The Dr. Skeptic blog lists 100 factoids about medicine, each drawn from medical reports — one factoid for each percentage in the range 1% to 100%, with a link to the source of that factoid. Here, below, are some items plucked from the entire list: 1% of population account for 1/5 of healthcare spending. 2% prevalence of […]
Tag: health
Coffee Goodness/Badness Question Re-Settled Again
The question “Is coffee good or bad for your health” just got settled once and for all again, with a new answer that contradicts many previous studies, again. A new study presents a conclusion that answers everything, or nothing, or both: “Association of Coffee Drinking with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality,” Neal D. Freedman, Ph.D. [pictured […]
Professorial arm wrestling in Zurich
If, at the age of 54, you can still arm-wrestle (and win) against a 23 year old ‘superb athlete with impressive strength and stamina’, you’re doing pretty well. And Professor Didier Sornette Professor on [sic] the Chair of Entrepreneurial Risks, Department of Management, Technology and Economics (D-MTEC), ETH Zurich, Switzerland, can perform just such a […]
A Measured Look at Schoolroom Chalk Dust
At long last, after millions of students in thousands of classrooms have freely and incautiously breathed trillions of breaths, there’s a report about the question: How much chalk dust enters the air when a teacher uses a blackboard? The study, Assessment of Airborne Fine Particulate Matter and Particle Size Distribution in Settled Chalk Dust During Writing and Dusting […]
He preferred to eat his cookie (adios, Duckett)
The Age [in Australia] reports about the cookie-munching that took down [former Australian official, who then moved to Canada] Alberta Health Services President and Chief Executive Officer Stephen Duckett: “The senior health administrator appointed to advise the Victorian government on how to dismantle the state’s healthcare networks in 1999 has lost a high-paying job in […]
HEALTH LESSON: Smoking marijuana
[Yet another tool for teachers.] Some students believe that health lessons are necessarily dull. But try this one. The New York Times reports: Young adults who started using the drug regularly in their early teens performed significantly worse on cognitive tests assessing brain function than did subjects who were at least 16 when they started […]
Telegraph: BBQ sauce good for health!
The London Telegraph cautiously interprets a possibly new research study, presenting the happy headlines: Barbecue sauces ‘are good for your health’ Barbecue sauces can be good for your health, scientists have found. (Thanks to investigator Ron Josephson for bringing this to our attention.)