Fake Banner
Misinformation Common Among Women With Breast Cancer

Vaccines are getting American media attention now that Republicans are engaging in misinformation...

Even With Universal Health Care, Mothers Don't Go To Postnatal Check-Ups

For decades, health care costs have been a political topic in America. Advocates argue it is the...

Happy Twelfth Night - Or Divorce Day, Depending On How Your 2026 Is Going

Today is, in Christian observance, Twelfth Night, the end of The 12 Days of Christmas in that song...

Blood Pressure Medication Adherence May Not Be Cost, It May Be Annoyance At Defensive Medicine

High blood pressure is an important risk factor for developing cardiovascular disease and premature...

User picture.
picture for Tommaso Dorigopicture for Fred Phillipspicture for Hontas Farmerpicture for picture for Patrick Lockerbypicture for Ilias Tyrovolas
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 »

Blogroll
If you think global warming deniers are anti-science about the environment, take a look at environmentalists.  While the former are only anti-science about one thing, environmentalists are increasingly on the wrong side of lots of science issues.

Journalist Fred Pearce is an environmentalist and a journalist but even during the real nadir of science journalism, the mid-2000s, he was never an advocate or a cheerleader. He always asked the uncomfortable questions, even about people whose side he was on, and he brought new science issues to light while doing it. He has been right for doing so, because scientists are in the forefront of environmentalism, not environmentalists.
Kroger, America's largest supermarket chain, announced it will stop selling sprouts because of their "potential food safety risk". It joins retail behemoth Walmart, which stopped selling them way back in 2010.

"After a thorough, science-based review, we have decided to voluntarily discontinue selling fresh sprouts," Payton Pruett, Kroger's vice president of food safety, said in a statement that USA Today got.
Since spot weather events are once again proof of global warming, reversing the trend of 2007 to 2011 when we were told that local weather was not evidence against global warming, it's time to think about the upcoming Ice Age - because we are having a big storm in the northeast, weeks later than when we had a giant snowstorm in 1980 Pennsylvania that knocked out our power for a week, so NYC media writers desperate for pageviews say it must be due to climate change.  
They are not buying into global warming except they care about the environment more than anyone ever did before. They will eat healthier than previous generations, provided the products are in pouches and not cans and can be purchased in vending machines and be...microwaveable. Except it needs to be slow food and locally grown.

What's up with Millennials? More importantly, what is up with marketing people and all their conflicting beliefs about Millennials?
Both literally and figuratively, our rationality is what makes us human. It is what separates us from our pets, right? Yes, but in many ways we are a lot less rational than other animals, and we even strive to make our irrational aspects rational—which is not rational at all.
Are you healthier if you eat cupcake from a mix you buy in a grocery store, which would be required to have a GMO label if California's Proposition 37 passes, or an 'organic' cupcake from Whole Foods?

On a science site, you know I would not ask that question if the answer were not obvious.  Humans are inherently irrational, even in our quest to rationalize our odd behavior, like claiming random mutations due to high-energy cosmic rays are better than precisely controlled human ones, because the former are 'natural' - or eating an incredibly healthy cupcake because it is more expensive and in a fancy 'health food' store.