Let’s warm up with a quick arithmetic problem, which I want you to do in your head. What is one thousand plus forty? Now add another thousand And thirty more Plus twenty Plus another thousand And finally, add an additional ten. What’s the answer? According to Dean Buonomano, in his excellent book Brain Bugs, the majority…
I love teaching at Duke. I can’t believe, actually, that I’m able to do that for a living. One of the great things about teaching is interacting with smart, ambitious students. And today, Duke’s The Chronicle just wrote about one such student, Elle Wilson who took a class from me last fall, and now designed…
I recognize that correlation does not prove causation. But here is a picture illustrating the correlation between income inequality and the percent of a country’s population that is obese. The findings are provocative, to say the least. Making the relationship somewhat plausible is all the evidence we have now of the toll that income inequality…
What would you like first: the good news or the bad news? Let me start with the bad. Life expectancy among patients in the U.S. with thyroid cancer lags behind that in Korea. In fact, the vast majority of patients diagnosed with thyroid cancer in Korea are cured of that illness, a statement I can’t…
This picture, from the Kaiser Family Foundation, shows that many people who lack health insurance in the United States right now are actually eligible for either Medicaid or federally subsidized private insurance.
The COVID-19 virus is wreaking havoc on healthcare providers. Hospitals and outpatient practices are struggling from a combination of lost revenue, from people delaying or canceling appointments, and increased expenses, related to the measures they are taking to reduce the spread of the virus within healthcare settings. As always, when American healthcare providers are in…