Here's my favorite example of how superstition can be more than simple harmless fun. Yanadi Kondaiah is an 80 year old man living in Hyperabad, India. He claimed to have a "magic leg" which could grant wishes and cure illnesses, and he made money by charging people to touch it ( Read more... )

Yet another case to file under "why it's dangerous to believe antiscientific insanity". A week ago an Indian teenager was so worried about the Large Hadron Collider that she killed herself by drinking pesticides. Partial blame goes to the Indian media, who "held discussions airing doomsday predictions over a huge particle-smashing machine buried ( Read more... )

Interesting followup to last year's post about ayurvedic medicine - traditional herbal medicine used in India for thousands of years. There was a recent study in JAMA which determined that one fifth (20%) of ayurvedic herbs purchased from internet sources contained not just detectable levels of lead, mercury, or arsenic - they contained heavy ( Read more... )

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The story of worldwide Polio eradication is very close to becoming one of humanity's greatest victories. Polio has been almost completely eradicated the same way that smallpox has been eradicated. The exception is small pockets of Africa where there are outbreaks of polio where Nigerian Muslims aren't getting vaccinated because they hold to of ( Read more... )

I've been talking with spiritualmonkey in the comments of another post about medical marijuana and whether to encourage or require medical cannabis dispensaries to treat their "medication" like other medication: to standardize it, dispense it in measured doses, or certify its purity and potency through trusted third parties. He pointed out (I hope I'm ( Read more... )