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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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If sloppy, agenda-based science is all that is needed for activists to latch on to a belief and never let go, then the anti-GMO contingent may have found its Andrew Wakefield in French biologist Gilles-Eric Séralini. It won't matter that the methods in his latest study are causing biologists all over the world to facepalm, they will insist it must be true and Big Science is the squelching the results.
In "Science Left Behind", the oft-regurgitated 'it takes a gallon of gas to make a pound of beef' nonsensical metric is revealed for what it always was; a claim put into a book that was derived from an advocacy press release in the 1980s that had no scientific merit.  Still, saying what advocates want is enough to make it into UN reports under 'gray literature' and so a UN report dutifully included it and a whole bunch of hysterical statistics was derived from it. That is the magic of agenda-based scientization of politics.
A study in Food and Chemical Toxicology into the health effect of a GM-tolerant maize crop and the herbicide Roundup suggested lab rats developed mammary tumors and were more likely to die prematurely. Science Media Centre issued a press release with some of the concerns by other scientists. Only a few are included, for the full list and quotes go here.
If you were to ask me yesterday what did the most harm to romantic relationships, I would have said 'romantic comedies' followed by 'advice from women'.
Anti-science people with a 'natural' fetish don't understand that the random and unpredictable nature of...nature...is a bad thing.  All of the funding campaigns and Internet rants of environmentalists are only possible because scientists and engineers harnessed the power of dangerous, unpredictable nature at one point in time - we don't try to power our homes and business with all-natural lightning bolts, we instead generate electricity synthetically and we do so as safely as possible. It can still hurt you but no one is waging a campaign against electricity today.
Has global warming made it too darn hot to think about autumn events like Oktoberfest?  Can't choose between a milkshake and a beer? You are in luck, the Red Robin restaurant chain is simply mixing the two.
 
A cold beer milkshake can appeal to beer enthusiasts and dessert-lovers, they believe, so now through November 11th, they are selling a Samuel Adams® Octoberfest Milkshake. You can probably guess its ingredients; soft serve ice cream, Samuel Adams® Octoberfest draft, vanilla and caramel.