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Environmentalists, What Are You Asking From Dedmoroz Lenin For Earth Day This Year?

Tomorrow is Earth Day. It is also Lenin's birthday. That's not coincidence. The leader of...

How Ancel Keys Went From MAHA Hero To MAHA Villain

If a lot of the food and health claims you read and hear today seem like things left over from...

Are Baseball Pitchers Faster Today?

On September 7, 1974, pitching for the California Angels, Nolan Ryan, known for his velocity, became...

Ground-Nesting Bee Populations Don't Get Publicity But They're Everywhere

Honeybees get attention in environmental fundraising campaigns because people don't understand...

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I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

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How Flawed Is Environmental Law? Ask The Paiute Cutthroat Trout After 8 Years Of Environmental Groups Blocking Its Restoration

How Flawed Is Environmental Law? Ask The Paiute Cutthroat Trout After 8 Years Of Environmental Groups Blocking Its Restoration

Sep 18 2019 | comment(s)

Eight years ago I wrote about how environmental lobbyists working for environmental lawyer groups kept the federal government in such a tail-chasing frenzy nothing could ever really get accomplished.

My frustration was over the Paiute cutthroat trout, a rare High Sierra fish that everyone agreed needed help. The government agreed, sportsmen agreed, the courts agreed, environmentalists agreed, but then it was environmentalists preventing it from happening.
Mainstream Media: Video Games 8X More Likely To Be Mentioned In Mass Shootings If The Criminal Was White

Mainstream Media: Video Games 8X More Likely To Be Mentioned In Mass Shootings If The Criminal Was White

Sep 16 2019 | comment(s)

A recent analysis of 204,796 news articles about 204 mass shootings(1) over a 40-year period found that President Trump is not inventing things when he mentions a link between shootings and video games. He got it from mainstream media.

Is corporate media racist? 

They found that 6,814 articles that mentioned video games when discussing mass shootings and video games were 8X more likely to be mentioned in media accounts when the shooting occurred at a school and the perpetrator was white male than when the shooter was African American, found the authors. 
Happy 40th Birthday To The Official Eradication of Smallpox

Happy 40th Birthday To The Official Eradication of Smallpox

Sep 13 2019 | comment(s)

In December 1979, smallpox was officially declared eradicated but it had already happened by then, thanks to the efforts of giants like Drs. Don Henderson and Bill Foege, not to mention 150,000 international workers pushing the disease first out of Europe and Asia, then to the Horn of Africa, and finally out of existence.

The last case was known in 1977 but no one was willing to raise any glasses, yet by early 1979 everyone knew the clocking was ticking. Finally, by the end of the year it was official. Smallpox was gone, and vaccines had done it. But not without help from those 150,000 pairs of boots on the ground and ... math.
Endocrine Disruptor Hype: 'Vaping May Harm Fertility In Young Women' Says Press Release, But The Study Was In Mice

Endocrine Disruptor Hype: 'Vaping May Harm Fertility In Young Women' Says Press Release, But The Study Was In Mice

Sep 09 2019 | comment(s)

If we want to understand why one political group denies vaccines and another that pollution is bad, we need look no farther than press releases touting mouse studies or statistical correlation as having human relevance, when they are only exploratory.

Everyone sees this stuff gets promoted in mainstream media, they know it is fake, and it becomes impossible for people to trust anything. Even their own political side or field. People assume everyone is hyping results for attention if even their own side is.
'I See Nothing But Fields For My Horses' - The Mystery Of A Mongol Massacre In 1238

'I See Nothing But Fields For My Horses' - The Mystery Of A Mongol Massacre In 1238

Sep 07 2019 | comment(s)

In 1227, Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, died, leaving 129,000 soldiers to carry on his war of conquest. But they didn't do it in one unit, his sons and brothers were all given troops. One of the deceased sons, Jochi, had a son named Batu, and after all of his uncles died as well, Batu, founder of the Golden Horde in the western part of the empire, became the most feared Mongol of his generation.
Attention Athletes: Get Ready For Performance-Enhancing Bacteria Probiotic Microbiome Omics Hype

Attention Athletes: Get Ready For Performance-Enhancing Bacteria Probiotic Microbiome Omics Hype

Sep 06 2019 | comment(s)

String Theory, stem cells, epigenetics, antioxidants, they've all been important basic research that got exaggerated beyond recognition, which got media attention, which got people rushing into the fields and led to even more papers making increasingly cosmic claims until the public stopped believing any of the hype, which is where they should have been all along.

Make way for the microbiome. What was once a goofy yogurt claim - as if your trillions of bacteria were going to be impacted by a half cup of overpriced dairy goop - became mainstream supplement gold.