I've written about MMS – the "Miracle Mineral Supplement" – several times beforeA (here and here, for example). I guess it's a useful thing to hold up to show how something can clearly be woo – eg claims that it kills/cures practically everythingB under the sun – and yet people still buy the stuff. Buy […]
Continue readingTag: science and society
engagement & experiences in undergraduate science education
At FYSEC2017, Gerry Rayner led a session called "Undergraduate science education in the 21st century: issues, needs, opportunities". Gerry kicked off by commenting that education has a greater impact – on students, teachers, and the wider society in which education systems are embedded – when people work together across a range of disciplines. What are […]
Continue readingno, we have no GM tomatoes
EDIT (11 Feb): it seems that the writer of the ‘we’re eating poison’ piece has decided to remove that page from their site. Which I guess is an improvement over the original. However, the good people over at Metabunk provided some useful links to the past, and this site appears to be the source used […]
Continue readingdoes science blogging still matter? yes. yes, it does.
That's the premise of an article in Nature (Brown & Woolston, 2018), which I discovered via the excellent Debunking Denialism on Facebook (& if that's not a good example of how various social media are interlinked, I don't know what is). Since mine is a science blog, obviously I was interested in the Nature narrative. Brown […]
Continue reading‘raw water’? eeewwww
'Raw water' – the latest foolish fad to hit people's screens, pockets, & in some instances I'd guess their toilet paper expenditure as well. I first heard of this particular litre of woo when I read an article in the New York Times with the headline: Unfiltered Fervor: the rush to get off the water […]
Continue readingmumps: learning from the comments threads
So, another All Black has come down with mumps and the comments threads are once more awash with those opposed to vaccines, posting the usual mix of pseudoscience and misinformation. Honestly, I would post a link on the Stuff FB page to this excellent commentary by Dr Mark Crislip, but I just know that the […]
Continue readingblood and guts, surgeons and scientists: “the butchering art”
The Butchering Art is medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris's first book. And what a book! Descriptions that bring the horrors of pre-anaesthesia, pre-antisepsis surgery shudderingly into view? Very definitely. Science and history? Oh yes, lots of it, and beautifully told. And through it all, the humanity and vision of Joseph Lister and others like him, working to […]
Continue readingthe last of the iron lungs
That’s the title of this excellent article by Jennings Brown, and I urge you to go and read the whole thing. It’s the tale of perhaps the last 3 people in the US who are still alive because they are still living in iron lungs. It’s a story of courage and endurance that lets them […]
Continue readinganother antivax myth (ingestion vs injection)
There’s an oft-repeated claim by the more strident antivaxxers that ingesting and injecting are two different things when it comes to subsantces like aluminium. This betrays a disturbing lack of knowledge of biology and physiology (especially from those who boast of ‘having done their research’), but they repeat it nonetheless. (Red’s self-belief is mildly amusing.) […]
Continue readingthe various ‘costs’ of measles
On that FB thread, one commenter proudly proclaimed that she & her four children had all had measles. Over in a week, no problems, stop yer whining. Well, lovely for her – & if the illness indeed lasted only a week per person then they were lucky; 7-10 days is the norm for uncomplicated measles. But measles […]
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