Free Republic

Okay, to be fair, “beware” kind of applies to all of academia at this point, but I think this one is worth mentioning, and I happened upon it by chance:‘New’ refers to the improbability of any one discipline or mode of thinking (e.g. Marxism, postmodernism) producing similar results, and that ‘no one (other than the interdisciplinarian) takes responsibility for studying the complex problem, object, text, or system that falls between the disciplines or that transcends them’ (Repko & Szostak, 2016, p. 324).This passage comes from a 2020 college textbook, the Third Edition of Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies by Allen F....

Mississippi State Auditor Shad White is advocating for a major shift in funding for degree programs at public universities. He is aiming to redirect resources away from what he calls "garbage fields" like women's and African American studies, which often lead to graduates leaving the state. A recent report from the Mississippi State Auditor's Office highlighted this push for change. It emphasized the importance of aligning college majors with workforce needs to address Mississippi's "brain drain" issue. This problem arises when college graduates leave the state in search of better job opportunities. The report revealed that taxpayers invest the same...

Former White House chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that there were “a number of studies that show that masks actually do work” to stop the spread of COVID-19. Anchor Jon Karl said, “There’s a new study out that suggests that masks were actually not effective, at least not in a global sense, in containing the pandemic. What is your sense looking back at all of this? Did masks prove to be less effective than you anticipated?”

The 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act), signed into law in December 2016, was created to help accelerate medical product development and “bring new innovations and advances” to patients quicker and more efficiently. Yet some researchers suggest the law is being used to bypass the once rigorous and evidenced-based standards for new drug approvals, allowing novel drugs to flood the market without adequate data and public transparency.(Maxx-Studio/Shutterstock)According to a research letter published on August 8 in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open (JAMA), 24 of the 37 drugs approved in 2022 by the U.S. Food and Drug...

Germany and Nigeria are set to venture into an agreement to pave way for the return of centuries-old sculptures known as the Benin Bronzes that were taken from Africa in the 19th century and displayed in German museums and elsewhere.Governments and museums in Europe and North America have increasingly sought to resolve ownership disputes over objects looted during colonial times. A British colonial expedition stole the bas-relief Bronzes along with many other treasures in 1897 from the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, in what's now southern Nigeria. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, an authority that oversees many of...

The White House on Friday called it “incomprehensible” for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to block a new Advanced Placement (AP) course for high school students on African American studies. “It is incomprehensible to see … this ban or this block, to be more specific, that DeSantis has put forward,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, noting the Biden administration does not play a role in dictating school curriculums.

Two American medical doctors and a researcher wrote a study picking apart the methodology and key conclusions of two famous Dutch studies that are foundational to the development of modern gender medicine. The Dutch studies, published in 2011 and 2015 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine and Pediatrics, respectively, by Dutch medical doctor Annelou de Vries and two teams of researchers in the Netherlands, tracked dozens of adolescents as they underwent puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries and concluded that patients’ mental health and well-being improved; both studies were used as evidence in support of childhood cross-sex medical interventions and...

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- The video is a little over 16 minutes long. It features Aaron Brown answering questions and pontificating on the failings of the vast majority of “studies” aimed at various “gun control” policies. Brown is a well-credentialed expert on statistics.Early on, an important point is made about gun control policies. They have tremendous associated costs. Those costs are almost never considered in policy debates. This is a failing of Progressive philosophy and government policy in general. While benefits are stressed, costs are ignored or glossed over.Brown focuses heavily on a Rand meta-study updated in 2020. The Rand study evaluated...

A New Jersey university is launching what it called the world's first "Master of Arts in Happiness Studies." Centenary University's program will "explore the implications of happiness for individuals, the workplace, and our broader society," according to the college's announcement. It's set to launch virtually in the fall and will cost students $17,700. "Whatever profession you identify, there is a place – a very important place for happiness studies – for the science of well-being," Tal Ben Shahar, a happiness expert and the director of the program, told Fox News.

Politicians and bureaucrats from agencies with evidence of capture by Big Pharma should not be making population-wide health recommendations. The first group is subject to the whims of public sentiment, which have no place in individual healthcare decisions. The latter have unknown motives requiring serious investigation by our elected representatives to reform the health bureaucracy and redirect its activities back to the original mission. The insistence of both of these groups that children get vaccinated against COVID-19 is a case in point.New data from the New York State Department of Health shows protection from the Pfizer mRNA vaccine against infection...

Science says Aspirin is good, bad and undeterminedAspirin Use Is Associated With Decreased Mechanical Ventilation, Intensive Care Unit Admission, and In-Hospital Mortality in Hospitalized Patients With Coronavirus Disease 20199/25/2021, 12:57:34 PM · by ransomnote · 65 replies journals.lww.com ^ | Oct 21, 2020 | Jonathan H. Chow, Ashish K. Khanna, Shravan Kethireddy, et alAspirin Misuse May Have Made 1918 Flu Pandemic Worse10/2/2009, 1:44:59 PM · by decimon · 30 replies · 1,715+ views HIV Medicine Association ^ | October 2, 2009 | UnknownThe devastation of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic is well known, but a new article suggests a surprising factor...

Johns Hopkins University professor Dr. Marty Makary says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been "using science as political propaganda.""The absolute worst studies that were done during the pandemic came out of the CDC," he said in an interview Tuesday with the Fox Business Network spotlighted by Breitbart News."It really is offensive. It should be offensive to anybody who believes in science, including our nation’s physicians. This is using science as political propaganda. The absolute worst studies that were done during the pandemic came out of the CDC."Makary, a professor of public health, pointed to a CDC...

Analysis of 30 COVID-19 early treatments, and database of 225 other potential treatments. 66 countries have approved early treatments. Treatments do not replace vaccines and other measures. All practical, effective, and safe means should be used. Elimination is a race against viral evolution. No treatment, vaccine, or intervention is 100% available and effective for all variants. Denying efficacy increases the risk of COVID-19 becoming endemic; and increases mortality, morbidity, and collateral damage. https://c19early.com/

A review of peer-reviewed studies suggests regular COVID 19 mask wearing increases risk of mental retardation. Studies affirm what independent medical doctors are increasingly saying – mask wearing mandates are not only unscientific, but contrary to good health and can be deadly! Below, we show how the scientific literature finds that prolonged mask wearing impedes brain function. Top medical doctor, Britain’s Dr Vernon Coleman, is Britain’s best-selling medical author for several decades and has repeatedly warned how dangerous mask wearing really is – it can even be deadly to some. He tells us: “Masks cause hypoxia and hypercapnia – and...

Malaysian master’s student Shin Jie Yong poured through more than 100 different studies examining the efficacy of cloth masks in fighting airborne infections, and his conclusion is that it’s “questionable.”Yong writes that he first tried to use Google to find the evidence he was looking for, but due to a lack of “concrete info” to be found on the world’s most popular search engine, he ended up going to PubMed, “a biomedical literature database,” where he “looked through over 100 indexed papers about cloth masks.”A meta-analysis published last month showed, not surprisingly, that “wearing N95s and surgical masks decreased the...

Starting next week, billboards, social media, television and print media will carry messages urging thousands of Valley motorists, including those in the West Valley, to prepare for four years of disruptions in their driving routines. It’s not exactly Armageddon that the Arizona Department of Transportation will be heralding, but it certainly won’t be a walk in the park either, especially for car and truck traffic on I-10. West Valley motorists who need to get to the other side of the county or Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport can expect significant increases in traffic as motorists try to evade the inevitable...

Fraud may be rampant in biomedical research. My 2016 article "Broken Science" pointed to a variety of factors as explanations for why the results of a huge proportion of scientific studies were apparently generating false-positive results that could not be replicated by other researchers. A false positive in scientific research occurs when there is statistically significant evidence for something that isn't real (e.g., a drug cures an illness when it actually does not). The factors considered included issues like publication bias, and statistical chicanery associated with p-hacking, HARKing, and underpowered studies. My article did not address the possibility that the...

Two studies published Wednesday found that the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine was highly effective at preventing infection and severe cases of the virus caused by more infectious variants. The findings indicate that the two-dose inoculation, which has already been approved for emergency use and distributed in the U.S. and other countries, could also protect against more transmissible variants fueling new waves of the virus across the globe.

(...) STORY AT-A-GLANCE -Makers of COVID-19 vaccines are now destroying long-term safety studies by unblinding their trials and giving the control groups the active vaccine, claiming it is “unethical” to withhold an effective vaccine -In so doing, they make it virtually impossible to assess any long-term safety and effectiveness, and the true benefit versus cost -It’s ironic, because vaccine mandates are being justified on the premise that the benefit to the community is more important than an individual’s risk of harm. Yet vaccine manufacturers are saying that participants in the control groups are harmed by not getting the vaccine, and...

Proponents have called the state’s massive new toll road project a monumental opportunity and a thoughtful plan for smart growth. The 330 miles of new highways will curb interstate congestion, bolster the economy and facilitate hurricane evacuations, they say. In short, the argument goes, the roads would be a good investment. So why is it that so many of the preliminary studies are at best lukewarm on the idea? And the latest reports only add to the list of reasons to reconsider the controversial project. The tolls roads, dubbed the Multi-use Corridors of Regional Economic Significance, were largely pushed by...