Having a kid with Autism Spectrum Disorder, from high-functioning Aspy’s who can pass for “quirky” with a little help to ASD issues to the point of non-verbal and non-functioning, is expensive. A recent study has looked at just how much it can cost to have a child on the spectrum, and the answer was as… Read more High Cost of Autism
Have you seen the blaring headlines about how the brains of men who watch more porn are rotting/smaller/inadequate? Well, those headlines are a fine example of misstating and/or overstating scientific findings in order to get people to read the article, AKA “click bait”. I’ve groused about this before, and will again in the future I… Read more Porn rots your brain?
I have to be honest — myths that people accept as facts drive me bananas. I think it may be a function of my Asperger’s syndrome. I am made completely insane when commonly held beliefs have no basis in fact because 1) I like my facts to be factual and 2) I feel like people… Read more Obesity Myths
There is a new documentary in town called Fed Up and it attacks “the conventional wisdom of why we gain weight and how to lose it, Fed Up unearths a dirty secret of the American food industry-far more of us get sick from what we eat than anyone has previously realized.” Moreover, it stars that… Read more How Sweet It’s Not
You may have heard that there is a new heir to the English throne. Or maybe not. They have been kind of burying the story in the back pages of the media haven’t they? So, just in case you haven’t seen it or heard it anywhere else, let me share the fact that at 4:24… Read more A Star Is Born!
In the wake of yet another politician (Trent Franks, R-AZ) erroneously declaring that pregnancy is rarely the result of a rape, Slate published an article claiming that the belief that women are unlikely to become pregnant from a sexual assault came from Nazi experimentation. Well, yes and then again no. The article is correct in… Read more Embedded and Embodied Ideologies
The one thing that almost all anthropologists are united in is the whole-sale despising of cultural imperialism. Even if you are unfamiliar with the definition I’m sure you’ve run into it. Sometimes it is the blatant mockery of different cultures, but most of the time it is the unspoken subtext in Western opinions about Others.… Read more Mind Not Blown
Doctors and scientists are, like everyone on earth, a product of their culture and upbringing. There is no such thing as “objectivity”. It is a fantasy constructed by the delusion that facts are immutable. Well, absolute facts do exist, but the interpretation of them is always skewed because they are only viewed through the prism… Read more Kell and McLeod can happen together, actually.
I stumbled upon the concept of Melungeons many years ago when I read Kentucky author Jesse Stuart’s renowned work Daughter of the Legend. In the book, the hero falls in love with a Melungeon heroine, and endures all the prejudice from former friends that comes with following his heart. Melungeons are/were a group of people… Read more Getting My Melungeon On
Authoritative knowledge. I know I have mentioned it before, but it is a very big concept in medical anthropology and thus bears repeating. Basically, cultures imbue some people/groups with the “authority” to decided what “knowledge” is real. These systems of knowledge may even be in competition with one another. An example of this is the… Read more Old Wife’s Tales