During the Obama administration, he was concerned about vaccines causing autism and it showed when it came to guidance about swine flu vaccines. His administration banned multi-use vials because of his party's insistence that preservatives caused the disorder.
The number one killer of honeybees is not pesticides, despite expensive marketing campaigns by environmental groups trying to claim that is the case (1), and it isn't even the very lucrative industry of trucking bees around to engage in artificial pollination for crops like almonds, which leads to shock from being in new places.
A study has taken a look at the radii of homes with measured data near natural gas wells and statistically linked that to higher radon.While some in media will use that to sound this week's 'science is killing us' alarm, the reality is that something that is not a concern is being linked to something else not a concern.
A recent review of meta-analyses and 277 randomized controlled trials--in which nearly 1 million adults participated--to find out how various nutritional supplements and diets influenced mortality rates and cardiovascular outcomes found...not much.
Sometimes pop culture becomes fact for the public. When the climate disaster film "The Day After Tomorrow" came out, journalists bizarrely started referencing it as a real climate change scenario, and now that Netflix, the home of anti-science sentiment among streaming services(1), has "Chernobyl" available, people think that is creating mutants.(2)
Population level metrics such as Body Mass Index (BMI) or statistical correlation using epidemiology don't do much to inform individual experience, and psychology faces the same issue. Surveys can tell us whatever surveys can tell us about what a particular group of people taking surveys think, but there is a reason that no polling group does well with Congressional districts that are contentious. It simply doesn't work. As we learned when we first believed the anti-vaccine problem was a fringe religious issue, what people claim on surveys is not their behavior.(1)
Implicit bias, a flawed heuristic designed to show you that you are prejudiced even if you don't feel or behave that way (that is what makes it implicit) is now being used to undermine confidence in health care. In this case the authors conclude that health care professionals are implicitly biased against women in health care, associating men more with career and family, and surgeons also associated men more with surgery.Their evidence; other implicit bias association claims, which is actual explicit bias. The data was literally taken from the Gender-Career Implicit Association Test hosted by Project Implicit, which exists for no other reason than to show everyone they are prejudiced.
In modern American culture, two exploratory fields in science compete to scare the public or suggest the promise of miracle cures; epidemiology and studies in mice.
Though Europe and Asia still smoke far more cigarettes than intelligent people should, and therefore cancer rates due to that will stay high for another 20 years or more, the clear trend in lifestyle diseases is obesity-related ones.That is actually a win, and far better than the bleak Population Bomb promoted by people like John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich just a few decades ago. Though there is still famine in parts of the world, they are parts of the world where groups opposed to science can manipulate people who don't trust outsiders or understand the technology, no differently than than distrust vaccines. The peaks and valleys of food have leveled out so famine is only going to decrease.
The Powering Past Coal Alliance(1) wants to phase out coal power but are hampered by limited membership who don't have to face economic realities. Finland has different energy sources available than China has. And China is not going to be bullied by Finland, Denmark, or anyone else.
Ever since President Clinton turned the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 into law, taking away federal authority over food and supplements unless bodies started dropping, the US Food and Drug Administration has been a little timid in doing the things it should do. Obviously it still approves products, but it has acted more like an agency buffeted by politics. When grassroots vaping caused smoking to drop, they responded to narrow political interests on the coasts, who were supported by both pharmaceutical and cigarette money, and basically declared all non-pharmaceutical smoking cessation products should be banned.(1)
Is it sacred land if it's two and a half miles in the air and only a few elites were allowed to visit on penalty of death for anyone else?
In synergy with the third season of the hit Netflix series "Stranger Things", Burger King is selling upside-down Whoppers starting today, retro 1980s packaging included. If you are not familiar with the show, and without too many spoilers, "Stranger Things" is a science fiction-horror show revolving around teens in the 1980s. If you are not familiar with Burger King, I suppose it's simple enough to say they sell hamburgers. And want to catch up to rival McDonald's.
