Fatherhood, Skeptically

So recently, I was informed about an at home, urine-based gender determination test called IntelliGender. Think a pregnancy test but for determining if you are expecting a boy or a girl. As this was the first time I had heard of such a thing, I was curious as to how this test worked. I went into my investigation having no real reason to doubt the test; I was expecting to find the usual list of binding proteins, antibodies, and the like. However, I received quite a shock when I found nothing of the sort. This dive ended up being a really good exercise in skepticism so I thought I'd share the experience (and break an almost year-long hiatus to boot). My first step when investigating a product like this is to go to the product's page. See what the company has to say, what evidence they have to offer, etc. Even if a product is pseudoscience, they will generally have some links to a dense (but legitimate) study that only tangentially applies to their product or some manufactured stu...

COVID-19. It's everywhere either literally or figuratively. If you're like a couple friends of mine who have been looking for some scientific perspective, you're probably worried about how you can protect your kids. I'd like to do what little I can to shed some light on that. Before I start, I'd like to make a little disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, or epidemiologist. If you have significant concerns of any form, you're best bet is to get it from the source. For the disease itself, I'll leave the important information to the CDC . Their info is likely to be the most robust and is concise enough for any level of understanding. They'll also keep it updated so it'll be the most relevant. Obviously, following their recommendations is probably your best bet. Though avoiding the disease should be your number one goal, the recorded cases in children have largely presented as mild. So unless your child is immunocompromised, they will likely weather t...

With Halloween around the corner, my social media has been inundated with spooky (not that I mind, at all). Everything from kids costume adds, to Halloween memes, to invites to spooky events. It's a great time of year. Strangely, this year I've noticed a lot of posts about the poison candy myth; specifically, how it is completely false. It is totally understandable why parents would be concerned about their kids eating candy handed out by a stranger. But it is also understandable why so many folks get frustrated that this myth continues to get spread about. Because of this, I wanted to dive in on the origins of this myth and whether we should or should not be worried for our kids. As with many skeptical discussions, I think it is important to set forth some operational definitions; i.e. what qualifies as a Halloween poisoning? Well there are some isolated incidents of children's candy being poisoned. For example, in 1974, Ronald O'Bryan gave cyanide laced pixie sti...

Today, were going to talk about a toxin. This may come as a surprise as toxin is one of the more common pseudoscience buzzwords. Truly, there seems to be an abundance of discussion in parenting blog circles about toxins. Ironically, many who espouse these beliefs themselves ingest an incredibly potent neurotoxin: alcohol. Now, to be clear, I too drink; in fact I am an avid brewer and self proclaimed beer connoisseur. But I am also a chemist so I am no stranger to just how dangerous a compound alcohol is. It may seem strange to be discussing an adult beverage on a blog about parenting. But it may surprise you just how deeply this drink affects our lives. Figure 1 : Ethanol Structure Humans have a long cultural history with alcohol. In fact, there is evidence  that we have been making some form of beer since 11,000 BCE (13,000 years ago). This makes some sense, as fermentation is an effective way to preserve the calories in grain. Furthermore, our ability to rapidly metaboli...

In my short tenure as a father I've seen my kids put pretty much everything in their mouths. More often than not the objects in question are decidedly less than edible. Because of this, I tend not to overly concern myself when they are eating actual food. That's not to say that I don't worry about my kids nutrition, I do. But when someone tries to tell me that I need to be concerned about my child eating GMOs because of some unexplained health effect, nondescript toxin, or wild industrial conspiracy I tend to brush their concerns off. This is especially the case because I have a degree in biochemistry; so when all these concerned parents spew myths about the safety of GMOs I know on a very fundamental level what factual mistakes they've made. That's not to say their whole process has been founded in wrong turns. Far from it, most parents start from a very appropriate place: wanting to give their child the best chance in life. I'd like to discuss today why GMOs ...

I hate to do a topic back to back but there was a piece of news concerning chiropractic that seemed too important to pass up. I'm speaking, of course, of the Melbourne chiropractor who was filmed giving an adjustment to a newborn infant (yes you read that right, a newborn). The article states that the child in the video is two-weeks old. In my opinion, that is far to young to be doing any such manipulation. But I'm getting ahead of myself, lets go over what was in the video. As a warning, if you watch the video yourself know that it could be distressing; I definitely found it hard to watch. But I'll try to go over the important details, and discuss them, so you don't have to watch. The Video The video is pretty concerning. The guy in the video, Andrew Arnold (I will not be calling him doctor as he is not deserving of the title), can be seen doing a number of manipulations on the baby. The first manipulation that grabs the attention (and the headlines by the Google...

One of the big difficulties when dealing with pseudoscience is it's ability to hide its misinformation behind a thin veil of scientific jargon. As far as popular pseudosciences go, chiropractic is one of the best at this; and it is incredibly frustrating. Chiropractic, at its core, depends on magic. To use that as a basis of medical practice is unethical to say the least. To use it on children, as we'll discuss further down, is simply obscene. Some chiropractors even practice on infants (even newborns) which can lead to disastrous  consequences. But before we get too far, lets unmask this "alternative therapy" and show its true, baseless face. Chiropractic was started by Daniel David Palmer in 1895. He firmly believed that a life force, that he called “Innate,” was responsible for good health and was blocked by “vertebral subluxation,” that could be cured by spinal manipulation. So from jump, we have a magical life force being the basis of the practice; this is a p...

The anti vaccine movement has gained a fair amount of attention early this year. The World Health Organization  (WHO) has labeled vaccine hesitancy one of it's top ten threats to global health. Measles is making a comeback in the United States. Particularly near Portland, OR  where a large outbreak has risen to 50 cases as of 4 Feb. The anti-vaccine movement is nothing new; there have been anti-vaxxers probably as long as there have been vaccines. There's even a popular depression era cartoon making fun of them: The specific claims about vaccines have been debunked time and time again. As such I will not present here an exhaustive list of them, as this topic will no doubt come up again, but instead discuss the ones that come up most when I talk to other parents. Before I get into the weeds here, I'd like to say that it is 100% okay to be concerned about what is going on with your child's medical care. Illness is frightening for us parents and painful for child...

The TV is on a lot at my house; it's one of the things I worry about a lot. For instance, I'll throw on something I've seen before that is kid friendly (more often than not some Sci-Fi show like Star Trek ) when I'm doing chores. The boys don't usually pay attention, unless the theme songs are playing; they love those. But sometimes they do, and then I worry if I'm setting them up for failure. There's precious little published on the effects of screen time on children; both physically and psychologically. Early this year, a review  was published discussing the effect of screen time on obesity rates in children. As nice as it would have been for this to shed some light on any potential dangers, it seems to only have provided minimal understanding. In light of this I thought it would be worthwhile discuss this paper and to overview the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommendations concerning screen time. As I alluded to before, the study doesn't ...

Today, we're talking about something that I've noticed is a fear among many parents. It is a fear that starts with the letter "F." But it's not a swear word, oh no. Today, we're talking about fluoride. You may think that fluoride is a somewhat closed case; limited to a minority of conspiracy theorists. But this is sadly not the case. Just recently, a study focusing on the effects of removing water fluoridation in the city of Juneau, Alaska was published. The short is that it caused a lot of cavities at great expense to the public. I also hear a lot from various sources that parents fear their kids coming into contact with fluoride. Generally, this comes from two sources: toothpaste and water. There seems to be much less fear surrounding toothpaste though; and all the arguments generally stem from the water fluoridation concerns. Based on that, I'd like to focus on water and discuss the fears, logical missteps, and data associated with them. From what...

I was recently directed to a blog post  via a parent that discussed whether or not mental pharmaceutical treatment was preventing modern prophecy. This interesting perspective is brought by Vironika Tugaleva, a self proclaimed life coach who has authored two self help books. Now, setting aside the obvious differences in Religious beliefs that are likely to come up, the arguments she gives in this post have some clear issues, both factually and, if I'm going to be honest, ethically. Let's dive in to them. Let's begin by looking at the context given for the discussion. An individual named Ken Dickson and his book, detailing his personal experience in dealing with his mental illnesses, that lead her to some interesting conclusions. She makes three observations about Ken's experience: Everyone around him thought he was crazy and dangerous while Ken gained abilities that some people vie to access with daily meditation and ceremony Our current mental health care syst...

Recently, Reuters published an article claiming that the talc Johnson and Johnson used to produce its baby powder, among other things, was highly contaminated with asbestos. They further claimed that J&J knew since the late 1950's.  Considering that baby powder is, after all, used on babies and many parents are likely to become worried about whether or not this is an issue I feel it is a good idea to go over the evidence. The claim that J&J was hiding a carcinogen in their talc products is a pretty extraordinary one. And as Carl Sagan put it, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." It seems even more extraordinary when there are multiple scientists backing up J&J's claims of safety. So does Reuters have the evidence to back it? Sadly, it seems they do. The strongest piece of evidence presented are the reports from outside labs, as early as 1957, that show detectable amounts of asbestos minerals in the talc. The 1957 and 1958 reports ...

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume most everyone knows what asthma is. Basically, it is when you have a reaction that causes your lung airways to become inflamed, causing a decrease in lung function. Given the sudden onset of asthma attacks, the highly effective medications, and the necessity of, you know, breathing it never occurred to me that parents would ever dabble into woo where asthma was involved. Boy was I wrong. As I've mentioned, I'm a member of a local skeptic group. One of the members gave me an example she came across of a parent giving, frankly, wildly inappropriate suggestions for the treatment of an asthmatic child. We'll discuss those in a moment. First, lets discuss that which elicited the response. A parent was distressed that her child didn't seem to be improving with normal treatment. Additionally, she was concerned that her counter, "looked like a pharmacy." Now, given the time frame she provided and the lack of other medi...

My youngest son O will soon be turning one; a whole trip around the sun. As I prepare for the influx of sugary snacks, chiefly cake , I'm reminded of the common scapegoat of parents with hyperactive children, "Oh, must have been all that sugar she ate." In recent history, sugar has become somewhat of a boogie man. The media likes to portray it as the source of all our health woes: weight gain, diabetes, heart disease; the list goes on and on. The weight (pun intended) of sugar's importance on health is still somewhat debated within science (and a discussion for another day). It is clear that moderation (as with all things) is key. But one thing is for certain: it doesn't cause hyperactivity in children. Let's discuss the history of this myth. Near as I can tell, the myth began with the publishing of Feingold diet in 1973 by Benjamin Feingold, M.D. His diet advocated for the avoidance of salicylate, artificial food coloring, and artificial flavors as a...

One of the group's I'm involved in on Facebook is a parent support group for children with emotional and learning difficulty. I've only recently (at the time of writing) been actively interacting with the group for a little while but there's a clear leaning towards pseudoscience in some "therapies" for these kiddos. This is actually pretty understandable. Behavioral difficulties can become unmanageable really fast. And parents, most of whom don't have the training to cope (I'm lucky to have had classes via foster care training) can get unraveled really quickly. Even those trained, myself included, can become overwhelmed. It's a truly difficult and frightening thing to deal with. But this doesn't mean you should look to alternative therapies; quite the opposite. In my honest opinion, all that will do is waste time you could be spending finding a treatment plan that will actually help, and help long term. This brings me to the u...