I want the Dunning-Kruger effect to be real. First described in a seminal 1999 paper by David Dunning and Justin Kruger, this effect has been the darling of journalists who want to explain why dumb people don’t know they’re dumb. There’s even video of a fantastic pastiche of Turandot’s famous aria, Nessun dorma, explaining the Dunning-Kruger effect. “They don’t know,” the opera singer belts out at the climax, “that they don’t know.” I was planning on writing a very short a...| Office for Science and Society
“There’s only one source for this stuff, the adrenalin glands from a living human body.” That bit of misinformation found in Hunter. S Thompson’s 1971 psychedelic classic, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” likely planted the seed that grew into one of the most outlandish and repugnant of all conspiracy theories. That would be the ludicrous QAnon claim that Hollywood celebrities and “liberal elite” politicians are kidnapping children to harvest their blood. QAnon is a not-so-fr...| Office for Science and Society
If you ask a dog owner what dogs cannot eat, they’ll list some foods like onions, garlic, rhubarb, grapes and chocolate. (As an aside, if they say grains, don’t listen to them.) Dogs' inability to safely consume chocolate is common knowledge, but thanks to their proclivity for eating anything they can get their mouths on, many dogs are nonetheless treated for ingesting chocolate every year. However, there are also many, many dogs who eat chocolate (with or without their owner’s knowledg...| Office for Science and Society
A cup of tea may be a cure for rainy days, but the soothing cup of the brewed beverage may also come with a dose of micro- and nano-sized plastics shed from plastic bags, according to researchers at McGill University. While the possible health effects of ingesting these particles are currently unknown, the new research published in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology suggests further investigation is needed. Over time, plastic breaks down into tiny micropl...| Newsroom
