April 4, 2021 — Prevailing bias envelopes us invisibly. Objectivity is something we have a passion for pursuing. But the challenge of that pursuit is great. In fact, objectivity is rare, if not mythical. Humans are subjective creatures, so objectivity is unnatural for us. If we care about a subject, we bring a bias to it. When we hear […]
March 30, 2021 — We all have great skill for seeing what we want to see in just about any situation. It flows from confirmation bias. Often, believing is seeing. Not the other way around. So the wild variance in views of obesity and the pandemic should not surprise us. Recent posts from Jane Brody and Anthony Warner serve […]
March 28, 2021 — Are we entering a new golden age for obscurantism? Truth seems elusive at times in public discourse. But the pursuit of it is receiving a great deal of attention. So we have social media enterprises exploring ways they can slow the spread of misinformation. In response, folks who persist in spreading it are becoming more […]
March 27, 2021 — In the new issue of Childhood Obesity, Sarah Armstrong and Ted Kyle tell us the time has come to stop screening for obesity in school. The reason is simple. This screening harms children, but offers them no benefit. Telling a child or the child’s parent they are fat doesn’t help. It does nothing for their […]
March 2, 2021 — Today in Obesity Care Week (OCW2021) the focus is treatment and prevention of obesity. Note that the focus is both. Not one or the other. For decades now, we have watched ineffective talk about a false choice: shall we resolve to treat obesity or prevent it? “We can’t treat our way out of this epidemic,” […]
February 16, 2021 — It’s easy and quite natural to respond to a chronic condition like obesity with a sense of doom. However, difficulty and impossibility are two different things. This is precisely why the myth of yo-yo dieting is so frustrating. The popular notion that springs from that myth is that losing weight is futile. Anyone who does […]
January 20, 2021 — Today is a day of transition. But even when defeat is obvious, changing direction is hard. The whole world has seen a vivid illustration of this over the last two months around the U.S. Capitol. And when ideology creeps into the science of public health, we see it there, too. One becomes committed to a […]
January 1, 2021 — In a world of divisions, one sentiment seems to unite us: joy in being done with 2020. Thus we say that we look to this new year with a measure of hope for better days ahead. Even for a stern realist, hope is important. Monica Hesse explains: I am not a superstitious person and I […]
December 27, 2020 — Soda taxes are a favored tool for fighting obesity around the world. The World Health Association is totally on board with this taxing sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs). But there’s just one tiny problem. The promise that these taxes will improve health feels great, but fulfillment of that promise is elusive. In fact, evidence for an […]
December 26, 2020 — Some mistakes are hard to correct. Sometimes, it’s even hard to figure out where the mistake lies. Thus, retractions can be quite messy when a problem arises with a scientific publication. Two recent examples illustrate just how complicated retractions can become. Do Women Need Male Mentors? Back in November, a paper in Nature Communications started […]
