Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Will vitamins cure you or kill you?

Another must read report from Sandy of the Junkfood Science blog.

Interesting that the "bad" information about vitamins cuts both ways and this says a lot about how the media always has a tendency to hype and distort issues.

I was almost going to write "complex issues", but in this case there isn't much complexity.

For healthy people with reasonable diets there is absolutely no evidence at all that vitamin supplaments have any health benefit. Zero. None. Yader.

And a well conducted meta-analysis of a large number of studies conclusively shows this.

But unfortunately this got picked up in the media, (admittedly with some help from the authors of the study), and transmuted into “Vitamins may shorten your life!”

As Sandy shows, the study's data in no way supports such a conclusion. Other than for Vitamin A, people's self-dosing with vitamins may be a pointless waste of money, but it is not doing them any harm.

The Top 25 Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians

#25. Chuck Klosterman













He Is:
A Pop-culture obsessed and farm-raised hipster who writes for GQ and ESPN.

Looks Like:
Someone who has penned 14 books on the spiritual nature of the vulva.


#17.
Masi Oka













He is:
Actor. Time Magazine whiz kid. Reported I.Q. of 180 (same as cast of Carpoolers).

Looks Like:
An author of a paper stating sex with a man is, by definition, a hate crime.


#11.
Richard Butler



He Is:
The Molly-Ringwald-serenading lead singer of the Psychedelic Furs.

Looks Like:
The co-founder of online erotic products store exclusively for lesbians, "Toys for Twats."

You get the idea. Full list here.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Academic cool on warming | The Australian

RESPECTED academic Don Aitkin has seen the ugly side of the climate change debate after being warned he faced demonisation if he challenged the accepted wisdom that global warming poses a danger to humanity.Professor Aitkin told The Australian yesterday he had been told he was "out of his mind" by some in the media...

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