Ranthropologist

Tag: science

  • Daily Reads: No Comment

    Daily Reads: No Comment

    Today’s Daily Read isn’t the most scintillating article I’ve ever read, but the information it contains is revealing and important, so I believe it is worth the quick read. Cathleen O’Grady of Arstechnica reports on two studies that looked at the influence of online comments on the effectiveness of public service announcements (PSAs). The study created mock PSAs on the safety and efficacy of vaccines – one pro-vaccine and one anti-vaccine – and paired them with anonymous comments that supported or refuted the message of the PSAs. The researchers made sure to attribute each PSA to health organizations that were perceived as credible by the study participants. In the first study, participants were more likely to have their opinions swayed by the PSA if they thought the source was credible; however, if they found the commenters to be credible they were less likely to be swayed by the PSA. In the second study, the participants were provided with general information about the commenters – e.g. one commenter was identified within the comment as a college student, another as a health care lobbyist, and a third as a medical doctor specializing in disease and vaccines. In this study, the participants were more swayed by the commenters they perceived as credible – in this case, the self-identified doctor – than they were by the PSA. This occurred regardless of whether the doctor agreed or disagreed with the PSA. As the article notes, this research is not definitive, but it points out an important weakness in how people perceive information they receive from anonymous comments – which is, how can we know that a self-identified commenter truly is the expert he or she claims to be? I think this is hugely important, and very troubling. It’s one thing to trust the credibility of an anonymous restaurant review on Yelp; it’s quite another to trust anonymous opinions on critical health and social issues.

    Don’t read the comments—they can make you mistrust real experts

  • Daily Reads: Anybody Want A Peanut?

    Daily Reads: Anybody Want A Peanut?

    Today’s Daily Read relates to the one I posted a few days ago about hygiene, but this time it’s about food allergies – specifically, peanut allergies. Rob Stein writes for NPR’s blog The Salt that children who are fed foods containing peanuts from a young age are much less likely to develop a peanut allergy by the age of 5. This mechanism may operate by training babies’ immune systems very early to recognize peanuts and thus prevent an allergic overreaction. This is superficially similar to how vaccination works, and also how the hygiene hypothesis* works – early exposure means a stronger, more resistant immune system. The article appropriately cautions that parents who haven’t already fed their young children peanuts need to proceed carefully; but it seems that starting to give peanut-containing foods between 4-12 months may just prevent peanut allergies later. I’m loving all these new studies showing that coddling kids is not actually protecting them; instead, it seems that what we think is protecting them might be making them weaker in the long run.

    Feeding Babies Foods With Peanuts Appears to Prevent Allergies

    *And here’s a bonus article about the hygiene hypothesis that relates to allergies as well – but this one proposes that using automatic dishwashers instead of letting kids do dishes the old-fashioned way might also be contributing to the uptick in allergies. Who knew that washing dishes could be good for you?

  • Daily Reads: Healthy Dirtiness

    Daily Reads: Healthy Dirtiness

    This article I ran across on Vox makes me very happy because it reflects something I’ve been teaching students in my classes for years: that being too clean can make you less healthy. This is especially true for children. The article discusses what is known as the hygiene hypothesis, which proposes that exposure to allergens, viruses, bacteria, etc. – in other words, a less than fully sanitized environment – strengthens children’s immune systems by allowing them to develop defenses from a young age (although I hasten to note, as the article does, that this does not mean children should not be vaccinated. In fact, vaccination operates on the same principle: that exposure to a small amount of inert virus primes the immune system to respond when that virus is encountered in the wild. So this is not an excuse to avoid vaccination in favor of deliberately infecting your kid with a disease like measles). Research is starting to show that children who are kept in environments that are too clean are more likely to develop autoimmune diseases such as asthma. I have long railed against the use of products like antibacterial soaps and household cleaning products, hand sanitizers, and antibacterial wipes partly for this reason. I jokingly recommend to my students that if they ever have children, the kids should be rolled about in a dirt pile every day – but I’m not really joking. Here’s one good takeaway from the article: “In the wealthy world, adults who clean their houses with antibacterial sprays have higher asthma rates, and people who are more often exposed to triclosan  (the active ingredient in antibacterial soap) have higher rates of allergies and hay fever. Kids who grow up on farms or have pets, meanwhile, have lower rates of allergies and asthma.” Read the entire article to learn more about how our obsession with cleanliness may be affecting our health.

    The hygiene hypothesis: How being too clean might be making us sick

  • Daily Reads: Measles Mania

    Daily Reads: Measles Mania

    Today’s Daily Read relates to the post I wrote a few days ago about how difficult it can be to convince people to accept ideas that go against their already strongly-held beliefs. I actually have two articles to share today. The first, from the Washington Post, made my eyeballs pulse with rage when I read it: it talks about a medical doctor in Arizona who has catapulted into the media spotlight because he supports anti-vaxxers. Jack Wolfson is a cardiologist who now practices holistic medicine. He supports his anti-vaccination stance with thoroughly unscientific and debunked ideas about “chemicals” in vaccines being harmful (forgetting or ignoring the fact that there are chemicals in everything); arguing that people should get viruses because they are natural (clearly he has never heard of the naturalistic fallacy – just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s good for you); and proposing that following a paleolithic diet provides enough immune protection to make vaccines unnecessary (not considering that paleolithic humans had infant mortality rates of over 50 percent, life spans of around 40 years, and suffered from boom and bust food cycles that could leave them malnourished, vitamin and mineral deficient, and prone to disease; not to mention that he hasn’t considered the fact that “paleo” diets were incredibly diverse depending on which population of ancient humans you are following. I, for one, wonder how many modern followers of paleo would go the Inuit route and eat almost nothing but raw fish and seal blubber). Of course, Wolfson has been embraced by anti-vaxxers as a champion, especially in light of the ongoing measles outbreak.

    The second article is from last year and comes from Chris Mooney of Mother Jones. I linked to it in my post from a few days ago too, but I want to bring it up again here because it discusses a study that shows how presenting anti-vaxxers with information that refutes their views causes them to embrace those views even more fervently. I include it because even though people like Wolfson make me want to pelt them with facts and studies, I have to remind myself that the backfire effect, as detailed in Mooney’s article, makes this approach futile. Fortunately there is some new research that is looking into how to approach these issues in a way that makes people receptive to new information, but so far, it seems that most people are still yelling past each other and not changing any minds at all.

    Amid measles outbreak, anti-vaccine doctor revels in his notoriety

    Study: You Can’t Change an Anti-Vaxxer’s Mind

  • Daily Reads: Got Water?

    Daily Reads: Got Water?

    Here’s a great idea from some folks in Oregon: use the treated wastewater produced from sewage to brew beer. Writing on the NPR blog The Salt, Cassandra Profita discusses the process by which clean, drinkable water can be produced from sewage sludge. Although Oregon does not approve this water for consumption, a new experiment is allowing small craft brewers to use this water in their beer. This is a terrific idea. People get grossed out by the idea that the water came from sewage, but as I have written about before, this is a mental and cultural block. There is no reason to fear drinking water that has been reclaimed from waste; consider the fact that most of our municipal water sits in reservoirs filled with fish and plant matter, as well as trash, fuel and oil residue from boats, and other unsavory flotsam and jetsam. That water goes through the same treatment process as wastewater. So why not use it? Drought conditions and continued water scarcity means we need to look at every option, and as far as I can tell there is no downside here.

    Why Dump Treated Wastewater When You Could Make Beer With It?

  • Daily Reads: Everybody Poops

    Daily Reads: Everybody Poops

    Ok, so maybe an article about poop isn’t the most important or thought-provoking thing in the world, but I thought it was pretty interesting. I definitely learned some things about the process of elimination, so to speak! Joseph Stromberg of Vox talks about 9 different things you may not know about poop. I knew most of these things already, but the list filled in some gaps in my knowledge – for example, although it makes sense in hindsight, I did not realize there were some fairly significant differences in male vs. female colorectal anatomy. So if you are looking for some bathroom reading, this article is the one to read the next time nature calls.

    Everybody poops. But here are 9 surprising facts about feces you may not know.