Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin recently signed Federal Law 358-FZ, which bans genetic engineering of plants and animals for the indefinite future.

In response to an overtly science-hostile bill by the state government in Vermont (1), the U.S. House of Representatives preemptively passed a softball GMO labeling law in 2015.

Anti-science groups (Friends of the Earth, NRDC, Union of Concerned Scientists, et al.) and their paid Deniers for Hire (Sourcewatch, US Right To Know, every other organic trade rep) were understandably apoplectic, because it was not going to handicap domestic agriculture and thereby make the organic food process more attractive.(2)

The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) says it doesn't know if coffee causes cancer or not, a switch from 1991 when the agency said it did.

That is bad for people who want to trust IARC's recommendations -- because its reasons to reverse course on coffee are no more valid than its reason to have declared it possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B) in the first place. And the coffee claims are no more valid than any other claims the agency has made about the hazards of common things.

For decades we have been told that salmon is good for us, for everything from heart health to brain function. And we should eat more of it.

But if more people actually listened to those dietary recommendations, they would run squarely up against environmental activists and the media outlets (i.e. Mother Jones) and anti-science Deniers for Hire (i.e. SourceWatch) they fund.