Facts rarely get in the way of a good story. There is a foundational myth in placebo research that has been repeated over and over again, sometimes with inexplicable flourishes, often with the...
Pfizer and BioNTech’s RNA vaccine against COVID-19 has just been authorized by Health Canada. There will be many Internet whispers, half-truths and lies about how it works and how safe it is, so...
The U.S. is abuzz with chatter about Oprah for President. She makes a thoughtful, rousing, captivating speech at the Golden Globe Awards and people are ready to usher her into the Oval Office. But...
“Laughter is the best medicine!” That’s an old adage, maybe even dating back to the biblical era. The book of Proverbs in the Old Testament proposes that “a merry heart doeth good like a medicine:...
When John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost that the mind can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven, without realizing it, he was talking about the “placebo” and the “nocebo” effect. “Placebo”...
Sometimes beliefs are converted into fact just by repetition. We constantly hear of people who want to avoid monosodium glutamate because of a fear of being struck by “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”...
Study after study has shown that vitamin supplements do not offer any benefits over a well-balanced diet. In certain cases they may even be detrimental to health. In 1994, the National Cancer...
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