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Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

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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In the early days of food labeling and regulations, it was just about mandating honesty. If you go to buy mayonnaise, you shouldn't have to wonder if it is mayonnaise (1), and then labels became a marketing distinction.

Better ingredients meant a better product and that appealed to people who cared about higher quality or superior health for their families. 

More recently, labels have become a way to promote self-identification with a world view - you could show you are more ethical and care more about your children and the developing world, and even the whole planet, if you buy a special label.
A pilot Earth Index commissioned by BBC Earth using data from the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) sets a new standard for estimating pretend money. It values coral at $10 trillion for the global economy. Trees are worth even more, at $16 trillion, which means the pretend value of trees are almost as much as all of the real value of the people in the United States (GDP $17.42 trillion.) Heck, the Grand Canyon is worth $700 million and it just sits there looking stoic.

In an effort to keep the pressure on scientists who accept the overwhelming consensus on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the hard-left political magazine Mother Jones has written another article using emails provided to the organic lobbying organization US Right To Know(1) to undermine science it has chosen not to accept. 

If you get money from a corporation, are you for sale?

It’s obviously a silly question, since almost everyone in America signs the backs of checks ratherr than the front of them, yet much of the public tends to think that if a scientist gets funding from the government or a corporation, they are mandated to produce a specific, pre-chosen result, even though those same people would not agree that their own “funding source” — an employer — controls their beliefs.

A new survey finds that how 40 percent of people function is a scientific mystery - because only 60 percent of people start their mornings with coffee.

This is baffling in a country where $18 billion annually is spent just on specialty coffees.
The surest way to tell if an organization is a politically partisan one is if they make sure to claim flaws in their opposition and ignore the entire swath of the people on their side. Sourcewatch, for example, can't find a single thing wrong with Natural Resources Defense Council, which has $300 million in the bank, whereas they dismiss the organization I run, the American Council on Science and Health, as 'industry shills' because ACSH proudly makes its donors public while NRDC, which generates more money in interest in one day than the Council's budget for the entire year, gets a free pass while never telling anyone where their money really comes from.