1. None of you are naive, so it won't surprise you to learn that in Manhattan, there is a definitive political skew, which bleeds over into what science they accept. And in academia there is a skew so overt it can only be discrimination. And in journalism there is a political skew so overt it's both of the aforementioned.
So it won't surprised you to learn that Dan Fagin (email [email protected]), Charles Seife (email [email protected]), and other "professors" in the NYU Journalism group, are defending the vaccine and agriculture deniers at Organic Consumers Association and their puppet sites. It also won't surprise you to learn that the biggest supporters of this move to the scientific fringe are discredited former journalists like Carey Gillam, Paul Thacker, and Michael Balter, all of whom were unceremoniously dumped from various media jobs when their biases became so overt.
It will surprise you how effectively this tiny cabal manipulates people who would know better, if they could remove their political blinders. But all someone has to do is say the name "Monsanto" and they readily deny science, even if they put a mask on it by calling it "anti-corporation."
How you can help stop the NYU smear campaigns against scientists
It probably won't help to write Fagin or Seife. Fagin will remind everyone yet again that he has a Pulitzer Prize for environmental writing, while Seife will pretend he is doing investigate journalism by never once questioning the claims of his political allies in organic trade groups.
It may help to write Perri Klass, MD, a pediatrician and director of the Director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU and say in no uncertain terms that a university kept afloat by government-backed loans should not be using student money to pay activists to attack the science and medical community. The average salary there is $270,000 per year, they should be doing something more important with their money. The email for Dr. Klass is [email protected] and her phone number is 212-562-4141.
I expressed concern about their libel in the past and she waved it away, saying their social media claims were there business. How odd. Would Dr. Klass say the same thing if they were smearing women or minorities? Well, they are.
2. In Daily Caller, Dr. Josh Bloom and Dr. Henry Miller take government to task for botching the opioid epidemic. They are all jumping on the same bandwagon - DEA stuck a higher classification on hydrocodone-containing medications while the Justice Dept. was hinting they might sue opioid manufacturers. Except, as Drs. Bloom and Miller show, prescription painkillers are the wrong enemy.
3. We were on the History Channel. "In Search Of" hosted by Zachary Quinto of "Heroes" and "Star Trek" fame, delved into psychological mind control, and they asked Dr. Alex Berezow to sit down and talk about the sonic attacks in Cuba.
Host Zach Quinto with Dr. Berezow talking about the sonic attacks in Cuba.
4. The fact-checking site Snopes linked to our work debunking claims that plastic on lettuce was somehow causing harm.
If plastic were really harmful, Whole Foods would not take fruit out of its natural wrapper and put plastic over it, right?
Credit: Michelle Cien
5. I am not giving US Right To Know a link, because they are unethical trade group muckspouts who feed off attention. They were literally created to spread hate speech about the science community and studies have shown that the Russians exploit such hatred of American science by activists to undermine our food, our energy, and, most recently, vaccines. These crass charlatans embrace all three of those anti-science movements. It's no surprise Russia Today adores their press releases and that USRTK adores the Kremlin right back.
Their latest attack is on a journalist they can't stand because she does not reflexively default to the whims of their clients, the way their favored journalists at the New York Times, like Eric Lipton and Danny Hakim, do.
I have disagreed with Tamar Haspel on many things, but that is because different people who are literate can still interpret things different ways. For them to claim she misleads readers because she accepts science is almost as ridiculous as claiming we are a corporate front group when 4% of our funding comes from corporations. And ironic because USRTK is 100% corporate-funded, as all trade groups are.
Look for bad former journalists similarly exposed on the Deniers For Hire site to be cheerfully repeating the claims of USRTK because it furthers their political agendas.
