Health Nerd

In my opinion it changes nothing about the assessment. The piece was a 25-year-old opinion piece by three people two of whom are dead. It was well-cited, but didn't actually impact the evidence.

Stupid thing to do, of course, and good to see it retracted.

Our Food System Depends On It. RFK Jr.’s Followers Hate It—and It Has Been Linked to Cancer. I’m an epidemiologist. Here’s what the research says.

My new piece about glyphosate and why it's probably fine for your health unless you're spraying the stuff in which case the data is mixed.

Also, RFK Jr. got attacked by all of his friends and it was very funny to me.

slate.com/technology/2...

While not a defense, I suspect that graph would look very similar if you were to get US data on the same topic.

What a remarkable statement. Both true and chilling.

"It is clear that the sum of US policy choices amount to mortality worse than a COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing, year after year" @gavinyamey.bsky.social

Sadly that seems to be the case.

I am being yelled at on Threads by a "medical astrologer" who believes that epidemiology is all about correlations and that oncological surgeons fund studies showing that pathological BRCA mutations cause cancer in order to drum up more patients.

The only remarkable thing about this is that the journal editors have not yet retracted every one of these papers.

Making up data - even if it is a case report - is an astonishing breach.

Seems, uh, highly implausible.

❤️❤️❤️

Nothing is more fun than deeply irritating the statistical community online.

Laugh at your peril, they will come for you with their slide rulers and pedantry.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
It was statistically significant (p<0.05)
Which means that it's true.

I am the bed of many things

"Coffee is a tea" quintessential Brit well done

Everything is either a false dichotomy or just plain wrong.

Sure, but the moon's gravity is substantially lower than Earth and there has been modelling suggesting that the impact on kidneys and muscle mass is likely similar for long-term stays. Also, travelling to Mars requires a fairly long jaunt in microgravity!

It Seems Like It Would Be Fun to Go to Mars. Well, No One Considers This Part. Elon Musk says his obsession with the red planet is cooling.

Space is very cool and also horrifyingly dangerous and could kill anyone who goes there long term.

My new piece on why I don't think we'll make it to Mars safely in my lifetime

slate.com/technology/2...

It Seems Like It Would Be Fun to Go to Mars. Well, No One Considers This Part. Elon Musk says his obsession with the red planet is cooling.

a fun one by @gidmk.bsky.social! we really do have to make things work here on Earth

slate.com/technology/2...

Shockingly, the scientific evidence still points to a zoonotic origin of SARS-CoV-2.

Having a toddler and a newborn is really improving my ability to eat meals one-handed and standing up.

There's No Such Thing As A Vitamin D Deficiency - Part 4 Why there are probably few if any people who really need to take a vitamin D pill.

My final piece in a 4-part series on vitamin D supplementation.

I think that the evidence as a whole shows quite strongly that vitamin D pills are probably a waste of time for virtually everyone.

Science!

gidmk.substack.com/p/theres-no-...

Gotta say, to me this reads less like a scientific argument and more like a personal belief. Studies being done by experienced epis and getting published in journals is not a comment on how robust the findings are!

... which also happens to be the biggest cohort of the ones studied, and is arguably the most robust piece of epi research on the topic, found no increased risk of any other cancer. Not great imo!

I didn't review that survivalist, but it seems to be to be quite a misleading presentation of the evidence. For example, he cites the AHI analysis as showing an increased risk of AML start the highest doses of glyphosate but doesn't mention that the same study...

2/24/26: Do People Even Know WHAT Foods Have Fiber?; Podcast: How Refrigeration Shaped our Food Choices; Free Vintage Food Posters; Our Favorite Condiment Is....... Because EVERYBODY Eats

Sneak peek at The GROCERY Cart Newsletter...look for mention of @gidmk.bsky.social @tpwky.bsky.social and more
open.substack.com/pub/thegroce...

It's a trick charlatans have been pushing for a long time. Glyphosate *may* cause cancer in the people who spray it, but there's never been any real debate about the minute residues you get in the food we actually eat.

The original statement - that Trump is pushing the "mass poisoning" of American food and people through "chemical warfare" is abject pseudoscience. The only real scientific discussion is about whether industrial exposures may very small increases in cancer risk, not the risk to consumers.

Do you want the flippant, brief, or detailed answer?

As I discuss in the piece, there is some very weak and inconsistent evidence that working with glyphosate may raise the risk of some cancers. But it's not demonstrated, and is certainly not the main risk that's discussed publicly.

Glyphosate Probably Isn't Giving You Cancer Why you are probably safe to eat fruit and vegetables farmed using the weedkiller glyphosate

Given the renewed interest in glyphosate, here's my piece on the chemical and how we know that it almost certainly does not cause cancer:

gidmk.substack.com/p/glyphosate...

So...good? Difficult to answer. Depends on what you are comparing it to and what you mean. Certainly it's better than most of the alternatives, as far as I've seen.