Testosterone beyond Sex

When we think about sex hormones, notably estrogens and androgens, we usually associate them with sex, gender and body development. Like all hormones, they are chemical messengers, substances produced in one part of the body

Cancer, processed meat, red meat. Just how bad? Not very.

NO MORE BALONEY The remarkable thing about the latest World Health Organization declaration–that processed meats are definitely carcinogenic and red meat probably is too–is how many media folks responded by trying to save our bacon.

Breast cancer: Should DCIS be treated? Pig genome: messy and quite boaring

SHOULD DCIS BE TREATED LIKE BREAST CANCER? No one seems to know exactly what to make of the big study on the outcomes of DCIS. (DCIS = ductal carcinoma in situ, often called stage 0 breast cancer or precancer, which … Continue reading »

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Down with time changes plus the NY Times hearty series on cardio developments

WAIT A SECOND It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, the time being 1972, a time before computers ran the world. That’s when it was decided that a way must be invented to keep precision atomic … Continue reading »

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Obamacare lives and Kennewick Man is a Native American

WHEW! The Affordable Care Act (aka ACA, aka Obamacare) subsidies to help people buy health insurance got saved by the US Supreme Court after all, with the somewhat unexpected help (unexpected by me, anyway) of Chief Justice John Roberts. Here’s … Continue reading »

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More fallout from the retracted gay marriage paper; social sciences under fire

For the third time here at On Science Blogs, fallout from the fraudulent Science paper about the ease of changing opposition to gay marriage. The commentary now has moved on from that particular paper to the shakiness of social science … Continue reading »

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Eat chocolate and lose weight! Plus more on the fraudulent gay marriage paper

Eat chocolate! Lose weight! Lie to everybody! The first response to journalist John Bohannon’s latest sting operation against schlock science journals and schlock science journalists–publishing a paper claiming that a chocolate bar a day helps people lose weight–was a savory … Continue reading »

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[UPDATED] Fraud in Science: the retracted study on attitudes toward gay marriage

[Update added comments from Retraction Watch’s Adam Marcus and comment on Tara Haelle’s post at the health journalism blog Covering Health.] There’s an interesting meta-question growing out of the flap over that Science paper that’s just been retracted.  I speak, … Continue reading »

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Concussion, TBI, human evolution, Neanderthal DNA, blogging news

Concussion, traumatic brain injury, and life’s hard knocks Search “concussion” in the media and you’ll come away thinking hard knocks to the head are chiefly a problem for kids and football players (or kid football players.) Last fall the blog … Continue reading »

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Do AA and other 12-step programs work? Does breastfeeding raise IQ?

Do 12-step programs for addiction treatment work? Are 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous effective treatments for addiction? That long-time dispute has just popped up again, prompted mostly by an Atlantic article with the click-worthy title “The Irrationality … Continue reading »

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