Prostate Cancer Screening for Men

From Science Sounds:
The US Preventative Services Task Force concluded last week that men over 75 years old should no longer be screened for prostate cancer. Furthermore, they conclude that “the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of prostate cancer screening in men younger than age 75 years.”
As I have [...]

Abortion does not cause mental illness

From Science Sounds:
A recent article in the New York Times reported results from an APA study that concluded that abortion does not cause mental illness. The full title of the article is “Abortion Does Not Cause Mental Illness, Panel Says.” Maybe I am being paranoid, but somehow that title calls the results [...]

Are there differences at the neural level in the ways that liberals and conservatives process information?

Some theories suggest that conservatives tend to have a more structured and persistent cognitive style, where liberals tend to be more open to ambiguity.  Building on this idea, a recent paper by David Amodio and his colleagues investigated whether liberals and conservatives would show different brain responses when completing a task requiring cognitive control.  They [...]

Making the System Safer

In the last 50 years, no one thinks that drivers have gotten better, but fatalities per mile driven have fallen over 80%. How has this become possible? What have we learned from this example that can be applied to other areas?
David Hemenway is a professor of Health Policy at the, Harvard School of [...]

Why your classes are larger than average

When you were in college, did you ever wonder why your classes were usually larger than the “average” class size advertised in the brochures?
When you are sitting in traffic, have you ever thought that maybe if just a few more people carpooled that no one would need to be stuck with so many cars on [...]

Shared Decision Making in Health Care

With the ongoing saga of the Democratic Primary, and the upcoming presidential election, we will all be hearing more and more about the cost of health care in this country. While the debate at the national and state levels will certainly influence the lives of many down the road, what about the decisions that we [...]