April 13, 2025 — “Political cynicism is rising in many democracies throughout the world.” Explaining this, Ariel Hasell, Audrey Halversen, and Brian Weeks ascribe it to the influence of social media and demonstrate it with data from the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The trouble is that when cynicism proliferates, everything seems like B.S. So this week when Education Secretary […]
March 2, 2025 — Stuff happens. That was the response of a cynical U.S. health secretary last week to the needless death of a child from measles in the midst of an outbreak growing worse in Texas and New Mexico. The situation tells us the cost of cynicism can be death – in this case, the death of an […]
December 29, 2024 — In recent years, a troubling trend has emerged – a growing distrust in health science, particularly in fields like nutrition and obesity. This skepticism isn’t just about healthy debate or constructive criticism. It’s about an erosion of confidence in scientific expertise. In the age of social media and viral misinformation, unreasonable doubts have real consequences […]
October 7, 2024 — Public discourse about nutrition and health seems to go through waves of fear. There was the fear of fat that began in the 1980s. In the early 2000s, that wave subsided and the fear of sugar and carbs swept us all up with a fever to count carbs and especially, grams of added sugars. Though […]
October 5, 2024 — The remarkable power of an open-label placebo comes through in a new study appearing in Scientific Reports. The power is remarkable simply because “open label” means that everyone receiving a placebo knew that it had no medicinal effect whatsoever. And yet, compared to usual care for overweight and obesity, people lost more weight after four […]
April 15, 2024 — “Trust no one.” This classic line sets up thrillers, mysteries, and the moment we seem to be living. Trust in institutions is low and misinformation proliferates through electronic and social media. Because we are in the middle of a very careful, transparent, and public process for developing a new edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans, […]
March 11, 2024 — We can point to any number of symptoms. The rise of measles because of skepticism about vaccination comes to mind. Certainly, we hear from people who reject scientific concepts about obesity. So it’s no surprise to us that a new report in PNAS documents high but declining public confidence in science. Arthur Lupia, David Allison, […]
February 25, 2024 — Are we cynical? We can surely find excuses to be. Examples of cynicism pop up at every glance. Certainly we see it in politics and public policy. Closer to home at ConscienHealth, people routinely find reasons for cynicism about all kinds of medical research and advice – especially nutrition and obesity. This is a real […]
January 7, 2024 — We are living is a time of concern about mistrust, misinformation, and polarization. Edelman has been warning us for years now about deepening distrust that promotes misinformation because people do not know what to believe. It promotes polarization because they come to trust only people with beliefs similar to their own. As we confront misinformation, healthy […]
December 3, 2023 — We are living in an age of low trust. Without trust, many problems in public policy confront us – polarization, disinformation, and roadblocks to progress in public health. Unhealthy cynicism begins to crowd out the healthier approach to inquiry, skepticism. The advice to trust, but verify, gives way to broad claims that everything is rigged […]
