/oss/taxonomy/term/4901/all en /oss/article/medical-critical-thinking-student-contributors/well-established-balancing-act <p>Some things can be classified with high acidity, like lemon juice, or low acidity, like bicarbonate. Acidity is often measured on a pH scale. This is because Danish chemist <a href="https://www.sciencehistory.org/education/scientific-biographies/soren-sorensen/">Søren Peter Lauritz Sørensen</a> invented the concept of pH as a convenient method for expressing acidity. Acidic things have a low pH whereas alkaline things have a high pH.</p> Thu, 17 Oct 2024 22:09:08 +0000 Daniela Padres 10119 at /oss /oss/article/critical-thinking-general-science-climate-change/windmills-donald-trumps-mind <hr /> <p><em>This article was first published in <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/the-right-chemistry-theyre-not-windmills-donald-theyre-wind-turbines">The Montreal Gazette.</a></em></p> <hr /> <p>The mind works in mysterious ways.</p> Fri, 11 Oct 2024 17:27:45 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 10111 at /oss /oss/article/medical-critical-thinking-health-and-nutrition/processing-information-about-processed-meat <p>The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an arm of the World Health Organization lists processed meats in its “Category 1,” reserved for substances known to cause cancer in humans. There is really nothing all that noteworthy here except for the official classification. Unofficial advice about minimizing processed meat has been dispensed by nutritional scientists for a long time. And for good reason.</p> Tue, 08 Oct 2024 22:06:53 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 10104 at /oss /oss/article/critical-thinking-health-and-nutrition-environment/we-are-exposed-thousands-and-thousands-chemicals <hr /> <p><em>This article was first published in <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/the-right-chemistry-we-are-exposed-to-thousands-and-thousands-of-chemicals">The Montreal Gazette.</a></em></p> <hr /> <p>“Three thousand six hundred food packaging chemicals detected in human bodies: How reheating food is killing us.”</p> Fri, 04 Oct 2024 20:53:47 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 10102 at /oss /oss/article/medical-critical-thinking-health-and-nutrition/hyperbaric-oxygen-therapy-may-just-be-hot-air-many <hr /> <p><em>This article was first published in <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/christopher-labos-hyperbaric-oxygen-therapy-may-just-be-hot-air-for-many">The Montreal Gazette.</a></em></p> Fri, 27 Sep 2024 23:03:19 +0000 Christopher Labos MD, MSc 10098 at /oss /oss/article/covid-19-critical-thinking/bret-weinstein-would-be-galileo <p>Galileo has many heirs. I don’t mean biological descendants; rather, some intellectuals see Galileo’s face in the mirror staring back at them. Freed from the shackles of academia (or simply kicked out of their university), they find a lucrative niche for themselves, telling their enraptured fans that, just like Galileo, they have an Earth-shattering theory… and a mysterious “they”<i> </i>don’t want you to know about it.</p> Fri, 27 Sep 2024 05:56:13 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 10096 at /oss /oss/article/critical-thinking-pseudoscience/your-hairdresser-will-heal-you-now <p>My hairdresser brings me to an isolated room. On the sparsely decorated walls, a framed drawing of the head meridians and a yin-yang symbol representing the Chinese body clock, in which different organs are claimed to be at their peak activity at different times of the day.</p> Thu, 19 Sep 2024 14:56:29 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 10082 at /oss /oss/article/critical-thinking-student-contributors-health-and-nutrition/real-gold-or-fools-gold-controversies-bee-pollen <p>The <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10045447/">earliest evidence</a> of human consumption of bee products can be traced back to a painting from between 8000-5000 B.C. in Spain. The Greeks considered pollen to be the food of kings. There is a reference to bee pollen in the Bible. Ancient philosophers such as Hippocrates, Pliny the Elder, and Pythagoras believed in the therapeutic potential of bee pollen. So, it seems only natural that we, in the present day, would take a fascination with bee pollen.</p> Thu, 19 Sep 2024 15:03:05 +0000 Daniela Padres 10083 at /oss /oss/article/critical-thinking-health-and-nutrition/what-does-health-canada-issued-natural-product-number-npn-supplement-mean <p>Prescription drug sales in Canada amount to roughly $50 billion a year. That’s a lot of money, but the $13 billion pulled in annually by the natural health products industry isn’t small potatoes either. The question is what consumers are getting for that money.</p> Wed, 18 Sep 2024 22:07:09 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 10081 at /oss /oss/article/critical-thinking-pseudoscience/what-media-gets-wrong-about-cam <p>There must be a template for this.</p> <p>Time and time again, I have seen journalists cover so-called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in a way that is so similar, it’s making me think they must teach that template in journalism school.</p> <p>It’s a story structure that sounds good at first. It aims to be balanced in giving voice to both patients and practitioners, as well as proponents and skeptics. It uses storytelling to grab the reader’s attention. All the ingredients are seemingly there to cover the topic responsibly.</p> Thu, 12 Sep 2024 18:17:51 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 10076 at /oss /oss/article/critical-thinking-technology/can-you-trust-dr-wikipedia <p>Do you know who invented the electric toaster? If you answered Alan MacMasters, a young Scotsman with high cheekbones and quite a head of hair, you’ve been lied to by Wikipedia.</p> Fri, 06 Sep 2024 14:15:01 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 10060 at /oss /oss/article/medical-critical-thinking-health-and-nutrition/no-tolerance-igg-food-intolerance-tests <p>“But where’s the harm?” we are so often asked. When your baby dies and has to be resuscitated in the emergency room, I’d say the harm has a Vegas-sized neon arrow above it.</p> <p>An infant boy in Hong Kong had a really bad reaction to being introduced to cow’s milk at eight months of age: vomiting, difficulty breathing, and a generalized skin rash. The doctors performed an allergy test by pricking his skin and sure enough the boy was allergic to a protein in cow’s milk. Hurray for modern science.</p> Fri, 30 Aug 2024 02:02:34 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 10050 at /oss /oss/article/critical-thinking-pseudoscience/if-it-sounds-too-good-be-true-it <p>There is hardly a week that passes without someone asking my opinion about some video purporting to have found a remedy for some terrible ailment that “Big Pharma doesn’t want you to know about.” Why? Because as we are told, these companies are more interested in selling expensive, ineffective treatments to make sure that profits keep rolling in, profits that would be lost if a cure were made available.</p> Wed, 28 Aug 2024 19:37:16 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 10049 at /oss /oss/article/critical-thinking-general-science/claims-about-ozone-therapy-dont-pass-smell-test <hr /> <p><em>This article was first published in <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/the-right-chemistry-claims-about-ozone-therapy-dont-pass-the-smell-test">The Montreal Gazette.</a></em></p> Fri, 23 Aug 2024 16:50:20 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 10046 at /oss /oss/article/medical-critical-thinking-history/genghis-khan-hiding-inside-your-dna <p>Genghis Khan is more legend than man. We’re not even sure when he was born: historians agree it’s somewhere in the decade that spans 1155 and 1167. That birth has itself been mythologized. Stories tell of a ray of light impregnating his mother; the baby, named Temüjin, was apparently born holding on to a piece of clotted blood, an omen of his later conquests. His death in 1227 is shrouded in rumours both kind and denigrating. Genghis Khan was struck by lightning. He died of an arrow wound that led to a systemic infection. He was castrated by a princess.</p> Fri, 23 Aug 2024 13:51:15 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 10044 at /oss