Fatherhood, Skeptically

In my short tenure as a father I've seen my kids put pretty much everything in their mouths. More often than not the objects in question are decidedly less than edible. Because of this, I tend not to overly concern myself when they are eating actual food. That's not to say that I don't worry about my kids nutrition, I do. But when someone tries to tell me that I need to be concerned about my child eating GMOs because of some unexplained health effect, nondescript toxin, or wild industrial conspiracy I tend to brush their concerns off. This is especially the case because I have a degree in biochemistry; so when all these concerned parents spew myths about the safety of GMOs I know on a very fundamental level what factual mistakes they've made. That's not to say their whole process has been founded in wrong turns. Far from it, most parents start from a very appropriate place: wanting to give their child the best chance in life. I'd like to discuss today why GMOs ...

This first post I wanted to be an extension of the blog description in the header. Specifically, I want to expand on the things that led to my conclusion that there was a niche in skepticism, parenting, that needed filling. I like to consider myself fairly active in the skeptical community. I am, at the time of this writing, a graduate student studying chemistry, I am an administrator of a local skeptical community's Facebook page where I am partly responsible for setting up meetings, demonstrations, etc. Finally, I work tirelessly to apply skepticism to my everyday life. So why parenting; why not a broader topic; why not focus on academia? There are a couple reasons. First, I have noticed that a fair amount of the fear and uncertainty that leads people into pseudoscience comes form wanting to do right by our children; do give them their best possible start in life. The sad irony is that many delve into pseudoscience and end up putting their children in unnecessary danger...