Pre-Existing Convictions
In anticipation of the ‘new results’ RFK Jr. has promised about the causes of autism, an overview of what science has already learned.
Geoffrey C. Kabat
· 13 min read
Health
A collection of 172 posts
The Language of Independence
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s doctrine of self-reliance has been corrupted by social media, wellness culture, conspiracy theorists, and the “sovereign citizen” movement.
Samuel Cornell
· 6 min read
Rethinking “Harm Reduction”
Once seen as a model of progressive drug policy, San Francisco now stands as a morbid example of how that approach has gone astray.
Christopher Calton
· 18 min read
Invisible Disability and Hidden Potential
Sir Simon Baron-Cohen: “When you systemise, you try to analyse the rules, the events that happen with some regularity, and causal relationships, so you can identify predictable patterns.”
Hannah Gal
· 16 min read
RFK, Jr. and the End of Expertise
The US health secretary is spreading disinformation about vaccines while the administration he serves guts medical-research agencies and programs.
Geoffrey C. Kabat
· 11 min read
The Fugitive Mind
My best friend had a psychotic break—our crisscrossing journeys through facts and fictions in thirteen chapters.
Joan Maltese
· 51 min read
Antiscientific Vandalism
Musk and Trump are inflicting catastrophic damage on biomedical research.
Evan D Morris
· 6 min read
Misreading a Flawed Study
Vaccination against UTIs is a novel idea that holds enormous promise, but clinical trials must be well-designed and carefully analysed.
Geoffrey C. Kabat
· 5 min read
The Life and Death of a Medical Study
A 2015 study found that black newborns attended by white doctors die at twice the rate of those in the care of black doctors. The study’s refutation last year has not altered the progressive narrative of systemic racism in medicine.
Stewart Justman
· 9 min read
Water Fluoridation: The Science and the Myths
Water fluoridation is a scientifically validated public health measure. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign to eliminate it is unjustified scaremongering.
Henry I. Miller
· 3 min read
Sanitising a Paranoid Crank
Misleading and irresponsible journalism is being used to launder the reputation of RFK Jr.
Matt Johnson
· 10 min read
The Psychologisation Pandemic
Denial of “invisible” suffering is bad science and worse ethics.
Samuel Kronen
· 18 min read
Racial Disparities and Child Protection
The politicisation of medicine has had terrible unintended consequences.
Naomi Schaefer Riley
· 8 min read
Recycling Plastic Is a Dangerous Waste of Time
The recycling industry—and the world at large—has yet to fully reckon with a bombshell study that dropped last year.
Frank Celia
· 17 min read
From Caregivers to Social Reformers
Directing physicians to treat their patients as racial statistics rather than an individuals is a grievous misdirection of their skills.
Ronald A. Lindsay
· 12 min read