Cynthia Closkey's blog
From an opinion piece in the New York Times on the issue of society ignoring evidence that mammograms only increase medical procedures, they don’t save lives: For years now, doctors like myself have known that screening mammography doesn’t save lives, or else saves so few that the harms far outweigh the benefits. Neither I nor …
Continue reading “Reason #2978 why health insurance in the US is so expensive”
Where does dust come from? I thought it was mostly bits of skin and bugs and whatnot. But if that were the case, then when I’m away from my house for days in a row, there should be a lot less “new” dust than there is when I’m here a lot. Tonight I vacuumed the …
[T]ell readers that they’re wrong about something they know in their heart to be true, and they will send you hate mail. from “You’ve got mail, you idiot!” by Christie Aschwanden
The upper eyelid of my left eye has has been twitching for a few days. I googled to find out why this started suddenly, and whether I need to worry about it. Here’s what I found: Called myokymia in doctor lingo, these rippling muscle contractions in an eyelid can be triggered by: Stress Tiredness Eye …
It seems that Agent Smith was right all along: Over the decades, many theories have been offered to explain what caused the demise of the Neanderthals, ranging from climate change to simple bad luck. In recent years, though, it’s becoming increasingly clear that, as Pääbo put it to me, “Their bad luck was us.” Again and …
Continue reading “Isn’t it fun when science echoes the movies?”
In today’s New York Times, “Bats Perish, and No One Knows Why“: In what is one of the worst calamities to hit bat populations in the United States, on average 90 percent of the hibernating bats in four caves and mines in New York have died since last winter. Wildlife biologists fear a significant die-off …