Given that most adult women did not have access to the HPV vaccine in youth, the clinical burden of cervical cancer in the United States has not yet declined.  

Women still get tested and a few thousand still die each year. The authors believe that the increase in saved life-years has not occurred because taxpayers haven't yet spent enough.

Risk factors like salt and sugar intake and high blood pressure for heart attacks and disease need constant rethink if they are going to be more than folk wisdom.

Low-salt and sugar-free have too many vested interests to get critical thinking on how valid population-level statistics are for individuals, and 'high' blood pressure rarely gets questions about how reliable the correlation was that picked 130/85 mmHg (millimeters of mercury) as high blood pressure for everyone. Thosa blood pressure numbers are the clunkily-named systolic on top over the diastolic below. The top is the pressure in arteries as the heart beats while the bottom is the pressure at rest.(1)

If humans in space are happening any time soon, it will be despite government involvement rather than because of it. NASA couldn't even build a telescope without going 25 years and 1,000 percent over budget. By the time all cultural parties pick away at a manned space program, it will be so expensive and time-costly it won't be worthwhile, and the private sector will throw all that baggage out and just do it.

The James Webb Space Telescope program showed NASA is incapable of doing Big Engineering now, but they can put cute robots on other planets, and fund smaller projects, like how we might grow plants. Early results for how monitors that plants can wear and will stretch as plants grow are due to a NASA grant, and that is a very good thing.

Humans and five whale species are the only mammals known to go through menopause. Why is unclear but a new study sought answers.

Scientists found that females of short-finned pilot whales, false killer whales, killer whales, narwhals and beluga whales and experience menopause live around 40 years longer than other female whale species of a similar size and speculation is that by living longer without extending their reproductive lifespan they have more time to help their children and grandchildren, without increasing the “overlap” period when they compete with their daughters by breeding and raising calves at the same time.

At a recent meeting of the board of editors of a journal I am an editor of, it was decided to produce a special issue (to commemorate an important anniversary). As I liked the idea I got carried away a bit, and proposed to write an article for it. 

Like old media such as newspapers and televisions, content on social media is tailored toward audience engagement. Television and newspapers have long known that 'dead bodies sell' but in social media it can be sold in real-time. It has sped up information - and cynicism. Fifteen years ago Reuters was caught augmenting photos of an Israeli attack on terrorists so it looked like more smoke and destruction than actually occurred and few in media were bothered, more recently outlets pulled a photo of British Princess Kate of Wales because it had been retouched. Only after the audience flagged it, though.

If a small survey in California is indicative of young physicians nationwide, emergency room culture will need to change for younger residents to have interest.

The news comes at a worrisome time. Increased government control of health care has meant plummeting interest in emergency medicine among graduating medical students. Women are even less likely to enter the field and instead opt for a culture that requires less assertiveness and self-advocacy, according to the survey.  

Advances in technology in recent decades have obviated the need and desire for humans to move. Many of the world’s population sit for long periods throughout the day, whether in front of a computer at work or in front of a TV at home. Given that the human body is made to move, all this sitting is clearly bad for our health. A new study from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), confirmed this – and then some.

A total of 5,856 female participants aged 63 to 99 years were asked to wear an activity monitor on their hip for seven days at the start of the study. The researchers then followed them for a decade, during which 1,733 participants died.

As the century turned, the science community began to become critical of a once-honored field; epidemiology.  If you are not familiar with it, it is people who correlate causes to outcomes. They don't show it, they usually are not scientists, but they look for links and then if those look interesting scientists will follow up on it.

This was an occupation once so conservative and evidence-driven that they were the last to accept that heart disease and cancer might have a hereditary factor. When epidemiologists showed that smoking causes lung cancer the data were so overwhelming and comprehensive that Big Tobacco began to stockpile money for the inevitable lawsuits because they had denied it.

One of the few things that can get a government union employee in a mandatory industry like education fired is hitting a student. Yet the link between increased tolerance and less accountability for students has correlated to increased violence by teachers. If there are no repercussions for behavior, behavior gets worse.

Everyone seems to know this except academic psychologists, who instead argue that grades are the problem. Don't want to be assaulted? Don't have accountability for any student who will suffer no lasting repercussions if they assault you while if you defend yourself you will be fired, go to jail, be sued, and vilified by the internet for eternity.