McGill Office for Science and Society (OSS)

12/31/2025

As we wrap up 2025, we are thrilled to take a look back at the year and share which of our articles you liked best every month!

Check out our story for the links to each article 🔗

To all our readers, we wish you a very happy and healthy New Year!

12/27/2025

If you’ve spent any time online, you’ve seen it: influencers with ring lights and discount codes confidently dispensing health advice that’s wrong, misleading, or outright dangerous.

China has decided to crack down, passing a law that requires influencers to prove they’re qualified before speaking on topics like health, medicine, finance, or education. Platforms must verify credentials, and disguised medical advertising is banned.

At first glance, it feels like a win for public safety. Misinformation does kill.

But once governments start deciding who is “qualified” to speak, things get complicated. The internet has also amplified voices that institutions ignored: patients, people with disabilities, and marginalized communities sharing their lived experiences. Credentials don’t guarantee honesty, accuracy, or ethical behavior, and regulation risks driving people further into distrust-filled corners of the web.

China’s law tackles a real problem, but forces an uncomfortable question the rest of us haven’t answered yet: if not regulation, then what? And who gets to speak online in the meantime?

https://mcgill.ca/x/5op

If you spend any time online, you’ve probably noticed that the internet has a bit of a misinformation problem. Scroll long enough and you’ll encounter an influencer with a ring light, discount code, and unwavering confidence explaining how coffee enemas cure cancer, broccoli ruins your hormones,...

12/26/2025

While references to mouthwash appear in ancient literature, it is generally difficult to date the mouthwash’s origins 🦷🪥 History says we’ve rinsed with everything from wine to urine 🍷🚽 While generally thought to be beneficial, there is an evolving field of research suggesting that frequent antiseptic use may reduce beneficial oral bacteria tied to nitric oxide (NO) production 🦠❌

Despite these concerns, the Canadian Dental Association still recommends adding mouthwash, “to a regular oral hygiene routine [as it] reduces and prevents gingivitis more than brushing and flossing alone.”

Get our verdict in this week’s latest!
https://mcgill.ca/x/5oT

I find that I always go in and out of “mouthwash phases.” Sometimes I convince myself that it is an absolutely necessary component of my oral health routine, while in other moments in life I concede that a two-minute brush and a good flossing will suffice. However, I recently have been finding t...

12/26/2025

Are plastics a necessary evil? Dr. Joe puts plastics into perspective in his latest video!

12/22/2025

Did you know that bears don’t actually hibernate? 🐻💤 Or that animals can hibernate in the summer? ☀️

Get the latest scoop on what hibernation is, what it isn’t, and learn new terms you can whip out the next time hibernation becomes a topic of conversation 🗣️

https://mcgill.ca/x/5ZF

Having recently moved to Prague, I have spent many of my weekends in the Czech countryside. Life there is slow, with a usual day involving a long walk in the forest as the main event. I am often reminded by my grandmother to keep my eyes and ears peeled (my words, not hers) for wild boars – especi...

12/21/2025

Finding out Santa isn’t real is a childhood milestone, but it doesn’t always go as smoothly as parents hope.

Research on the Santa Claus myth shows that most children begin to question his existence between ages 7 and 9. Some feel proud when they figure it out. Others feel sad, angry, or deeply disappointed, with emotional reactions that can linger for weeks, or longer.

So is the Santa story a harmless bit of magic, or an elaborate deception that risks damaging trust? Psychologists have been debating this for decades, and the data suggest there’s no single outcome. How children react seems to depend less on “credulity” and more on how strongly the illusion is maintained, and how the truth is revealed.

From Depression-era disillusionment to modern developmental psychology, this article explores what science can (and can’t yet) tell parents about the moment when kids learn the truth about Santa, and why reactions vary so widely.

https://mcgill.ca/x/5Zt

“My moma [sic] said the chimney was blocked.” Thus reads the letter from a 10-year-old girl in Wisconsin who was told by her mother that Santa Claus would not be dropping off gifts that year. The real reason? The Great Depression, a decade-long economic downturn that followed the 1929 Wall Stree...

12/21/2025

“Pigment in tomatoes and watermelon could help cure depression-but there’s a catch” screamed a headline in the New York Post. There sure is a catch, and it’s a pretty big one.

Just about every day we are confronted with some report about some food that is going to extend our life or accelerate our demise 🩺🏥 Sometimes it’s even the same food! In this week’s piece, Dr. Joe goes through an example involving the not-so-scientifically backed depression-curing powers of watermelon and tomatoes 🍉🍅

In fact… something that can cause depression is being accosted by meaningless nutritional studies every day.

https://mcgill.ca/x/5Z9

Just about every day we are confronted with some report about some food that is going to extend our life or accelerate our demise. Sometimes it’s even the same food! One day we are urged to use vegetable oils instead of animal fats, and the next day may bring a study informing us that soybean oil ...

12/19/2025

AI is quietly reshaping health misinformation, and older adults are paying the price.

Across YouTube, hundreds of thousands of seniors are being fed “science-backed” health advice from videos that look professional, sound authoritative, and cite convincing studies. There’s just one problem: much of it is entirely fake.

From AI-generated scripts and voiceovers to hallucinated medical studies and non-existent doctors, these videos are designed to capture attention, not improve health. Our investigation found that many of these channels appear to be run by overseas content farms, exploiting platform algorithms and trust in medical authority to generate ad revenue.

The result? Seniors are being misled about exercise, nutrition, medications, and even encouraged to distrust their doctors, all by content that didn’t exist a few years ago and is getting harder to spot by the day.

This isn’t just about bad information. It’s about how generative AI is blurring the line between reality and fabrication in one of the most high-stakes domains there is: health

https://mcgill.ca/x/5ZV

I had never received an email in Vietnamese before. My request for an interview had been written in English, and the channel I had reached out to made English-language videos, but the reply I received was a simple question written in Vietnamese: “What can we help each other develop?” The man in ...

12/18/2025

From grocery stores to medicine cabinets, date stamps carry a quiet authority. “Best before” and “expiration” dates shape what we buy, what we toss, and what we trust, but they do not all mean the same thing.

This article explores:
• The difference between “best before” dates on foods and expiration dates on medications
• How manufacturers decide these timelines using quality, safety, and stability testing
• Why some products remain usable after their dates, while others do not
• How policy, economics, and access can influence when food gets labelled as “expired”

“Best before” does not mean “bad after”, and those small printed dates often say more about balance than certainty.

Read more 👇
https://mcgill.ca/x/5kr

From grocery stores to our medicine cabinets, dates stamped on products carry a subtle authority. These "best before" or "expiration" dates guide our consumption, influence our purchasing decisions, and, in some cases, shape the ingredients list on our favourite food products. But what do these date...

12/17/2025

Riding Shanghai’s Maglev train feels like stepping into the future, the train glides into the station at over 300 km/h, lifted entirely by magnetic forces. But its power raises a familiar question, do strong magnetic fields pose a health risk? 🚄

This article looks at:
• How Maglev trains use low-frequency electromagnetic fields to levitate and move, without direct contact or friction
• What decades of research say about low-frequency magnetic fields and human health
• Why Maglev emissions stay below international safety limits set by scientific consensus
• Who actually warrants closer study, not short-term riders, but people with long-term exposure

A seven-minute ride poses no health risk. The science behind magnetism, it turns out, is far less mysterious than it looks.

Read more 👇
https://mcgill.ca/x/5kj

For anyone who flies into Shanghai Pudong International Airport, it’s a rite-of-passage to take the Maglev -- short for magnetic levitation -- train into the city. The railway is as much a tourist attraction as it is a transportation system. I was on board the train this summer, gleefully watching...

12/16/2025

🧝🏼‍♀️🧌 Folklore in some European countries held that placing a straw in an anthill and allowing ants to crawl all over it, and then sucking on the straw, slowed aging 👴🏼👵🏾 A classic example of sympathetic magic, this practice has no roots in science🪄. However, place that ant-infested straw into a jug of milk… now that’s a different story 🐜

The origins of “ant yogurt” trace back to Turkey and Bulgaria, where red wood ants were added to milk 🇹🇷🇧🇬🥛 However, whether ant yogurt is any better in this regard than any other yogurt has not been studied. Get the full sip in Dr. Joe’s latest!

https://mcgill.ca/x/5k9

I do get some interesting questions. How about this one? “Why in Central Europe did we as kids put a straw on an anthill, wait for the ants to crawl over it and then suck it for its sour taste? My mother did it and lived to 93!” Let’s deal with the living to 93 first. Many people live to 93 wi...

12/15/2025

Nearly half of Canadians now say creationism should be taught in schools, a figure that appears to be rising. But what does that actually mean, and does creationism belong in a science classroom?

This article examines the difference between religious belief and scientific theory, unpacks why “intelligent design” failed under legal and scientific scrutiny, and reviews the overwhelming evidence supporting evolution. It also takes a closer look at the poll behind the headlines, showing how ambiguous wording can inflate apparent support.

Teaching about creationism is not the same as teaching it as science. And framing evolution as “controversial” misunderstands how science works… and why evidence matters.

https://mcgill.ca/x/itK

A new poll shows that nearly half of all Canadians believe that creationism—the idea that living things on this planet were created by supernatural forces—should be taught in schools. More troubling, it seems, is the observation that the fraction of Canadians who think so has gone up in the last...