Applying basic common sense to ridiculous claims — It’s Halloween, and the internet is once again abuzz with candy-related discussion. People are hotly debating whether sugar is killing children, or what the best method is to keep sex offenders away from your kids. And amid this lively debate, the perennial topic of the holiday has once again reared…

It may come as a surprise that for some countries, Covid-19 statistics may be entirely made up — Throughout the pandemic, there’s been a lot of debate and discussion about different countries’ reported Covid-19 statistics. Whether it’s explaining the difference in deaths between France and, say, Lithuania, or why Peru has a higher death count than other Latin American nations, or even just comparing places like the US…

Why you probably don’t need to worry about hair straighteners and uterine cancer — As a bald man, it is hard to wax lyrical about the wonders of chemical hair straighteners. While I once had a ponytail, in the days before male-pattern baldness made my dome shiny, I have long since lapsed into a general disinterest in hair products generally. That being said, a…

The complex answer to an important question — Since the start of the pandemic, there have been innumerable important questions. Epidemiologists briefly became, if not celebrities, then at least familiar faces that you occasionally saw on TV — thankfully, we’ve now mostly retreated behind the closed doors to our lovely spreadsheets — simply because we were the ones…

Why taking everything with a grain of salt is often a good idea — There’s a big issue that’s been bothering me all pandemic. It’s present in almost every scientific discussion we have, it’s important for every fact or factoid that you hear on TV or see online, and yet we almost never talk about it in a meaningful way. People sometimes allude to…

A very chilly question with important implications — Cold water exposure or immersion is an increasingly-popular health fad whereby people shuck the bonds of comfort and descend into the murky, freezing cold depths to improve their wellbeing. It usually involves finding the closest body of extremely cold water and spending at least 10–15 minutes bathing in it while…

The complex answer to a seemingly simple question — It’s 2022, nearly three years since the first cases of an unknown coronavirus were detected in Wuhan, China, and there’s a question on everyone’s mind: is the pandemic over? If not, when will it be done for good? The question seems simple enough. It is anything but.

Why you don’t need to chug down boiled plant leaves to stave off mortality — There’s something wonderful about drinking a cup of tea. Whether it’s the first cup of the day, a short but pleasant break in between other tasks, or hours shared between friends with pot after pot, tea has something almost magical about it that humanity has enjoyed for millennia. And, according…

Why the health benefits of standing up at work might be a bit oversold — The idea behind standing desks in the workplace as a health intervention is fairly simple — we know that a sedentary lifestyle, with lots of sitting, is bad for us. That’s been demonstrated over and over again in dozens if not hundreds of studies at this point. …