Sociology
Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Alternative Facts
—Antony Alumkal
From the intelligent design movement to claims the biotech industry plans to reengineer the human species and the environmental movement is using (non-existent) climate change as an excuse to usher in a totalitarian world government, paranoia has driven the creation of alternative science—“paranoid science”—which functions as part of the Christian Right’s alternative reality.
Botox’s popularity raises important questions
—Dana Berkowitz
The fact that young, wrinkle-free women are turning to a potential lifetime of Botox and other preventative aesthetics speaks volumes about the unattainable appearance demands we place on women, our cultural infatuation with youth, and the sinister pressures we feel to buy our way to self-improvement.
Big Biomedicine
—Joseph E. Davis
The time is ripe for a redirection of biomedical research funding and a larger re-balancing between reductionistic “fixing” and holistic “healing,” requiring a deeper understanding of the “old-fashioned” social and environmental determinants of health and illness and a renewed commitment to addressing them.
