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Well, CSPI have been at it for years now. They're total asshats. I nearly got banned from wikipedia for adding a rude word to Jacobson's hagiography there. Oops.

The food/fat jihad is every bit as dangerous as the AGW scam. If and when AGW falls, we must be ready to point the finger at the rest of the junk science portfolio at the same time.

>>"eating a cupcake is the same as putting a gun in your mouth."

Uh, no it's not. The dougnut is more nutritious. But then again, no one has ever gotten fat by nibbling on a Colt.

How could you possibly support anythings associated with the Center for Consumer Freedom (unless you're affiliated with them)? Perhaps you haven't seen the USA Today article on their leader: http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2006-07-31-lobbyist-usat_x.htm, paying particular attention to his twisted logic at the end. They're the people from "Thank You For Smoking" times 100. I wouldn't support their corporate-funded all-about-the-money agenda no matter if I agree with some of their stances or not--because they DON'T. Yuck, what a bad taste this leaves in one's mouth.

These are good too...

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_Berman

(cites from the USA Today article which states "his company has 28 employees and takes in $10 million dollars a year, but "only Berman and his bookkeeper wife" know how much of the $10 million ends up in their own pockets.")

and http://www.consumerdeception.com/public.html

...pretty shady...

Oh yes, I accept everything that Sourcewatch says without reservation. They are a truly objective and unbiased organization.

I voted

Haley, something you could perhaps consider is that everyone is biased. You're used to "following the money" to look for bias; and that can be a good strategy. If I read a survey by an ice cream manufacturer that says ice cream is healthful, I'll suspect it. Quite rightly.

But what is often overlooked, deliberately one suspects, is that money is not the only source of bias. A firmly held belief system is just as corrupting. For instance, a christian may be strongly biased against evolution, because of their beliefs, although no money is involved. A vegetarian will be strongly biased against meat eating, even though there's no money involved.

Now consider that one of them, say the vegetarian, forms a pressure group to promote vegetarianism. They will naturally promote research and information that makes vegetarianism look good, and ignore that which doesn't. They'll promote research and information that makes meat eating look bad, and ignore that which is positive towards it. They're not being paid by an evil corporation, but they're biased anyway. The bias is in their fundamentalist belief system, and they and their supporters may not even see it's there, in the same way as a conservative watching a conservative news show sees no bias, and a liberal watching a liberal new show sees no bias (but if each watches the other's show, they'll see it instantly and throw their shoes at the screen in fury).

So the important thing in life is not just to look for the bias in your opponents, but to try to be honest and see that on your own side, and in yourself. Are the Centre For Consumer Freedom promoting a particular bias? Yes.

But look at the CSPI; run by a fundamentalist vegan, they ruthlessly promote his belief-system driven agenda. Who pays for them doesn't matter (let's not get into their being an offshoot of the lawsuit-seeking Nader empire); their bias is in their organisational genes.

If the corporate side of the argument are biased by money; well, at least that's predictable. Not so those driven by extreme belief alone, because there is no limit to their malignity, for they will always believe that whatever they do is for the public good and will thus bury the kitchen floor with eggshells as they try to construct their omelette.

Evil people do evil. Good people do good. But for good people to do evil - that takes ideological fanaticism- which might be religious but is frequently something else.