When writing about scientific progress, one of history’s greatest physicists, Max Planck wrote in 1950, “An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning.” There is one opponent of scientific innovation that can never die, though. A corporation, that deathless, soulless entity whose only purpose in ‘life’ is to generate and protect it’s profits can be counted on to resist science that would restrict it’s profitability in  perpetuity.

The tobacco industry showed us how long a corporation can muddy the waters. For decades everyone knew that tobacco was a dangerous product, that it’s designed use would cause heart disease, pulmonary problems, cancer of the lung and mouth. Learning how it was done, the sugar industry has done exactly the same thing…