June 14, 2012
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken “Be careful!” “Walk gently!” “Try not to get hurt!” Don’t worry; I am talking to myself, not to you. I am warning myself before I take the leap into a realm of challenging a truism. In a recent [...]
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June 7, 2012
Today’s Nature includes a report from 22 scientists that documents growing rates of species extinctions, extreme climate events, and other changes to the global ecosystem that they argue herald “a planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence.” I could be posting about how important it is that we pay attention to this message. [...]
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Why We Need to Ban the Word “Safe” from Reports of Risk Research: The Example of Alcohol Use in Pregnancy
June 21, 2012Yesterday, BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology electronically published in “Early View” 5 articles from a Danish research group, all of which use longitudinal data from 2003-2008 to consider the relationship (or lack thereof) between maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy and various outcomes (executive function, intelligence, attention) in these mothers’ children at 5 [...]