Animal Madness
“Animal Madness” – Worth
“Animal Madness” – Worth
Losing weight is hard. And keeping it off once you’ve lost it–that’s probably even harder. Just ask Oprah. So maybe those of us who are overweight or obese should simply focus on not gaining more weight than we’ve already gained. Surely that’s easier. Right? Well, not long ago a group of researchers ran a study…
Because so much of human thinking is dichotomous, even though so much of the real world exists on a continuum, we have strange phenomena like the one illustrated in the picture below. The picture shows the significance values of research findings, and reveals that there are many more articles published where the statistical significance of…
As a science, economics does not always succeed at predicting how humans behave. The discipline assumes a level of rationality, and an ability to process complex information, that far exceeds human capacity. But as a standard for how people ought to behave, economics provides an excellent set of lessons. Consider the economic principle of consistency in financial…
In recent years, it feels like we’ve been inundated by stories of greedy pharmaceutical companies jacking up the price of important generic medications. In 2015, “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli, recognized that no other generic companies were manufacturing Daraprim, a drug used to treat infections common among people with AIDS. So he raised the price of…
The Affordable Care Act has done a lot to increase the proportion of Americans with health insurance. I’ve posted a lot of those figures in the past. But here is some data, published by a former student of mine, showing that the law doesn’t seem to be having a huge impact yet on people ages…
Shutterstock Generic cholesterol pills are probably better for most patients than brand-name medications because the lower cost of generics increases the chance the patients will take the pills every day. Yet some physicians primarily prescribe expensive brand-name drugs like Lipitor and Crestor. According to a recent study of physicians in Massachusetts, about a quarter of…