McGill Office for Science and Society

Does Daylight Savings Time Actually Save Energy? The surefire signs that Spring is just around the corner have started to appear – trees are budding, flowers beginning to bloom and there’s more rain than snow. (Full disclosure – I live in the UK now...

🌞 Spring forward this weekend!

Daylight Savings Time might not actually save much energy anymore💡

It started as a lighting‑saving idea long ago, but today all our electronics and travel habits blur its impact

Maybe we’re really just saving sunshine for smiles! 😄🕒

Read more ⬇️
mcgill.ca/x/5NA

Everyone Else Is Wrong: The Dr. Amen Story When a psychiatrist diagnoses you with anxiety, depression, an eating disorder or a learning disability—or even a serious pathology like schizophrenia—they don’t typically look at your brain. Dr. Dani...

Celebrity psychiatrist Daniel Amen says brain SPECT scans should transform mental health care

Major medical orgs disagree

With no rigorous clinical trials to validate his approach, is this a paradigm shift, or neuro-palmistry with a $4,000 price tag?

Read the article to find out
mcgill.ca/x/5Gq

Your Poop Is Not Reliable, At Least for Now Let’s say you mail your poop to two different companies—not an illegal act, by the way, provided it doesn’t smell or soil anything, and that it’s packaged and labelled appropriately. It also helps if ...

Those gut microbiome kits you pay good money for may as well be a ticket to see your local fortune teller.

Seven different companies; a standardized poop sample; and results that are all over the place.

My latest for @mcgilloss.bsky.social.

www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

Do men really experience colds differently, or do we just interpret sickness through gender expectations? 🤒 Turns out the science is surprisingly nuanced.

Read the full article on our website👇
mcgill.ca/x/5Gi

Everyone Else Is Wrong: The Dr. Amen Story When a psychiatrist diagnoses you with anxiety, depression, an eating disorder or a learning disability—or even a serious pathology like schizophrenia—they don’t typically look at your brain. Dr. Dani...

You've seen on PBS. You're seen him on book covers. And he sells SPECT scans for your brain.

Dr. Daniel Amen wants to lead a psychiatric revolution, but rigorous science might ruin it.

My latest for @mcgilloss.bsky.social

www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

Paying Attention to My Own Lectures “It builds muscle!” That’s the usual answer I get when I ask in class about the importance of protein in the diet. Sort of correct since muscles are indeed composed mostly of protein, but the protein ...

Essential for skin, hair, bones, antibodies, hormones, enzymes, hemoglobin, neurotransmitters, protein is more than just a muscle-building agent. Dive into Dr. Joe’s latest to brush up on protein's nuances: optimal intake by life stage and smartest sources. 👇
mcgill.ca/x/5G5

After I wrote this, I flagged all the channels I had linked to for medical misinformation.

Two are gone. Another one now prominently reveals that it is a digital AI presenter (based on an allegedly real doctor).

I whacked a couple of moles. Yay.

www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

Protein marketing gone awry.

"PROTEIN ENERGY BITES."

"Not a significant source of protein."

Brand? "No B.S."

via @builduprdns.bsky.social

We've hit the absurdist phase of the protein trend.

Interesting Chemistry Hides in Cookware Like most chemists, I like to cook. After all, what is cooking but the appropriate mixing of chemicals? In the lab we use flasks and beakers, but how do we equip our kitchen? Tiffany's in New York off...

Tiffany’s sells a silver frying pan for thousands while a basic aluminum pot costs a few bucks

Is there really a difference?

Read Dr. Joe’s article on what the evidence says about the materials your cookware was manufactured with and while you’re at it, get some shopping advice!
mcgill.ca/x/5q9

Rare Blood Clots After Certain COVID Vaccines, Explained The light at the end of the pandemic tunnel was marred by a worrying shadow. As the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, headlines fuelled anxiety: some people were developing life-threatening blood clo...

💉 The rare blood clot stories after certain COVID vaccines were both scary and confusing

Scientists now think they’ve figured out exactly what was going on

It isn’t a straightforward conclusion, but a very RARE immune mix-up

Read @jonathanjarry.bsky.social’s article here 👇
mcgill.ca/x/5qF

The Frivolous Costco Chicken Lawsuit Talk about a frivolous lawsuit! These two ladies claim that they have been misled by the information on the label of Costco’s famous rotisserie chicken that states “no preservatives.” Why? Because the...

A lawsuit claims Costco’s rotisserie chicken falsely advertises “no preservatives” because it contains sodium phosphate and carrageenan

But neither is a preservative

This article explains what these ingredients actually do and why additives aren’t the real concern

Read more 👇
mcgill.ca/x/5T8

Granitoids, Pebbled Ice and Crescent Chips: Curling Chemistry As you can imagine, there's a lot of physics involved in curling. Rotation speeds, angles, momentum transfer, friction analysis, ecetera. But would you also believe there's a bunch of chemistry at pla...

Tomorrow’s the last day of the Olympics!

Remember curling doesn’t just involve strategy, there’s chemistry on the ice too 🧪

Hard ice from filtered, pH-balanced water, pebbled coats, and stones made from specific granitoids chosen for how they interact with the ice 🧊

Read more 👇
mcgill.ca/x/5cJ

The Costco Hot Dog….Decisions….Decisions So, there I was at Costco looking at their special of a quarter pound hot dog and soft drink for $1.50. A good deal financially to be sure. These days I have hot dogs rarely, but I still have fond mem...

Costco’s $1.50 hot dog combo 🌭

High in salt and fat, yes, but no risk of botulism, thanks to sodium nitrite

This article follows the long and circuitous story of saltpeter, gunpowder, botulism, nitrosamines and why cured meats are pink and safe from “sausage disease”

Read more 👇
mcgill.ca/x/5iH

America's Healthier Past is no More Than a Myth This article was first published in The Montreal Gazette. “Make America healthy again” sounds like a great slogan. It is loaded with nostalgia and … haziness. What is that “again” all about? When were...

Was America healthier in the past? 🇺🇸

The data says no

Lower life expectancy, high infant mortality, and infectious diseases like TB and pneumonia were common causes of death

Sanitation, vaccines, antibiotics and food safety regulations changed that

Nostalgia isn’t evidence

🔗 mcgill.ca/x/5qj

Rare Blood Clots After Certain COVID Vaccines, Explained The light at the end of the pandemic tunnel was marred by a worrying shadow. As the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, headlines fuelled anxiety: some people were developing life-threatening blood clo...

Remember the rare blood clots after some people received the AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccines?

We now know exactly what happened to trigger them.

My latest for @mcgilloss.bsky.social, showing that research into making vaccines even safer never stops.

www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

Degree ABCs Five minutes on health TikTok is all it takes. A pair of scrubs. “Dr.” in the bio. And a confident voice assuring you they can detox your liver, balance your hormones, or fix your chronic illness, wit...

Scrubs and confidence don’t equal competence.

MD, DO, NP, PhD, ND; these letters matter.

This is your no-nonsense guide to what health-care credentials actually mean, who’s trained to do what, and where skepticism should start.

Confidence is free. Accountability isn’t.
mcgill.ca/x/5TE

Fighting With Chocolate “An army marches on its stomach,” Napoleon supposedly maintained, alluding to the critical importance of supplying food to soldiers. At the time the main military fare was salted meat and dry bread th...

“An army marches on its stomach,” Napoleon supposedly maintained - and chocolate fit the bill! Despite not being the melt-in-your-mouth, irresistibly smooth chocolate we are used to, chocolate ended up finding its own special place on the battlefields 🍫

Read the full story here👇
mcgill.ca/x/5T6

The Gold Rush of Testosterone Replacement Therapy If you’ve never injected yourself with dog semen, don’t worry: someone has done it for you. Seventy-one years after the initial publication of Frankenstein, the medical journal The Lancet would dedica...

Testosterone Replacement Therapy is everywhere you look and, unfortunately, the evidence does not support the near-miraculous claims made for it.

It has its uses but it's not a fountain of youth.

My latest for @mcgilloss.bsky.social.

www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

From The Lancet, 1889: "I will simply say that after the first days of my experiments I have had a greater improvement with regard to the expulsion of fecal matters than any other function."

What is this elixir of defecation?

Tune in on Friday for my @mcgilloss.bsky.social article! :D

It's likely that the "Beecher running out of morphine, using saline and noticing a placebo effect" story is a Frankenstein's creature of a myth, stitching together various events including an episode of M*A*S*H.

My latest for @mcgilloss.bsky.social:

www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

Dr. Michael Greger’s Bias Is Food for Thought How can we distinguish between a sufficiently objective science communicator and an advocate? Communicating science to the public means choosing scientific papers, reading them, and appraising their w...

The founder and host of NutritionFacts(dot)org sounds fair, but his vegan bias colours how he interprets studies.

I look at Dr. Michael Greger and how bias plays a role in scicomm.

@mcgilloss.bsky.social

www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

Say Toodle-oo to the Winter Boo-hoos Each October, like clockwork, a dear friend of mine reminds me to begin taking vitamin D supplements– just in time for the perils of daylight savings time. His reasoning? Its prophylactic effects agai...

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that is triggered by the changes in seasons, typically from fall to winter.

Taking vitamin D supplements is often touted as a reliable prophylactic treatment.

However, there may be something better we can do.
mcgill.ca/x/5i9

A Case Study in Magical Thinking: Scentbird’s CEO We often turn to successful people for advice. Bookstore shelves are heavy with tomes adorned with photos of rich luminaries resting their head on their fist, and podcasts can’t get enough of famous s...

But seriously, this successful CEO is doing blood type astrology; trying to predict the future by saying the most banal stuff; and thinking that if you have flecks of gold in your hazel eyes, it means you accumulate solar energy.

Ooof.

@mcgilloss.bsky.social

www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

Preservatives in food are not rare, and cancer is frightening 🍟🍽️ But just how much should our eyebrows furrow?

In Dr. Joe’s latest, he breaks down the results of a seemingly alarming study, and offers important advice to carry going forward 🚨

mcgill.ca/x/5wE

A Beginners Guide to Time Travel: Explaining the Time Zones In a way, time travel does exist. Just hop on a plane from Montreal to Vancouver, and you jump back three hours. Or better yet, fly in the other direction to Auckland, and find yourself 18 hours in th...

Time zones are a fairly recent invention, owing their origin to the North American railroad system 🚂🕒

Read our latest to learn about why time zones exist, why some countries operate on seemingly strange times, and how to have the longest day EVER!
mcgill.ca/x/539

A Virus Most of Us Have Causes Multiple Sclerosis Multiple sclerosis is a big deal in Canada. Our country has one of the highest rates of the disease worldwide, with 290 out of every 100,000 living Canadians having received the diagnosis. To put this...

90-95% of us have been infected by the Epstein-Barr virus.
Most of us won't develop multiple sclerosis.
Yet, this virus lies at the centre of the multiple sclerosis web.

My latest for @mcgilloss.bsky.social.

www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

Wellness influencers claim that Himalayan salt is purer, healthier, and possibly spiritually aligned with your chakras. The only problem is, it’s mostly bogus. Pretty and pink, sure, but bogus.

mcgill.ca/x/5JR

Gua Sha Is Exotic Wellness That Leaves a Mark When sales go stale, embrace the romanticism of exoticism. That is one of the tricks of the wellness industry: selling gadgets and procedures that come from ancient traditions far, far away. There is,...

You’ve seen that heart-shaped jade stone used to smooth out facial puffiness. It’s called gua sha, except the version done by influencers (including Hudson Williams!) has little to do with the bruising Asian practice.

My latest for @mcgilloss.bsky.social.

www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

...where he is delaying the much-needed Hepatitis B birth dose vaccine, calling this a “window of opportunity” to test his theory that the vaccine causes long-term neurological problems, even though evidence proves otherwise.