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Model That Claimed Only Lockdown Works To Prevent Coronavirus Spread Was Flawed, Shows New Look

Posted by on Jan 4, 2021 in Mathematics | Comments Off on Model That Claimed Only Lockdown Works To Prevent Coronavirus Spread Was Flawed, Shows New Look

If you believe the Chinese government, they've had basically no meaningful COVID-19 deaths since March. I'd also like to sell you a wet market in Wuhan. Believing a dictatorship that has routinely lied has been disastrous. It was disastrous for the reputation of the World Health Organisation, who claimed no travel should be curtailed and that the virus could not spread from human to human because China told them that, it was disastrous for the doctor who exposed the Wuhan cover-up (he became dead), and it was disastrous for the world economy, which could take a decade to recover.

It may be harming trust in epidemiologists and peer review as well.

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Is There A 27 Million Year Cycle For Mass Extinction Or Just Coincidence?

Posted by on Dec 18, 2020 in Evolution | Comments Off on Is There A 27 Million Year Cycle For Mass Extinction Or Just Coincidence?

A new paper finds that mass extinction of land-dwelling animals - amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds- occur in a cycle of about 27 million years.

A pattern in nature or just coincidence?

Probably coincidence, since 27 million years give or take is a fantastic range of time but journalists and professional doomsday prophets are making something of it the way they do Mayan calendars and Biblical numerology. When it comes to real concepts of time, 66 million, 26 million, and 27.5 million don't have much in common.

Yet the paper does link them as non-random events, using the bane of informed food and chemical acceptance of science - statistical analyses.

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Is There A 27 Million Year Cycle For Mass Extinction Or Just Coincidence?

Posted by on Dec 18, 2020 in Evolution | Comments Off on Is There A 27 Million Year Cycle For Mass Extinction Or Just Coincidence?

A new paper finds that mass extinction of land-dwelling animals - amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds- occur in a cycle of about 27 million years.

A pattern in nature or just coincidence?

Probably coincidence, since 27 million years give or take is a fantastic range of time but journalists and professional doomsday prophets are making something of it the way they do Mayan calendars and Biblical numerology. When it comes to real concepts of time, 66 million, 26 million, and 27.5 million don't have much in common.

Yet the paper does link them as non-random events, using the bane of informed food and chemical acceptance of science - statistical analyses.

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Melatonin May Boost Memory But Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Go Buy Supplements

Posted by on Dec 10, 2020 in Neuroscience | Comments Off on Melatonin May Boost Memory But Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Go Buy Supplements

Every pharmacy has a section devoted to products that are not scientifically known to do anything at all, they could never pass FDA scrutiny on their claims, but they don't need to and pharmacies are in business to make money. And in places like Washington, DC, California, and New York, the public overwhelmingly believes in supplements as alternatives to medicine, so carrying fish oil, ginkgo, ginseng and other products that claim to be memory boosters and prevent "cognitive decline" is just listening to the market.

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Melatonin May Boost Memory But Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Go Buy Supplements

Posted by on Dec 10, 2020 in Neuroscience | Comments Off on Melatonin May Boost Memory But Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Go Buy Supplements

Every pharmacy has a section devoted to products that are not scientifically known to do anything at all, they could never pass FDA scrutiny on their claims, but they don't need to and pharmacies are in business to make money. And in places like Washington, DC, California, and New York, the public overwhelmingly believes in supplements as alternatives to medicine, so carrying fish oil, ginkgo, ginseng and other products that claim to be memory boosters and prevent "cognitive decline" is just listening to the market.

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The ‘Blood Type’ Diet Debunked Again

Posted by on Dec 7, 2020 in Public Health | Comments Off on The ‘Blood Type’ Diet Debunked Again

Nearly every sort of diet has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list by now, all claiming to have a foundation in science. Yet one key reason some among the public are distrustful of epidemiology statistics on masks and social distancing is that epidemiology is also used to statistically link nearly every food or chemical to harm or longevity.

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The ‘Blood Type’ Diet Debunked Again

Posted by on Dec 7, 2020 in Public Health | Comments Off on The ‘Blood Type’ Diet Debunked Again

Nearly every sort of diet has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list by now, all claiming to have a foundation in science. Yet one key reason some among the public are distrustful of epidemiology statistics on masks and social distancing is that epidemiology is also used to statistically link nearly every food or chemical to harm or longevity.

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E-Waste Is Declining, Government Needs To Change Laws To Keep Up – And Get Out Of The Recycling Business

Posted by on Dec 3, 2020 in Environment | Comments Off on E-Waste Is Declining, Government Needs To Change Laws To Keep Up – And Get Out Of The Recycling Business

When your Xbox is a gaming console and a 4K Blu-Ray player, you don't need two devices, and when your phone is a camera and a video recorder, there are two fewer things to buy - and eventually throw away.

As smart devices have become more integrated, and more commodities like a dishwasher than technology events, people own fewer things and keep them longer. That means less electronic waste. Yet the story we get from environmental groups is that e-waste is the fastest growing material pollution and only donations to lawyer-run groups can stop it.

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Cholestyramine Taken With Daptomycin Prevents Antimicrobial Resistance

Posted by on Dec 1, 2020 in Chemistry | Comments Off on Cholestyramine Taken With Daptomycin Prevents Antimicrobial Resistance

Antibiotic resistance is a serious problem. Nature constantly evolves new ways to kill, which means pathogens will develop new methods of resistance to current treatments, but pharmaceutical companies also have little incentive to develop new antibiotics. Instead, they have obstructions when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will require a billion dollars in expenses, 10 years of regulatory approval, and then grandstanding politicians will demand it immediately be generic and cost a dollar. 

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New Paper Claims Your Living Room Causes Diabetes

Posted by on Nov 10, 2020 in Chemistry | Comments Off on New Paper Claims Your Living Room Causes Diabetes

In the modern world of chemistry, where we can detect parts per billion, trillion, and even quadrillion, we can detect anything we want in anything else. In the modern world of epidemiology, we can also link anything to anything we want, as Harvard School of Public Health does often with its claims that some food or trace chemical is either curing or causing cancer when grant application season rolls around.

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