I get a lot of ridiculous press releases, but the headline that made its way to my inbox today, “New Cancer-Fighting Game App Goes Global,” represented a new level of nonsense. The press release described a “ground-breaking” smartphone “cancer-fighting game app” that promised to “help young cancer patients fight their disease.” If you’re like me, […]
Health/Medicine
This summer it’s happened three times so far. Once, I got an urgent email from the backyard pool where they have baby swim lessons. Another time, my older son’s swim teacher pulled the class out of the high school pool and taught the kids “safety skills” on the deck. And when we were at camp, […]
Half a lifetime bent over peering into people’s mouths had left Martha Podleschak with spine problems. One of the job requirements for a dentist is a constant, slightly sideways forward tilt. According to her x-ray technician, Podleschak’s particular leftward lean had compressed the discs between her vertebrae, causing a pattern of extreme wear on the […]
When I think back on the formative moments of my youth, it’s hard to top the Canada-Wide Science Fair of 1980. It was there, in Thompson, Manitoba, that I first truly experienced the transformative power of science to make daily life richer, better, more rewarding. No, it wasn’t my own engagement with the scientific method […]
A couple of weeks ago I found myself in a beautiful rural home that belongs to my parents’ friends, a slim and sophisticated couple who enjoys bird watching and international travel. I was meeting this pair—let’s call them George and Marsha—for the first time. I’m inherently nosy, so while the rest of the group chatted, […]
“There are so many women in the world, so many fresh and young and virtuous women, so many good and kind women. Why have I been cursed with women who destroy the children in their own wombs?” So complains Hilary Mantel’s fictional version of Henry VIII – and this Sunday marks the date, 477 years […]
So many press releases land in my inbox that I don’t have time to read them all. But a recent release from the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) caught my eye — “Treatment by naturopathic doctors shows reduction in cardiovascular risk factors. Randomized controlled trial.” This would be big news if it were true. Naturopathic […]
We often lament hype in science journalism. But seldom do we worry about underhype – of downplaying the significance of a study. In March, I had reason to worry about this. Just after Nature published a story that I wrote about a massive cancer genetics project, I received an email from my editor: “Should we […]
