Illusions and Myths
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Science-Based Medicine » Boost Your Immune System?
This post is a wee bit of a cheat in that it is a rewrite of a Quackcast , but I have three lectures and board certification in the near future, so sometimes you have to cook the wolf.
Cigarettes may be useful for distance runners?!? (or, How to prove anything with a review article) | Obesity Panacea
( Image source ) Last winter the Canadian Medical Association Journal published a fascinating article by Ken Myers discussing the (as-yet unexamined) benefits of cigarette smoking on endurance running performance. Ken is a friend and elite distance runner (we used to literally run with the same crowd while I was doing my undergrad in Calgary) so I was very excited and a bit confused when I saw his article.
Top 10 Myths About The Common Cold
Winter is on its way (to the Northern Hemisphere) and with it comes myths of the common cold.
spiked-health | Column | Myths of immunity
Dr Michael Fitzpatrick is the author of MMR and Autism , Routledge, 2004 (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA) ); and The Tyranny of Health: Doctors and the Regulation of Lifestyle , Routledge, 2000 (buy this book from Amazon UK or Amazon USA ). He is also a contributor to Alternative Medicine: Should We Swallow It?
While better hygiene, hand washing and clean water can protect people against diseases such as influenza and cholera, most viruses spread regardless of how clean we are.
Europe | 10 myths about vaccination
Photo: Andrew Zuckerman To hear his enemies talk, you might think Paul Offit is the most hated man in America. A pediatrician in Philadelphia, he is the coinventor of a rotavirus vaccine that could save tens of thousands of lives every year.
An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All | Magazine
Brian Chapman reports the start of an interesting Olympics 2012 rumor on his Legends & Rumors blog :
The Museum of Hoaxes
Squashed, Why People are Sheep
Why People are Sheep Yesterday morning, I found a dozen or so comments telling me to stop being an entitled socialist whiner, seize life by the ballocks, and twist until my dreams came true. The comments were reasonably articulate, yet remarkably trollish.Why You're Probably Less Popular Than Your Friends: Scientific American
Image: David Malan Getty Images Are your friends more popular than you are?The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why? by Marcia Angell | The New York Review of Books
An advertisement for Prozac, from The American Journal of Psychiatry , 1995 It seems that Americans are in the midst of a raging epidemic of mental illness, at least as judged by the increase in the numbers treated for it. The tally of those who are so disabled by mental disorders that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) increased nearly two and a half times between 1987 and 2007—from one in 184 Americans to one in seventy-six.Our home-page hits reached 1 million on 3/28/00, 2 million on 7/20/01, 3 million on 9/8/02, 4 million on 9/16/03, 5 million on 8/19/04, 6 million on 6/6/05, 7 million on 2/4/06, 8 million on 1/21/07, 9 million on 2/6/08, 10 million on 7/16/09, and 11 million on 12/8/10. Portions of Quackwatch are updated several times a month. Most recent update: February 8, 2012.
Quackwatch
This image is a “balloon race”.
Snake Oil? The scientific evidence for health supplements
Digests: Myths and Misconceptions about Second Language Learning
This Digest is based on a report published by the National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning, University of California, Santa Cruz: "Myths and Misconceptions About Second Language Learning: What Every Teacher Needs to Unlearn," by Barry McLaughlin.as clean as fire
Beautiful piece of music using a Risset rhythm illusion to give the feeling of increasing tempo. by Jul 27