My new piece looks at a meme that's been going viral for the last 6 years, and whether healthcare administrators are really causing healthcare costs to skyrocket in the United States. gidmk.substack.com/p/are-admini...

Imagine getting headshot by a 14 year old in Arc Raiders and then you report him to the Australian police who ban his account. Incredible. Incredible feeling.

A very interesting comparison here. 2025 vs 2023 for my state of NSW. Testing for COVID-19 and influenza has not changed substantially that I'm aware of in this time. The labs generally test for both on any swabs taken. The ratio of COVID-19:Flu 2025 - 0.49 2023 - 2.97 (!)

One of the things that Australia really excels at is consumer protection.

A study I wrote to the journal about in May this year was just retracted: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... The review paper claimed that the majority of benefits in clinical trials could be explained by placebo effects.

so lilaware and i took a stab at it. there are some methodological caveats due to resource constraints, will discuss below for 2 samples of (stacks of 5 pennies) x 8 in each sample, p = .41 @gidmk.bsky.social @markhoofnagle.medsky.social

One thing that always identifies charlatans - they blame patients when their treatment fails.

Headlines are saying that COVID-19 and flu TRIPLE your risk of heart attack. This is just a painful story about pretty weak science. If nothing else, the "triple" risk is only over the first 14 days post-infection and declines enormously after that! 1/n

Not a bad run for a random Saturday morning.

A spooky piece for a spooky day - why do parents believe that sugar causes hyperactivity in children when we've known for decades that it doesn't? slate.com/life/2025/10...

Credit to MDPI for retracting this vitamin D/COVID-19 meta-analysis that @gidmk.bsky.social and I flagged: pubpeer.com/publications...

I wonder if the increasing accuracy of computer translation services has resulted in fewer ridiculous tattoos

Bit of news - a study I emailed the journal about last year was just retracted www.nature.com/articles/s41...

8 months later and this "journal" has more people on the editorial board (19) than published "research articles" (7). 😆And that's with hyperprolific author JPAI involved. He could spare them at least an article a week and never notice.

A bunch of headlines are proclaiming that you can boost your metabolism and you don't even have to exercise! Except, that's not really true. Let's look at the study. 1/n

Putting a CONSORT diagram in the supplementary materials but the verbal description in the text is entirely the wrong way around imo.

The importance of scientific sleuthing (although, why was this paper published at all?) Apple Cider Vinegar For Weight Loss - A Study That May Never Have Happened At All open.substack.com/pub/gidmk/p/...

Can apple cider vinegar make you lose weight? Probably not. My piece this week takes a look at a fascinating example of unreliable science, forensic metascience, and seriously problematic data. gidmk.substack.com/p/apple-cide...

Haven't done one of these in ages. Scientific error-checking, difficulty: easy Spot the issues in this table 1 from an RCT. For context, there are supposedly 8 patients in each group. I count at least 3 major errors/issues.

Conversations like this are, I suspect, why I no longer have a single colleague who is interested in researching Long COVID.

The bizarre fury over dietary guidelines from people like Means would make slightly more sense (still not much) if data didn't show fewer than 1% of people actually following these guidelines.

I was marginally non-significant once.

It is remarkable how cooked some people have become about COVID-19.

Hot off the press at Vaccine, the former (competent) ACIP used a standardized tool for evaluating vaccine advisory committee performance to deliver a solid evidence-based ass-whupping on the quacks that RFK, Jr replaced them with. I'll briefly explain why 🧵 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

When I saw that someone had published an absurd paper claiming that COVID-19 and HIV were comparable, I was going to do a deep dive. But it turns out @marcveld.bsky.social already did it: marcveldhoen.substack.com/p/the-abuse-...

New paper from me and team - a randomized trial protocol for a stepped-wedge trial that we're running looking at diabetes self-management applications. bmjopen.bmj.com/content/15/1...

RFK Jr unloaded a paper into my hellsite replies to support his teen sperm count claims. I do love a vigorous evidence-driven academic debate, so LFG! Does this paper show teens only have 50% of the sperm counts of dudes his age? SPOILER: No.🧵 rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/secretary-...

Ultra-processed food - the eternal enemy of the people. And, apparently, testicles. Or...is it? My new piece. gidmk.substack.com/p/is-ultra-p...

Step 1: prove that people eat a little bit more food when it tastes better. Step 2: reword "tastes better" to "Ultra-processed". Step 3: published in Cell Metabolism.

A useful post on the bizarre citation cabal that is the IHME and the Global Burden of Disease study.

My new piece is on why we don't really know if soft drinks are giving people liver disease despite the headlines, and also a fascinating and problematic metascience issue. gidmk.substack.com/p/are-fizzy-...

My 2yo, trying to convince me to carry her: I just a little girl! My 2yo, trying to convince me to give her my coffee: I just a big girl!

The Cass review into children's gender services in the UK continues to be terrible. A new report from Australia led by the fantastic Dr. Julia Moore - and featuring me - looks into the issues in detail. My new piece. gidmk.substack.com/p/the-cass-r...

Ah yes, the exact opposite of science. Very much the quiet part out loud.

Haven't read the study or press release yet. My guess is that this is going to be a tiny, arbitrary sample of people where there is a very modest but statistically significant increase in some random biomarker in the Long COVID group that may or may not be replicated in larger trials.

Um.

Of the many, many silly things in nutrition research, the fact that the Korean government regularly funds research that shows kimchi in a positive light is one of my favourites. Hilarious stuff.

I have just left a lengthy Pubpeer comment on the autism/Tylenol study being cited by the Trump administration. There appear to be a number of fairly straightforward errors in the paper. pubpeer.com/publications...

Cocoa supplements have been in the news as an anti-aging tool. My new piece breaks down why this is a very dubious finding: gidmk.substack.com/p/chocolate-...

This is a fascinating story. A Lebanese team published a study showing massive benefits for apple cider vinegar in 2024. People immediately noticed it was problematic, and complained. BMJ asked the authors for the data, and they sent it through. The study has just been retracted and WOW 1/n

If you're in Sydney and know people/have patients with metabolic disease (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, etc) - let them know about the PANDA trial! Being run by my former PhD supervisor: www.powerlab.site/research/pan...

VERY good piece, as always, by the brilliant @gidmk.bsky.social "The data thus far, especially the highest-quality studies out there, does not show that acetaminophen causes autism. It doesn’t even show a consistent association." gidmk.substack.com/p/tylenol-us...

But it's the public health experts who damage trust in science. IT WAS ALWAYS A LIE.

New piece out - do soft drinks give you depression? Probably not. The evidence is SUPER weak. gidmk.substack.com/p/soft-drink...

Science can be such a headache sometimes. This study has hit the headlines because the authors claim that it shows that soft drinks cause people to be depressed by negatively impacting their gut microbiome. Several BIG issues with this 1/n

Here's @retractionwatch.com covering the recently-retracted COVID-19 and vitamin D study that took PLOS three years to investigate: retractionwatch.com/2025/09/25/a...

It's ridiculous that people can write up their opinions about the literature as part of a systematic review and then have those opinions be cited as fact. But it happens CONSTANTLY.

About fifteen months ago, someone handed me a bad study. Today it was retracted. So far, so normal. But do I just want to yell at journals and publishers again? Hell no. What could they actually DO to be better at handling this sort of nonsense? open.substack.com/pub/jamescla...

"Tylenol can't cause autism, autism came first!" This is a terrible argument, stop making it. There are GOOD arguments against the claim, but this is obviously missing the point and makes you sound extremely ignorant to anyone who has looked into the issue.

This is not the sort of thing I'd expect a scientist at the FDA to say. Personally, I doubt that any of the Alt accounts are who they claim to be.