A Costly Misconception
Now that glyphosate has become a national-security issue, it’s time to revisit the source of misinformation about this controversial herbicide.
Geoffrey C. Kabat
· 10 min read
Health
A collection of 178 posts
The Cost of Indifference
The sad and curious case of the chronic fatigue syndrome.
Samuel Kronen
· 16 min read
Cousin Marriage and Inbreeding: A Genetic History
What large-scale genomic data reveals about consanguinity, inherited disease, and the uneasy politics of discussing biological risk.
Zoe Booth, Francisco Ceballos
· 7 min read
More Vaccine Fearmongering
By spreading unproven claims that Covid-19 vaccines caused the deaths of children, Trump's FDA continues to undermine public trust in vaccines, with disturbing implications for the health of Americans.
Henry I. Miller
· 6 min read
The BPA Panic and the Distortion of Science
A new article in MIT’s ‘Undark’ magazine recycles old misinformation about a supposedly toxic chemical.
Geoffrey C. Kabat
· 10 min read
America’s Public Health Is Under Attack
The hepatitis B vaccine episode is a preview of what happens when scientific institutions are corrupted by people who reject the scientific method itself.
Henry I. Miller
· 7 min read
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
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