Category: Science and Medicine
Clinical Decision Making: Part I
How do doctors make clinical decisions to arrive at a diagnosis? Part 1 of a 3-part series.
A Final Word: On T-Shirts and Teapot Tempests
I wore a T-shirt at The Amazing Meeting 2012 that generated a lot of controversy. You can see a picture of it on my Wikipedia article. I didn’t want to talk about the T-shirt, but I’ve been repeatedly challenged to explain myself, and I’m afraid I can no longer avoid it. Steven Novella has recommended that we try to give other people’s...
I Am Not Your Enemy: An Open Letter to My Feminist Critics
Note: The previous post is my usual weekly contribution to SBM. I am taking the liberty of posting this additional entry today on an issue that is peripheral to Science Based Medicine. If you are not interested in the recent squabbles within the skeptical movement, you will probably want to skip it. But it does respond to a detailed critique of an...
Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: It’s Complicated
When a baby is born, the obstetrician or midwife announces “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl.” As toddlers, children learn to classify everyone as either boy or girl. When our firstborn was very young, we overheard her talking to herself as she grappled with the concept: Let’s see… I’m a girl, and Kimberly [her baby sister] is a girl, and Mommy’s...
Picking Cherries in Science: The Bio-Initiative Report
by Kenneth R. Foster & Lorne Trottier Science-based medicine is great, but it all depends on how you evaluate the scientific evidence. A bad example is the BioInitiative Report (BIR), an egregiously slanted review of health and biological effects of electromagnetic fields (EMF) of the sort that are produced by power lines, cellular telephones, Wi-Fi, and other mainstays of modern life. When first...
Who takes dietary supplements, and why?
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, I’ll bet you’re not a regular consumer of vitamins or supplements. I’m in that group. Aside from sporadic vitamin D in winter, I don’t take any vitamins or supplements routinely, nor do I give any to my children. Your reasons may be close to mine: There is little to no evidence suggesting that dietary deficiencies...
Mouse Model of Sepsis Challenged
A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calls into question the standard mouse model of sepsis, trauma, and infection. The research is an excellent example of how proper science investigates its own methods. Mouse and other animal models are essential to biomedical research. The goal is to find a specific animal model of a human disease...
Honey Boo Boo
My son has been coughing for several weeks, and the cough will probably persist for another 2 or 3 weeks. Coughs last a long time. Patients think a cough will go away in less than a week but in reality they are likely to last several weeks. Coughs are a pain for the patient and an annoyance for the people around them....
One Flu Into the Cuckoo’s Nest
“I don’t seem able to get it straight in my mind….” ― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Influenza is going gangbusters at the moment. I like going to Google Flu trends as well as the CDC flu site to see what flu is doing. Using Google searches as a surrogate for infections is an interesting technique that public health...
The Placebo Narrative
Science journalist Sharon Begley wrote a recent piece in The Saturday Evening Post about Placebo Power. The piece, while generally better than the typical popular writing on placebos, still falls into the standard placebo narrative that is ubiquitous in the mainstream media. The article is virtually identical to a dozen other articles I have read on placebo effects in the popular press,...