/oss/taxonomy/term/5610/all en /oss/article/critical-thinking-pseudoscience/whats-trending-world-pseudoscience <p>Our office’s mission is to separate sense from nonsense, which may well be a Sisyphean task. There is a lot of pseudoscience—meaning ideas and interventions that look scientific but that are not—especially around health. Having a mental map of what is trending right now can help us better understand the landscape so that we can intervene more effectively. I have been interested in health-related pseudoscience for over a decade now. Here is what I see being popular at the moment and who is pushing (and often profiting from) these narratives.</p> Fri, 15 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 9645 at /oss /oss/article/health-and-nutrition/dna-teleportation-really <p>French virologist Dr. Luc Montagnier, who was awarded a share of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology, passed away on February 8. The Prize, awarded for his 1983 discovery of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), was richly deserved but was not without controversy. Without doubt, the identification of the virus was certainly a landmark event, but the discovery was disputed by American biomedical researcher Robert Gallo who claimed that he had detected the virus before Montagnier. This led to a long and acrimonious dispute that was finally settled with the intervention of U.S.</p> Thu, 24 Feb 2022 19:07:32 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 9035 at /oss /oss/article/covid-19-health/escaping-covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy <p>As I write this,<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations"> 4.8 billion doses of a COVID-19 vaccine</a> have been administered globally. Even with my scientific background, I cannot easily wrap my head around this number, 4.8 billion. If you think of each syringe carrying a dose as a pencil, and you put these 4.8 billion pencils side by side like they are in a colouring box, you end up with a line that is almost twice the length of the Earth’s diameter.</p> Fri, 20 Aug 2021 19:55:34 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 8810 at /oss