Winner of THE SCRAPBOOK's prize for boneheaded environmental feeble-mindedness is the story in the New York Times metro section of Sept. 27 (brought to our attention by alert reader Jonathan Balsam), headlined "Malathion Spraying May Affect Monarch Butterflies."
Now, the spraying is successfully wiping out mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus, which has killed 43 people in New York state. And the butterflies? Here's the story's thesis: "While this year's butterfly migration started off with near-record numbers [perhaps a hundred million], no one can know if it would have been larger without the spraying." And its source? A long jogger who saw a few dead monarchs in Central Park. Schoolchildren in science fairs do better than this.