, causing a vicious circle of hunger and conflict.

Terrorism generates food disruptions. It undermines production systems and supply routes.

Calm Down Food Nanny, We've Been Eating Processed Foods For 14,000 Years

Calm Down Food Nanny, We've Been Eating Processed Foods For 14,000 Years

May 18 2025 | comment(s)

With a new president in the White House bringing in a former Natural Resources Defense Lawyer and long-time anti-science progressive, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., there is new concern about erosion of American leadership in science and health.

If leadership is just spending money on things like theater in foreign countries or paying yourself $100,000 to rewrite data from government surveys on why some people don't trust vaccines, we are not losing much.(1)

Hopefully with Republicans agreeing about some of the more ridiculous positions of the left - seed oils and vaccines are bad - acceptance of science will blossom among the nearly 90% of career government employees in Washington, D.C. who are Democrats.(2)
Global Warming Update: Your Virtual Climate Wealth Is At Risk

Global Warming Update: Your Virtual Climate Wealth Is At Risk

May 16 2025 | comment(s)

Want to lose 16% of your retirement just like that? Run a computer simulation where the worst thing you fear is true.

A new paper sounds the alarm over a crash in virtual climate wealth. It isn't science, it is just a computer simulation and therefore more like dystopian 1960s fiction than science. 
Drones Work For Pesticide Applications

Drones Work For Pesticide Applications

May 14 2025 | comment(s)

Though organic™ farmers sell bucolic imagery of hoeing by hand and sunsets over fields of corn, it is just marketing to the gullible. All farmers who make more than enough money to pay their real estate taxes(1) are high-tech gurus. They use real-time data on the health of their land and their crops, they want to use just enough product to get the most food with the least environmental strain.

It's a long way from the $3 billion environmental imagery of farmers with leaky backpacks drenching plants in science and cackling like Scrooge McDuck on a pile of coins about it.
Pesticides: Environmental Threat Or Anti-Science Populism?

Pesticides: Environmental Threat Or Anti-Science Populism?

May 13 2025 | comment(s)

With former Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dictating a lot of science policy for the Trump administration, anti-science activists have been quietly cheering even though they uniformly voted for his opposition.

They need a win. Claims that bees are dying off have been met with a resounding thud, we have more bees than at any time since records have been kept. Concerns about GMOs have fared as poorly. Trillions of animals have been fed using GMOs and neither any of them or the billions of people who ate food grown using them have gotten so much as a stomachache. Food activism likes to gloss over how often organic lettuce gives consumers E. coli.
Pathogens, Pests And Perils In Global Food Security

Pathogens, Pests And Perils In Global Food Security

May 12 2025 | comment(s)

In wealthy countries, the richest and the aspirational well-off can afford to pay extra for food only grown using toxic pesticides they are assured are healthy for the planet, but the 99.99999% have to think about affordability.

Every time a chemical is removed due to manufactured outrage by environmental groups and the fifth columnists they get implanted inside presidential administrations, it is the poor that pay the price. Cereal crops are a staple for those worried about food security, and are the earliest victims of pathogens and pests. And then the first target for activists in a $3 billion industry devoted to scaring people about science solutions. 
Side Effects Update: Lecanemab To Slow Alzheimer's

Side Effects Update: Lecanemab To Slow Alzheimer's

May 12 2025 | comment(s)

In 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration an Alzheimer’s therapy shown in clinical trials to modestly slow disease progression but side effects, brain swelling and bleeding, occurred in some.

Though clinical trials have taken twice as long and cost twice as much due to government regulations, they can't  cover everything and a successful doesn't mean broader demographics won't show different effects. Lawyers are gleeful at the opportunity to sue but they will be disappointed in the latest results for lecanemab. Adverse events associated with lecanemab treatment in clinic patients were rare and manageable.
The Ideal Amount Of Sleep You Need Is Cultural Not Fixed For All People

The Ideal Amount Of Sleep You Need Is Cultural Not Fixed For All People

May 12 2025 | comment(s)

You've heard that you should get eight hours of sleep per night, a whole industry has built up trying to help people who can't do that, but like BMI, organic food, and 'alcohol in moderation is okay', there is no science to it.
On Progress

On Progress

May 11 2025 | comment(s)

The human race has made huge progress in the past few thousand years, gradually improving the living condition of human beings by learning how to cure illness; improving farming; harvesting, storing, and using energy in several forms; and countless other activities. 

Progress is measured over long time scales, and on metrics related to the access to innovations by all, as Ford once noted. So it is natural for us to consider ourselves lucky to have lived "in the best of times". 

Why, if you were born 400 years ago, e.g., you would probably never even learn what a hot shower is! And even only 100 years ago you could have been watching powerless as your children died of diseases that today elicit little worry.
Here's Your Chance To Buy Gems Buried With Buddha 2000 Years Ago

Here's Your Chance To Buy Gems Buried With Buddha 2000 Years Ago

May 11 2025 | comment(s)

Almost 2,000 years ago in modern-day Uttar Pradesh, India, someone deposited a cache of gems inside a reliquary (a container for holy relics), along with some bone fragments and ash. The gems were precious, but the bones and ash even more so, for according to an inscription on the reliquary, they belonged to Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha.

The 53-Year Odyssey Of Kosmos 482 And The Push For Sustainable Space

The 53-Year Odyssey Of Kosmos 482 And The Push For Sustainable Space

May 11 2025 | comment(s)

A Fallen Spacefarer Returns to Earth

Raman Spectroscopy Makes Saliva A Good Way To Detect Cancer

Raman Spectroscopy Makes Saliva A Good Way To Detect Cancer

May 10 2025 | comment(s)

A few drops of saliva can now reveal what used to require a scalpel, a syringe or a scan.

Scientists have developed ways to analyze spit for the tiniest traces of illness – from mouth cancer to diabetes, and even brain diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Unlike blood tests or biopsies, saliva is easy to collect, painless and inexpensive. During the COVID pandemic, some countries used saliva-based testing for rapid screening.

Toward A Unified Theory Of How Language Evolved

Toward A Unified Theory Of How Language Evolved

May 09 2025 | comment(s)

Humans are the only species on earth that uses language, combining sounds into words and words into sentence with infinite meanings.

We do this using linguistic rules for calls and sentence structure. "A dog eats" tells us one thing while "a big dog" means another while "you're such a dog" from a friend at the bar means something else completely.

Humans have mastered syntax.

How did that evolve? The comparative approach, comparing the vocal production of other primates, with that of humans, provides some answers. Other primates typically use a single call type while some species combine calls, it is mostly as an alarm. All those known are too limited to be a precursor to the complex, open-ended combinatorial system that is human language.
FDA Approves 3 New Food Colorings Using GRAS That Kennedy Wants Banned

FDA Approves 3 New Food Colorings Using GRAS That Kennedy Wants Banned

May 09 2025 | comment(s)

U.S. policy when it comes to science can be a little confusing. Over 20 years ago, one political party demanded that drugs and devices undergo far more testing before approval. It was a common belief among the more conspiracy-minded that FDA was colluding with right-wing corporations to get products passed.
Brain Organoid Research Shows Science Academia Needs Stronger Ethical Oversight

Brain Organoid Research Shows Science Academia Needs Stronger Ethical Oversight

May 09 2025 | comment(s)

As the Trump administration continues to make significant cuts to NIH budgets and personnel and to freeze billions of dollars of funding to major research universities – citing ideological concerns – there’s more being threatened than just progress in science and medicine. Something valuable but often overlooked is also being hit hard: preventing research abuse.