The myth of the breastfeeding diet

Breastfeeding is often sold to new mothers as a bulletproof way to lose the baby weight. The promise is the same whether you’re getting advice from lactation experts, mummy blogs, Unicef, midwives, or official medical sites such as the NHS in the UK and the National Institutes of Medicine in the US: feed your baby […]

Guest Post: Upvote This Post, Pleeease!

You won’t believe the 17 ways you’re doing online science journalism wrong! Number 25 will make you cry[1] Are you a long-time science journalist? Maybe just starting your career and seeking exposure? Maybe only have a vague idea of what science even is? In today’s online marketplace, it doesn’t matter. If you can write quickly […]

Guest Post: Praised Be

“I have an idea,” said my friend Chris. We often walk and talk briskly together in the California beach town where we live. Not long before, we’d talked about how the Earth’s huge population is a major contributor to global warming. So I was only slightly amazed when she followed up with, “I think we […]

Guest Post: The Trajectory of the Sting

Who doesn’t love hijinks? Last week, science journalist John Bohannon brought the hijinks. He wrote on io9.com about how he joined a sting operation designed to reveal the lightning-quick path from bad science – about fad diets – to big headlines. Here’s the short version. They ran a short clinical trial on 16 volunteers, collected some data, […]

Guest Post: The Deep Roots of Boko Haram

Nearly a year ago last May, the mercurial leader of Boko Haram announced the fate of 276 schoolgirls that he and his men kidnapped from a secondary school in Chibok, Nigeria.  Standing in front of a video camera and tugging at a red hat, Abubakar Shekau laughed as he read from a prepared statement.  “I […]

Guest Post: The Top 5 May 20ths Ever

Five years ago today, The Last Word On Nothing was born. I’ve been Googling around, trying to figure out why anniversaries are a thing, but most of what pops up is drivel from couples counselors. Wikipedia offers some facts about Latin names. But what I’m really looking for is why we celebrate anniversaries, why they make us feel so many […]

Guest Post: A Litany of Posts Not Written

As of tomorrow, May 20, LWON will have been alive for five years. LWON is a little surprised at this and entirely pleased with itself.  In celebration, two of our brilliant alumni have agreed to write guest posts listing the Top Five Things They Want to List the Top Five Of.  We are, and always […]

Guest Post: The Fairy Tale of the Fairy Godmother

Once upon a time, a beautiful girl lived in a not-so-faraway land. She was dreadfully abused by her mother, who was wicked as well as mentally ill. She was abandoned by her father, who was also wicked and mentally ill, and who had no job and nine cats. She had a wicked brother, but that […]