If I wanted to create a fake news story – I would lead with a sensational headline. Something that would incense and shock the readers and be extra “clickbaity”. Perhaps a hook about a teenager…

Ineffective drugs are generally a bad idea - natural medicine, osteopathy and homeopathy are not considered medicine because they can't demonstrate efficacy, and chemotherapy drugs are expensive so…

Modern diet fads, like paleo, farm-to-fork, the weird Food Babe's if-she-can't-spell-it-you-shouldn't-eat-it beliefs, harken back to a simpler time when people lived off the land, and nothing had…

Carbon Cycles by Arvid G. Högbom For centuries it was commonly believed that the Earth's climate is, and always has been, stable.  The idea that the climate, on the contrary, has always changed…

This specimen of the theropod dinosaur Torvosaurus tanneri is on display in Madrid, Spain. The genus Torvosaurus includes a unique species of megalosaurid theropod dinosaur. They are found in the…

A paper in Sexually Transmitted Infections details a cheap way to kill off gonorrhea in the mouth - alcohol-containing mouthwash.  Gonorrhea is caused by bacteria and  curb the growth of…

Nibiru easily ranks as the pseudoscience doomsday scenario I get most questions about. Many people, including teenagers, are terrified that we are all about to be killed by a planet called Nibiru…

A new analysis has found that if you are on Medicare, it's better to get a female internist than a male. Female internists have lower rates of 30-day mortality and hospital readmission than those…

The True Coin of Science There is a way of 'doing science' which has long stood the test of time.  It doesn't matter how many people support a theory, or how eminent they may be.  Nullius…

We love to touch things. If you put a sculpture in an art gallery and say "please touch" you can guarantee that both children and adults will touch it. So it's natural that we want to touch other…

When I was a college professor, I used to tell my students the normal world is a crazy place. It’s still true. Sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. According to Howard…

We've had fake news world ending prophecies for centuries. But now we have exaggerated scientific scenarios to add to the list, so that we can get scared by asteroid impacts, nuclear war, runaway…

We've had prophecies of the world ending for centuries. But now we face countless fake and exaggerated end of world stories based on science and pseudoscience, which are spread, together with out and…

There remain a lack of safeguards built into the health-care system for fitness trackers. Personal health wearable devices that are used to monitor heart rates, sleep patterns, calories, and even…

Though environmental activists are aghast that Republicans now control the White House, the Senate and the House for the first time since the 1920s, at least a few have come to some self-awareness…

Newborns with the common virus in the herpes family known as congenital cytomegalovirus have an increased risk of developing acute lymphocytic leukemia, according to a new analysis. The authors say…

The City Colleges of Chicago treats adjunct faculty like full timers when it comes to workloads but pays us worse than a full time fast food worker in Chicago IL.  I am the treasurer of this…

This is something you hear said so often - that we risk being hit by an asteroid that could make humans extinct. But do we really? This is the article I’m commenting on, a recently breaking news…

One of the many classics in social psychology from the mid-20th century was Leon Festinger’s When Prophecy Fails (1956). The point of the study was to infiltrate a doomsday cult. It was a cult whose…

Stephen Hales - Climate Science Pioneer #3 in a series Stephen Hales (1677-1761) was a clergyman who devoted much of his time to scientific pursuits, especially in conducting experiments in plant…