10/August/21

 

Concrete steps to improve pesticide regulation are proposed in a new open-access commentary, “Novel strategies and new tools to curtail the health effects of pesticides”, published on August 3, 2021 in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health. The authors include Dr Charles Benbrook, Dr Michael Antoniou, and Dr Robin Mesnage, whom GMWatch readers will know from their public interest work on GM crops and pesticides such as glyphosate. The steps include ending industry testing of its own products and insisting that tests are carried out on pesticide formulations as sold and used instead of isolated "active" ingredients. GMWatch

 

 

Journalist Paul Thacker has published an excellent interview with Prof Richard Ebright about what may be the worst case of science reporting ever – coverage of the lab leak hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2. Thacker and Ebright reveal how it was driven by fear of:
* implicating "Science" with a capital "S", as well as certain sources prized by science writers
* triggering restrictions on high-risk gain-of-function research.
Ebright says, "False narratives were established and enforced by a small number of scientists and their willing soldiers among science writers. The first false narrative was that science showed that the virus entered humans through natural spillover. The second false narrative is that this was the consensus of the scientific community. Neither of those narratives was true." The Disinformation Chronicle