Facebook certainly leads me to read papers that I normally wouldn’t. For whatever reason, a post about deodorants popped up on my feed, from the Wendyl’s Green Goddess page. In the blurb for a sale of products was the following: Conventional products contain aluminium ingredients which have been linked to cancer. Do your skin and […]
Continue readingTag: science and society
‘pregnancy isn’t a death event’ – social media’s window to the dark side
Today I was on leave and, the weather being bad, thought I’d do a bit of catching up on the news. And so it was that I found, on the Stuff FB page, an item about the (lack of) funding for cutting edge cancer drugs. So far, so innocuous (although also somewhat sad) – until […]
Continue readinganti-vaccination activists – deluded and dangerous
The latest news reports indicate that the mumps outbreak in Auckland is spreading. As you might expect, the very first commenter on the FB page for that story is someone claiming that vaccines don’t cure mumps and offer a significant risk to health. (I wish Moveable Type allowed the Comic Sans font…) The only reason […]
Continue readinga pox on all their parties
Chickenpox “parties”. They had their day – and that day was before the chickenpox vaccine came on the scene. Because chickenpox can be much worse in teens and adults, back in the day it did make sense to contract the disease in early childhood. In fact, it was almost unavoidable, given the epidemic nature of […]
Continue readingmms – the woo-filled gift that keeps on giving
I've written before about the so-called 'miracle mineral solution', aka MMS (here, for example), but I see that it's hit the news again recently. MMS is essentially bleach1, but one Jim Humble has made quite a little empire (and a 'church') out of selling the stuff, and has previously claimed that it's a preventative & […]
Continue readingprofs, publications, & social media
A while back, my Twitter feed brought up a post with the intriguing title "Prof, no-one is reading you". The article kicks off with the following provocative statement: Many of the world's most talented thinkers may be university professors, but sadly most of them are not shaping today's public debates or influencing policies. Now, them's […]
Continue readingthe bedbug genome and their bloody habits
Once upon a time, I wrote about traumatic insemination in bedbugs. (Those of my friends who are still traumatised by learning about the reproductive habits of various slug species may not wish to follow that link.) Now, two papers just published in Nature Communications describe the results of sequencing & examining the genome of the […]
Continue readingdoes powerpoint make students stupid and professors boring?
This is a cross-post from Talking Teaching. The author of this article certainly thinks so. Under that header, he continues: Do you really believe that watching a lecturer read hundreds of PowerPoint slides is making you smarter? I asked this of a class of 105 computer science and software engineering students last semester. Well, first up, […]
Continue readingshould we stop students using laptops during lectures?
This is a cross-post from Talking Teaching. Image from linguasynaptica I guess it depends on what they’re using their laptops for. Most days when I come in at the back of the lecture room & walk down to the front, I’ll see a lot of laptops open & in use. Quite a few students will […]
Continue reading‘slapping therapy’ for diabetes, and a child dies
I've heard it said more than once that complementary & alternative medicine (CAM) 'does no harm' – here's just one example. I suppose that could be true of a healthy person using something like homeopathy, where the only harm is likely to be to their wallet. But time and again, forms of CAM have been shown to do harm, […]
Continue reading