Fatherhood, Skeptically

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 ...