Part the First. Tales from the Crypt. Subtitled The lives of 17th century Milan’s working poor – their health, diet, and drug habits – emerge from thousands of bodies buried under a public hospital. This article appeared in Science on 1 May 2025: In 1456, the Duke of Milan established a medical institution dedicated to […]
Read more...The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Report has dropped! The original document included phantom (hallucinated?) references, but those have been fixed apparently. Or maybe not. A graduate student who wrote a review with the same defects would get a flat “F”, but this does not seem to matter. Could AI (Algorithmic Intelligence) have had anything […]
Read more...ChatGPT admits to being an inherent bullshitter.
Read more...“Musk’s departure ….does not actually change…. DOGE’s mission to destroy everything that protects the public from….rapacious oligarchs”
Read more...Part the First. Old Experimental Models in Biology Lead to New Knowledge. Developmental Biology began as Embryology. A few of us still kicking remember the transition and miss the holistic approach required to master the material. Early embryological models included sea urchins and salamanders, tadpoles and the chicken. Much useful research was done with these […]
Read more...How an analytical simplification, of omitting lambda, a measure of inconsistency, can serious distort randomized clinical trial results.
Read more...Experts worry MAHA could wage a war on SSRIs. But some researchers have long questioned the drugs’ efficacy.
Read more...Part the First: Gene Editing as a Cure for Genetic Disease. The recent politics of American science has been depressing in the extreme, and last week I promised to cover recent good things in basic and clinical science. I can’t think of anything better than a baby has been treated successfully for a rare, lethal […]
Read more...The use of AI is severely degrading competence in advanced medical/biomedical degree programs in elite universities. Patients be warned.
Read more...Another line of thought on why consumption of ultra-processed foods is correlated with poor health outcomes.
Read more...A new archeology is being developed based on evidence of human activity in the Earth’s sedimentary record, and archeologists are helping to define the Anthropocene as a new stage in the geological record.
Read more...Part the First: Retrospective Notes on a Pandemic. BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal, has recently published two interesting pieces on COVID-19. The first is an analysis by Anthony Costello, who was previously Director of Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health at the World Heath Organization: UK decision not to suppress covid raises questions […]
Read more...To avoid bias, should scientists direct evidence collection from a crime scene? Or should they stay removed from it?
Read more...Part the First. A Few Words in Response to the Excellent Commentariat of Naked Capitalism. No one knows better than I that funding of science in the United States is hit or miss. My overall average flirts with the Mendoza Line, which is not so bad. For most I do not miss the grant treadmill/lottery, […]
Read more...Some raised eyebrows over a Trump Administration big spend for a possible flu vaccine.
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