Gideon M-K: Health Nerd

Pictured: Problematic research. Source. There is a lot of problematic research out there. I’ve written about this issue before—most people are not aware that there are real medical trials that doctors use to make decisions for our health which may never have happened at all. It’s a very sticky problem that is hard to fix. The biggest hurdles when trying to correct the scientific record are simple: it’s hard to publish criticism in a meaningful way, and even when you do no one cares.

Pictured: Parasites. Delicious, nutritious parasites. Photo by Vinicius Benedit on Unsplash Humans have been eating raw fish in many forms for a very long time. There are raw seafood options in every cuisine I can think of, from the ceviche of Spanish and South American cuisine to the carpaccio of Italy to Hawaiian poke bowls to all of the other dishes you can find across the world. According to the latest headlines, raw fish comes with some serious downsides.

Photo by micheile henderson on Unsplash The ketogenic diet has been a contentious topic since I first started writing about health. On the one side of the argument are the low-carb proponents, who insist that carbohydrates are the cause of pretty much all chronic disease. I’m not joking, that’s a real position that some people take.

Pictured: Not particularly violent unless you hate colour. Photo by Cecilie Bomstad on Unsplash In the ongoing culture wars, nothing is quite as attention-grabbing as transgender people. Even though trans and gender diverse individuals making up a tiny fraction of the population, they are given an outsized amount of concern no matter what the topic of the day is.

In 2024, I wrote about a really bad paper that had just been published. It was causing a massive hubbub because the authors of the study were claiming that COVID-19 vaccines had likely caused a lot of deaths across the world in 2021 and 2022, and that COVID-19 itself was mostly harmless. While that was a common claim during the pandemic, this was a paper published in the leading journal BMJ Public Health, lending the ideas significant credibility. The paper itself was terrible.

One of the biggest media stories in the UK at the moment involves Professor Jason Arday. He was the youngest Black man to ever be made a full endowed professor at Cambridge University, and was promoted as a leading example by the university for years. He was recently forced to resign amid allegations of plagiarism and lies, and was found dead last week in an apparent suicide. The tale is monumentally depressing. You cannot read the story without getting furious and sad in equal measure.

Pictured: A VERY old photo. Look at all those paper files! Photo by National Cancer InstituteUnsplash This is the second part in my series of how to read a randomized trial. These detailed discussions of how to read and interpret the scientific literature are for paid subscribers only. If you like my work, please think about a paid subscription it really helps to keep me writing!

Pictured: Full-fat dairy cows. Photo by Daniel Quiceno M on Unsplash Everyone loves a good anti-establishment story. The idea that all of those smarmy experts have been wrong all along is wonderfully compelling. There’s a sense of self-righteous indignation that you can only get for disagreeing with established wisdom for no reason at all only to be proven right years later.

Pictured: Time consuming. Photo by Danielle Cerullo on Unsplash Fitness hacks are one of the most popular things around. We all want to be fit, but getting fit is such a chore. It would be lovely if there was some way to avoid spending hours every week slowly building muscle and doing cardio at the gym. And according to recent news, there’s a really simple way to cut down on your time at the gym and still see those gains.

Pictured: A man. Photo by Jonas Kakaroto on Unsplash There’s a very common myth that I keep seeing online. It goes something like this: “The reason we don’t have a birth control pill for men is because when they tested it men said they wouldn’t take it because of symptoms like aches, muscle cramps, and depression. The same symptoms women have had on the pill for DECADES.” You see this all the time. Here’s a recent post about the 96% effective male hormonal birth control and how it was shelved.