OpenMind

02/03/2023

The hidden cost of telehealth --no physical exam and missed diagnoses, a big price for the convenience.

What have we sacrificed for the convenience of online doctor visits?

02/02/2023

Gaslighting Long Haulers
Despite all the patient voices and validating studies from university labs, long Covid has been dismissed by some doctors and journalists as a contested, even psychiatric, disease. In this column, we push back. Now at OpenMind
By Ryan Prior

Despite all the patient voices and validating studies from university labs, long Covid has been dismissed by some doctors and journalists as a contested, even psychiatric, disease. In this column, we push back.

02/02/2023

Despite all the patient voices and validating studies from university labs, long Covid has been dismissed by some doctors and journalists as a contested, even psychiatric, disease. In this column, we push back.

07/01/2023

https://www.openmindmag.org/?fbclid=IwAR2G2nBIvy_8zhZFi8WDORwCP4diNaZ5ez9kqDYTZ-lfiS69sKjT1y7_T84
around the world are in steep decline, in the most consequential loss of life on earth since the wipeout of the dinosaurs. The tiny empires that prop up terrestrial life are on fire, yet we can barely comprehend the flames licking at our feet.

10/12/2022

This month, we’re revisiting and updating some of our favorite OpenMind essays from 2022. Today, we take a fresh look at Phil Ball’s essay on the new billionaire space race:

Outer space was supposed to belong to all humankind. Should we surrender it to anyone who can pay up?

10/12/2022

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to OpenMind to keep up with independent journalism that tackles science controversies and deceptions while illuminating a better way forward. 👉https://scienceliteracyfoundation.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=8b13bd284ea78b372ebfde707&id=37240a49ac

09/12/2022

This essay offers a novel conceptual frame for evaluating the kinds of actions and decisions that might lead us to a more stable, successful future:

To solve our global problems, we need to evolve into a global collective, taking inspiration from DNA, ants, and our own social success.

09/12/2022

Human intuition is not a reliable guide for recognizing the most economical explanation or outcome. But once you train your brain to think in terms of possible outcomes, some more likely than others, it is easy to tap into the power of Ockham’s razor.

Ockham’s razor can help anyone evaluate the odds that distinguish sense from nonsense.

08/12/2022

This occasional column is an extension of the WWR section of our newsletter. We hope it will help our readers continue diving deep into the topics we cover and care about—even if we aren’t the ones publishing the stories.

Recommended articles from our editorial team on misinformation, cognitive science, and more.

08/12/2022

Can we be protected against the spread of fake news in the same way that we can be protected from the spread of a deadly virus? Read about some of the techniques researchers are developing to do just that.

Researchers are trying to boost people’s immunity to fake news using online games and other strategies. Can these efforts protect the wider population against disinformation?

07/12/2022

"Indigenous knowledge is exceptionally nuanced and deep. It is cumulative, place-based, and acquired largely through observation and experimentation on both large and small scales."

Native study of the natural world is thousands of years old and exceptionally nuanced and deep. When our body of knowledge excludes that expertise, we distort our understanding of ecosystems and put species at risk.

07/12/2022

As skies glow orange from California to Australia and the Mediterranean coast, as air becomes unbreathable and residents lose homes, the debate over how to control the flames has intensified here in the United States.

A maverick ecologist went to court against the National Park Service. Behind his lawsuit is a larger question: Is it appropriate to use unnatural means such as chainsaws and logging equipment to save ancient sequoias and protect public lands?

06/12/2022

This illuminating essay from Erica Cirino explains why feel-good planting campaigns can actually be a distraction from tackling climate change. It’s also a great reminder that scientific knowledge is hard-won and often imperfect, despite good intentions.

Misguided schemes to plant trillions of trees distract from the real work of controlling carbon emissions and reining in climate change.

06/12/2022

Whether you are a journalist or a consumer of media, you’ll want to know how to avoid ableism or correct it when you see it in play. Our primer on sensitivity and appropriateness is the perfect place to start.

Journalists often struggle to cover disabled people. Here’s what experts say about getting the story right. Bonus: A primer on correcting the media when they get it wrong.

05/12/2022

We regularly share stories that have caught our attention in the weekly newsletter (subscribe if you haven’t already), but occasionally we want to offer our readers a chance to go deeper.

Recommended articles from our editorial team on misinformation, cognitive science, and more.

05/12/2022

We asked Sara Walker to explain how her "planetary intelligence" perspective can help guide us to new types of problem-solving while erasing the perceived boundary between natural and human-generated ones.

To solve our global problems, we need to evolve into a global collective, taking inspiration from DNA, ants, and our own social success.

02/12/2022

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to OpenMind to keep up with independent journalism that tackles controversies and deceptions while illuminating a better way forward. https://scienceliteracyfoundation.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=8b13bd284ea78b372ebfde707&id=37240a49ac

30/11/2022

There's a myth about plastic that has permeated our culture and our minds: All we need to do to get on top of plastic pollution is recycle our water bottles and sip from paper straws.

The industry has convinced us that recycling will reverse the toxic impact of plastic—while it keeps right on polluting. Here's what you can do to fight back.

30/11/2022

The creator of Sci-Hub believes scientific research should be available for free to the citizens funding it with their tax dollars, and to the rest of the world.

Pirate websites offer millions of scientific articles for free. A court case in India could decide whether for-profit gatekeepers can shut them down.

29/11/2022

To social media companies, you are a product, not a consumer. Putting users back in charge could help stem the flow of hate and lies.

Achieving a more transparent and less manipulative online media may well be the defining political battle of the 21st century.

29/11/2022

We are committed to telling unique, science-based stories that challenge common misconceptions and deceptions, and that offer solutions to some of today’s most pressing problems. Your support will allow us to sustain and expand our mission 👉

By giving to OpenMind magazine, you are supporting independent journalism that takes a hard look at controversies, distortions, and deceptions in science.

29/11/2022

"We don’t..understand how common lab leaks..are, because so many have been swept under the rug or..disappeared from..reports. The cases of..smallpox lab accidents in Britain in 1966 and 1978—and another in 1973—are models for how lab..accident fog works."

They are almost never fully covered by media and usually shrouded by a fog of disinformation and denial. Could this explain the culture of conspiracy surrounding COVID-19?

28/11/2022

"The idea that abortion causes physical and mental damage to those who choose it has permeated our culture for decades. But evidence shows pregnancy is the riskier state of affairs." Important piece by Emily Willingham:

The idea that abortion causes physical and mental damage to those who choose it has permeated our culture for decades. But evidence shows pregnancy is the riskier state of affairs.

28/11/2022

In this essay, Hogan Sherrow clarifies terms like s*x and gender that many people tend to confuse. He also shows trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people are normal and are part of the long history of humanity.

Acceptance of a person’s s*xuality and gender identity requires at least some acknowledgment that they are natural and real.

25/11/2022

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to OpenMind to keep up with independent journalism that tackles science controversies and deceptions while illuminating a better way forward. https://scienceliteracyfoundation.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=8b13bd284ea78b372ebfde707&id=37240a49ac

23/11/2022

This article offers a novel conceptual frame for evaluating the kinds of actions and decisions that might lead us to a more stable, successful future. Such a framework is essential for being, in Walker's words, a "good ancestor" to generations to come.

To solve our global problems, we need to evolve into a global collective, taking inspiration from DNA, ants, and our own social success.

23/11/2022

There are free, authoritative online sources that provide accessible information about the impacts of climate change and the ways we can respond:

Academics need to stop talking about climate change in ways that obscure its true dangers.

22/11/2022

Planetary intelligence is perhaps the ultimate extrapolation of "Think globally, act locally." The big obstacle to putting that adage to work is that thinking globally is not a skill built into normal human cognition.

To solve our global problems, we need to evolve into a global collective, taking inspiration from DNA, ants, and our own social success.

22/11/2022

In this article, Jill Neimark shares some tips for dismantling your moral outrage, grief, sense of betrayal, or overwhelming fatigue in the face of public health failures:

When people have different views about health and freedom, they misuse morality to demonize one another, letting policymakers and corporations off the hook.

21/11/2022

The world needs policies built around physical realism and maximizing quality of life, not around economic models that hide their justice-hindering biases.

It's time to call out the most dangerous assumption in the history of economics.

21/11/2022

The pressing question for us now is: How quickly can we evolve technological systems that not only anticipate possible futures but also steer us collectively to the ones we want?

To solve our global problems, we need to evolve into a global collective, taking inspiration from DNA, ants, and our own social success.

18/11/2022

Right now, humans struggle to deal with existential threats of our own creation (think: climate change) because those threats play out over times and distances far greater than anything experienced by each of us individually.

To solve our global problems, we need to evolve into a global collective, taking inspiration from DNA, ants, and our own social success.

18/11/2022

Did you sign up for our newsletter? We publish public service science journalism at the crossroads of culture and politics, addressing areas from biomedicine to neuroscience to technology 👉 https://scienceliteracyfoundation.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=8b13bd284ea78b372ebfde707&id=37240a49ac

18/11/2022

In the future, human societies and technologies may become enmeshed to form a collective, global intelligence, analogous to the way ants organize into a colony or individual cells operate together in the human body, writes Sara Walker, an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist at Arizona State University.

To solve our global problems, we need to evolve into a global collective, taking inspiration from DNA, ants, and our own social success.

16/11/2022

If the science sounds too good to be true or too wacky to be real, or very conveniently supports a contentious cause, then you might want to check its veracity.

Here are six tips to help you detect fake science 👉

We tend to blame the glut of disinformation in science on social media and the news, but the problem often starts with the scientific enterprise itself.

16/11/2022

According to Project Drawdown, improving water-related infrastructure is a top solution for addressing climate change. It will reduce carbon emissions and save money in the long run, all while creating jobs.

When a pop meme is used to explain complex geopolitics, we miss the chance to nurture cooperation and find instruments of peace.

15/11/2022

We often feel there’s not much we can do in the face of money and government, but this story shows that residents can have an impact and that local officials do listen and act on their behalf.

You CAN take on a behemoth. When a polluter came courting our town, here’s how we fought back.

15/11/2022

Here are four reality-checks that you can perform — as an investor, a consumer, and a voter — to see through the hype.

Want to know the true value of AI, NFTs, and other much-touted technologies? Ignore the news and look at the harsh judgment of the market.

14/11/2022

In the column here, Amos Zeeberg explains how two divergent cultures can learn from each other to create more empathetic, efficient, and effective healthcare systems, and how patients, themselves, can change to get more out of the systems they have.

National personality helps explain the opioid epidemic in the United States and the su***de rate in Japan. Every society has unique health crises and a medical landscape of its own.