The line between deliberately manipulating a story and poorly reporting the facts is perilously thin.

During Sunday’s Oscars, what is colloquially called the United States’ ‘paper of record’, the New York Times, launched an advertising blitz positioning itself as the highbrow ethical responder to the spate of so-called ‘fake news.’

“The truth is hard…to find…to know,” the ad, widely circulated now on YouTube, proclaimed somberly.

U.S. Right To Know is a small marketing group devoted primarily to endorsing the organic food process and undermining conventional agriculture. Nearly 100 percent of their funding comes from organic food companies, and they seem to believe that for organic food to be cost-effective, regular farming has to become more expensive. (1) Like Sourcewatch, Mother Jones and a few others, they are what the science community calls Deniers For Hire, the junkyard dogs of politically partisan anti-science groups. They hate farmers, and they hate affordable energy, but they hate scientists and doctors most of all. (2)

Genetic variants linked to autism spectrum disorders (ASD) contribute to enhanced cognition and are therefore positively selected in spite of the problems they also bring along – new evidence has just been published in PLOS Genetics [1]. The problems these genes bring along are the price to pay for relatively rapid evolutionary advancements. It needs a much longer time for further natural selection to smooth the bugs out – this is all obvious, simple science. Another example is the genetic predisposition of Ashkenazim Jews to diseases such as Tai-Sachs, which comes along with their high average verbal IQ, also a relatively recent evolutionary advancement.

A new fMRI study used neural activity in 80 people to accurately predict the virality of 80 New York Times health articles.

Well, it's the New York Times, a top five newspaper in the U.S. so the results are going to be skewed by that, as were the articles selected; the public loves weak observational claims about health and the demographic that reads the New York Times is most inclined to believe claims about miracle vegetables, scary chemicals and diet fads. 

American chestnut trees were once among the most majestic hardwood trees in the eastern deciduous forests, many reaching 80 to 120 feet in height and eight feet or more in diameter.   

The “then boundless chestnut woods” Thoreau wrote about in Walden once grew throughout the Appalachian mountains. They provided habitat and a mast crop for wildlife, a nutritious nut crop for humans and a source of valuable timber. Because of their rapid growth rate and rot-resistant wood, they also have significant potential for carbon sequestration, important in these days of climate change.

I was not supposed to start this piece using the pronoun ‘I’.

We frequently see a contrast drawn between what is “natural” and what is “chemical.” Sometimes products are described as “chemical-free” even though every physical object is made of chemicals.

As much as this suggests a problem with our science education, it speaks to a missed opportunity for wonder. Nature is not some sort of cosmic mother figure; on the contrary, nature is composed of diverse biological and physical processes, including some pretty amazing examples of chemistry continually taking place.

Many cannot accept that IQ is largely determined by our genes. They do not trust the research. Pointing to such research is an argument from authority. Moreover, the research does not explain the mechanisms in the social realm well, and so the research can anyway only be supporting evidence, but it is alone not convincing and we do have to ask: Can we trust the science?

But it comes worse!

There are multiple food fads trying to catch on per year but as the saying goes in science, if one epidemiology study counted, everything would cause or prevent cancer.

One long-held epidemiology belief is that the more vegetables you eat, the healthier your heart will be.  While vegetarians and animal activists tout such claims, the actual evidence is not clear. In recent decades we've been told bacon, butter and red meat all cause heart disease. But the same groups scaremongering food have also claimed that coffee causes breast cancer, that cell phones cause all kinds of cancer, and that BPA can be an endocrine disruptor, even though they are biological and toxicological impossibilities. 

You might think that after the November elections, the last group anyone will listen to for guidance on the American public are partisan pundits. But they are still lobbying for an alternative result, now saying that if President Trump wants to honor his commitment to repealing the The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) while allowing more coverage, better benefits, and lower costs, the only choice is a Single Payer system; socialized medicine.

They list now-famous pretend money, the same optimistic estimates that led to the Obamacare system being financially viable, savings of $504 billion annually on health care bureaucracy and profits.