183
votes
Accepted
Do studies show that viruses are contagious?
A qualified doctor challenging the Germ Theory of Disease after 1900? Wow.
This is just a smattering - just a random tasting - of the thousands - or perhaps millions - of studies showing that ...
- 140k
127
votes
Accepted
Was the Brazilian Zika virus outbreak centered in a place where GMO mosquitoes were released?
Quick summary:
The first cases in Brazil were nearly 500km from the GM mosquito testing areas, the other side of a state larger than Spain
Brazil wasn't even the first place this particularly ...
- 8,942
95
votes
Accepted
Are vaccinated children significantly less healthy than the unvaccinated, as recent study claims?
Almost all studies in this arena are correlative-based and not causation-based, so that I would take them all with a grain of salt. I would all suggest that Weiler and Thomas (2020) omit some ...
68
votes
Accepted
Is the Zika virus a serious threat?
The best summary is probably to quote from the WHO director general Margaret Chan's statement on announcing that zika had been declared a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern":
The ...
- 8,942
43
votes
Are vaccinated children significantly less healthy than the unvaccinated, as recent study claims?
David Gorski has some (updated) comments about the methodology of the study such as:
The authors claim that RIOV “reflects the total number of billed office visits per condition per group, reflecting ...
- 57.1k
42
votes
Accepted
Is "Syphilis: All of these men have it" a WWII propaganda poster?
A google search for "All of these men have it" "Stay away from dance halls" mainly got web 2.0 user generated content websites such as reddit and pinterest. I came across a thesis, but it gave a ...
- 38.9k
35
votes
Do fevers caused by infection not exceed 105 °F (40.6 °C)?
The claim is false, as evidenced by Prospective Evaluation of the Risk of Serious Bacterial Infection in Children Who Present to the Emergency Department With Hyperpyrexia (Temperature of 106°F or ...
- 104k
27
votes
Are vaccinated children significantly less healthy than the unvaccinated, as recent study claims?
It is worth noting that almost all of the conditions listed in the chart, unless they are unusually severe, do not need professional medical intervention. Skin rashes, coughs, minor to moderate asthma,...
- 1,531
23
votes
Do rusty nail wounds cause tetanus?
Tetanus toxin, which has been given the scientific name tetanospasmin, is created when the bacterium Clostridium tetani divides and grows. C. tetani cannot divide in an oxygenated environment, but as ...
- 44.4k
21
votes
In February 2020, did Tencent release accurate statistics for the Wuhan coronavirus that were 10 times the official figures?
The Tencent screenshot is almost certainly a hoax, for the simple reason that such screenshots are extremely easy to fake. For example, here's how easy it is to get a "screenshot" of the New York ...
- 319
19
votes
Accepted
Is there a dramatic decrease in the number of diagnoses of noninfectious diseases?
That's true.
It is of course difficult to pinpoint any number for all diseases and all countries, but is not just an anecdotal observation from your local oncology section:
In France, "the delay ...
- 44k
19
votes
Accepted
To what degree do facemasks protect against COVID-19?
Regarding the bounty, which asks a somewhat broad question:
I still see comments in social media where people claim masks are ineffective. Has new data or research come out?
Yes. There's a Dec 18 ...
- 57.1k
13
votes
Is Lyme disease a global pandemic?
TL;DR summary:
There are indeed varying definitions of a pandemic; some emphasize (or even require) human-to-human transmission and some don't.
It's difficult to apply a definition that emphasizes ...
- 57.1k
8
votes
To what degree do facemasks protect against COVID-19?
We don't know exact numbers. As of July 17, 2020, international public health agencies have published no data regarding percentage reduction of transmission rates for Sars-COV-2 when masks are ...
- 852
8
votes
Accepted
Are 40% of the oceans' bacteria killed by viruses every day?
According to Bacteriophage Distributions and Temporal Variability in the Ocean’s Interior mBio Nov/Dec 2017 Volume 8, e01903-17:
Phages have been
shown to kill hosts at rates of up to 20 to 40% of ...
- 104k
8
votes
Accepted
Is it more harmful to eat sugary food when sick?
No, unless you are obese.
According to the National Institute of Health1:
In conclusion, when considering the signaling pathways involved in glucose metabolism in immune cells, it is generally ...
- 2,132
8
votes
Accepted
Is catnip ten times more effective at repelling mosquitoes than DEET?
First, it is important to understand the terminology being used.
There is the plant catnip.
From the plant catnip, catnip essential oil can be obtained by steam distillation. Only a tiny fraction ...
- 104k
8
votes
Can the BCG vaccine cure type 1 diabetes?
I work in Diabetes research in the UK and Can find no evidence to support the wild claims in the paper, press release and press reports. Sadly hidden away in a table in supplementary data is the fact ...
7
votes
Accepted
Do antibiotic resistant infections kill 700,000 people a year?
These estimates are worldwide, with this being the source (AMR = AntiMicrobial Resistance):
Antimicrobial Resistance: Tackling a crisis for the health and wealth of nations
The 700k number was ...
- 30.2k
7
votes
Do antibiotics weaken your immune system?
How much antibiotics affect gut flora is open subject, there are studies showing there is long lasting negative effect. Eg. "Gut microbiota disturbance during antibiotic therapy: a multi-omic approach"...
- 26.6k
6
votes
Was COVID-19 in Italy by September 2019?
I don't have the immunology expertise to analyze this particular study (e.g. in re cross-reactivity), but I'll just note when it come to antibodies, results are harder to interpret than for PCR tests, ...
- 57.1k
5
votes
Is the Zika virus a serious threat?
So the questions are:
Is the Zika virus "relatively new"?
From WHO.int:
Zika virus is an emerging mosquito-borne virus that was first identified in Uganda in 1947 in rhesus monkeys ...
- 3,866
4
votes
To what degree do facemasks protect against COVID-19?
WTHR did a fact check on this image in May 2020:
“CDC can’t confirm the accuracy of the numbers reflected in this image,” they said in a statement. “Currently we are not finding any data that can ...
- 2,873
4
votes
In February 2020, did Tencent release accurate statistics for the Wuhan coronavirus that were 10 times the official figures?
Tencent denied those figures were ever published on their site. And there's seemingly no corroborating evidence besides that screenshot:
The screenshot was first picked up by NTDTV, a U.S.-based, ...
- 57.1k
4
votes
Accepted
Does stopping antibiotics early increase risk of antibiotic-resistant bacteria spreading?
Issue: Whether stopping a course of antibiotics earlier will increase the risk and spread of resistant disease causing bacteria in the body?
Evidence:
Traditional evidence pointed out that early ...
- 22.7k
4
votes
Do antibiotics weaken your immune system?
Antibiotics are designed to either kill or stop the growth of bacteria by targeting specific traits/functions of the bacteria (bacterial cells are prokaryotes) and not to target eukaryotic cells (...
- 279
3
votes
Is the Zika virus a serious threat?
Now that two years have passed since January 2016, let's review again what scientists have learned about microcephaly and Zika.
In October 2018, Regina Grazel and Pamela Harris-Haman write in Advances ...
- 2,883
3
votes
Accepted
Can teasel root cure Lyme?
In short: There have been no clinical trials.
In December 2016, an article was published in a journal called Alternative and Complementary Therapies. That is normally a red flag, but this one had a ...
- 140k
3
votes
Can the BCG vaccine cure type 1 diabetes?
No. The study doesn't claim that and the results are very weak anyway
This story is an interesting case where the headlines exaggerated the claims and the claims were far weaker than many supposed ...
- 56.2k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible