Category: Science and Medicine
Repurposed to Radical: How drug repurposing created a global right-wing market for COVID early treatment fraud
A condensed timeline of the events, people, and far-right global politics that repurposed science and medicine to promote fake miracle cures for COVID-19 and spread deadly disinformation with a focus on the United States, France, and Brazil.
AI as a Diagnostic Tool
Using AI systems for pattern recognition in early diagnosis of dementia shows the potential of this tool.
“Subscription science”: Physician-influencers, social media, and conflicts of interest
Antivaccine activists and quacks often weaponize legitimate concerns about industry conflicts of interest in medicine into the "shill gambit," in which they accuse critics and defenders of science-based medicine of being in the pay of big pharma. However, the rise of physician-influencers and, in particular, Substack show that not all conflicts of interest are from industry or even financial.
Detransition, Retransition, and What Everyone Gets Wrong
A article published in The Atlantic implored people to take detransitioners seriously but did so by perpetuating non-evidence-based tropes that harm both detransitioners and transgender people
More Marijuana More Problems for Young Children Part 2: Additional Problems for the Aforementioned Children
A recent study found that young children are increasingly being harmed by accidental ingestion of cannabis in the form of edibles.
An Absurd Thought Experiment
How would you have reacted on 1/1/2020 if a doctor claimed that a virus that killed zero children was "truly dangerous" compared to one that kill 2,000?
ProtocolKills.com: Misinformed refusal on steroids
Back in the day, I used to refer to something I dubbed "misinformed refusal," a term that refers to how antivaxxers had weaponized "informed consent" by inverting it to frighten parents against vaccinated. In the age of the pandemic, ProtocolKills.com generalizes misinformed refusal to all COVID-19 treatments with the help of "hospital hostage negotiator" Laura Bartlett, who views COVID-19 treatments in hospitals...
Letter to a Medical Student: There Is No Elite RCT Strike Force
None of us have to fantasize what we would have done during a pandemic. What you actually did the past three years is exactly what you would have done.
Retracted papers about COVID-19 are more highly cited than they should be
Earlier this month a study showed that papers about COVID-19 that are retracted tend to be cited far more than average and continue to be heavily cited after retraction. Clearly, scientific publishing and the scientific community need to do better.
Children and COVID-19: A Few Facts and Figures from the Pandemic’s First Three Years
After three solid years of the pandemic, here is an admittedly incomplete rundown of how it has affected children in the United States.