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The Brain is a Composite Organ
A new study published in Nature Neuroscience shows evidence that our brains are actually two organs combined into one composite organ.
AI Moral Decision-Making
LLM-based AI models are being increasingly used by physicians to assist clinical decision-making. What might their effect on medical moral reasoning be?
Body Integrity Dysphoria – A Rare and Informative Condition
A fifty-year-old man was admitted through the emergency room with extensive dry ice injuries to his left leg. For two days his doctors tried to save the leg, but the damage was too extensive, so eventually they had to perform a below-knee amputation. During this time the patient also suffered from small strokes due to fat emboli from the damaged leg. After...
Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine Six Years On
More than six years after the pandemic arrived and ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were first touted as COVID cures, the evidence shows more than ever that they don't work.
The NFL and Brain Injury
Last week I wrote about traumatic brain injury (TBI). By coincidence, the BMJ just published a study looking at a type of TBI called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is caused by repeated head injuries over a long period of time, even those not severe enough to cause an acute TBI. They were looking specifically at former NFL football players, because that...
Preventing Traumatic Brain Injury
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects tens of millions of people worldwide each year with about 5 million deaths. For those who survive there is often permanent neurological impairment. TBI is therefore a serious public health issue that needs to be addressed. The largest international study of TBI was recently published in Nature Medicine, providing some insight into how best to approach the...
Trump’s Frontal Assault on Vaccines
On Monday, Donald Trump signed an executive order full of antivax goals. It's a frontal assault on vaccines.
AI And Pseudoscience
We have to deal with artificial intelligence (AI). We cannot simply dismiss it or criticize it, and we certainly shouldn’t just embrace it without significant skepticism. But I feel it is necessary for any science communicator to do their best to become AI-literate – even if AI itself is not your field of communication. AI now touches everything. For example, increasingly people...
Negative Health Effects of Vaping
When vaping was first introduced it was marketed mainly as a safer alternative to smoking and as a potential smoking cessation method. But increasingly people who have never smoked are vaping, and now the concern is that vaping is more of a pathway into smoking than one out of it. According to the CDC, about 30% of all adults who vape have...
NYT Article on Rapid Prompting Method
This is one of those stories that will not go away, and a recent NYT article is fresh evidence of that. The title is: An Autism Breakthrough, or an Illusion? The Fight Over Assisted Spelling.” I always approach such articles cautiously, bracing myself for the cringing experience of reading a non-expert butcher such topics in depressingly predictable ways. This article was not...