A growing number of scientists are signaling what could turn out to be a scandal among the U.S. scientific community: That many scientists last year opposed the COVID-19 "lab-leak" origin theory simply because then-President Donald Trump had spoken favorably of it.
The lab-leak hypothesis postulates that the SARS-Cov-2 virus may have escaped from a Chinese coronavirus lab located just a few miles from the first known outbreak of COVID-19. The suspicion was largely ignored or dismissed as a conspiracy theory by much of the press and scientific community over the past year.
-Daniel Payne 
More than 100 Nobel laureates have come together to sign a letter accusing Greenpeace of "crimes against humanity" for the environmental group's anti-scientific stand against genetically modified organisms, in particular the group's effort to stop the use of a kind of rice aimed at eradicating vitamin A deficiency, a scourge that has killed millions in the last decade and blinded tens of millions more.
The victims, according to the World Health Organization, are mostly children and pregnant mothers.
For starters, why are liberalism’s pet issues the lodestars of what constitutes scientific fact? Medical science informs us fetuses are human beings. The liberal response? “Who cares?” Genetically modified foods are safe, sayeth the scientists. “Shut up,” reply the liberal activists. IQ is partly heritable, the neuroscientists tell us. “Shut up, bigot,” the liberals shriek. -Jonah Goldberg
Democrat, Liberal, Obama, Science, Narrative, Oops, Ignorance
A controversial regulation to update the nutrition facts label that is part of the first lady’s Let’s Move push was finalized by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday, and scientists are warning the new label is not based on sound science.
The changes to the nutrition facts label, which first lady Michelle Obama will announce Friday when she speaks at the Let’s Move-aligned Partnership for a Healthier America, requires food manufacturers to list added sugars, which scientists say lacks “scientific rigor.” The label will also cost companies at least $640 million to update, and a net social cost of $1.4 billion.
The Climate Facts We Don't Talk About...
These are almost certainly not the only climate facts you haven’t heard. Here are three more that might surprise you, drawn from recent published research or assessments of climate science published by the US government and the UN:
• Humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century.
• Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago.
• The global area burned by wildfires has declined more than 25 percent since 2003 and 2020 was one of the lowest years on record.
Why haven’t you heard these facts before?
Democrat, Editorial, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Science, Narrative, Education
Numerous studies on Head Start, the federal pre-K program for poor kids, show that its reading and math gains virtually evaporate by fourth grade. And the latest evidence from Oklahoma and Georgia, two states that implemented universal pre-K in the 1990s, only confirms this. Oklahoma's high-school graduation rates have dropped since it embraced UPK and Georgia's remain stagnant. The average reading score of Oklahoma's fourth graders on the NAEP -- the national report card -- dropped four points between 1998 and 2011. Georgia just reached the national average. The NAEP reading gap between black and white children in Oklahoma was 22 points in 1992. In 2011? The same. Georgia had a 28-point spread in 1992. In 2011? Twenty-three points. How should President Barack Obama, who had promised evidence-based policy, have responded? By renouncing his commitment to UPK. What did he do? Jetted to Georgia and declared its program a national model. -Shikha Dalmia
Liberal, Government, Narrative, Economy
In the empirical analysis, for a panel of 108 countries from 1970-2008, we use different proxies for government size and institutional quality. Our results, consistent with the presented growth model, show a negative effect of the size of government on growth. Similarly, institutional quality has a positive impact on real growth, and government consumption is consistently detrimental to growth.
Environmentalist, Hypocrisy, Crime, Government, Science, Politics
Published in 1962, Silent Spring used manipulated data and wildly exaggerated claims (sound familiar?) to push for a worldwide ban on the pesticide known as DDT – which is, to this day, the most effective weapon against malarial mosquitoes. The Environmental Protection Agency held extensive hearings after the uproar produced by this book… and these hearings concluded that DDT should not be banned. A few months after the hearings ended, EPA administrator William Ruckleshaus over-ruled his own agency and banned DDT anyway, in what he later admitted was a “political” decision.