A book that criticizes alternative medicine to treat conditions that have names but no criteria is controversial - because it runs up against a supplement and alternative medicine enabled by governments that believe science can't be trusted
After one of the most divisive presidential elections in American history, many of us may be anxious about dinner-table dialogue with family and friends this Thanksgiving. There is no denying that the way we communicate about politics has fundamentally changed with the proliferation of technology and social media. Twitter bots, fake news and echo chambers are just a few of the highlights from this election season. Much of how we’re conversing online can’t – and shouldn’t – be replicated around the family table. We are getting out of practice at conducting meaningful, respectful conversation.
Stereoscopes entertained every Victorian home with their ability to produce three-dimensional pictures. Typewriters and later fax machines were once essential for business practices. Photo printers and video rentals came and went from high streets.
It is still true that far more men than women have leading roles in many organizations. If you ask women to explain this, as many researchers have, they point to workplace culture as a prime culprit.
A false history of science was used to initiate colonial education, in support of colonialism. This false history persists. In a recent article about decolonizing mathematics, for instance, Professor Karen Brodie asserts that, “Much, though certainly not all, of mathematics was created by dead white men.”This is not true.
On Thursday, Gold Coast man Gable Tostee was found not guilty of the murder of a woman, Warriena Wright, who fell to her death from his unit’s balcony. The case raises questions about how common death by falling is – and how many such incidents are homicides.
During the debates, fact-checkers like CNN and Politifact focus on evaluating the truthfulness of what each candidate said. While it is important to get the facts straight, focusing on the truth of the candidates’ statements is not nearly enough to evaluate the actual impact of the debate on the audience. How candidates say things matters just as much as whether they stuck to the facts.
Hearing voices that other people can’t is a meaningful experience. Like dreams, they can usually be understood in terms of one’s life experiences. Within mental health services, however, the prevailing medical model means some practitioners pay attention only to their presence, not their meaning.
A prolonged Internet outage affecting major sites like Twitter, Netflix, Spotify and The New York Times on Friday has commentators concerned that this is was a practice run for future, more widespread disruption of the internet. The distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) targeted the dynamic domain name service provider Dyn and came in three waves during the day.
Occasionally in science there are theories that refuse to die despite the overwhelming evidence against them. The “aquatic ape hypothesis” is one of these, now championed by Sir David Attenborough in his recent BBC Radio 4 series The Waterside Ape.The hypothesis suggests that everything from walking upright to our lack of hair, from holding our breath to eating shellfish could be because an aquatic phase in our ancestry.
Our linguistic and legal obsession with “insult” and “offense” is nothing new. In 1832, Sydney resident William McLoughlin was given 50 lashes for using the word “damned” against his master.But what does McLoughlin’s case tell us about today?Welsh Rabbit and lashes from pretty fellowsThe word insult can be traced to the Latin insultāre “to leap upon” or “assail”. It possibly entered English via a Middle French word insulter, meaning “to insult, crow, vaunt, or triumph over; to wrong, reproach, affront”.
Doctors and parents sometimes disagree about a child’s medical treatment. As the recent case of six-year-old boy Oshin Kiszko highlights, some disagreements between doctors and parents can’t be resolved by further information and discussion.Oshin has brain cancer.
“Never put anything smaller than your elbow into your ear” is something we’ve been wisely cautioned against at some stage or another. But more of us are ignoring this advice.We use in-the-ear-headphones to listen to music, car keys and hair pins to scratch that particularly unpleasant itch, and hearing aids to enable better communication.Many of us also use disposable foam earplugs to protect from damaging noises in the workplace, or to block the noise of snoring partners, loud traffic outside bedroom windows, dogs barking and any other bothersome sounds that prevent a good night’s sleep.
