Science Facts & Fallacies

America’s health care system is broken. The price of insurance continues to accelerate while access to quality care continues to decline. Medical bills remain one of the primary causes of bankruptcy, and physicians are exiting the profession at an alarming rate—burned out by endless rules and regulations that prevent them from doing their jobs.

Given the vast sums of money we’ve invested in health care over the decades, how could medicine find itself in such a decrepit state? The ultimate problem, says emergency medicine physician Dr. Liza Lockwood, is a bureaucratic system that serves its own interests at the public’s expense. The regulations that govern hospitals, insurance plans and prescription drugs don’t benefit patients because they weren’t designed to.

Instead, the modern medical apparatus has severed the doctor-patient relationship. What began in the 1990s with the rise of HMOs and insurance pre-authorizations has metastasized into an administrative nightmare. Electronic medical records, originally pitched as a tool to improve safety and efficiency, have morphed into bloated data-entry tools built to maximize hospital billing codes. Rather than examining patients and honing the art of diagnosis, clinicians spend their days clicking through drop-down menus, completing mandated checklists and generating dozens of pages of useless documentation.

This bureaucratic bloat fuels widespread burnout and erodes public trust. Squeezed into brief ten-minute visits, doctors are often forced to write bridge prescriptions just to keep untreated patients afloat until backlogged specialists become available.

According to Dr. Lockwood, reform won’t come from inside the machine. The real fix lies in bypassing the establishment entirely through Direct Primary Care and alternative financing models. By removing corporate middlemen, federal bureaucrats and third-party payers, direct care restores genuine competition, cuts costs and gives physicians the freedom to actually practice medicine again.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies as they examine America’s broken health care system—and how to fix 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 executive vice president at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

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

Is Europe’s ideological aversion to air conditioning quietly killing thousands of people? A surprising body of evidence suggests that the continent’s green activism and energy degrowth mindset have turned a solvable public health challenge into a deadly political failure. As climate policy expert Roger Pielke Jr. explains in his recent analysis, Europe has warmed about 0.5°C per decade since the 1980s, driving clear increases in extreme heat stress days and summer heat mortality, with 68,000 deaths in 2022 marking a recent high point.

Yet Europe largely chooses these outcomes. Household air conditioning penetration sits at just 19% across much of the EU, compared to roughly 76% in North America and over 90% in Japan. Rigorous U.S. data show AC deployment cuts the risk of dying on extremely hot days by roughly 75%, despite more frequent heat waves. Indeed, northern European countries with relatively temperate climates and low AC rates (e.g., Germany 3%, UK 5%) contribute surprisingly large shares of avoidable deaths alongside hotter Mediterranean nations.

Pielke estimates that matching North American AC use could avert roughly 26,000 heat deaths in a particularly hot summer like 2022. Near-universal coverage could save some 35,000 lives annually. And the gains would concentrate among the elderly—over-65s comprise roughly 93% of deaths—making targeted cooling in homes, care facilities and hospitals effective and affordable.

This could be done without compromising the EU’s climate goals, since countries like France already have largely decarbonized electrical grids; more energy use does not necessitate higher CO2 emissions.

The core problem lies in ideological policies that treat energy consumption itself as a vice: EU building directives, national thermostat rules, permitting barriers, and a broader cultural hostility to “active” cooling all elevate heat-death risk. These policies are reversible with sufficient political will.

As with most sustainability debates, balancing environmental protection with adaptation is not only possible in this case but necessary since lives are on the line. Europe’s experience stands as a cautionary tale against letting degrowth dogma override public health. Evidence-based pragmatism protects the vulnerable. Symbolic technophobia costs lives.

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

Museums are now reburying both 12,000-year-old human skeletons and presenting creation myths as factual history—while critical research on the first people in the American Southwest has largely ground to a halt courtesy of progressive politics. So argues anthropologist Dr. Elizabeth Weiss in a recent report examining an alarming ideological shift in her field, The Reburial of the Southwest: Closing Off Native History and Archaeology.

What began as a narrow effort under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) to return clearly affiliated sacred items to American Indian tribes has expanded dramatically. Because of regulatory updates to the law in 2023, remains that predate any modern tribe by thousands of years are being pulled from museum collections. Everyday commercial objects from the 20th century are now treated as cultural patrimony requiring reburial. Museums classify even recent debris—such as spark plugs and bottle caps—found at ancient sites as funerary objects. Basic archaeological research in Arizona has effectively stopped, with no recent studies drawing on Native remains from the state.

Even more perplexing: the same progressive framework pushing these policies has introduced sex discrimination into curation and fieldwork. Some major research institutions now bar menstruating women from handling remains or artifacts under the banner of “culturally appropriate care,” adopting taboos promoted by tribal activists. These restrictions emerged from universities and museums aligned with progressive causes that otherwise present themselves as champions of women’s rights and equality. Weiss notes that the rules were only reversed at her own institution after she applied legal pressure under Title IX, a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination.

This contradiction reveals a deeper pattern. Progressive ideology that claims to oppose discrimination and defend science readily imposes religious-style restrictions and shuts down empirical inquiry when those goals conflict with identity-based claims. The result is not only the loss of data on early American diet, disease and migration, but also the quiet acceptance of sex-based barriers in academic spaces that would be loudly condemned in any other context. Weiss argues that these incoherent outcomes stem from academia’s postmodern skepticism of objective truth and the decolonization narratives that flow from it.

Join professor Elizabeth Weiss, Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies as they examine the social justice movement’s impact on anthropology.

Dr. Elizabeth Weiss is a physical anthropologist and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at San Jose State University. Follow her on X @EWeissUnburied

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

Drug legalization is supposed to spur several critical improvements in public health. As more states legalize recreational marijuana, we’re beginning to see how substantial these benefits are—and the results are underwhelming. A just-published review in The Lancet Psychiatry examining how cannabis policy changes from 2000 to 2025 relate to drug use, addiction and other psychiatric disorders paints a more complicated picture than many legalization advocates have described.

Commercialized legal cannabis markets in Canada and the US were linked to increased cannabis use and addiction among adults. “Since the mid-1990s and especially after 2015,” the review noted, “there has been an increase in the number of people using cannabis daily or near daily in the USA, who now exceed the number of people using alcohol daily or near daily.”

This increase in use has been accompanied by rises in drug potency as cannabis flower is increasingly “displaced by higher potency products that are associated with an increased risk of cannabis use disorder and psychotic disorder.” This is a striking result since legalization is generally thought to produce more predictable, safer drug supplies with fewer harmful effects as sellers begin to operate within the bounds of the law.

These markets also saw increases in hospital admissions for psychosis and for psychotic disorders occurring together with cannabis use disorder. However, there was no consistent evidence of changes in the overall prevalence or incidence of psychotic disorders at the population level. It’s also not clear if marijuana use causes psychosis or if people with psychotic disorders are more inclined to use the drug. Another more perplexing possibility is that cannabis use is both a cause and a result of psychosis in different cases.

In other parts of the world, the results varied with the scale of the changes to drug policy. In Europe, for instance, there was little connection between changes in cannabis regulation and drug use—”This is consistent with the small scale of policy change or commercialization in Europe when compared with the USA or Canada.”

The takeaway for now seems to be that markers of commercialization—retail density, lower prices, higher-potency products, and marketing—track with higher consumption and certain harms. Jurisdictions that restricted commercial influence through tight state controls or non-profit models showed weaker or no such associations. Long-term data remain limited, particularly from low- and middle-income countries, and most studies cover relatively short periods after policy changes.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies as they scrutinize the results (so far) of marijuana 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

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has joined the chorus of psychedelic advocates who claim the drugs could revolutionize mental health care, particularly treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Despite the recent fanfare, the hype around these potent hallucinogens remains just that—overconfident speculation in search of confirmatory evidence. The conclusion has already been reached, with Kennedy and others now on the hunt for data to validate their preferred conclusion.

Kennedy contends that government barriers have blocked progress on substances such as ibogaine for treating PTSD, depression and opioid withdrawal. Ibogaine, extracted from an African shrub used in traditional ceremonies, has shown preliminary signs of reducing withdrawal symptoms and cravings in self-reported and observational studies. Evidence supporting its use specifically for PTSD is even lower quality; advocates and reporters often point to anecdotes to strengthen the case for experimental use of the psychedelic, though serious risks, including life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias, tend to be minimized during that discussion.

The poor evidence base goes back decades to Timothy Leary’s work at Harvard with another psychedelic called psilocybin. Initial research explored applications for alcoholism and prisoner rehabilitation, but concerns over study methods, undisclosed side effects and promotion of recreational use to undergraduates led to Leary’s dismissal. His “turn on, tune in, drop out” message helped establish him as a counterculture figure, but his primary concern wasn’t carefully testing potential PTSD treatments.

The problem is more troublesome in RFK Jr.’s case since he wields significant influence over federal policy as Health and Human Services secretary and is an infamous contrarian, content to reject robust evidence when it threatens his views. Although he claims the effects of ibogaine and related drugs should be settled by data, Kennedy has already staked out positions on multiple issues—vaccines, antidepressants and pesticides to name just three—that contradict the best available science. What confidence can we have, then, that his approach to psychedelics will be any better?

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies as they scrutinize Kennedy’s claims about ibogaine.

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

Social media has been awash in panic as one influencer after another wrongly warns prospective parents against the routine (and sometimes life-saving) vitamin K shot, given to newborns right after birth. Claims linking it to pediatric cancer, eczema and other serious conditions are spreading rapidly online, leaving many new moms and dads alarmed and confused.

Vitamin K plays a critical role in blood clotting by activating coagulation factors that prevent excessive bleeding from everyday bumps and injuries. Newborns are born with very low levels of it. The vitamin doesn’t cross the placenta efficiently, their guts are initially sterile with no bacteria to produce it naturally and breast milk provides only limited amounts that aren’t well absorbed. This leaves infants vulnerable to vitamin K deficiency bleeding (VKDB), which can cause catastrophic brain bleeds leading to death or lifelong neurological damage.

Before the shot became standard practice, early and classical VKDB affected roughly 250 to 1,700 newborns per 100,000 births, with late-onset cases occurring at 4.4 to 7.2 per 100,000. In severe instances, one in five babies died. The simple intramuscular shot has reduced this risk dramatically—to less than 1 in 100,000. It is not a vaccine, just a necessary vitamin supplement.

An early 1990s study suggesting a possible cancer link has been thoroughly debunked by subsequent research. Concerns about jaundice or rare side effects often stem from outdated formulations or unrelated newborn conditions, such as immature liver function. Higher-risk infants, including those whose mothers were on certain anticonvulsants or anticoagulants during pregnancy, benefit most from the intervention.

Unfortunately, refusals have risen sharply — from around 15,000 in 2017 to 37,000 in 2024, fueled by recycled misinformation and influencers capitalizing on fear. Algorithms amplify scary content, distorting parents’ risk assessments and putting more children at needless risk of devastating outcomes.

Parenthood brings enough real challenges. This safe, evidence-based shot prevents entirely avoidable harm. Seek out credible sources, question sensational claims, and prioritize data over viral videos.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies as they challenge viral nonsense about the Vitamin K shot.

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