Why can’t we prevent or cure hangovers?
There is a nice theory in economics about why capitalism is better than socialism. It goes like this. Under socialism, central planners try to estimate what the public wants and…
How unreal is long-COVID?
Research funding for COVID is amazing. A lot of academics got and continue to get grants promising to do research on COVID. Unfortunately, COVID kinda died out recently and the…
Heat and the great balls decline
OK, click baity title, but bear with me. In a prior post on Roman fertility decline, I had mentioned a speculative piece arguing that Roman fertility decline was in part…
Male hair loss treatments: I think they work
Being the go-to science guy, I get questions like: so can something be done about my hair loss? The context of this is that I frequently talk about replication crisis,…
Supersize me failed replication. Well sort of.
Most people people my age know about a documentary called Supersize me! from 2004. The story of it goes like this: As the film begins, Spurlock is in physically above…
Are vaccines bad for infants?
And I am not talking about COVID vaccines! I am talking about this far more intriguing paper: Miller, N. Z., & Goldman, G. S. (2011). Infant mortality rates regressed against…
Vaccine viral hormesis
So the cool kids are talking about vaccine effectiveness, and the problems of estimating this. The simple starting point is to take government statistics about deaths or hospitalized cases or…
Book review: Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy by Richard Hanania
The ever-funny Richard Hanania has published his first book: Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy: How Generals, Weapons Manufacturers, and Foreign Governments Shape American Foreign Policy. You…
How bad is low level lead poisoning? Probably not that bad
For some months, I've had a window open with some lead poisoning studies by economists. We know generally not to trust economist work without carefully checking out their tables and…
Book review: David Sinclair – Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To (2019)
David A. Sinclair - Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To, 2019 (free ebook is on libgen) I know Scott Alexander has already reviewed this, but since I…