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
Much attention is being given to what people ate in the distant past as a guide to what we should eat today. Advocates of the claimed paleo diet recommend that we should avoid carbohydrates and load our plates with red meat and fat. Its critics, on the other hand, argue that these are the same ingredients that would set us up for heart attacks. Moreover, these animal-derived foods require more space to produce on our crowded planet filled with starving humans.
Science – or strange permutations of it at least – is everywhere in the cinema. At any one time on movie screens around the world, humans are being threatened by lethal viruses, cured from terminal illness by miracle elixirs, rendered superhuman with bionic limbs or made obsolete by robots possessing artificial intelligence.But what are the facts behind these entertaining fictions? And how best to dispel the myths and misconceptions perpetuated by blockbuster films while also enlightening audiences on the real marvels of biotechnology?
Stephen Hawking said something! And again the international media is all a'buzz.
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation can help alleviate symptoms of autism, such as anxiety. AGUILA_JONATHAN/Flickr, CC BY-NC-NDBy Peter Enticott, Deakin University
Studies that deliberately exclude older adults from their samples render older adults' sexuality invisible. shutterstockBy Sue Malta, University of Melbourne
Want more working memory? Then you need to expand your brain. Credit: Flickr/Elena Gatti, CC BYBy Joel PearsonBefore we had mobile phones, people had to use their own memory to store long phone numbers (or write them down). But getting those numbers into long-term memory could be a real pain.
By Amanda Salis, University of SydneyDietary guidelines broadly recommend a daily intake of 10,000 kilojoules (2,400 calories) for men and 8,000 kilojoules (1,900 calories) for women. But what do these figures mean in the context of the number of kilojoules or calories you personally need to consume to attain and maintain a healthy body weight?I’m going to stick with kilojoules in this article because kilojoules – not calories – are the metric unit for measuring energy, just as kilograms – not pounds – are the metric unit for measuring body weight.
By Katy Bell, University of Sydney; Alexandra Barratt, University of Sydney, and Andrew Hayen, UNSW AustraliaCancer screening is beneficial when it’s able to prevent people dying from cancer. And it should clearly be adopted where there’s evidence showing this. But using cancer survival rates to promote screening, as is often done, is misleading.
Women are playing an increasing role in science today but there are still barriers that can prevent them from achieving success comparable to their male colleagues. This feeds the argument that there is a gender pay gap in earnings in science, although that doesn’t tell the full story of the challenges facing women scientists.The Institute of Public Affairs senior researcher Mikayla Novak took the opportunity on International Women’s Day to exhort us to “avoid sensationalist, but misleading average pay gap statistics”, and instead focus on individual choices.She argued that:
Not many people would know the peculiar vocabulary used to evaluate scientists.‘H index’, ‘impact factor’ and ‘citation number’ are some of the snazzy phrases that are now ubiquitous in the world of science. Not all scientific papers are born equal - some are ground-breaking, while most are an incremental advance – and these scales have been developed to help determine the ‘impact’ of the scientific articles that are published.
People with life-threatening or incurable diseases may be willing to try experimental drugs and unproven treatments. Credit: juicyrai/Flickr, CC BY-NC-NDBy Tina Cockburn, Queensland University of Technology and Bill Madden, Queensland University of Technology
Research undertaken on beagles and the contraceptive pill in the 1970s was found to be fabricated - there never were any beagles. Flickr/Understanding Animal Research, CC BY-SABy Mark Israel, University of Western AustraliaThere are a few things you might need for an experiment involving beagles and the side effects of contraceptive pills. Animal research ethics aside, beagles might be a good start.
