from the ‘letters to the editor’ – vaccines & ear infections

A couple of days ago our local paper carried a letter that included the bald statement: "vaccines cause ear infections." My first response to that one was: citations, please! That sort of statement is incredibly dangerous, because it’s essentially saying, don’t vaccinate if you don’t want your kids to get ear infections. (The letter writer […]

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scientific laws

Sometimes scientific terminology can be quite confusing – everyday words like ‘theory’  & ‘law, for example, mean something different when used in a scientific context. And just what is a law in science, anyway? I’ve just stumbled across a brief excerpt from an interview with Richard Feynman, where he uses some great analogies to answer that […]

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zombie attacks and worms with luminescent bombs

Every so often someone writes a paper with a really eye-catching title. I’ve come across two of these this week: When Zombies Attack! Mathematical modelling of an outbreak of zombie infection (no, honestly, I’m not making it up! You can read the original paper here) and Deep-sea, swimming worms with luminescent ‘bombs’ (Osborn, Haddock, Pleijel, Madin & […]

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watch where you pee

This afternoon, while I was sweating out my frustrations via one of the gym’s cross-trainers, I listened to the May 20th podcast from The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Among other things, they discussed the candiru, a small freshwater Amazon fish that allegedly swims up the urine stream of someone urinating (stories aren’t clear as to whether you […]

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