Category: Basic Science
Serologies
“You keep using those words: positive serology. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Improving how the NIH decides which grants to fund: Reality vs. conspiracy
Last week, the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a plan to decrease the problem of reputational bias in grant funding. I couldn't help but contrast how hard the NIH tries to use the most rigorous scientific criteria to decide whose grants to fund with the conspiracy theory that Anthony Fauci personally doles out NIH dollars like a mob boss...
How the “Don’t take this medication with grapefruit juice” warning originated
How a chance discovery by one scientist improved the safety of consumers worldwide.
The rise and fall of the lab leak hypothesis for the origin of SARS-CoV-2
Two new studies were published last week that strongly support a natural zoonotic origin for COVID-19 centered at the wet market in Wuhan, China. Naturally, lab leak proponents soberly considered this new evidence and thought about changing their minds. Just kidding! They doubled down on the conspiracy mongering, because of course they did.
COVID-19 puts the spotlight on an unexpected racial disparity in health care
Evidence increasingly suggests that pulse oximeters, the little finger clips that measure blood oxygen, overestimate the blood oxygenation in Black patients. It's a problem that's been discussed a long time that took a pandemic to bring to public consciousness. How can SBM decrease or eliminate such healthcare disparities?
The Science of Biological Sex
What does the science actually say about biological sex?
100% Cure Rate Is Hard to Believe
An experimental cancer drug made 100% of rectal cancers disappear in a small trial, allowing subjects to avoid the standard treatment of chemotherapy and surgery . “Some scientists say these kinds of results have never been seen in the history of cancer research.” 100% is hard to believe; the 95% confidence interval was 74 to 100. Whatever the true percentage, if this...
Do Covid-19 Vaccines Affect Fertility?
Fears of future infertility are keeping some parents from vaccinating their children for COVID-19. These fears are not supported by any evidence.
It rises again! Bleach as an “early treatment” alternative to vaccines and a cure for COVID-19
Bleach...it had to be...bleach. Again. This time around, it's being used to treat COVID-19, because of course it is. MMS is a slasher quackery. No matter how often it appears to have died, it always returns for another installment in its quackery franchise.
A Pox on All Our Houses
‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Monkeypox. What’s Monkeypox? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call an orthopoxvirus By any other name would sicken as much; So Monkeypox would, were...