I find most of this post persuasive, but it seems to me like there shouldn't be excessive certainty on either the yes or no column here. The author's claim is not "no, this is false" but "the study is not bad, for what it is, but is highly limited in the conclusions that can be drawn from it, and it has some serious limitations." It seems reasonable to remain agnostic for now and pursue further studies on the topic that attempt to more accurately correct for other confounding variables.
This also gives me pause: "It is certainly possible that some pesticide is causing adverse health effects at the currently used levels (although there is no current evidence for this)."
That claim seems to me to be false if we include studies on occupational use of pesticides [1]. It could definitely be the case that the residues that ordinary consumers encounter are entirely non-toxic, but again, it seems to me like the jury is still out on that.
From the article: Participants in the French study also provided information about their general health status, their occupation, education, income and other details, like whether they smoked. Since people who eat organic food tend to be health-conscious and may benefit from other healthful behaviors, and also tend to have higher incomes and more years of education than those who don’t eat organic, the researchers made adjustments to account for differences in these characteristics, as well as such factors as physical activity, smoking, use of alcohol, a family history of cancer and weight.
Even after these adjustments, the most frequent consumers of organic food had 76 percent fewer lymphomas, with 86 percent fewer non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, and a 34 percent reduction in breast cancers that develop after menopause.
Granted, it could be that these socio-economic factors weren't adequately corrected for, but they did at least attempt to.
Exactly, it's a common misconception that people go into debts for PhDs. The stipends are low, but being paid to learn, travel and do research is not a bad choice for some people.
I'm a junior academic, recently a postdoc, and I saw a little bit of ADHD stimulant use among peers, and the increasing popularity of modafanil. Basically just due to publication pressure; in my field assistant professors at a top flight university have to write not one but two peer reviewed books to get tenure. Others go in an orthogonal direction and get obsessed with intense exercise routines, also with the aim of increasing those ~six hours of usable cognitive time per day.
MDMA and cannabis are both quite popular and talked about openly but I think that's more a general reflection of the culture in places like NYC and the Bay Area, where I have personal experience.
Good luck with the book by the way. One word of warning: please try very hard to avoid falling into a simplistic narrative that will contribute to drug prohibition. Criminalization of drugs has, IMO, ruined far more lives than drugs themselves. A former Columbia colleague, Carl Hart, professor in the psych department, has written a lot on this and might be worthwhile as an interview subject for your book. Personally I think he sometimes pushes too far in the opposite direction, but he is nevertheless an important public voice speaking up against decades of scaremongering.
David Chalmers has spent the better part of his career trying to arrive at a consensus definition of consciousness. [1] It's not exactly fair to fault the author of this article for failing to do so. Chalmer's interview with Sam Harris gives a pretty good overview of the difficulties that arise when we specifically try to define and explain consciousness in anything beyond the most general terms. [2]
The parent comment makes a fair point in my opinion. The job you're describing is done by the #2 at a university (provost or executive vice chancellor or whatever title they want to use). The president's job is to court 7 and 8 figure donations and to be a symbolic figurehead. Not all of this money is wasted; often the donations go toward supporting research or paying grad student stipends. Administrative bloat is a huge problem at universities but I actually no longer see the presidential salaries as being very objectionable relative to other forms of waste I've seen, like the money spent on stadiums or unnecessary luxury amenities.
I agree the headline shows unnecessary certainty. Likewise, "world ending" and "apocalypse" aren't necessarily the same thing, especially when it comes to someone with nonconformist religious views like Newton. But I would counter that it isn't "completely wrong," at least based on Prof. Snobelin's commentary, which the article links to:
"Since Newton believed that the 1260 years corresponded to the duration of the corruption of the Church, he added 1260 to 800 A.D. and arrived at the date 2060 for the “fall of Babylon” or cessation of the apostate Church. It seems that Newton believed the fall could perhaps begin somewhat before the end of the 1260-year period and continue for a short time afterward. Whatever the precise chronology, Newton believed that sometime shortly after the fall of the corrupt (Trinitarian, Catholic) Church, Christ would return and set up a 1000-year Kingdom of God on earth."
So yes, it would be more accurate to say that "Newton predicted the apocalypse would happen sometime around the year 2060," but I don't think the headline is completely off base here.
A bit of explanation for those, like me, who didn't know about the original meaning of the word "cliché" (courtesy of Wikipedia):
"Cliché and stereotype were both originally printers' words, and in their literal printers' meanings were synonymous. Specifically, cliché was an onomatopoeic word for the sound that was made during the stereotyping process when the matrix (the papier-mâché mold bearing an impression of the forme) hit molten metal. In English this was known as 'dabbing'. The matrix was applied to molten lead at the point of cooling to make the cast."
Despite the SN, I don't have any affiliation with this project. Just a fan of Hooke. For those not familiar with him, his Wikipedia bio is a pretty good start:
This also gives me pause: "It is certainly possible that some pesticide is causing adverse health effects at the currently used levels (although there is no current evidence for this)."
That claim seems to me to be false if we include studies on occupational use of pesticides [1]. It could definitely be the case that the residues that ordinary consumers encounter are entirely non-toxic, but again, it seems to me like the jury is still out on that.
[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...