I woke up this morning to the news that the town of Slave Lake, a couple hundred kilometers North of Edmonton, has been largely burned to the ground in an out of control wildfire. And when I arrived at work, checked my Facebook, I was even more startled to discover that I not only knew someone (a member of the skeptics group) affected — his house was razed — but that he has been posting videos of the flight to safety on YouTube all morning. There’s not much to be said at a time like this. Just mark the moment.
If one ever needs a reminder of the sad state of medical and science reporting in the modern media, one can often just turn on the television and witness a lemming-like approach to sensational news stories. This morning, for example, after Karin and I watched last night’s The National (CBC) report on a new report on childhood obesity from the American Academy of Pediatrics I Google’d a total of six-hundred and ninety-five redundant articles on that same subject proclaiming the same exaggerated and out-of-context headlines: “Cholesterol drugs urged for children as young as 8” or even “A sad milestone: Kids and cholesterol drugs.” I wonder how many of those six hundred and ninety-five publications and their editors bothered to scope out the real deal behind [...]
It was all over the news yesterday that WE’RE KILLING OUR BABIES WITH SHAMPOO! Chemical leach through their precious skin and melt their reproductive organs. It’s the end of the world. It will be just like that movie Children of Men and it’s all due to us and our fascination with… AHHHHH! Take a deep breath. Calm down. I actually hunted down the research article in question and read it through in its entirety last night. In something of a cross/post (with absolutely no apologies to that glory-hogging cynic who originally posted it) here is what I found out: Who was studied? A small group of infants less than eight months of age who’s parents had agreed to routinely provide the researchers with a wet [...]
