There is a huge market for fantasies of doom, and some scientists are doing their best to keep pace with filmmakers. Horror films feed an enduring human need to be scared.  And now that greenies have thoroughly scared us with tales of impending apocalypse as the end result of our scientific progress, scientists around the world have wised up and taken steps to give the market what it demands. Unfortunately, the vast rewards for fabricating doom have led to some awful abuses, a few of which are starting to be documented.  Take, for example, this article published in the widely read journal Nature.  Quirin Schiermier writes: Two Swedish scientists have been found guilty of "misconduct in research" in a paper that they published in Science and later retracted. Their highly publicized work had suggested that tiny particles of plastic in the ocean harm fish. The misconduct ruling was made by an investigative board from...(Read Full Post)