Now that pharmacies are regularly distributing vaccines, their push to get people in for shots is not entirely in the interest of public health. Rather, often they are betting on the customer picking up something else while in the store. But has this commerce complication made the push for the flu vaccine too early?
Other Science News
There's no time like the present to do our part, so our team decided to pitch in on the #22KILL push-ups challenge to honor those who serve. 22KILL is a global movement bridging the gap between veterans and civilians to build a community of support.
It wasn't all that pretty, but we did it!
To find out more, visit www.22kill.com
Chess, the eminently cerebral game, is even thought provoking in ways unrelated to the movement of pieces on the board. Can you become a talented or great player simply by practicing relentlessly? Or must one already possess superior, innate intelligence in order to succeed?
Jenny McCarthy is at it again, but she's not talking about vaccines anymore. She's moved on to promoting therapies to "cure" autism that are expensive, time consuming, not backed by science and (shocker!) don't work. This woman is a medical menace.
We thought that our fellow scientists and physicians — our peers — who joined Theranos in order to increase its transparency and communication would be willing to talk about their role on the advisory board, and the developing technology. But, after we tried to engage them, boy were we wrong.
Ben & Jerry's wants us to believe that global warming, while catastrophic enough in its own right, could also deprive us of some of our favorite dessert flavors. Immediate action is necessary, the company implores us, or the chocolate, nuts and coffee used as ingredients could vanish from the Earth. By rolling out this disingenuous marketing gimmick the ice cream maker must think its customers are dimwitted rubes with no ability to engage in critical thinking.
I must admit that I still love books, not e-books, but the physical object and that lets me wander through bookstores making serendipitous discoveries. To my great joy, I found this new release, The Kingdom of Speech, as I was about to leave my local bookstore. Here is my report.
AMR is inevitable. As people keep finding ways to kill the microbes that infect us, those microbes, through evolutionary processes, will mutate to counteract them.
The UK’s report, A review of Antimicrobial Resistance, is a well-considered blueprint of a financially viable way forward. While it may not find its way to your nightstand, it should be required reading for our legislatures.
Karl Meltzer's newest feat, setting the land speed record traversing the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, was unquestionably remarkable -- and newsworthy. Yet among its media coverage, two of the most prominent reports played up the angle that one particular aspect of his achievement — the ultra runner's food consumption during his historic dash — was in some way bizarre. However, for the most part, that was just not the case.
For the second time this year, the EPA has published a report placing glyphosate in the "not likely to be carcinogenic to humans" category.
Claims that the “the science isn’t settled” with regard to climate change are symptomatic of a large body of ignorance about how science works. So what is the scientific method, and why do so many people, sometimes including those trained in science, get it so wrong?
The first thing to understand is that there is no one method in science, no one way of doing things. This is intimately connected with how we reason in general.
Science and reasoning
It might be wise to consider that while Dr. Amir Attaran was completely wrong in his predictions that the Summer Olympics in Brazil might possibly lead to worldwide Zika virus transmission, there are reasons to believe that the Canadian professor's clarion call turned out to be notably, if inadvertently, beneficial to global health.