On the record

“It makes me mad that I could have had hot fudge sundaes all these years.”

A California woman who has been on a low-fat diet for 30 years responds to a major study revealing that such diets do not reduce the risk of cancer or heart disease.

“It's really sad the girls are winning. This isn't the game they should be winning at.”

A paediatrician is dismayed by statistics showing that more US teenage girls than boys are smoking and abusing prescription drugs.

Sources: San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post

Scorecard

Science ‘journalism’

Petroleum geologists give author Michael Crichton a journalism award for his novel State of Fear, which dismisses the threat of global warming as an unrealistic scenario overhyped by wayward scientists.

Nuclear waste

A Nevada family is threatened after their daughter, a contestant in this year's Miss America pageant, made comments in favour of a planned nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

Number crunch

Even as Japan plans to significantly increase the number of whales it kills for scientific research, the Japanese are turning up their noses at the pungent, chewy meat. The government sells on carcasses for public consumption, but no one seems to be wildly enthusiastic.

65% more whale meat reached the market in 2005, compared with a decade earlier.

60% more minke whales will be killed this year compared with last year under government targets.

30% was the drop in the price of whale meat between 1999 and 2004.

Source: Associated Press