In Science Left Behind I showed that in America it was easy to accurately correlate beliefs about science to political viewpoints. If you believed in psychics, witchcraft, organic food or homeopathy, statistically I could be determine how you voted. If you believed in GMOs and vaccines I also knew how you voted. 

But everyone hates the word "chemical."

That is why it is fertile ground for scaremongering. As soon as you use the word chemical, people are scared, and if you throw the word "toxic" in front of it, like activist academics and $2 billion per year in environmental groups do, dollar signs are sure to follow.  

It may not feel like science wins often in court but it beat out activists last week.

Not only did science, and Science 2.0, win, it was a unanimous decision at the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of the United States.  And the ruling dealt a serious blow to "sue and settle" agreements with trial lawyer groups, in this case Center for Biological Diversity, along with limiting the power of the federal government to bully and intimidate landowners.

Marta Venier, an environmentalist at Indiana University, recently teamed up with a Michigan activist group to "test" car seats and declared they had toxic chemicals.

Obviously that is media clickbait but if you are reading here, you want to know science truth and will leave the fake news to Mother Jones. So let's get to it

In 2018, we can detect anything in anything

The North American Free Trade Agreement won't see its 25th birthday. The United States, Canada, and Mexico have signed on the dotted line for its replacement, The United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement.

The debate fell outside usual positions. Free trade is the hallmark of Republicans, they say, but they seemed to be unhappy with NAFTA. Democrats, in the old days, were protectionist about American workers, yet their criticisms suggested they wanted to keep manufacturing jobs in Mexico and for Canadian farmers to have a good deal in the U.S. while America got penalized in Canada.

What gives?  

Do you want to believe that your car grill is determined by your personality or that lap dancers get better tips when they are ovulating? You probably like evolutionary psychology. Want to believe that surveys of psychology undergraduates at elite schools represent humanity, without the expense and risk of dealing with real people, who can be pretty sketchy? Social psychology is for you.(1)

Scientists don't think much of either and would prefer they stay in the humanities buildings, because evolutionary psychologists want to make everything about sex, while social psychologists claim there are no differences between sexes. 

Want to know how to create a $1 million company? Give $60 million to someone claiming they are going to revolutionize journalism by hiring a bunch of young, edgy people who don't care about business or making money, but who believe success happens by being popular on Facebook.

You know who is the only company with long-term success being popular on Facebook? Facebook. For everyone else, it is a terrible business model. "Field of Dreams" was just a movie, folks, wishful thinking and building something no one wanted is not why Reaganomics worked.