Author Archives: KLG

Coffee Break: CDC – Vaccines – Autism, Oh, My!; Wellness; Prioritized Science; Very Ancient Art; and MAGA

Part the First: CDC Finally “Decides” that Vaccines Cause Autism.  In news that will surprise absolute nobody, while pleasing some and causing despair in others, CDC says the mountains of data that show vaccines do NOT cause autism is not evidence-based: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday publicly reversed its stance that […]

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The Making of the MAGA Right

As the old baseball saying goes, sometimes “You can’t tell the players without a scorecard.”  This became especially true since Curt Flood opened the floodgates to free agency more than fifty years ago when he refused to be treated as disposable property by the owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, one August A. Busch, Jr.  […]

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Coffee Break: Unstable Climate-Unstable Economy, Gambling and the Decline of Sport, the Last of the Great Men of Molecular Biology, and SNAP

Part the First: Financial Stability and Climate Instability.  Or, could a climate-related shock trigger a recession?  This is a question that could be asked only by an economist, or two, as in Advancing research on financial stability and climate-related financial risk, an editorial last week in Science: Climate change–related natural disasters such as floods, fires, […]

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Coffee Break: Wither Sport, Unwellness, Chimpanzee Metacognition, The Sokal Hoax, and a Political Temblor

Part the First: Wither Sport in This Modern World? The World Series ended last week with two games for the ages.  These were the only MLB baseball games I watched all season, and as a baseball man of the old school, I picked well.  Both games between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue […]

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The Primary Care Puzzle: Can It Be Solved?

Lisa Rosenbaum, MD, is a national correspondent for the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).  She has just published Is a Long-Simmering Crisis Boiling Over? U.S. Primary Care Today.  The easy, and current, answer is “Yes.”  But this is not necessarily the final answer.  Dr. Rosenbaum begins with the description of the career arc of […]

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Coffee Break: Political Grownups, Bending Time, CDC at Sea, Snakebites, and AI Again

Part the First: Where Have All the Grownups Gone?  Corey Robin is always worth reading (the first edition of The Reactionary Mind is much better than the second), and lately he has been more active publicly, here asking about the grownups: For a long time now, I’ve thought that you’re never really a grownup until […]

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How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System

Upon reading this collection of essays (the title of this post) from Wolfgang Streeck and then contemplating our current world, The Second Coming of William Butler Yeats comes to mind: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon […]

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Coffee Break: Casey Means MD and MAHA, Health Insurance, Coffee Scat, and Big Brother at the Home of the Free Speech Movement

Part the First: Casey Means MD Is Still Awaiting Her Closeup.  We discussed the Surgeon General in waiting some time ago in a review of her book, Good Energy.  Her confirmation hearing in the US Senate is apparently still in the works.  Dr. David Gorski has an update at SBM, Surgeon General nominee Dr. Casey […]

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Whither Food in the Twenty-First Century?

Our so-called “food system” is a complete mess, one that must be set to rights if the people are to have a chance of thriving in the coming years, which are likely to be stressful because of other messes.  This dire situation has been described in Food Fight: From Plunder and Profit to People and […]

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Coffee Break: Politics and Science and Politics, a Coral Catastrophe, Mamdani, and the New ICE Age

Part the First: Politics and Science.  It will be s surprise to no one that autism is somewhere nearby: Inside FDA, career staffers describe how political pressure is influencing their work.  The inquiry came in August and struck scientists at the Food and Drug Administration as highly unusual.  The leader of the center that regulates […]

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Coffee Break: Genes and Disease, Workslop Passing for Science, Nobel News, a Labor Party in the US, and Our Sick Politics

This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 1425 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, PayPal, Clover, or Wise. Read about why we’re doing this fundraiser, what […]

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The Illnesses of Basic Biomedical Science, Continued: Scientific Publishing

This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 1189 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, PayPal, Clover, or Wise. Read about why we’re doing this […]

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Coffee Break: Vaccines Continued, Ancient Art, Renewables, Ignis Fatuus Explained, Good Sleep, and Jane Goodall

This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 752 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, PayPal, Clover, or Wise. Read about why we’re doing this […]

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Coffee Break: Autism, Universities, Gene Therapy for HD That Works, More Anti-Vax Nonsense, and Making America Greater, or Not.

This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 139 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, PayPal. Clover, or Wise. Read about why we’re doing this […]

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Politics, Government, and Science During Pandemic Times

When asked in early 2000 how long I thought COVID-19 would last, I answered three years.  Alas, it has now been nearly six years since a frightening respiratory disease was first noticed in Hubei Province centered in Wuhan.  Retrospective analyses indicate the virus was already circulating in other parts of the world.  It soon became […]

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