Several years ago a friend asked me to look at the possibly efficacy of the herbal supplement Protandim and whether the claims of the marketers were scientifically justified. This page discusses the results of my research.
There has been much discussion on social media, particularly in libertarian circles, of Covid-19 vaccines causing sudden cardiac death. This page discusses why it is not really feasible to show a statistically significant association and attribute cause in this manner.
The DANMASK-19 study (Bundgaard et al. 2020) was a large randomized study in Denmark on the effect of the general public wearing surgical masks. The results of this study have been subject to much politicized interpretation because it failed to find a statistically significant result using conventional significance levels. This page describes in detail the statistical interpretation of this study. In brief summary, the DANMASK-19 study failed to find a significant effect (p<0.05) of wearing surgical masks on the likelihood of being infected by Covid-19 amongst the general public. A 95% confidence interval for the magnitude of any change in the rate of infection ranged from a decrease of 46% to a 23% increase. The most likely change in rate of infection was a 15% decrease though there was also a 25% chance that wearing a surgical mask increased the rate of infection.
In late 2020 and early 2021, there were 2 newer peer-reviewed reviews of the scientific literature on whether the general public wearing cloth masks will slow the spread of Covid-19. Overall they suggest that while it seems like mask wearing should work, it does not do so when actually tested in practice using randomized controlled studies.
A commentary by Jefferson and Heneghan which notes that the recommendations in July 2020 for the general public to wear masks appeared to be based on politics rather than good medical practice.
A commentary by Mahase discusses the advantages and problems with the general public wearing cloth masks and includes other expert discussion.
In 1998, Andrew Wakefield and collegues published a paper in the Lancet alleging a link between the administration of the MMR vaccine and autism. The paper was subsequently retracted because it contained 5 scientific frauds in the paper itself and one in Wakefield's response.
My article on these frauds was published in the November/December 2020 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer.
Transcripts of the Medical Research Council hearing on this issue, which resulted in Wakefield's medical license being revoked, are available here.