Science Facts & Fallacies
Cameron English
Recent Episodes
For 70 years, a persistent minority of academics and activists has claimed that fluoridated drinking water poses a serious but overlooked risk to public health. This hypothesis, almost universally rejected by the science establishment, was treated like a bad joke as far back as the 1965 film Dr. Strangelove, which pilloried opposition to fluoridated water as an anti-communist conspiracy theory.
But fluoride phobia was suddenly mainstreamed after the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) amplified concerns about fluoridated drinking water, publishing a federally funded study in January claiming that “Accumulating evidence suggests that fluoride exposure may affect brain development.” The concern intensified after health and human services secretary RFK, Jr. announced plans in April to tell the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop recommending fluoridation in communities nationwide. CDC has yet to update its guidelines on water fluoridation, and just-published research has confirmed that exposure to trace amounts of fluoride in drinking poses no risk of neurological damage.
Nevertheless, two states have already removed the chemical from their municipal water supplies, and the broader policy debate over fluoridated water continues despite clear evidence exonerating it as a beneficial public health intervention. Skepticism today typically correlates strongly with political identity but spans the ideological spectrum, with left-wing anti-chemical activists and MAHA conservatives finding common cause on this and other alternative health issues.
The question worth exploring is: why are so many people from opposite ends of the political spectrum, who disagree about almost everything, willing to lock arms on these alternative health causes? More importantly, what can scientists do to neutralize this campaign before it gains further traction and causes more harm to public health?
Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts and Fallacies as they take a closer look at the anti-fluoride crusade:
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
Enjoying delicious food is a fundamental part of the human experience. Few of us would deny the enjoyment we get from that first bite of pecan pie after Thanksgiving dinner, or the aroma of a perfectly cooked steak coming off the grill. Eating is undeniably pleasurable, in other words, and we certainly do find some choices more appealing than others. This preference is nature’s way of directing us toward safe, nutritious foods and away from toxins that can harm us. In recent decades, however, some scientists have warped this basic evolutionary fact into a convoluted theory of “food addiction,” the belief that people can become dependent on specific foods the same way they do with deadly drugs like heroin.
On the surface, food addiction makes sense. America remains in the throes of an obesity crisis, and heart disease—a condition heavily influenced by poor dietary choices—still kills more Americans than any other cause. Against that backdrop, the addictive nature of our favorite foods seems to explain our ongoing willingness to overindulge despite the often-fatal consequences.
But the food addiction narrative begins to unravel the more experts scrutinize it, raising questions proponents of the hypothesis don’t have good answers for. For example, only a minority of obese people fit the definition for food addiction while a larger share of patients diagnosed with anorexia do. This paradox badly undermines food addiction and goes to a broader point: the diagnostic criteria are not distinct from existing disorders. Indeed, large-scale studies show that food addiction symptoms almost perfectly overlap with binge-eating disorder and normal overeating driven by stress or restriction.
Once those factors are controlled for, an independent “food addiction” syndrome disappears. “Collectively, the present findings support the view that [food addiction] reflects a cluster of preexisting psychological constructs—such as craving, guilt, and disordered eating attitudes—rather than a clearly delineated disorder,” the authors of a July 2025 review concluded.
Perhaps more importantly, no unique addictive agent has been identified. Decades of searching for a “food drug” (sugar, fat, palatability) have failed. While some mental health experts insist there is an “emerging consensus” about the validity of food addiction, they can’t seem to settle on exactly what quality makes a certain dietary choice addictive. This seriously undercuts any attempt to analogize food addiction to a well-established substance use disorder like alcoholism.
In short, “food addiction” is a metaphor stretched into a diagnosis. It pathologizes common human struggles and distracts from evidence-based drivers of overeating: sleep deprivation, emotional distress, and the modern food environment’s relentless cue exposure. The science has moved on; the label should too.
Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts and Fallacies as they take a closer look at “food addiction.”
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 science is settled: biological sex is not a spectrum but a binary, and the evidence is undeniable to anyone willing to fairly consider it. So argues evolutionary biologist Colin Wright in a new peer-reviewed article simply titled Why There Are Exactly Two Sexes. Grounding his argument in Darwinian evolution—a theory universally endorsed by the science community—Wright outlines a few basic facts that no serious person disputed until just a few years ago.
In anisogamous species, including humans, sex is strictly defined by the type of gamete an organism’s reproductive system is designed to produce, small sperm for males and large ova for females. This gametic dimorphism, evolved over a billion years ago from isogamous ancestors through disruptive selection, forms the universal basis for the two sexes. “As with the fact of evolution itself,” Wright notes, “contemporary scientific debates have long moved on from questioning whether the sex binary is a fact to questions about how anisogamy evolved, why it persists, and what its evolutionary consequences are.”
Of course, challenges to this consensus are widespread today; even some major science journals have declared their opposition to the sex binary. “The idea of two sexes is simplistic,” Nature famously asserted in 2015, for example. “Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that.” The problem with this and similar counterarguments, Wright adds, is that they’re “seemingly driven by cultural and political debates surrounding the concept of ‘gender identity’ and transgender rights.” They don’t introduce new evidence that improves our understanding of sex, they merely try to redefine it to facilitate certain policy outcomes.
This biased methodology introduces an even greater problem beyond its factual mistakes: lawmakers, physicians and individuals begin making decisions that cause real harm. As Wright puts it:
Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts and Fallacies as they take a closer look at Wright’s defense of the sex binary.
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
US obesity rates are falling from a record high after steadily climbing since the 1960s, dropping to 37 percent this year from a peak of just under 40 percent in 2022. This downturn tightly correlates with a surge in the use of blockbuster weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Zepbound—which have more than doubled since 2024, resulting in roughly 7.6 million fewer obese adults, according to Gallup. This positive trend underscores obesity’s responsiveness to pharmacological intervention, bolstering arguments that it behaves as a treatable medical condition rather than mere lifestyle failure.
Critics aren’t convinced, however. They contend that obesity is a behavioral abnormality and a risk factor for real diseases, not a discrete pathology. Writing in the journal Nature in 2014, Dr. David Katz summed up this perspective. “Our bodies, physiologies and genes are the same as they ever were,” he argued. “What has changed while obesity has gone from rare to pandemic is not within, but all around us.” In short, an abundant food supply and marked decrease in physical labor over recent decades have turned a normal physiological response—storing excess calories for later use—into a public health threat. Humans are wired for an environment characterized by energy scarcity, where intense exertion is required to gather the calories necessary for survival, a dynamic that persisted well into the 20th century.
Proponents of the disease model of obesity, including the American Medical Association (AMA), which classified obesity as a disease in 2013, emphasize its complex etiology: genetic predispositions, hormonal dysregulation (e.g., leptin resistance) and socioeconomic barriers contribute to energy imbalance, akin to hypertension or diabetes. Advocates also say recognizing obesity as a disease destigmatizes patients, enhances insurance reimbursement for treatments and spurs research funding—vital as obesity drives comorbidities like cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
So, is obesity a disease or a harmful lifestyle choice? Are those two definitions mutually exclusive? Join Cam English on this episode of Facts and Fallacies as he examines the obesity-disease hypothesis.
Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish
RFK, Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) coalition has built its platform on the concept of health freedom, a belief that individuals have a right to make their own health care decisions without coercion from the public health establishment. “This growing, nonpartisan health freedom movement is pushing for bold, sweeping changes to a system that many believe is long overdue for reform,” says Josh Axe, a prominent alternative medicine advocate and MAHA supporter. “Whether you realize it or not, if you’ve ever questioned a prescription, worried about food safety, or felt unheard in a medical office, you’re already part of it.”
Americans across the political spectrum embrace this rights-based rhetoric, even people who are generally hostile to Kennedy’s agenda; for instance, scientists who advocate for universal health care often frame access to medicine as a human right. Nevertheless, critics of the MAHA campaign argue that health freedom is merely a smokescreen masking an insidious agenda. Kennedy and his compatriots cloak their policy goals in the language of liberty, the argument goes, but they have no problem imposing their preferences on Americans when they can get away with it.
For example, the FDA under Kennedy’s leadership recently changed federal recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines, a move that could limit access to the shots even if people want them and could benefit from the protection they provide. And earlier in his career, RFK, Jr. was caught on camera advocating for the imprisonment of prominent businessmen he deemed proponents of climate change misinformation. The man clearly has an authoritarian streak, in other words.
These observations invite some important questions: is health freedom a legitimate concept that has been abused by cynical MAHA activists? Is the very idea of “health freedom” a fiction? Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts and Fallacies as they scrutinize “health freedom.”
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