Disarming Climate Change Denial Tropes (Featuring Peter Hadfield aka Potholer54)

Human-caused climate change has been studied for many decades, and the common sense alternative explanations have already been studied and don’t explain the warming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHzO2t1-y9M

Americans are eating up the meat industry’s health claims

“Meat is indeed packed with protein, but it comes with some well-established health drawbacks.

“Saturated fat we’ve known about for decades,” said Dr. Sarah C. Hull, a cardiologist at Yale Medicine. It’s common in red meat and contributes to increasing LDL cholesterol levels, hardening the blood vessels and, in turn, raising the risk of heart attack or stroke.

Moreover, “all mammalian meat tends to be very inflammatory,” said Hull, who studies the diet-related risks of heart disease and cancer. “More recently we’ve come to understand that the many pro-inflammatory compounds found in red meat” can have other downsides, she said, including “deleterious interactions with the gut microbiome.” Studies have also linked the risks of certain cancers and Type 2 diabetes to heme iron, a form of the mineral that’s found only in animal tissue and is more easily absorbed than the iron in plants.”

https://health.yahoo.com/wellness/nutrition/healthy-eating/articles/americans-eating-meat-industrys-health-093040469.html

Do Cellphones Cause Cancer? RFK Jr.’s HHS Is Suppressing FDA Data Confirming Cellphone Safety.

“Do Cellphones Cause Cancer? RFK Jr.’s HHS Is Suppressing FDA Data Confirming Cellphone Safety.”

https://reason.com/2026/01/16/do-cellphones-cause-cancer-rfk-jr-s-hhs-is-suppressing-fda-data-confirming-cellphone-safety/

FOTD Episode 11: The Trouble With Twin Studies – Does Our DNA Make Us Who We Are? (with Jay Joseph)

Twins separated at birth studies are problematic for multiple reasons.

Studies comparing twins reared together to siblings doesn’t isolate genetics because the environment is different for each sibling cohort.

A whole bunch of claims about genetics rest on these bad studies or claims that these studies don’t strongly support.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoysrR7Adwk

Bad Science Revisited: “The Bell Curve” Turns 30

“we concluded that Herrnstein and Murray produced no valid evidence that genes influence within-group IQ score differences. The key evidence they cited consisted of “twins reared apart” studies and, to a lesser extent, family correlations, reared-together twin studies, and adoption studies. Aided by concepts developed in science’s ongoing “replication crisis,” we argued that the genetic findings reported in these studies do not hold up under critical examination due to environmental confounding, a reliance on uncertain or false assumptions and concepts, the use of questionable research practices (QRPs), and other problem areas. In the language of psychometrics and behavioral genetics, we argued that Herrnstein and Murray presented no valid evidence in support of above-zero IQ heritability. This conclusion, of course, automatically invalidates claims about genetic group differences.”

https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/03/bad-science-bell-curve/

Exercise Scientist Breaks Down RFK’s Polarizing New Food Pyramid

The new government food pyramid matters because it affects major government food programs and student lunches. Otherwise, not many people dutifully follow the government dietary recommendations. There have been several changes over time and in 2011 they got rid of the pyramid and replaced it with a plate, which makes sense because we more often eat food on a plate than in pyramid measurements.

Butter and cheese in the highest tier doesn’t make sense. They are okay in moderation, but are not good in high amounts, and the highest tier implies you should eat a lot of it. Not only is eating too much of them bad, they are easy to eat a whole lot of all at once, and are high in calories.

Whole grains are good! They shouldn’t be relegated below butter and cheese. Whole grains are hard to overeat, are associated with better health, and are per-calorie better for you than butter and cheese. Butter and cheese being in a higher tier than whole grains is backwards.

The new pyramid promoting: protein, vegetables, minimally processed food, and healthy fats is good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7TwGXK9g1A

MAHA Republicans Are Imposing New Food Labeling Mandates

“Seed oils have become a major target of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, whose figurehead is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Seed oils are one of the driving causes of the obesity epidemic,” according to Kennedy, who has accused fast-food restaurants that use seed oils of poisoning Americans.

But among nutrition experts, opinions about seed oils and health are much more mixed, with plenty suggesting they’re fine in moderation, are better than alternatives, or are unwisely treated as a unit despite the fact that different seed oils have different properties and effects on health.

There’s also mixed evidence on the effects of common food dyes and additives)”

https://reason.com/2025/12/22/maha-mandates-food-labels/