Can answering 36 questions make two people love each other?
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Counterculture: Lessons from war in medicine
The most urgent war on drugs has nothing to do with marijuana.
The rise of pathogenic bacterial resistance to antibiotic drugs is equal parts appalling and fascinating. Our relationship with bacterial diseases is cyclic: microbes infect our bodies and transmit themselves among us, we drive them back with medicine, a few unique bacteria survive and repopulate their own robust kind, and we must then find a new weapon against them. As in war or espionage, both opponents adapt to attack and exploit each other’s weaknesses. As bacteria evolve in response to the drugs we deploy, their strengths and weaknesses change; their strength manifests as resistance to the last drug treatment they endured – or else they wouldn’t be alive in the first place. Their weaknesses could be any of several things, but our job as worthy opponents is to exploit them.
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BPA is not OK
How safe is BPA in our sunscreen?
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The history of science is full of examples of discovery, both intentional and accidental. But how do scientists study subject matter incapable of being explained by simple models? And additionally, if science can produce favorable results (say, in the clinic), to what extent does it matter whether or not the results can be fully explained? Here, Siddhant Iyer outlines the ways in which scientists may study as-of-yet unexplained phenomena and argues for a framework involving the use of complex models while also acknowledging limitations.