Month: January 2011

Energy Drinks

Energy drinks are becoming more and more common as the stimulant of choice targeted at the young, athletic, and anyone under a deadline. What are the risks, benefits, and above all the science?

/ January 6, 2011

Obesity Denial

It seems that for every established science there is an ideological group who is motivated to deny it. Denialism is a thriving pseudoscience and affects any issue with the slightest political or social implications. Sometimes, even easily verifiable facts can be denied, as people seem willing to make up their own facts as needed. Denialists have an easy job – to spread...

/ January 5, 2011

Followup: More Evidence against the XMRV Virus as a Cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

A mouse leukemia retrovirus, xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV retrovirus), has been under consideration as a possible cause of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS, and also prostate cancer). In a study published in Science in October 2009, Lombardi et al. found XMRV in 67% of CFS patients and 3.7% of controls. Several subsequent studies in the UK, the Netherlands, and the US...

/ January 4, 2011

Deadly Choices about vaccination

The year 2011 is starting out rather promisingly, at least from the point of view of science-based medicine. Its beginning coincides with the release of two — count ’em, two! — books taking a skeptical, science-based look at vaccines and, in particular, the anti-vaccine movement. First off the mark is a new book by a man whom the anti-vaccine movement views as...

/ January 3, 2011