1. In Washington, D.C., I went to Capitol Hill and met with the Chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, who was intrigued by our Little Black Book of Junk Science. Rep. Smith keeps a copy of the U.S. Constitution in one suit pocket and I encouraged him to keep our book in the other. He didn't commit to that just yet but he asked for copies to be sent to him so he could give it to the committee and that is part of our goal. We want it in the hands of every member of Congress and everyone in America too. It's time to take decision-making back from activists and engage in evidence-based thinking again.
He had his scheduler Gina take the picture on the left, which I told him was a nice thing to do, and he replied, "I want to be able to tell people I know you."
That's the mark of a savvy diplomat, folks.
2. Meanwhile, on the left coast of the U.S., Dr. Alex Berezow was on The Michael Medved Show Podcast to discuss our newest publication. A sharp man like Medved wants to know why things like climate change or gender dysphoria were not included and the reason is simple - we don't have physicists or psychologists on staff, and we don't want to do what sloppy journalists do and just repeat something that sounds "truthy." 
As Alex noted, we have lots of pressing issues that are a worry for the entire public right now - affordable food, energy and medicine - so we stick to what we know.
It's subscriber-only but Alex got permission for you to download it so you can listen. If you want to skip right to ACSH, he begins at the 18:20 mark.
The book has anti-science activists in a panic, as the next blurb shows. There are even more environmental petitions going around to have our scientists and doctors banned from newspapers, more fake social media outrage by Organic Consumers Association hand-puppets, and...more paid smear pieces in hard-left anti-science magazines.
3. There is no greater compliment than when someone like Paul Thacker, a proud left-wing activist blogger for the organic industry, smears you in one of the pieces he writes for various progressive outlets. It may pay the bills for him but no one in the middle is really fooled by fifth columnists like Thacker any more. The links between environmental groups and Russians seeking to undermine American science and technology are well-documented by now, and when it comes to denial of science on issues that kill or harm poor brown kids in developing countries, the American progressive movement is leading the way. They pay people like Thacker and Carey Gillam, who pretend to be journalists, to be their outlets.
Why Thacker is not a journalist; his sole sources are fellow denialists like Naomi Oreskes and he parrots a press release by US Right To Know, a group which has received numerous Department of Justice complaints for possibly being in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act - a federal offense - because of how quickly the Kremlin's propaganda site, Russia Today, prints their claims verbatim. Now, no one is saying Thacker is directly in collusion with the Kremlin, he is not important enough for that, he is instead one of the "useful idiots" they indirectly help. And perhaps fund, by donating to environmental and progressive sites which then pay him.
Of course, Thacker may not like the inference that he is even indirectly involved with Vlad Putin - and yet he engages in just that inference in his dreary hit piece on us, alleging that a document that some lawyer got from US Right To Know suggests companies are "secretly" funneling millions of dollars to us. It's complete nonsense, no one has ever controlled our output, and while I would love to have lots and lots of corporate grants, US Right To Know got more in industry funding just last year than we will get in 10 years. Why would he write such gibberish without doing any fact checking? He follows around US Right To Know's Carey Gillam like a love-sick puppy, and he also reprints their claims without any skepticism because he is being bought off by the organic industry. He even weirdly claims that Science 2.0 , the movement I founded in 2006 and which has 20,000 scientists as members, is "pro-GMO propaganda" because in 2015 I went for one day to talk at a biotech conference at U.C. Davis. No one paid me to attend. No one paid for me to attend. Maybe I got a free coffee or something. That is enough to make you a "Monsanto shill" when you are a pay-to-play smear artist like Thacker.
Why would he blatantly lie about me? He didn't want to ask for the truth, that's why. His schtick works as long as he isn't forced to do any journalism, fact-checking or research. He is a reliable muckspout for the organic industry precisely because he won't do any journalism, he will just repeat what he is told to write and cash his check.
Read his conspiratorial fever dream here: http://progressive.org/magazine/how-the-biotech-industry-cultivates-positive-media/
4. More evidence that Organic Consumers Association is cracking the whip on the activists it pays, like Thacker and US Right To Know, is the tizzy they are in and the outrage they are trying to invent about a food documentary. Sorry, anti-science groups, when even the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times give a science documentary a thumbs-up, your efforts have already failed.
"Food Evolution" is changing hearts and minds. I witnessed it myself, and Genetic Literacy Project reprinted my article from Science 2.0 for their audience, on the experience I had watching people in a progressive city like New York, which is about as removed from food and science as you can get, go from skeptics to science accepters.
5. Finally, the website Racked had an interesting article on the many different places coffee is popping up; from fabrics to beauty products. They debunk one myth promoted by Singtex, which markets its S.Café by claiming that “coffee grounds within the yarn fills in little microscopic holes that create a long-lasting natural and chemical-free shield preventing UV rays from contacting the skin.”
Nothing is chemical free, they note Dr. Alex Berezow saying, and what every scientist on the planet knows. Nothing. If Singtex customers are unsure what a chemical is, they can download Little Black Book of Junk Science free of charge.
Read the article here: Wear Your Coffee (Without Spilling It All Over Yourself)
