An ambitious federal effort is pouring some $700 million into scaling “regenerative” agriculture, framed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a sustainable alternative to modern farming. In a recent video, Kennedy promoted the approach as a way to rebuild nutrient density, cut chemical use and raise farmer profits while protecting the land for future generations. The rhetoric is appealing, but it badly misrepresents the realities of food production.

Regenerative agriculture, as defined by groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, is long on flowery language—“restore soil and ecosystem health, address inequity”—and short on operational clarity. Advocates typically reject or minimize the modern tools of intensive agriculture in favor of older, less-efficient methods. Some practitioners do pursue useful questions about soil nutrient management and plant resilience, but that work is not what Kennedy is selling. He presents regenerative practices as a superior system overall, which the evidence doesn’t support.

Pesticide safety remains one of his central targets. Critics have long argued that residual exposures, though individually tiny, become dangerous when “added up.” That cumulative-exposure gambit ignores how regulation actually works. Maximum residue levels are set with large safety factors; the resulting exposures are so low that neither single chemistries nor combinations reach levels of toxicological concern.

Moreover, synthetic products are designed for greater stability, lower off-target movement and higher efficacy. Modern herbicides, rejected by Kennedy as his allies, have also enabled widespread no-till and low-till systems that leave soil structure intact, sequester carbon, retain moisture and reduce fuel use—outcomes regenerative advocates claim to prioritize.

Claims of superior nutrient density in regenerative or organic crops have also not held up under scrutiny. Nutrient profiles track growing conditions, variety and soil amendments far more than production system labels. Yields, by contrast, are consistently lower under restrictive regimes. Lower productivity raises food costs and undercuts the equity goals that advocates often invoke.

Many years of experience with romanticized alternatives show the same pattern: lower yields, higher costs and no meaningful safety dividend for consumers. Modern conventional systems have delivered the safest and most abundant food supply in history on less land with fewer inputs. That record is not improved by subsidizing a return to methods that could not feed the present population, let alone the projected future one. Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies as they critique RFK Jr.’s regenerative farming pitch.

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the executive vice president at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

An ambitious cohort of cities across the US and Canada has moved ever closer to legalizing drug use—with tragic results. Towns once recognized as safe places to raise a family are now characterized by homeless encampments and “open-air” drug markets. Overdoses and crime rates, both supposed to decline in the wake of liberalized drug laws, have increased in many jurisdictions. Residents in a lot of these communities have been left to deal with the fallout alone as their leaders remain committed to so-called harm-reduction policies intended to make illicit drug use safer. “Harm reduction isn’t just a problem for addicts,” Atlantic staff writer Michael Powell noted recently. “In many cities, the autonomy of drug users has taken precedence over nearly everything and everyone else, not least working-class families …who must live alongside addicts and accept dystopian decay.”

Seattle and similar cities illustrate the pattern. Public fentanyl use, addicts collapsed on sidewalks and schoolchildren observing drug deals have become routine where policies prioritize “meeting users where they are.” Distributing clean needles can reduce HIV and hepatitis transmission among participants, yet this narrow benefit has been overshadowed by increasing disorder and the normalization of addiction in residential neighborhoods.

Portugal’s more structured harm-reduction approach is often cited as a model for the US to follow, yet their strategy retained police involvement and treatment pressure. Perhaps more importantly, drug distribution is still a crime. The policies put in place by state and local officials in the US lack these defining features, usually intentionally. Oregon’s Measure 110 decriminalized possession of small quantities of drugs and produced sharp rises in overdoses and public use before a rapid public backlash and partial reversal. The arrival of fentanyl intensified the death toll, but the policy’s removal of consequences and enforcement made open-air markets and visible addiction far worse.

The reality is that widespread drug use is not inevitable. Heroin-addicted Vietnam veterans largely quit upon returning home, after being removed from a drug-saturated environment, and smoking rates fell dramatically in the US after sustained stigma and restrictions. These examples are strong evidence that norms, consequences and limited supply—all variables harm reduction excludes as “judgemental”—shape demand.

“Safe supply” experiments, in which addicts are given a taxpayer-funded ration of opioids, and the elevation of active users’ autonomy above the interests of children and working families have delivered measurable social decay rather than the promised reductions in harm. Two decades of expanding harm-reduction show the same result: the welfare of families and functioning neighborhoods has been subordinated to enabling public addiction.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies as they critique the case for drug legalization.

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the executive vice president at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

Long-debunked myths about organic farming and food safety are surging again on social media, fueled by selective studies and fear-driven algorithms. On this crossover episode of Talking Biotech and Facts & Fallacies, Cam English is joined by geneticist and farmer Dr. Kevin Folta to explain why these claims—e.g., switching to organic food reduces disease risk—keep returning and why they harm consumers and farmers.

Even experts who should know better amplify these false narratives about organic food’s superiority, often chasing virality rather than sticking to the evidence. The result is a familiar cycle in which weak observational data and out-of-context abstracts are presented as proof that conventional produce carries serious downsides.

These messages gain traction because most people struggle to evaluate risk accurately. Air travel, for instance, terrifies many people—up to 40 percent of travelers experience some degree of flight anxiety—even though it remains one of the safest forms of transportation. Yet many of the same people drive to the airport without a second thought, despite the fact that driving is far riskier on a per-mile basis: recent U.S. data show roughly 177 times higher fatality risk for passenger vehicles than for commercial flights. Statistical safety, however, often fails to override the visceral sensation of sitting in an aluminum tube at 30,000 feet.

The same gap appears when consumers confront pesticide residues measured in parts per billion. The residues are real, yet they sit far below levels that regulatory science deems harmful. Organic production uses its own approved pesticides, some with higher toxicity profiles than modern synthetics, while both systems operate under strict residue limits designed to protect public health.

The practical consequences are clear. Myths shape shopping habits, prompting many households to pay premiums for organic labels that deliver no meaningful safety or nutritional advantage on pesticide exposure. That added cost falls hardest on families already stretched thin. At the same time, the messaging harms American farmers—particularly the contract growers and family operations who produce the bulk of conventional fruit and vegetables on razor-thin margins. When fear reduces demand for safe, nutritious produce, those farmers absorb the economic hit.

Clearer communication remains the most effective response: placing residues in proper context, distinguishing genuine hazards from trace exposures, and refusing to let long-settled science be displaced by viral anxiety. Join Kevin Folta and Cam English as they break down the resurgence of some of the most persistent food-safety myths.

Kevin M. Folta is a professor in the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida and host of the Talking Biotech podcast. Follow Professor Folta on X @kevinfolta

Cameron J. English is the executive vice president at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

Even credentialed scientists are susceptible to the pressures of social media virality, sometimes venturing well beyond their expertise to promote popular but misleading health narratives. Last week, Dr. Rhonda Patrick of FoundMyFitness, typically a reliable source of science-backed info on nutrition, urged the public to switch to organic food to cut their pesticide exposure. With over 1.4 million followers, Patrick’s message amplified a widespread fear but ignored critical scientific context.

The simple, oft-overlooked truth is that pesticide residues in both conventional and organic foods occur at trace levels that regulatory science deems safe. Maximum residue limits (MRLs) and allowable daily intakes (ADIs) incorporate large safety factors—often 10- to 1,000-fold—below doses showing no adverse effects in rigorous toxicology testing. Consumers quite literally can’t ingest enough produce to approach these strict thresholds.

Organic production also uses pesticides, including some with higher toxicity profiles than their modern synthetic counterparts—which also help prevent far more dangerous natural contaminants like aflatoxin-producing molds, a major global cause of liver cancer.

Like many influencers before her, Patrick relied on observational studies and high-dose animal experiments to bolster her advice. These papers are frequently cited in anti-pesticide discussions, though they bear little relevance to typical dietary exposures. Likewise, detection of pesticide metabolites in urine reflects normal liver and kidney function, not toxicity.

Even among professional applicators exposed at much higher levels under strict protocols and personal protective equipment, cancer rates are often lower than the public’s very low risk—likely due to healthier lifestyles and greater fruit and vegetable consumption.

The problem with Patrick’s well-meaning but misinformed messaging is that it risks discouraging intake of nutritious produce, an actual public health priority. While organic food serves as a valid personal or local choice for those who prefer it, the evidence does not demonstrate meaningful safety advantages against conventionally grown food.

Modern agricultural tools enable abundant, affordable food supplies that have dramatically improved food security compared to historical organic practices. That’s a critical message more people need to hear.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies as they take on a pesticide myth even some scientists fall for:

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the executive vice president at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

E-cigarettes burst onto the scene nearly 20 years, disrupting the cigarette industry and leaving anti-smoking advocates uncertain about how to respond. The devices, now more commonly called “vapes,” looked and functioned like cigarettes, yet they contained no tobacco—supplying users with a low-risk source of vaporized nicotine. A growing body of research has since shown that vaping is significantly less harmful than smoking and can help adult smokers quit their deadly habit. But this conclusion wasn’t obvious at the time.

On the latest episode of the Facts and Fallacies podcast, Cam English and Dr. Liza Lockwood welcome veteran tobacco control advocate Cliff Douglas for a thoughtful discussion on nicotine, vaping and the future of tobacco harm reduction.

With nearly four decades in the field — from helping ban smoking on airplanes to advising the U.S. Surgeon General — Douglas brings a unique perspective. Once deeply embedded in traditional tobacco control, he now champions a science-based, pragmatic approach that recognizes the vast continuum of risk between combustible cigarettes and newer nicotine products.

Douglas highlights dramatic progress: high school smoking rates have plummeted from 36% in the late 1990s to about 1.5% today. Yet he argues that knee-jerk hostility toward vaping and nicotine pouches stems from fear, historical distrust of the tobacco industry and outdated views conflating nicotine with the deadly chemicals in cigarette smoke. He stresses that separating nicotine from combustion creates far safer options.

A powerful theme emerges from a careful survey of the science: harm reduction is both a public health imperative and a social justice issue. Douglas urges meeting smokers where they are, noting that traditional cessation methods fail most people (quit rates hover around 6%). He encourages older smokers especially — whose rates have stagnated — that it’s never too late to switch and improve quality of life.

Cliff Douglas is a public health expert and legal scholar dedicated to reducing death and disease from combustible tobacco use. He was president and CEO of Global Action to End Smoking and director of the Tobacco Research Network at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He held senior roles at the American Cancer Society and the U.S. Surgeon General’s office. Follow him on X @cdoug

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the executive vice president at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

Fossil fuels, pesticides and food processing have dramatically improved living standards around the globe. This may be a controversial claim, but it’s difficult to dispute. Inexpensive energy and abundant food are two essential components of the unprecedented economic growth the world experienced over the last century. Yet this is not the message that comes through when certain academic voices talk about these innovations or the industries that produced them. Instead of considering the risks and the benefits of, say, pesticides—e.g., crop yield increases, reduced disease spread—these figures speak exclusively of their potential to cause harm.

Consider this curious New England Journal of Medicine perspective from the University of California, San Francisco’s Center to End Corporate Harm. The article erroneously brands fossil fuels, processed foods, synthetic chemicals and prescription opioids—a diverse array of useful tools when reasonably used—as “corporate vectors” of disease, no different than cigarettes. It urges researchers to weaponize “internal industry documents,” much like the tobacco lawsuits of the 1990s, to facilitate litigation to cripple the companies that make these products.

The framing is overly simplistic and ideological, collapsing distinct tools and risks into a cartoonish conspiracy of corporate villainy. Tobacco’s decades-long denial of nicotine addiction and cancer risk was uniquely deceptive. Fossil fuels have driven the large gains in global life expectancy by replacing deadly biomass cooking fires and enabling modern agriculture and medicine—benefits the NEJM article largely ignores.

Selective document-mining amounts to hindsight bias and cherry-picking. Every industry keeps internal memos, but when you read the allegedly scandalous documents, they usually don’t reveal nefarious behavior. GLP has reported on multiple cases in recent years confirming this fact (see here and here).

Instead of blanket litigation, proper regulation and evidence-based education continue to offer a more sensible alternative. Demonizing “corporate vectors” is a distraction from the actual causes of our public health challenges.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies as they examine so-called “health harming industries.”

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the executive vice president at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

With illicit opioids still killing thousands of Americans each year, some public health advocates are pushing a radical solution to blunt the overdose crisis: safe injection sites. Also known as supervised consumption facilities, these sites allow users to bring their own drugs to consume in a clean, monitored space staffed by medical professionals equipped to reverse overdoses. The sites aim to cut needle-sharing that spreads HIV and hepatitis C, reduce discarded syringes and serve as entry points to counseling and recovery services.

Critics argue the label “safe” is misleading, in part because the facilities normalize illegal drug use instead of confronting addiction. They point to low treatment-referral rates in some studies, which undermine a key justification for safe injection sites, and question whether the facilities reduce overall community overdose deaths. They also highlight studies reporting increases in neighborhood disorder and crime.

In the U.S., federal statutes and local opposition have blocked or delayed many proposals, with skeptics insisting taxpayer resources would be better spent expanding evidence-based treatment, prevention and supply-side enforcement rather than government-sanctioned drug consumption.

Meanwhile, supporters cite data from individual facilities in Canada and Europe, where research shows zero deaths inside facilities and measurable drops in local disease transmission. While some advocates acknowledge the evidence for safe injection sites is preliminary and inconclusive, they contend this uncertainty should drive governments to adequately fund pilot programs and research the efficacy of this controversial harm-reduction technique.

The debate pits compassion against accountability, leaving policymakers and voters divided on whether these sites are worth the risk they may pose to the communities where they’re established.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies as they dissect the science surrounding the safe injection debate.

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the executive vice president at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

Ever notice how the environmental movement’s doomsday predictions arrive like clockwork, each one as urgent as the last? Mass starvation, poisoned skies, civilization’s collapse: all imminent unless we repent and degrow right now. Yet here we are, decades later, and the apocalypse still hasn’t come.

From Paul Ehrlich’s 1960s population-bomb panic that promised billions would starve to the endless claims that we’d poison the air and run out of arable land, the track record is one long string of busted forecasts. But it’s not just that the predictions were wrong—they were falsified by major technological innovations and economic growth Ehrlich and his compatriots couldn’t have anticipated. This is the raw material for a very uplifting story.

Since 1970, combined emissions of the six major air pollutants have dropped nearly 80 percent. We’re feeding more people than ever while using relatively less land, thanks to yield explosions in maize (+196 percent), wheat (+218 percent), and rice (+147 percent) since 1961, gains that spared an area the size of India from the plow. Global hunger is ticking downward. And deaths from weather-related disasters have plunged more than 90 percent per capita since the 1920s.

None of this happened by heeding calls to turn back the clock. It happened because richer societies invest in better technology, cleaner chemistry and smarter stewardship. Oddly, these are the very developments alarmists reflexively demonize. And that prompts an important question: why does the modern environmental movement oppose the tools that enable sustainability?

Join Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies to examine why the green movement has been so spectacularly wrong about the disasters that never come.

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

The greater the media hype around psychedelics, the more skeptical you should be.

A perfect example of why this skepticism is justified went viral late last month: a single inhaled dose of the potent psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT sent almost 60% of treatment-resistant depression patients into remission in just one week, according to a March 25 paper in JAMA Psychiatry. It sounds like a game-changer — until you read the study, warts and all.

As it turns out, the psychedelic bros tweeting from Silicon Valley exaggerated the paper’s results, overlooking some critically important limitations in the research along the way.

Impressive results?

There’s no denying the short-term results look dramatic: a massive drop in depression severity versus placebo. But read past the abstract and bright red flags begin to appear. The original placebo group, 41 patients who got zero active drug in the week-long clinical trial, entered the 6-month follow-up period eligible for up to five doses of 5-MeO-DMT if their depressive symptoms worsened. In other words, the researchers gave their control group access to the very drug they were trying to test.

Not only does that undermine the study’s headline-grabbing results, the authors didn’t report any of the outcomes for this placebo group. “A detailed analysis of part 2, including … treatment outcomes of patients who received placebo in part 1, will be presented in a subsequent report,” they noted in passing.

Instead, the paper focused only on the 23 patients (out of 40) whose symptoms improved on the active drug in week one. Of those, just 13% stayed in remission for six months without any redosing. The rest needed 1–4 doses and 87% were back in remission at month six. Again, these are impressive numbers—but how much of that result is truly from the psychedelic versus natural fluctuation or study effects? There’s no way to know, because the researchers excluded the data that would answer that question.

Headlines v. reality

Perhaps more importantly, the study was hailed as evidence that 5-MeO-DMT is effective against treatment-resistant depression, a severe mental health disorder that doesn’t respond to antidepressants or other therapies. Yet buried deep in the study was this surprising admission:

“[R]elatively few patients had extensive histories of treatment resistance or prolonged, chronic illness courses. In subsequent research, it will be important to include patients with more advanced levels of treatment resistance and longer-standing symptoms.”

The pressing question: why was this drug promoted as a powerful therapy for treatment-resistant depression if few of the study participants actually had the condition? Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies as they dissect the JAMA Psychiatry study.

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

The analogy works like this: law enforcement applies the same kind of selective pressure to the illicit drug market that antibiotics apply to bacteria. When we crack down on illegal drugs—seizing precursors, shutting down labs, tightening borders—the black market doesn’t surrender. Instead, it adapts. Clandestine chemists rapidly pivot to entirely new molecular scaffolds that are harder to detect and regulate. The latest example: an opioid called cychlorphine, first flagged in Europe in 2024 and now showing up in Toronto, southwest Ohio, eastern Tennessee, central Kentucky, and Chicago.

On this understanding, the underground market functions as “a vast chemical Petri dish,” says one expert, where an almost unlimited menu of new, powerful molecules is synthesized and distributed to drug users around the world. Moral of the story? Prohibition doesn’t end the arms race—it accelerates it.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts and Fallacies as they explain the science, trace the evolution of illicit opioid use and confront an uncomfortable policy question: is America’s prohibitionist approach to drug policy actually making the opioid crisis worse? If so, what do we do about it?

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish