RealClearScience
Powerful psychedelic drug ibogaine could help people kick opioid addictions
Somewhere around two million Americans suffer from opioid-related substance use disorder. Treatments like buprenorphine and methadone calm the brain circuits affected by opioids, reducing ...
Outside of ‘occasional surges’, biodiversity evolution has been largely stagnant for millions of years, studies suggest
The traditional view is that species have increased in diversity continuously over the past 200 million years, particularly in the last ...
How did early humans avoid being wiped out by tuberculosis?
Tuberculosis is responsible for as many as one billion deaths in the last 200 years alone, but its murderous history ...
First plants didn’t evolve flower color to attract pollinators, study suggests
Flowering plants feature a wondrous array of colors, the primary purpose of which is to attract insect pollinators. But this ...
Ancient Egyptians loved beer. Here’s the recipe they used to brew it
The ancient Egyptians loved beer. According to Mohamed A. Farag, a Professor of Chemistry at The American University in Cairo: ...
Too many carbs, calories? Nope. Lack of fiber biggest problem with American diets
Ask Americans about what they think is the biggest problem with their diets and you'll probably hear a variety of ...
Viewpoint: 5 popular Netflix documentaries serve up pseudoscience about agriculture, chemicals and nutrition
Netflix brought in $15.8 billion in revenue in 2018 in part because the streaming service floods subscribers with a deluge ...
Mimicking brain death: The danger of overdosing on this muscle relaxer
In a new case report, Turkish doctors from Dokuz Eylul University present a curious case of drug intoxication mimicking brain ...
Viewpoint: Intellectual property tug-of-war could hinder the CRISPR gene-editing revolution
Conservative estimates place the value-added of [intellectual property] on the American economy at nearly $1 trillion annually... ... Take, for instance, ...
China embraces artificial intelligence-driven agriculture, emerges as global technology hothouse
China is facing a number of growing pains, but one in particular has proved more taxing than most: How can ...
Controversial theory linking herpes to Alzheimer’s bolstered by study
An outside-the-box theory received new attention in an extensive study published [June 21] to the journal Neuron. Researchers based out of the Icahn ...
Viewpoint: New director of International Agency for Research on Cancer, under fire for promoting cancer fears, likely to maintain status quo
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a World Health Organization subsidiary mired in controversy, picked Dr. Elisabete Weiderpass ...
Big data meets taxonomy: Classifying animal species with ‘DNA barcoding’
[T]axonomy – the science of classifying organisms – would be so much easier if life forms came with barcodes… Interestingly enough, ...
Do ‘brain training’ games actually help kids’ cognitive skills?
In just 13 years, brain training has sprouted from a fledgling industry to a behemoth projected to be worth as much ...
Reproductive warfare: Do infertile ‘kamikaze sperm’ thwart rival males?
In the 1990s, biologist Robin Baker put forth the idea that a significant proportion of human sperm are not actually capable of ...
Viewpoint: The government can’t decide what a GMO is—so how is it going to require mandatory labeling?
If the food industry and government cannot come to a consensus about what is a GMO and what isn’t, labeling ...
Obesity paradox explained? Why muscle mass may reduce risk of death
Nearly twenty years ago, researchers began noticing a curious paradox in health-focused studies: despite common wisdom that being overweight or obese is ...
Viewpoint: Biggest ‘bee apocalypse’ myth? There isn’t one
[D]espite panicked claims of an apocalypse, managed honeybee colonies in the United States have actually been rising since 2008. In fact, as of ...
Why Alzheimer’s patients have abnormal gut bacteria
People suffering from Alzheimer's disease have altered gut bacteria, a new study published in Scientific Reports shows. ... A team of researchers primarily ...
Alternative medicine can kill you
Chiropractic, homeopathy, acupuncture, juice diets, and other forms of unproven alternative medicine cannot cure cancer, no matter what some quacks ...
Could all those cups of coffee be causing infertility in men?
Caffeine is the most widely consumed psychoactive drug in the world. Hundreds of millions of people are technically junkies, imbibing ...
Treadmill requires 15% more effort to be as effective as outdoor running
Do you get a better workout on a treadmill or outdoors? Now, a team of French and Italian researchers has ...
Animal research rarely replicates in humans—So why does the media hype these studies?
Last year, I F*%king Love Science blared a headline sure to pique the interest of any alcohol imbiber: "Beer Hops May ...
Gold mine in our body? Should researchers pay for using our plasma cells?
By donating blood plasma, you can make anywhere from $40 to $100 per week. But that's loose change to Ted ...
How ‘chemophobia’ links Food Babe to Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’
Over fifty-four years since it was first published, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring remains a divisive book. The exposé led to ...
How does promiscuity in females impact evolution?
Darwin’s original ideas about sexual selection were based largely on males competing for mates, either by fighting among themselves or ...
5 advancements that could enhance human performance
The concept of human augmentation, which is also called human performance enhancement or HPE, tends not to receive much attention ...
Despite what Disney movies want us to believe, opposites don’t usually attract
[T]he idea that opposites attract has completely saturated the film industry...In fact, one study found that almost 80% of us ...