Tag Archives: carroll

Would You Eat an M&M That Fell on the Floor?

by EverettCourtney Posted on October 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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News you can use from Aaron Carroll:

Perhaps no one in the United States has spent more time investigating the occurrence of bacteria on public surfaces than Charles Gerba.

According to Carroll, Gerba’s research tells us that it’s just fine to eat food that you’ve dropped on the floor. This sounds suspiciously like motivated reasoning to support the stereotypical male point of view, and I’m a little curious to learn what Mrs. Carroll thinks of this. I suppose we’ll never know. In any case, the argument here is that your average floor is no more germy than any other surface in your house, and less than many. Kitchen floors, for example, have about half the bacteria of kitchen counters.

That’s all fair enough, but what about ordinary old dirt and dust? My kitchen counters have almost none of that. My kitchen floor has lots, thanks to the fact that I walk on it, the cats walk on it, the dust accumulates until I vacuum it, and so forth. It may be that dirt and dust aren’t likely to make you sick, but it’s still a little disgusting to have it all over your food. Or am I being a little too fastidious here?

Of course, it also depends on the food item. If a peanut M&M fell on the floor, I’d have no qualms about rubbing it clean with my shirt and then eating it. But a leftover piece of chicken? Probably not.

I wonder what Donald Trump would think of all this? He’s a famous germaphobe, but he also apparently thinks that fast food is safer than other foods because it’s highly processed and standardized. So what would he think about an M&M that fell on the floor?

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Would You Eat an M&M That Fell on the Floor?

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Should Doctors Ask You About Your Guns?

by MargareKorth Posted on July 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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In Florida, it’s illegal for a physician to ask you if you own a gun. Pediatrician Aaron Carroll thinks this is ridiculous:

When pediatricians ask you about using car seats, they’re trying to prevent injuries. When they ask you about how your baby sleeps, they’re trying to prevent injuries. When they ask you about using bike helmets, they’re trying to prevent injuries. And when they ask you about guns, they’re trying to prevent injuries, too.

….When I ask patients and parents whether they own guns, if they tell me they do, I immediately follow up with questions about how they are stored. I want to make sure they’re kept apart from ammunition. I want to make sure they’re in a locked box, preferably in a place out of reach of children. Doing so minimizes the risks to children. That’s my goal.

When we, as physicians, ask you if you drink or smoke, it’s not so that we can judge you. It’s so we can discuss health risks with you. When we ask you about domestic violence, it’s not to act like police detectives. It’s so that we can help you make better choices for your health. When we ask you about what you eat or whether you exercise, it’s so we can help you live better and longer. We’re doctors; it’s our job.

I don’t often disagree with Carroll, but I think I might here. Not about Florida’s law: that really is ridiculous. The state may have an interest in making sure doctors don’t give demonstrably bad advice, but it certainly doesn’t have a legitimate interest in preventing them from asking simple, fact-oriented question. This represents prior restraint on non-commercial speech, and as such it’s beyond the pale.

That said, should physicians ask about gun ownership? I’m not so sure. Carroll says he only wants to discuss “health risks,” and that’s appropriate. Doctors have expertise in the area of human health: that is, the biology and physiology of the human body. But that’s not the same thing as the safety of the human body.

Not only do doctors have no special professional expertise in this area, but it’s simply too wide open. Does your car have air bags? Do you ever jaywalk? Have you checked your electrical outlets lately? Is your house built to withstand an earthquake? Do you know how to work safely on your roof? Do you make sure to watch your kids in the pool? Are you planning any trips to eastern Ukraine?

I could go on forever in this vein. These are things unrelated to human physiology. If you define them all as health risks, you’re simply defining every aspect of life as a health risk, and therefore your doctor’s concern. That goes too far, and I don’t blame people for sometimes reacting badly to it. There are certainly gray areas here, but generally speaking, if I want advice about my health, I’ll see a doctor. If I want advice about gun safety, I’ll talk to a gun pro. I think it might be best to leave it this way.

FULL DISCLOSURE: My view is almost certainly colored by the fact that I’m all but phobic about doctors. I hate visiting them, I hate talking to them, and I hate the fact that they never seem to really, truly respond to what I tell them. I would be very annoyed if a doctor suddenly veered off and started quizzing me about general safety issues.

I’m keenly aware that this is an obvious overreaction on my part, and I do my best to restrain it when I’m actually talking to a doctor. Nonetheless, it’s there.

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Should Doctors Ask You About Your Guns?

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Please Don’t Confuse Me With Facts, Vaccine Edition

by SamanthaTerry Posted on March 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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A couple of days ago I watched Othello for the first time.1 By chance, I had never seen or read it before. But that Shakespeare. He sure had us humans figured out, didn’t he? Here is Emilia, responding to Desdemona’s plea that she had never given Othello cause to doubt her fidelity:

But jealous souls will not be answer’d so;
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they are jealous: ’tis a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself.

Why do I mention this? Because of Aaron Carroll’s tidy little summary of some Brendan Nyhan research on how to persuade people that the MMR vaccine is safe:

When they gave evidence that vaccines aren’t linked to autism, that actually made parents who were already skittish about vaccines less likely to get their child one in the future. When they showed images of sick children to parents it increased their belief that vaccines caused autism. When they told a dramatic story about an infant in danger because he wasn’t immunized, it increased parents’ beliefs that vaccines had serious side effects.

Basically, it was all depressing. Nothing was effective.

So that’s that. They believe not for cause, but believe just to believe. ‘Tis a monster begot on itself, born on itself. Of course, it’s possible that Nyhan simply didn’t find the right intervention. Or that an intervention from a researcher has no effect, but the same intervention from a family doctor might. Still, Carroll is right: it’s all kind of discouraging. It’s nothing new, but still discouraging.

1It was the 1965 movie version with Laurence Olivier in blackface. Kind of disconcerting. But Frank Finlay was great as Iago.

UPDATE: More here from Dan Kahan, including a reminder that (a) vaccination rates in the US actually haven’t declined over the past decade and (b) freaking out about a nonexistent problem is genuinely unhelpful. Also this:

The NR et al. study is superbly well done and very important. But the lesson it teaches is not that it is “futile” to try to communicate with concerned parents. It’s that it is a bad idea to flood public discourse in a blunderbuss fashion with communications that state or imply that there is a “growing crisis of confidence” in vaccines that is “eroding” immunization rates.

It’s a good idea instead to use valid empirical means to formulate targeted and effective vaccine-safety communication strategies.

Much more at the link.

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Please Don’t Confuse Me With Facts, Vaccine Edition

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