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The Invasive Data Collection Practices of Cars - Nissan Is The Worst

Oct 03 2023 | comment(s)

When you get in that expensive electric car, you are exposing your age, gender, social security number, religious beliefs, marital status, your race, if you are a citizen, even if you have a disability. Tesla says they don't sell your information to outside companies but they were also busted for sharing videos of customers internally, including kids, including nudity, so it's not secure.

I am not just picking on electric cars, though they are a nationally-subsidized grift so they should at least be stealing from us less after the sale. Virtually any car made since 2006 uses its sensors, microphones, cameras, bluetooth, and vehicle telematics to spy on you and harvest everything it is allowed.

And it is allowed a lot. Because you said they could.

Maybe It's Not Bad Science, It's Just Banal

Oct 02 2023 | comment(s)

Bad faith science, outright modifying language to highlight benefit or harm for effect, is not new.

It's long been common in claims about food and chemicals - glyphosate in breast milk, endocrine disruption homeopathy beliefs, annual fad diets etc. - but because journalists will state anything authoritatively if it comes from a journal, it's even become common in claims about climate change and COVID-19.

There Is Nothing 'Natural' About Organic Farming And If You Care About 'Sustainable', You Need Science

Oct 02 2023 | comment(s)

When it comes to denying science, California leads America, and sometimes the world. In early 2020, for example, when the President of the US said to cut travel from China due to SARS-CoV-2, Governor Newsom said he was xenophobic and racist and that since the World Health Organisation denied it was a pandemic, he was opposed to science also.

Prior to that it was a state where we had to hammer the legislature for 10 straight years to eliminate arbitrary exemptions from vaccines, because California schools on the coast had more unvaccinated kids than the rest of the US combined. Prior to that, they tried to ban modern agriculture, along with Happy Meals and Golf.

Fish Oil Supplements Are An Epidemiology Created Fad - And Worse Because They Are Rancid

Sep 25 2023 | comment(s)

Do you take fish oil supplements, believing they are boosting your brain power? A lot of people do, but they are a placebo; another in a long chain of Miracle Foods created by epidemiologists when they aren't using suspect statistical correlation to create Scary Chemical claims.

Yet journalists at places the New York Times and Washington Post love to create false balance by 'suggesting' epidemiologists are doing science - their work is in the EXPLORATORY pile, like with all computer models, mouse experiments, and findings from cells in Petri dishes.(1)

The Heart Of Chess: Biometrics Reveal Jan-Krzysztof Duda's Armageddon Championship Confidence

Sep 20 2023 | comment(s)

Polish Grandmaster Jan-Krzysztof Duda won the 2023 Armageddon Championship Series in convincing fashion but the intriguing science story is his biology while doing so.

Armageddon Chess is often used as a tie-breaker, and in it, black plays second but is the winner if the game is a draw - and has a shorter clock. The Armageddon Championship Series compresses time and uses a double-elimination format once the regional finalists are obtained.

No, Toxicologists Did Not Say Household Cleaners Cause Cancer

Sep 16 2023 | comment(s)

The trial lawyer outfit Environmental Working Group paid to publish a claim that a for-fee group paid by them 'detected' chemicals that a few fringe epidemiologists correlate to cancer - in animals - and therefore humans are at risk.
Newsweek doesn't have any science journalists so they dutifully repeated it, but if you want an answer you can trust, rather than corporate media, here are the facts.

1. Any chemical at high enough dose can harm you. That includes H2O. 'The dose makes the poison.'

A Nutritionist Reveals The Difference Between Farmed And Wild Salmon

Sep 14 2023 | comment(s)

Epidemiologists correlate eating more fish to better health and while skepticism is warranted - we're talking about what people claim on food surveys and taking it as scientific truth - there is no question its economic impact is real.

Yet food activists then piled out to an environmental strain problem by claiming that farmed salmon is somehow worse. It resonated without any skepticism because many weealthy elites want to go to restaurants and know blue collar workers risked their lives for expensive fish.

Heartland Health Research Alliance: Organic Industry-Funded 'Urine' Analysis Group Won't Disclose Its Financials

Sep 11 2023 | comment(s)

In the past, you may have seen various 'we detected X in urine' papers written by suspect names like homeopathy believer Phil Landrigan and endorsed by organic industry apologists like Chuck Benbrook.

What do such claims even mean? In science, nothing. We can detect anything in anything in the last 20 years, but lawyer-created groups like Heartland Health Research Alliance Ltd are ready to help the litigators who fund them sue "at the drop of a rat" so any detection in humans - bonus points if they can claim pregnant women - of any chemical that can kill a mouse at 10,000 times a real-world dose is going to get a teary press release sent to the New York Times.

How Hard Can It Be To Find One Lockheed Model 10-E Electra In The Pacific Ocean?

Sep 06 2023 | comment(s)

In July of 1937, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan, on their way around the world, missed a planned stop at Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean.

You may not even have known Noonan was on the flight, it's always been a better narrative to suggest she was solo, but one thing is well-documented. No one knows what happened to them.

Uncredited

The Economist Use Of Breezy Correlation Works For Economics - But Science, No

Sep 04 2023 | comment(s)

I have often felt that "The Economist" is one of the best-edited publications around. Since it primarily involves economics, and there is no scientific basis to it beyond supply and demand, it is easy to appreciate writing and editing, the same way I could be impressed if the world had a great magazine devoted to astrology.

Sometimes "The Economist" forgets its wheelhouse and ends up looking more ridiculous than Javier Baez swinging at something so far off the plate the catcher was lucky to grab it.

Framing: 'EPA Removes Federal Protection' When The New Regulations Were Never In Place

Aug 31 2023 | comment(s)

A few months ago, the Supreme Court continued to play Whack-A-Mole with the Biden administrationon's efforts to give control over US family farms to the EPA - under the guise of a Waters of the United States Act they expanded without a vote, and then the Clean Water Act, and then using an interpretation of the Endangered Species Act.

Eventually they may be forced to fall back on the CDC and say control over puddles in rural areas is needed due to Covid-19 Variant Seti Alpha V, or whatever we'll get before the election in November of 2024.

Geothermal Energy Is Clean And Renewable And American Environmentalists Oppose It

Aug 30 2023 | comment(s)

Last century, $3 billion in environmental groups opposed 19th century technology - oil. To win their war on extinction they promoted an unscientific concept that caught on with journalists and allied academics - "fossil fuels" - and insisted alternatives were better. Alternatives like hydroelectric and geothermal and natural gas.(1)

Today, they oppose all of those. They want to tear down all of the dams they told government to build, they claim natural gas will cause earthquakes, and that geothermal will cause earth to deflate.

Sorry Carl Sagan, We're Not An Empty Atomic Void

Aug 29 2023 | comment(s)

We use an atomic orbital in our logo, even though it is scientifically wrong.

Scientists spend a lot of time nit-picking minutiae(1) but sometimes you have to go with imagery the broad public understands, not try to satisfy that guy at a conference Q&A session who doesn't have a question but just wants to talk about himself.

An atomic orbital doesn't ruin trust in science, the way garbage like the manufactured 'balance of nature' or claiming sugar-free soda causes cancer or denial of agricultural breakthroughs do. What about thinking of small structures as primarily empty space?

Dentists Are Having To Spend Time Telling Patients That IARC Is Wrong About Aspartame

Aug 28 2023 | comment(s)

Do you think being a barber will cause you to get cancer? Listening to the radio? Drinking from a paper straw?

If the answer is yes, you are an International Agency for Research on Cancer epidemiologist. If you know better, then you know it is safe to keep on chewing Trident gum, or any other gum with aspartame. A message that dentists are in the awkward position of having to reinforce for patients who believe that New York Times endorsements mean IARC is a legitimate force for public health.

JAMA Says Less Discrimination In School Admissions Will Mean Fewer Black Doctors

Aug 27 2023 | comment(s)

Are universities and medical schools racist? They must be if a Supreme Court decision based on ending discrimination against Asians means fewer doctors.

Yet that is the argument in a recent JAMA op-ed; that black people won't be able to get into medical school unless a secret sauce gives them a boost. Even more, they contend, there will be more health inequity because minorities may refuse to go to a physician who is not their skin color.

Fire Brain: The Push To Diagnose Trauma After Natural Disasters Related to Climate Change

Aug 24 2023 | comment(s)

The coasts of the US take a lot of criticism in the science community for being opposed to well-understood science like nuclear power, natural gas, cell phones, agriculture, and, until 2021, vaccines.

The surest sign the pandemic is in the past is that they are reverting to their old ways. A movement is on to create a clinical diagnosis of "fire brain" - psychological trauma suffered as a result of natural disasters that can be attributed to climate change.

Jim Jones: Unified Human Foods Program Gets Its First Deputy Commissioner

Aug 23 2023 | comment(s)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Human Foods Program is a welcome switch from the old morass of government agencies covering food safety, chemical safety and technology, with EPA (which today is in 'everything is linked to cancer' mode), USDA ('as long as it's farmers doing the lying, we don't care what the National Organics Standards Board says about other farmers') and finally FDA, which isn't even allowed to tell rice companies they are not broccoli or a garbage whiskey company that claiming to be non-GMO doesn't make a carcinogen healthier.

Annual NY State Butter Sculpture Unveiled

Aug 22 2023 | comment(s)

Photos of the 55th Annual Butter Sculpture have been spread far and wide thanks to the New York State Fair.

It's a train, which is on brand with the theme of how dairy helps brains, bones and bodies work together grow. It's an important message; thanks to bizarre fads and activist campaigns, kids probably don't get enough food-based calcium and Vitamin D. New York, like California and a dozen other states, instead prefer pills and supplements because they think 'food is medicine' - unless it is yogurt.

The conductor of the train is, unsurprisingly, a cow.

State Fair attendees won't get to eat it, though. After the event it will be recycled.

Supplement Risk: Nuez de la India Diet Seeds Nuts Are Actually Toxic Yellow Oleander

Aug 18 2023 | comment(s)

In 1994, President Bill Clinton listened to his constituents who said Big Pharma was a corporate conspiracy and instructed the FDA to waive away any real control of the alternative-to-medicine industry. Unless they will kill someone, as long as the $35 billion industry writes a tiny disclaimer noting that there is no scientific basis for their claims and that therefore FDA doesn't agree with any nonsense on the label, they could be set free on a gullible public.

Dr. Mark Hyman, one of the Four Horsemen of the Alternative, was pleased that his future "patient" did all that for those who think powder made from endangered species has magical properties. It's Big Business now.

Epidemiologists Link Virtual Pollution To Dementia