Academia and the new dark age: Part 9 – The doctor will propagandise you about climate change now
3 June 2024 I know I’m frequently critical of medical doctors in my articles, but even I am starting to feel sorry for them. I mean, there they were, going about their business, believing that the practice of medicine was all about diagnosing and treating disease. And now they’re expected to be agents of the…
Academia and the new dark age: Part 8 – Why the “misinformation experts” won’t, and can’t, stop spreading misinformation
27 May 2024 Last week’s post, The doctor will propagandise you about vaccines now, generated some very lively discussion in the Substack comments section. Here’s one that summed up the general sentiment: Well, Sun in Capricorn, I’m sorry to break it to you but these ridiculous people do not understand – or perhaps more to…
Academia and the new dark age: Part 7 – The doctor will propagandise you about vaccines now.
20 May 2024 There have been many occasions over the last four years, when I wondered if I had somehow fallen through a wormhole and landed in a Monty Python film. (I challenge you to watch the “I want to be a woman – it’s my right as a man” scene from The Life of…
Guess who just turned 30?
Highlights from the AVN’s 30th birthday party 13 May 2024 Gratitude practices have become quite a ‘thing’ in the last few years, ever since positive psychology researchers discovered that one of the key behaviours that increases life satisfaction is frequently feeling grateful for one’s blessings. But there are some times when you don’t have to…
Ending the ‘trans’ insanity… with AI?
6 May 2024 Many people hold grave concerns about the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) is already having on virtually every facet of our lives… and even our deaths. Just to scrape the very tip of this giant iceberg: But, on the bright side, researchers at Stanford University have come up with a pretty cool…
Subclinical hypothyroidism
A sadly neglected cause of avoidable suffering, or an overtreated fad diagnosis? 29 April 2024 As I mentioned in last week’s post on iodine, I was prompted to delve into this topic by a comment made by Dr Jessica Funk, author of the Unpacking Truth Substack: It turns out that Jessica is far from being…
Goldilocks and the iodine bears
22 April 2024 In my February Open Thread for paid Substack subscribers, dentist extraordinaire Dr Jessica Funk, whose Unpacking Truth Substack is one you really should be subscribing to, asked me to investigate whether hypothyroidism is being overdiagnosed and overtreated. It’s a great question, and I will be answering it in my next post. To…
The case of the disappearing alcohol-mortality J-shaped curve
Bad news on booze 15 April 2024 Australians love to drink. Not quite as much as the Lithuanians, Czechs or Ugandans… … but we do have a higher proportion of adults who have drunk an alcoholic beverage in the last 12 months than any country in the world bar (oddly enough) Vietnam: … and we…
Which foods boost GLP-1?
8 April 2024 Back in Part 1 of this mini-series on GLP-1 agonists, I explained that these drugs are incretin mimetics. That is, they mimic the effects of biochemicals – including glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) – that potentiate the release of insulin after meals. You might also remember that GLP-1 has a half-life of less…
GLP-1 agonist weight loss drugs: Leaning the ladder against the wrong wall
1 April 2024 In his best-selling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey cautioned against a common trap: “work[ing] harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall.” In other words, one should spend some time clarifying what “success” means, before one invests…