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Critical Thinking

What the “Big Pharma” Accusation Gets Right (and Wrong) About the Drug Industry

26 May 2023

Grievances against the pharmaceutical industry are common in new media spaces. Influencers on Instagram tell us to shun drugs and embrace the “natural.” Diatribes are shared on Facebook against the...

Looping in to Chat GPT

24 May 2023

Like so many, I have been experimenting with Chat GPT, the artificial intelligence technology that can answer questions or produce articles on a given topic in humanlike conversational language. In...

Don’t Believe Everything You Hear, Especially when it Comes to Magical Solutions for Hearing Loss

19 May 2023

In the first 20 minutes of the movie Sound of Metal, the audience watches a young musician lose his hearing. As the background buzz of car motors, conversation, and birdsong fades to silence, we...

Saffron for Teenage Moodiness? The Evidence Is Immature

19 May 2023

“Clinically proven” is a very malleable term. What exactly does it mean for an intervention to have been clinically proven to work? In the world of dietary supplements, the veracity of this phrase...

Jumping the Gun?

17 May 2023

Ready, Set, Go…. for Ozempic. That’s what the incessant television ads suggest. “Ask your doctor about Ozempic,” the ads advise, without mentioning what the drug is for. The marketer’s hope is that...

Chlorophyll Water Won’t Clear Your Skin

12 May 2023

Our social media feeds are filled with buzzwords like anti-inflammatory, detoxifying, or antimicrobial. Chlorophyll water is no exception. There are countless social media posts claiming that...

Another TikTok Trend Not Based on Science: Vabbing

10 May 2023

Vabbing, as the name perhaps suggests, involves the dabbing of vaginal secretions onto so-called pulse points of the body—wrists, neck, inside the elbows—just as you would a fragrance.

Are lactation cookies just cookies?

28 Apr 2023

Wishful thinking can sometimes trump science. With “breast is best” echoing in their heads, and too few hours of sleep, new mothers may latch onto some seductive propositions about boosting their...

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