(A)H1N1 InfluenzaScience and policy collide on defining a ‘pandemic’
On June 11 the World Health Organization decreed that the recent outbreak of (A)H1N1 influenza (“swine flue”) qualified as a “pandemic.” According to reporters for the Washington Post, WHO delayed...
View ArticleGreenhouse Gas Endangerment FindingPart 4: Scientific causation
A careful look at parts of EPA’s proposed endangerment finding show the causal chain that the Agency believes is scientifically sufficient. This causal chain has interesting implications for air...
View ArticleClimate Change v. Scientific MethodEmails suggest a serious failure in peer...
Last week, unknown hackers broke into the computer at the University of East Anglia’s (UK) Climate Research Unit, downloaded a trove of emails and other documents, then posted them on the web for all...
View Article‘Preventive Services’ Under the Affordable Care ActPart 6: The extraordinary...
The report of the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Preventive Services for Women, titled Clinical Preventive Services for Women: Closing the Gaps, was issued just two weeks...
View Article‘Preventive Services’ Under the Affordable Care ActPart 7: A serious dissent...
The Institute of Medicine report on which the Department of Health and Human Services relies for scientific support for mandating first-dollar coverage of contraception, sterilization, and...
View ArticleRegulating Sugar as a ‘Controlled Substance’Scientist-activists at work
The lede in this Time story says it all: Sugar poses enough health risks that it should be considered a controlled substance just like alcohol and tobacco, contend a team of researchers from the...
View ArticleAdvocacy vs. AnalysisShould scientists disclose policy views in their analyses?
Law professor Paul Horwitz discusses whether advocacy infiltrated legal analysis in the commentary about the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, which the Supreme Court determined was an...
View ArticleAdvocacy ‘Science’Consumer Reports goes after caramel color in soft drinks
A trade magazine says Consumer Reports is trying to force the FDA to strictly regulate an impurity in the manufacture of caramel colors that the agency believes isn’t harmful. Elaine Watson reports in...
View ArticleTravel Restrictions to Reduce Ebola Risk in the US:Part 1: Some analytic...
A dispute has flared between those who support travel restrictions and those who do not. While some proponents can be faulted for excessive confidence in their effectiveness, opponents can be faulted...
View ArticleTravel Restrictions to Reduce Ebola Risk in the US:Part 2: First case in New...
Yesterday we explained why travel restrictions were part of a plausibly effective strategy to reduce the risk of Ebola infections in the US, notwithstanding well-publicized opposition from senior...
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