I'm disgusted by the hyperbole but relieved the story is a lie.

No, dire wolves haven't been brought back from extinction, and I don't believe any species should be, at least for now.

We are careless and irresponsible and restoring extinct species will have negative unintended consequences that outweigh all possible positive consequences.

#link: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2475407-no-the-dire-wolf-has-not-been-brought-back-from-extinction/

#BadScience
Beware researchers in nutrition clinging to their prejudices and not reading all the research.
Years ago tests on rodents showed that if fed a high carb/low fat they were Ok, fed high fat/low carb ditto.
But fed both high carb and high fat, and highly processed food, their cholesterol did rise.
Now we have lots of good research in this area but many only read the research that supports their views.
I read widely and decided low carb was the best option. Plus more fat in my diet but not highly processed fats.
One of my GPs was horrified when I went low carb to get my T2 diabetes into remission, especially as the same blood tests showed my total cholesterol was slightly high and my triglycerides too high.
A few weeks later I was starting my almost 6 years in remission (so far) and my cholesterol was fine.
In the past years my total cholesterol is slightly above the recommended amount but the so-called bad cholesterol is low and my ratios are good.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/mar/23/truth-cholesterol-12-things-you-need-to-know-eggs-weight-statins

"Now that he has been confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to put his frightening ideas about public health into action." #rfkJr #hhs #badScience #fascism #trump #publicHealth

https://newrepublic.com/post/191671/rfk-jr-targets-hhs-speech

The only 'Blue Monday' article you'll ever need

https://theneuroscienceofeverydaylife.substack.com/p/the-only-blue-monday-article-youll

It's #BlueMonday again. And this is all you'll ever need to read to know the 'truth' about it

Which is that it's a ridiculous marketing stunt that got way out of hand and impacted me more than most people

RETRACTED: #Hydroxychloroquine and #azithromycin as a treatment of #COVID19

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300996

Why does the principal author (who still claims the research is valid) look so familiar?

Coincidence of course.

What Smartphones are doing to kids' mental health is NOT terrifying (no matter what a child psychiatrist says)

https://theneuroscienceofeverydaylife.substack.com/p/what-smartphones-are-doing-to-kids

My response to the Guardian's latest 'Phones are destroying the children!!' article. As ever, it's... problematic

" “You look at these papers, and it’s still very hard to pin down what the definition [of ultra-processed] really is,” Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard, told me. It’s a concept prone to illogical free association, lumping together Cheetos with ultra-healthy fermented beans."

#food #ultra_processed #badscience #jumpingonbandwagons

The science of “ultra-processed” foods is misleading | Vox https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/391795/ultra-processed-foods-science-vegan-meat-rfk-maha?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

You’re being lied to about “ultra-processed” foods.

“Vegan fake meats linked to heart disease, early death,” the New York Post declared.

There was just one problem: The narrative was totally fake.

Plant-based meats were virtually absent from the study: Just 0.2 percent of calories across the sample came from meat alternatives. People were eating cookies and cake.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/391795/ultra-processed-foods-science-vegan-meat-rfk-maha

Causalingofication - describing an association as if it is causal, without a research design allowing for causal inference.
https://detectingbadscience.wordpress.com/2024/12/16/causalingofication/
Correlation is not causation. Yet research reports often make causal claims, even when the research design does not allow for them. Researchers regularly describe the results of a regression as if the correlates have “effects” on the outcome.
#badscience #betterscience #causality #causalinference #credibility #experiment #regression

Not everything works right away... With great enthusiasm I had developed materials for a Winter School "Detecting Bad Science" https://detectingbadscience.wordpress.com/
Despite the encouragements of many of you here, the number of enrolments in the course remained below the minimum break-even point. So I won't be teaching the course in January.
But...[1/2]
#betterscience #badscience #peerreview #research #openeducation #openscience

Watched an episode of Graham Hancock's "Ancient Apocalypse", and can I just say:

#archaeology #bogus #badscience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrWoG8IckyE

We've seen what ⁨#EBM⁩ ⁨#EvidenceBasedMedicine⁩ produces;
on #Masking with #TomJefferson⁩ assisted by #Cochrane,
the decades of infectious respiratory disease research that poo-hooed #AirborneTransmission, and,
the RWNJ #CassReport⁩ on care for transgender kids.

Lots of bad stuff resulting from fetishising ⁨#RandomControlledTrials⁩ ⁨#RCTs⁩ as the only research that can be relied on.

Will we hear from Trumpists that there's no RCTs that support action on #ClimateChange?

Using a mouse model, 10 children and asking their parents to guess whether the children felt pain.

"...the American Psychiatric Association has updated the diagnostic criteria for ASD to include hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input, with “apparent indifference to pain and temperature” as a symptom of ASD", the team at http://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39497100/ write"

Deeply deeply messed up.

Creating exam questions for intro stats, and defaulting, as I sometimes do, to IQ score examples because they're easy to think through (for me). Remembering several years ago a student asking me, with clear anxiety, whether they were "smart enough" for college based on their IQ score. As we talked it became clear they felt guilt and shame about their full-scale IQ score (they apparently got assessed in high school).

IMO the problems with IQ aren't psychometric (the Wechsler tests are extremely good tests, psychometrically speaking); they are cultural. We bundle some heavy stuff with "intelligence," like self-worth, value to others, and I even think I hear hints of morality judgments, sometimes. cognitive abilities don't work that way, but good luck convincing 300 million people. As a teacher one of the little threads of my teaching is helping students question the meaning of intelligence, not just IQ scores (the question of whether/how much those measure intelligence, and how to even define intelligence is a huge can of worms).

Your intelligence has nothing to do with your worth or goodness. It's been deeply disheartening to see the standard right-wing, white-supremacist, misogynist bad actors (incompetently) using IQ research to try to support their racist, misogynist, anti-LGBTQ rants.

As the cold war ended I really thought we were putting this behind us.