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Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

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A new paper in the journal Early Human Development hopes to use the infant form of the Body Mass Index(BMI) to predict future heart disease.

BMI is famous by now and has been used by government guidance bodies since the 1980s. It was invented nearly 200 years ago but, like homeopathy from the same period, somehow remains dogma to a few. It's a simple math calculation that takes into account height and weight. If you want to calculate yours, multiply your weight by 703 and then divide that by your height squared - (weight x 703)/(height in inches x height in inches).(1)

That is with adults. You can't do it with growing kids. 
If you want to find a nexus of conspiracy theories about science (it's a vast corporate conspiracy among the anti-GMO, anti-vaccine and anti-nuclear crowd, and a deep state conspiracy among the chemtrails crowd) YouTube is a good way to go, shows a new study (open access.)
The most popular organic fertilizer is feces while the most popular pesticide is copper sulfate. Both of those don't sound great to ingest but a new study says that extra dung leads to more bacteria - and that may be a good thing, if you believe a lot more bacteria is beneficial to gut health.

Yogurt marketing and supplement claims aside, there is no evidence that your body is impacted by probiotics unless you suffered a legitimate medical issue (as in you need an actual fecal transplant), yet like gluten-free diets probiotic foods have become a trend among people with extra money to spend. The same people who buy organic food.
Bisphenol S (BPS) and bisphenol F (BPF) are chemicals used in the lining of aluminum-canned food and drinks (to prevent spoilage). They were rolled out as a replacement for bisphenol A (BPA), a compound targeted by activists under claims it might statistically be an "endocrine-disrupting chemical." Exhaustive studies later found overwhelming scientific evidence that was not so.
A new paper has statistically linked depression and anxiety during pregnancy (and link preterm births due to those) to the radius of natural gas hydraulic fracturing wells in Pennsylvania.

Should you be worried? The short answer is "no", this is not a very good paper.

Just like "only in mice" has become a common complaint of biologists, chemists, and toxicologists about provocative claims designed to get media attention, "it's just correlation" is invoked nearly as often by the science community.
Raw milk is not a cure for any disease, it's actually more like a disease vector. It has no benefit to anyone, and I say that as a kid who drank it regular, and has a great deal of risk.

But the anti-science, anti-vaccine, anti-gmo, pro supplement community latched onto this, even for autism, and it became so popular FDA actually had to issue a statement telling people it's not real.  

In two years, not much has changed. Raw milk still won't be a treatment for autism, nor will raw camel milk, or any milk. It's nonsense, and embarrassing in a country that proudly claims world leadership in adult science literacy.