As if there aren't enough ridiculous things to study – and worry about. A group in Great Britain thinks that sandwiches are causing the Earth to warm. Now there's a baloney sandwich – if there ever was one.
Policy & Ethics
In what's become an eagerly anticipated tradition, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warns us that we're all moments away from annihilation. The international media uncritically reports this nonsense, even though the Doomsday Clock has been around since 1947. Yet we're still here. Guess there's something wrong with the clock.
Dangerous fentanyl is now part of the emotionally-charged, lethal injection controversy. This has erupted because Nevada wants to combine it with Valium to execute a twice-convicted murderer. Opinions abound. See who's right and who is wrong.
Government is transparent. That is, if you can cut your way through the jungle of bureaucracy. Competitive Enterprise Institute discovered that radical environmental groups are paying the salaries and expenses of staffers in the office of Washington State Governor, Jay Inslee.
It is immoral and reckless to leave drugs within the reach of children. That five kids were poisoned makes grandpa, who had a medical marijuana prescription, an irresponsible pothead.
There are those who believe that Ph.D's are still useful. Others might agree -- but with this gigantic caveat: It's only useful to those who are 100% certain that a life at the research bench is what they want to do.
If the poor are really at risk because hospitals will be shut down due to lack of funding, the worst thing that the Empire State can do is add costs to health care. But that's exactly what Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently did with his budget proposal.
Why would Canada spend $512 million on blood products from the United States when it has perfectly good sources of their own? The short answer is regulation of market forces, but there's more to it than that.
Seeking to contain runaway costs with more than a quarter of Kentucky residents on Medicaid, Gov. Matt Bevin is proposing that able-bodied adults be required to work or volunteer in order to receive benefits. His plan, the first of its kind among the 50 states, has attracted considerable criticism. Yet while it has its flaws, there's also a case to be made that it's worth considering.
The New York Times recently surveyed readers to ask them about its coverage of the national opioid epidemic. Lots of boxes to check and pre-fab questions to sift through. Instead, we used one sentence from a Times article to point out what's wrong. And the answer is ... plenty.
Eugenics has been science’s toxic brand since the end of World War II. The point was driven home yet again recently when Toby Young, appointee to the UK’s newly established Office of Students, was denounced in the House of Commons for having written favorably of “progressive eugenics”. Young resigned from the post the following day amid complaints about a series of other tweets and comments made in the past.
Before conducting any clinical trial – which is a nice way of saying "human medical experiment" – doctors and scientists first have to demonstrate that there's sufficient biomedical evidence to justify doing it. But a new study suggests that more than half of clinical trials don't meet this essential standard.