We all have to die. Those of us who process that reality ahead of time might be lucky enough to have a small say over the time and location of our unavoidable demise. And in the process, we may help society as a whole come to terms with death. That is why we applaud the increase in deaths that are occurring at hospices.
Policy & Ethics
In the science community, when dealing with people who are either evangelists in a war they know little about or are simply anti-science, this is known as "moving the goalposts." Basically, you just keep changing your argument every time the old one is shown to be invalid. That is what Greg Glassman, CEO of CrossFit, is doing.
For this issue, why should an economist lead? Why not a health economist? The answer: Many of the urgent problems are economic, so we need an economist, especially one versed in macro-economic issues and the world economy. To stop the global rise of drug-resistant infections, there's a supply-and-demand problem that needs to be fixed.
A proposed resolution by the New York State PTA, to be voted on at their November convention, supports mandatory labeling and a GMO ban from school food. The resolution, which is shocking coming from an organization that, is packed full of pseudoscientific thinking and anti-biotechnology propaganda.
Showing up to work at all costs is very much the American way. Called "presenteeism" — the opposite of absenteeism — is when workers come to their place of business instead of recovering from whatever ails them. This behavior, which accounts for 75 percent of productivity loss, also racks up a number of health issues: fatigue, depression, sleep disorders, and anxiety.
Enjoy the first installment of a new series entitled The Shackling of the Physician, about inane and laborious diagnostic coding excesses. Bitten by orca? Opera house as place of occurrence of external cause? Pecked by chicken? You have to be kidding ... Can anyone say #physicianburnout?
Perhaps more so than in any election in recent memory, the two major party presidential candidates have shown a shocking willingness to abandon the truth at a moment's notice. Twitter was ablaze after it was announced that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump answered the questions posed by Science Debate 2016. But considering their inconsistencies, how seriously should we take their answers?
Perhaps the most problematic classification system in the scientific community is that of the impact factor, which attempts to rank journals by their relative importance. This factor for a particular journal is equal to the average number of times an article in the journal is cited in a given year. While this sounds useful, in practice, it has been a slow-motion train wreck.
The "follow the money" argument is an intellectually lazy fallacy. However, if you really do think that money will change our minds, then write us a check.
In 1960, a Boeing mechanic was told he had renal failure – a death sentence. But he was started on an experimental technique – dialysis – which extended his life for 11 years and made him Patient Zero in this revolutionary area in health care. Today, Medicare spends more than $10 billion on dialysis, medications and laboratory testing for some 370,000 patients.
1. In America, we have the luxury of plentiful, affordable energy and full bellies - and so we have groups who are raising a billion dollars a year criticizing modern science and technology. Most media outlets just play along but UPI recently took a critical look at one topic; the claims of health effects related to modern natural gas extraction.
It's a topic we've look at with interest, but there's just nothing there, as UPI notes. Read more in Studies blaming ailments on Pennsylvania fracking are flawed
Researchers in Pittsburgh studying the effectiveness of email say that the electronic process is rife with miscommunication, exchanges between parties often have a difficult time conveying feelings properly, and most interestingly that emails among friends are no more effective than those between total strangers.