Interview – Nick Saik on GMOs and Agriculture

  Jonathan and Chris interview Nick Saik from Know Ideas Media, a filmmaker who specializes in communicating about food and agriculture online.   They discuss trust in farmers; going to filmmaking school and ending up working on the set of Supernatural; GMOs; precision agriculture; antibiotics in meat; the A&W dilemma; the romantic ideation of food production; RoundUp; orthorexia; chemical-free food; trust in institutions; why only big companies can afford to sell you GMOs; lab-grown meat;…

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How Some Journalists Got Hooked by Fish Oil and Vitamin D Spin

Are you confused by all the recent stories about fish oils? Science can be confusing, but spin always makes it worse. The recent VITAL study presented at the American Heart Association meeting, was an overall negative study but the spin made some people think it was positive. Mary Chris Jaklevic examined the issue on Health News Review with some assistance from a friendly cardiologist. https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2018/11/how-some-journalists-got-hooked...  

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Interview – Cameron Smith on Evolution and Anthropology

  Jonathan and Chris interview Cameron M. Smith, professor in the department of anthropology at Portland State University. They discuss what is anthropology; what it's like teaching evolution in the United States; what the theory of evolution is; what we've learned from the fossil record; whether or not humans are still evolving; what a hominin is; the revival of Lamarck's theory; and Cameron's real-life adventures on inhospitable terrain and his prediction for humanity's new space…

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Check Our Insta-Knowledge-Gram on Organic Food and Cancer

  If you don't follow us on Instagram, what are you waiting for? We're test-driving a new Instagram-friendly mini-lesson format with our cartoon avatars. It's called Insta-Knowledge-Gram and the first one is on organic food and cancer. Just look up "thebodyofevidence" on Instagram, click on our latest post, and start swiping left through the mini-slides! https://www.instagram.com/thebodyofevidence/  

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Should you take a daily Aspirin? It depends …

Should you take a baby aspirin every day? The question keeps coming up and three recent studies in the NEJM have cast doubt on its benefits. Read my latest article on the topic here: https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/opinion-should-you-take-a-daily-aspi... ************************************************************************* A series of recent studies has made people ask whether acetylsalicylic acid, better known as Aspirin, really is beneficial for your heart. As most people know, Aspirin is fixture in the field of cardiology and is routinely prescribed to people…

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042 – Childbirth and Crowdfunding Quackery

  It's Two Men and a Baby as Jonathan realizes that Chris takes odd bets and ends up with an infant to care for. Has childbirth been over- or under-medicalized? Ada talks to clueless university students about the miracle of life. Do epidurals make mothers too "chill"? The boys discuss maternal mortality rates, what can go wrong while giving birth, and water births (wait! how does the baby not drown?). Also: how can crowdfunding platforms…

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New tech holds the promise of changing your health — the problem is that sometimes it doesn’t work well

People love their gadgets. Fitness trackers are a great way to say I have a lot of disposable income and I care about my health. The problem is that a lot of the wearable tech out there doesn't necessarily do what it says it does.  I wrote about this for the CBC recently. Read the article here: https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/new-tech-holds-the-promise-of-changing-...   (Photo Credit: iStock/Getty Images)

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Epidemiology: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

"There are only a handful of ways to do a study properly, but one thousand ways to do it wrong." We often talk on the podcast about the difference between good and bad studies, about studies that prove causation versus the ones that just show an association. The field of nutrition research is particularly problematic these days and even John Ioannidis is sounding the alarm. I recently wrote an article for Medscape about what readers…

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Jonathan Has a Website

Just a quick word to let you know that I, Jonathan, now have a website that aggregates everything I do on the science communication side of things. Every article I write, every podcast I'm a part of, every video I release, every talk I give, and every media appearance I make: it's all there. It's jonathanjarry.com. Bookmark it. Subscribe to it. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming!

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