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Gideon M-K

gidmkhealthnerd
threads.net
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Epidemiologist. Scientific fact-checker, and all-around pedant. "scientific trouble-maker". Writer (, TIME, Guardian, etc). MPH, PhD. He/him
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There've been a lot of stories recently about how IUDs might be giving people breast cancer.I wrote about why the epidemiology is very unconvincing, and why the possible increased risk of breast cancer is probably outweighed by the decreased risk of other gynaecological cancers, something the headlines completely failed to mention.Featuring the excellent analysis of the same study by gidmk.substack.com/p/are…
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Yeh, I got this when I tried to get verified on Threads using TIME, NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, Guardian, and Slate. Apparently I am not interesting enough to qualify.
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It is to our enormous discredit as a society that pop science books - whether it be The Tipping Point or The Anxious Generation - have such a huge impact.These are stories. They tend to be wrong in very important ways. It's incredibly rare that you come across a pop science book that's accurately representing reality in a useful way, and most of the really popular ones are very far off.
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Disagree. Gladwell took 25 years to correct something that was never supported by evidence but which nevertheless had a huge impact on people's lives.Accountability isn't saying "I thought I was right at the time but the evidence has changed my mind" when the evidence 25 YEARS AGO DID NOT SUPPORT HIS BELIEFS.He is also STILL SAYING THINGS THAT ARE NOT TRUE. IN HIS APOLOGY TALK.
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Real accountability would be taking the book off the shelves, and donating a large portion of the money he has made from it to legal efforts to free some of the people that he was indirectly responsible for putting in prison.
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It's nearly a decade old, but this piece on diet culture by Dr. James Heathers remains one of the best things I've ever read on the topic.jamesheathers.medium.com/i-thi…
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The narrative of alternative medicine being holistic, in contrast to conventional care which is somehow not, is so ridiculous.Yes, doctors don't always spend enough time with patients. That's a feature of the ridiculous fee-for-service medical system in many countries.However, they do a decade of learning so that they can understand exactly what causes and influences ill health. How many Reiki masters can tell you about the Krebs cycle?
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HAHAHAHA. According to their website, the organisation that gave Bhattacharya an award has 48 members, of whom 22 are award winners and 10 are the board.Imagine calling this a "top award". The lack of any intellectual honesty is remarkable.
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Of the scientific articles I've read this year, this is definitely the, uh, most about butts.Plastic surgeons got 67 people to view photos of butts and measured where they were looking with eye-tracking:"Independent of gender or ethnicity, the intergluteal cleft was observed for the longest time with 0.87 ± 0.97 s and the diamond zone for the shortest time with 0.06 ± 0.19 s"
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This can be roughly translated into "when people look at butts of women wearing skimpy underwear, they mostly look at the centre of the butt."The authors claim that this has important implications for plastic surgery. I am not so sure that's true, but I guess I'm not a plastic surgeon who works on butts so I wouldn't know.
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Halloween is upon us, so I'd like to remind all the parents out there that there's not a shred of evidence behind the claims that people put drugs in Halloween candy.There has literally never been a confirmed case of it happening.gidmk.medium.com/no-on…
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Whenever ignorant anti-vaccine activists bring up the old canard "Well you CAN'T SUE VACCINE MANUFACTURERS" I like to point out that most countries in the world don't have this system and you can indeed sue manufacturers where I live.It's actually terrible for patients, because proving that a vaccine caused an individual harm in court is all but impossible.
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People seem to think that you can just turn up at court feeling sick and pharmaceutical companies will hand you money, but in fact you have to prove to a judge and/or jury that none of the 100 things that can cause whatever issue you're claiming was caused by the vaccine did in this case. In the US, this sort of case sometimes did go in the patient's favour, but in Australia from my understanding it literally never has despite many cases attempting it.
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I think what's interesting here is that the researcher has identified a real issue - electronic waste probably shouldn't be recycled into goods used in cooking or toys - but the alarmism is ridiculous. Based on a worst-case scenario, you may be getting nanograms (billionths of a gram) of bromine or lead from your spatula, which is lower than the amount that you get from eating fresh fruit.
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I think the Make America Healthy Again idea is very simply two main themes:1. Unmitigated ignorance about every aspect of health and regulation. These people do no appear to know what the agencies they hate actually *do*. 2. Pseudoscientific bullshit. The fact that this movement is being pushed politically just goes to show how divorced from objective reality the American right-wing has become.motherjones.com/polit…
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The fact that RFK Jr. is saying that the CDC - the CDC! - is suppressing stuff like exercise and dietary advice is bizarrely comedic. The whole thing just appears to be a grab-bag of ignorant whining about how the health establishment has generally ignored the weird bullshit that these people spout coupled with the strong libertarian belief that dismantling government functions is always good.
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This is pretty cool, but I'm also still missing some of the most important networks. For example, I still have to go to Bsky to talk to a lot of scientists and academics. Hopefully Threads gets those communities to join in greater numbers soon.
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Seven years since I started, and about a year since it was officially passed, graduated from my PhD today (I'm the bear)
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If anyone's interested in doing a postgraduate degree, I can heartily recommend !
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The people who believe that doctors need to be experts in nutrition also think that every health issue can be solved with diet.They are wrong.
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Spend weeks trying to teach my 14mo a new word: nothingEat fries in front of her one time: "Chippy, chippy, chippy"Ah, parenthood.
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My new piece for on MY FAVOURITE TOPIC EVERIs coffee good for you? Can it prevent Alzheimer's and reverse heart disease?PROBABLY NOT.Is coffee bad for you? Can it give you heart disease or diabetes?PROBABLY NOT.science slate.com/techn…
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Important note - ivermectin is an INCREDIBLY EFFECTIVE DRUG FOR HUMANS.Ivermectin is literally world-changing in that it almost eliminated a group of nasty parasitic infections that prior to the development of ivermectin (and the avermectins) were very hard to treat.It just doesn't work for COVID-19 or other viral infections. But as a treatment for, say, river blindness, ivermectin is spectacular.
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Still can't get over the ivermectin sales promotion here. That is a $325 kit including ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, oseltamivir, and budesonide. The total cost to produce that sort of thing is something around the $10 mark (maybe more like $20 if they're not compounding their own drugs).Sold to you by the COVID-19 denialist company. The pandemic has been incredibly profitable for charlatans!
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I think this is the perfect example of the "both sides" phenomenon. Rogan thrives on controversy and if you don't know anything about the topics in question this can come across as reasonable.For example, HIV denialism. There are no two sides here. HIV causes AIDS, and is treated effectively with antiretrovirals. Rogan invites on one scientist to lay out the facts, and then a swathe of insane denialists who say provably false things, and smiles and nods.
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If you say "that's really interesting" to someone who is stating complete lies such as the idea that we do not have evidence that HIV causes AIDS, you are not open-minded and curious you are a charlatan who promotes falsehoods. Journalists are meant to try and establish truth, not agree with whoever comes on as long as the ratings are good.
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