Astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson recently appeared on Conan O'Brien's TV show. As usual, he was engaging, charismatic and amusing. But when Dr. Tyson discussed microbiology and philosophy that's when his stars fell out of alignment.
Other Science News
By demonizing biotechnology and conventional agriculture, Whole Foods has profited handsomely. But with its recent financial struggles, it would be nice if the sales downturn was the result of Americans waking up to the fact that the chain has been lying to them for years.
Following the multi-year drought in the west and northwest, the question being raised is whether the mighty sequoia – which requires massive amounts of water – has been weakened or otherwise compromised. While there's no precise answer to that now, arborists are seeing signs that water depletion could be a real threat.
The American College of Surgeons recently announced submissions of their plan for attribution of care and physician payment to the Health and Human Services Department’s Planning and Evaluation Office of Health Policy. Let's discuss their approach to attribution, since surgery is a team activity.
Since I believe laughter is often the best medicine, I didn’t have to look very far to find funny movie scenes that also delivered meaningful medical lessons.
We are being confronted with very important questions about the anti-GMO movement and Mr. Ruskin, an anti-GMO activist who operates the website U.S. Right to Know. Are anti-GMOers also anti-vaxxers?2 If not, then why do they take money from anti-vaxxers?
A high-profile paper has finally been retracted by the journal Science after 10 months of investigation. The work has been ruled to be so full of negligence by an ethical review board – which discovered missing data and flat-out lies – it's a wonder how it was ever accepted in the first place.
Recently, in a room full of microbiologists, this question was posed: "How many of you believe climate change is the world's #1 threat?" Silence. Not a single person's hand was raised. Were they all rejecting science? No, not at all. They just didn't see it as threatening as antibiotic resistance, pandemic disease or geopolitical instability.
And, the award for best promoting public health and being a patient advocate goes to ... musician Ed Sheeran!
We didn't think that questioning the efficacy of contraception was still a thing. So we took a look at the data, just to be sure. And as we suspected, the facts show that the most-widely used forms of birth control don't just work, but when used properly they are incredibly effective.
Medicine has used algorithms and machines to make diagnostic statements for many years. But are we prepared for algorithms that we don't understand?
While brilliant, Stephen Hawking states uninformed opinions, like when the theoretical physicist claimed a few years ago that "philosophy is dead." In an upcoming documentary, Dr. Hawking says humans must flee from the planet because of "climate change, asteroid strikes, epidemics and overpopulation." But he's wrong on every single count.