There isn’t a week that goes by where someone doesn’t call me a “Pharma Shill.” They claim that I must be getting paid by “Big Pharma” because I dare say that vaccines say lives and counter the claims of antivaxxers on social media. (“Claims” is a gentler way of saying “outright lies.”) As of the writing of this blog post, I…
My wife and I went to a cupcake store and were a little surprised when we saw a sign for “Keto Cups.” The “keto” or “ketogenic” diet is the latest diet fad that’s actually been around since the days of the Atkins Diet. The idea is to deprive the body of simple carbohydrates, like refined sugar or even fructose (the…
I’m sensing that the general mood of my friends on the Left is much like when the sentient cheese product* was elected back in 2016. They’re in a bit of a panic. The confirmation of Brett “Hold My Beer While I Grope Her”** Kavanaugh has made them really scared of the very real possibility of things regressing when it comes…
When they tell you that vaccines don’t work, do some math.
Face it. You didn’t know how to use Facebook when you first used Facebook. In fact, I’m willing to bet that you don’t know how to use Facebook right now. You thought that it would be a great place to keep in touch with friends and family, and that you’d love having that constant stream of information flowing your way…
I don’t know how I get myself into these arguments with people, but I seem to do it all the time. I just gently walk up to them and say something — anything — and I end up being swallowed into a discussion about politics, science or religion. It’s like sneaking up to an alligator and expecting the outcome to…
I’ll start off by saying that I like Dan Rodricks. He’s an okay guy. He may be a little hard to follow on some of his arguments, but he generally means well. So I was a little bit surprised to read his latest opinion piece for The Baltimore Sun. In it, he tells us the story of a British academic from…
“How many African American women were killed by firearm in the Cherry Hill Community Statistical Area of Baltimore in 2016?” None. I was able to answer this question for you quickly because I have a dataset on homicides in Baltimore between 2005 and 2017. The dataset is the result of data from 2005 to 2016 collected by The Baltimore Sun and…
When dealing with screening tests that are susceptible to giving false positives and false negatives, you need to take into account a number of different things. Most importantly, you need to put your findings into context.
The story goes that my mom and dad couldn’t make it back to El Paso in time for my birth, so they went to a birthing clinic in Juarez to deliver me. Mom’s labor was long and painful, as those things tend to be. By around 8am on a cold and snowy Sunday morning, I was born. And then the…
