Fatherhood, Skeptically

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...