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As far as COVID-19 goes, there may be different opinions about masks, gatherings, and modes of transmission, but there is universal agreement that it causes stress. Although we all recognize it when we encounter it, defining stress is difficult. Here is my definition. Stress is the mind’s reaction to a situation one does not want to be in and results in some form of altered biochemical activity. You go to the doctor, she suspects you have a problem and immediately sends you f...Continue reading

A recent (and now retracted) paper coming out of the Universit of Pittsburgh suggests that an amulet may protect from COVID. That's right. An amulet. Should It have been published? Peer review is a faulty system. We have seen some howlers pass through peer review in the past, in part because reviewers don’t always take the time to go through the paper in detail. Peer review gets squeezed in between filing grant applications, supervising students, sitting on committees, and wr...iting papers. Reviewers may also lack the expertise to identify mistakes. And when a paper reads like a cross-genre novel, featuring deep dives into the Earth’s magnetic field, ancient human cultures, and epidemiology, a multidisciplinary team of reviewers is needed to properly vet that paper. This is why comments from scientists after a paper is published can be so useful, and Dr. Moses Turkle Bility, assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh and lead author of the paper, has not escaped from this process. Readers of the paper took issue with poor referencing, illogical jumps, and significant confusion over what doctors see in the lungs of many COVID patients. In short, the paper is a headache-inducing mess. The bottom line is that academics should be free to throw radical ideas at the wall and see what sticks, but these bold assertions cannot simply be accepted in the name of open-mindedness. They need to be backed by extraordinary work, and peer review needs to be beefed up accordingly to prevent bad papers from ending up in the literature. Jonathan Jarry dives into the full story behind this widely ridiculed paper and takes a look at what systems are in place to review outlandish claims. mcgill.ca/x/4Cd

We feel like now's a good time for Joe Schwarcz to give some background on #Dexamethasone, the steroid making the news these days. Whenever the leader of the free world has a health issue, the media explodes with a mix of facts and conjecture. President Trump’s bout with COVID-19 has focused attention on the treatments he has received which include dexamethasone, a steroid that has a wide spectrum of uses including reduction of inflammation in the bronchi, the airways that ...Continue reading

f you need to buy a new phone, do you look up different models and brands and compare their specifications to find the best match for your needs or do you buy what’s popular, expecting it to be the right choice? If you go by what’s popular so as not to get left behind, your brain has fallen prey to the bandwagon effect. The bandwagon effect is named after an actual wheeled wagon that carried the circus band. In the mid-1800s, an entertainer named Dan Rice, who was a rival of... infamous showman P.T. Barnum’s, invited a presidential candidate to campaign on his bandwagon. This paved the way for more bandwagons to be used as tools of political publicity and for the word itself to become tied to politics. Today, to jump on the bandwagon means to adopt an idea or a style because it has become popular and not necessarily because it is valid or good. Humans are social animals, so it’s not surprising that we occasionally throw a finger in the air to feel which way the wind blows. We often hear a more rhetorical form of the bandwagon effect when we are asked to believe something is true because it is popular. Fad diets draw their appeal in part because of their sudden popularity. It is easy to use the majority popular opinion as a shortcut to the most intelligent decision. To be fair, this bandwagon effect has been reported as being rather weak when tested for in isolation and to be dependent on specific conditions, but it can influence some people’s voting behaviour, who will rely on the latest poll to vote for what promises to be a winning ticket. Medical doctors are not immune to the appeal of the bandwagon. The removal of a child’s tonsils used to be very common when I was young, in part because this popular practice incited other doctors to adopt it, but its use has since been somewhat restricted to be more in line with the best evidence we have. Recently, we saw many hop onto the hydroxychloroquine bandwagon even though the evidence for its use against COVID-19 quickly melted away. Situations like these are complex and many factors play into them; but the allure of following colleagues and backing the right horse can’t be dismissed. It’s important to point out that accepting the scientific consensus on a topic like evolution or germ theory is not an example of the bandwagon effect. Accepting an expert consensus is deferring to what’s popular; rather it’s about trusting what multiple lines of evidence and stacks of rigorous studies are pointing to. If you find yourself being seduced by the idea of going with the crowd, ask yourself if there are indeed good reasons to do so. Otherwise, you might just end up following the clown car out of town. mcgill.ca/x/49G

Despite incredible scientific progress since its creation millennia ago, #astrology hasn’t lost its attraction. Its claims have been refuted over and over again, but in times of anxiety, many find the practice useful. Even individuals skeptical of astrology can start to warm up to it when it produces positive descriptions of themselves. This appeal for the pseudoscience is reinforced by our brain’s deep wiring for seeing patterns and agents even where there are none. In times... of great stress, the predictions of astrology can give the illusion of control. Not knowing what the future holds can be untenable for some. Even when astrology predicts bad outcomes, it’s something concrete on which to hang your hat. So - what sign are you? mcgill.ca/x/4DY

Debbie Schwarcz Gonshor is back on this week's "COVID & More" with the OSS to discuss Quebec's actions with respect to school openings, school reopenings, thoughts on a 2nd wave, flu season, and where we stand when it comes to COVID-19 preparedness as the colder months approach.

Dr. Joe Schwarcz discusses the history of dexamethasone. Would you believe it all began with the adrenal glands of cows? #dexamethasone #steroids #corticosteroids #cortisone #donaldtrump #stress

Tips for Better Thinking: Surviving Is Only Half the Story Our brain is not a computer; it is a squishy belief engine that can lead us astray in a myriad of ways. Learning to recognize how our brain misleads us can help us think more clearly and make better sense of the world around us. Take airplanes, for example. Imagine you’re in charge of sending airplanes out to fight a war. The planes that do come back to base have been hit in the spots indicated by the red dots. Where... should you add armour to reinforce them? Our first instinct is to say on the red dots! This is where the planes were hit: let’s make these areas stronger! But when we slow our thinking down, we realize that this is mistaken. If a plane was hit in these spots and made it home, the damage was not fatal. It is the planes that did not return to basethe ones that did not survivethat we should be concerned about. Indeed, when this scenario arose in World War II, statistician Abraham Wald recommended that planes be reinforced where there were no red dots, assuming that these were the spots that would deal a lethal blow to an airplane. This is known as the survivorship bias. It’s when we focus on paintings that have been chosen by art historians to be preserved and assume that every painting from that era was just as good. It’s when we concentrate on an old building that has survived in our city and observe that they don’t make them like they used to, not taking into account all of the old buildings that have been torn down in the intervening years for not being sturdy enough. It’s when we think that because highly-paid Hollywood actors exist, all we need is determination and hard work to make it, without considering the hundreds of thousands of would-be actors who don’t survive the process. It’s when we point out a few smokers who lived to be one hundred and turn a blind eye to all the ones who died at 50. The next time you find yourself looking at a multimillionaire CEO who dropped out of high school and wanting to hear their advice, ask yourself: where are all the high-school dropouts who aren’t multimillionaires? mcgill.ca/x/4aC

The concept of integrating the best therapies to create a more holistic medicine is appealing to university hospitals, but this gift horse is hollow. Beware the Trojan Horse of Integrative Medicine! The claim at the heart of integrative medicine is that conventional medicine is not enough and that so-called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is also insufficient, but that by integrating the two, patients get the best of both worlds. Medicine is accused of being hype...r-focused on disease and on the use of pharmaceuticals, failing patients with chronic illnesses. CAM is positioned as the answer to this, the yang to conventional medicine’s yin to yield a complete, holistic perspective. The evidence for these complementary therapies is often lacking and yet they keep being sold as a promising solution to the problems of real medicine. It is important to remember - as Dr. Ben Goldacre puts it best with an airplane metaphor - that "problems in aircraft design do not mean that magic carpets can actually fly." Jonathan Jarry dives deep into Integrative Medicine and the Trojan Horse that it is. mcgill.ca/x/4jd

Dr. Debbie Schwarcz is back on this week's "COVID & More" with the OSS to discuss Quebec's actions with respect to school openings, school reopenings, thoughts on a 2nd wave, flu season, and where we stand when it comes to COVID-19 preparedness as the colder months approach.

"Double, double toil and trouble;. Fire burn and cauldron bubble!" The mantra of a good witch, of course. Would you believe that the concept of a witch flying atop a broom began in the 15th century with drawings depicting nude witches, astride their broomsticks, flying through the air. According to some historians, this image was suggested by the practice of rubbing a broomstick with belladonna extract and maneuvering it in such a way that the active hallucinogenic ingredient..., atropine, would be absorbed into the bloodstream through the sensitive genital tissues. Hmmm.... And why did witches travel on broomsticks? Because they were scared of horses of course! Actually, any reminder of horses scared them off. Which is why horseshoes gained an undeserved reputation as instruments of good luck. Even Lord Nelson nailed a horseshoe to the mast of his ship in the Battle of Trafalgar to ensure he would not be bewitched. Unfortunately, it didn't work too well for him; he was of course killed in the battle. But there were positive spinoffs from witchcraft. One of the plants often found in a witch's brew was foxglove, otherwise known as witch's bells, which was supposed to invigorate the heart. In the 18th century, the British physician William Withering investigated the folk remedies concocted by a local woman, who was regarded by some as a witch and identified foxglove as the active ingredient. Soon its extract, known as digitalis, was being used to treat heart disease. And this remnant of witchcraft has stayed with us to this very day. Digitalis is still a commonly used medication. Unfortunately, a belief in witchcraft still exists in some parts of the world. In Nigeria, a segment of the population still believes that witches have magical powers, that they can fly at night, and transform into animals. Innocent people accused of witchcraft have been blamed for causing sudden death, disease, impotence, strong winds, and drought. Some human minds indeed seem to be bewitched. mcgill.ca/x/4ji

Will intermittent fasting melt pandemic pounds? When it comes to medical news, the past seven months have been dedicated (for understandable reasons) almost entirely to COVID-19 coverage. When a virus kills more than one million people worldwide, there is good reason why it should be discussed and analyzed in such detail. But there was a recently a non-COVID story that slipped under the radar and addresses one of the most frequent questions I used to get before the event. A...Continue reading

In less than 2 weeks, we kick off #Trottier2020. And on tap we have Britt Hermes, former naturopathic doctor, talking about her time as a naturopath and what made her realize the profession was not what it had promised to be. Here, she speaks with the McGill Reporter about why naturopathy could seem appealing, some of the falsehoods she learned while in the profession, & how easy it is in today's "wellness" world for alternative medicine to appear legitimate. mcgill.ca/x/4aa

On today's "COVID & More", Joe Schwarcz, Jonathan Jarry, Ada Marie McVean & Emily Shore will take a look at the last COVID updates but also be a little more spooky than usual, taking a look at Halloween and some of the science connections and myths surrounding Oct. 31st! TODAY at 12pm ET: YouTube.com/McGillOSS/live (*Take note: streaming on YouTube only!*)

@JoeSchwarcz explores how knowledge of molecular structure led to the development of synthetic antihistamines. #histamine #antihistamines #drugs #drugdevelopment

You have a lottery ticket in hand, your last ten tickets have been duds, are you due for a win? If you flipped a coin in the air and got five heads in a row, would you feel like tail is due? If so, congratulations! You just experienced the gambler’s fallacy. This thinking error comes about because we find it difficult to come to terms with the fact that random events are independent of one another. For example, researchers studied security camera footage of a roulette wheel a...t a large Reno, Nevada casino in 1998. They paid close attention to bets that were made that had odds of 50:50 (betting on a red number versus a black number, for example, or on an odd versus an even number). They noticed that bets overall were pretty much split down the middle, but as gamblers encountered streaks of five or more (e.g. five red numbers in a row), they significantly changed their bets (e.g. to a black number) as if it was due. But it wasn’t. Whenever the ball is spun on the roulette wheel, it has no way of remembering where it landed before. Each spin on the roulette wheel, each coin toss, each lottery ticket you buy is a beginning. It is not a continuation of a series of similar events. In the heat of the moment, however, it can be difficult to remember this lesson, and there are of course exceptions. Once a card is played in blackjack, it doesn’t immediately return to the deck, which means that the odds of receiving a certain card do change from hand to hand. And if you get 16 heads in a row when a friend flips a coin for you, you may suspect foul play. But if you are dealing with a fair coin and no magnets, and you somehow end up getting 16 heads in a row, the odds of your next toss are still, incredibly, 50:50. mcgill.ca/x/4Vd

Did you know you have rocks in your head? Well, sort of. Sometimes called ear rocks, small crystals of calcium carbonate (essentially limestone) are found in your inner ear. The technical name for these tiny stones wrapped in a matrix of protein is otoconia. They play no role in hearing, but rather are part of the vestibular system that has several functions such as helping you keep your balance and coordinating your eye movements while your head is in motion. Otoconia ar...e an essential component of the utricle and saccule, two vestibular organs in the inner ear that help relay information about linear acceleration and tilting of the head to the brain. In both these organs, specialized hair cells are attached to a gelatinous membrane that contains the otoconia. When the head is tilted, gravity pulls more on the crystals than on the liquid surrounding the hair cells. This results in bending of the hair cells, which is translated into electrical impulses that make their way to the brain. Basically, otoconia keep you from getting dizzy every time you move your head. Isn’t the human body amazing? Dizzyingly so. mcgill.ca/x/4Eb

Joe Schwarcz on food dyes & everyone's favourite snack - M&Ms. So question for you, what colour do you save for last? #chocolate #fooddye #reddyenumber2 #foodcolouring #foodcoloring #foodsafety #meltinyourmouth

DYK that at one point in history, bicycles caused a moral and medical panic? Under the reign of Queen Victoria, a woman was typically seen as the angel in the house, a man’s opposite whose main purpose was in making and raising children and whose desired traits were to be pure, docile and prude. Medical doctors were not initially keen on women bicycling. They promoted what could generously be described as misguided fears or, more accurately, as misogynistic pseudoscience. ...Bicycling was claimed to disgrace a woman’s walk, turning it into a plunging kind of motion. Riding a bicycle was thought to alter one’s body right down to the skeleton, with conditions such as bicycle foot and bicycle hand being deplored. Even your face was not immune to the transformative power of riding the steed of steel: the combination of fierce winds and facial strain was thought to permanently result in bicycle face! And all of this exertion was bound to turn a delicate woman’s body into something much too masculine for the times. It turns out that Victorian stereotypes were wedded to pseudoscientific theories about the female body: it was thought that women were mentally and physically impaired by the demands of their reproductive apparatus and menstruation cycles. Riding around on a tricycle was considered fine but on a strenuous bicycle? Why, it might cause a woman’s finite physical energy to be extinguished! Medical journals at the time would seek out anomalies linked to bicycle riding and confuse an association with a cause-and-effect relationship, although perhaps the confusion was a little bit voluntary. Riding a bicycle could cause appendicitis, they reported, internal inflammation and swelling of the throat from all the excitement and teenage girls whose reproductive system was still developing were thought to be at risk of displacement of the uterus, physical shocks, and all sorts of bodily transformations brought about by the bicycle that would render them unable to bear children. While there still exists some concerns with bicycles today, none of them have to do with a "flying-out" of the uterus . mcgill.ca/x/4a4

Another set of great talks for #Trottier2020 In Whom Do We Trust? today at noon! Wendy Zukerman, host of the @science_vs podcast, will look at how science is doing in keeping up with the fast-paced & ever-changing pandemic needs, and Angry Chef Anthony Warner on why people are misled with false information about food and the environment. Grab your lunch & tune in live at 12pm ET: YouTube.com/mcgilloss:live... & if you can’t tune in, the videos will be made available on our YouTube channel afterward! So again, our question of the day is - WHO DO YOU TRUST?

The onset of the coronavirus is not the first time that bats have received a fair amount of (unwarranted) negative attention. Why is it that these mammals get such a bad rap? The original cause of COVID-19 was not someone eating bats in China (myth!), but bats are not off the hook just yet since there is a chance that the SARS CoV-2 virus did originate in bat poop from where it migrated to an animal, likely the pangolin, from where it jumped to humans. Interestingly, this is ...Continue reading

@joeschwarcz talks about variolation, a method of inoculation first used to immunize individuals against smallpox. #vaccines #variolation #smallpox #measles #pandemic #antivax

"Why is my dog's pee ruining my lawn?" Very good question and a real annoyance for dog owners! Most homeowners let their dogs use the backyard as their own personal toilet. Often after a winter of such potty practice, when the snow melts, you’ll often find your lawn speckled with unsightly yellow patches. First of all, what causes these patches? Dog urine contains a variety of nitrogen compounds. Too much nitrogen will burn the grass and create yellow patches. But appropriate... concentrations of nitrogen can actually be beneficial to the lawn, which is why you’ll often see rings of thick dark green grass around the yellow patches. This makes sense since the main ingredient in lawn fertilizer is nitrogen. The concentration of nitrogen in the dog’s urine depends on the type of dog, its sex, and what the animal eats. Larger dogs will pee more and cause more damage. Female dogs also tend to cause more damage than males because they squat and urinate in one concentrated patch whereas the males spray their urine over a larger area. Finally, diets high in protein can increase the concentration of nitrogen in the urine since protein breaks down to release nitrogen compounds. So how do you prevent the appearance of these unsightly patches? There are two ways change the nitrogen concentration of your dog’s urine or focus on the lawn. You can start by changing your dog’s diet. Feed the dog with a type of food that has lower protein content so there is less protein, and subsequently less nitrogen, in the urine. Interestingly enough, many dog foods on the market actually have much more protein than an average dog requires. You can also try to dilute the dog’s urine by watering down the food. Or you can deal with the lawn directly by spraying the patches with water or treating them with gypsum pellets (made up of calcium sulfate hydrate) which expand in water to break up soil. You may also want to designate a certain area of the yard, such as a rock garden or gravel patch, as the "urine area" where you train your dog to go there every time. Another suggestion has been to give the dog tomato juice to neutralize the nitrates in the urine. This does not work and is scientifically unfounded. Then there are products like Ammonil or Green-um pills to try and neutralize the ammonia in the urine, or lawn care products like Dog Patch Spot Repair to be sprinkled on the yellow patches. Watering the lawn might be a cheaper alternative. With a little careful monitoring of your pet and the lawn, you should be able to let your dog out of the house (and the dog house) without worry. mcgill.ca/x/4Lc

Another set of great talks for "In Whom Do We Trust?", #Trottier2020, is coming up TODAY at noon! Wendy Zukerman, host of the Science Vs. podcast will look at how science is doing in keeping up with the fast-paced and ever-changing pandemic news & Angry Chef Anthony Warner on why people are misled with false information about food and the environment. Grab your lunch & tune in live at 12pm ET: youtube.com/mcgilloss/live (And if you can't tune in, the video will be available afterward).

COVID denialism, belief in detox regimens, libertarian calls to protect individual freedoms, all of these tropes are being stitched together into a Frankenstein’s monster by unscientific people like Dr. Andrew Kaufman. Dr. Andrew Kaufman, a psychiatrist essentially turned naturopath, has become very popular on YouTube for denying the existence of the coronavirus. Kaufman rose to fame in the early days of the pandemic by claiming that what scientists were actually seeing with ...their electron microscopes was not a new coronavirus but rather exosomes, a tiny bubble that buds off from that soap bubble and starts floating around, maybe eventually fusing with another soap bubble. And because they do look a lot like many viruses, Kaufman claims the virus does not exist. It’s all exosomes. He further implies that the pandemic just doesn’t add up. He has called lockdowns a form of house arrest and martial law, taking away people’s right to assemble and right to religion. He has claimed (erroneously) that vaccines are syringes full of poison and that masks simultaneously have pores too big to block the virus but small enough to significantly reduce your oxygen supply, which makes no scientific sense. He rhetorically asks the question, Who wears masks?, but does not answer it with doctors, dentists, nurses", but rather "people who are hiding something." Not surprisingly, he lost his remaining part-time doctor job recently for refusing to wear a mask. He worries this manufactured crisis has a goal, which is to make people reliant on government handouts, a common conspiracist belief of the freedom reactionaries. This Andy Kaufman is no joke. mcgill.ca/x/4uF

We've been getting a lot of questions about salt. Table salt, kosher salt, sea salt, Himalayan salt. So - which one should you buy? @Joe Schwarcz weighs in: Salt was the first seasoning used by our ancestors. They got it by evaporating seawater, or by mining it. The origin of salt deposits in the ground can also be traced back to oceans which no longer exist so that basically all salt is "sea salt." Salt was mined near Salzburg ("City of Salt") in Austria as early as 6500 BC ...Continue reading