Healthcare Patients May Be Biased Against Chatbot Avatars
A decade ago, automated telephone menus were what everyone hated. It was common to press 0 or yell 'Agent' at the phone because you knew that after inputting everything it wanted, when you got to an agent they were going to ask you for everything all over again.Today, you probably ignore the chat window that opens up on a website, especially if you think it is a bot. A Verizon bot is going to be able to help you with nothing, so going back to find your account number, which means closing the chat window, is a waste of time, when the real agent who replies will ask for it all over again(1)
UPF OMG: The Dinner Table Is Not A Periodic Table
A short time ago, the National Institutes of Health 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee held its second public meeting to discuss recommended changes. It was very authoritative, they said they were concerned about cancer and chemicals and obesity and they assured us they were looking at all of the new literature. The panel signaled it wants to go after Frappuccinos and aspartame. The problem is that none of those issues are why they were created.Why Organ Donation Centers Might Skip Top Candidates
An organ donor waiting list is not just who has been waiting the longest, an equation ranks patients based on age, waiting time, and other checklist. Yet the 'other factors may' mean a secret sauce that leads to disparity the same way EPA panels refusing to disclose data in studies its epidemiologists choose to use leads to erosions in public trust.Transplant centers may be ignoring such secret sauce determinations. A new analysis of 11 centers between 2015 and 2019 found that 78 percent of kidneys offered to these centers were not placed with candidates at the top of the list of around 6,000 transplant candidates - which meant 4,700 transplants.
Climate Justice: Economists Claim The World Owes Itself $298 Trillion
A new op-ed in Nature argues that countries which have air conditioning owe the world up to $298 trillion. And counting.That figure is virtual money. Like virtual water, or virtual pregnancy, it isn't a real thing, it is a computer model by activist economists who love to use terms like "reparations" because the modern world doesn't have people routinely freezing to death.
COVID-19 Led To More Youth Obesity – And More Bariatric Surgery
Calories cause obesity and while everyone wants a magic solution to eating too much for a prolonged period of time, those with the means can make it reality in the form of surgery.COVID-19 set off a panic in much of culture. Schools were closed, people were ostracized if they didn't think flipping masks up and down between sips of water was clinically valid, but decisions were being made in real-time so a lot of things that once again seem silly in hindsight were the Precautionary Principle in all its glorious flawed reasoning.
Like Drinking, College Student Binge Eating Can Have Future Consequences If Unchecked
New food surveys show what you probably knew; if you eat too much, you will get fat, and obesity is a risk factor for numerous health issues.Virtual Pollution Statistically Linked To Irregular Heartbeats In China
A new paper in Canadian Medical Association Journal has linked irregular heartbeats in 322 Chinese cities to small-micron particulate matter, invisible pollution that needs an electron microscope to visualize. Given its minute size, PM2.5 is one-fourth the size of real pollution, PM10, there is four times as much of it, so the paper could have used PM10 and achieved the same statistical significance. It just would have been less dramaticNational Academies Of Sciences: The US Needs Nuclear. Will Democrats Listen?
Prior to natural gas hydraulic fracturing making played out gas wells viable again, America was in a real climate emissions pickle. In 1994, Democrats finally won their war of extinction on nuclear energy, they cheered as President Bill Clinton and Senator John Kerry(1) created regulations that act as bans and eventually forced through a series of anti-nuclear activists at the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.EPA To Ban Half Of Methylene Chloride Uses In 15 Months
In 2016, The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act amended the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and created a mandatory requirement for EPA to evaluate existing chemicals using transparent methodology and risk-based assessment. Not simplistic epidemiology.This was actually a good thing. We want to make sure people are still safe as new data arrive and since they were using science and not statistical correlation, we could have confidence in the results.
EPA To Ban Half Of Methylene Chloride Uses In 15 Months
In 2016, The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act amended the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and created a mandatory requirement for EPA to evaluate existing chemicals using transparent methodology and risk-based assessment. Not simplistic epidemiology.This was actually a good thing. We want to make sure people are still safe as new data arrive and since they were using science and not statistical correlation, we could have confidence in the results.