It is compounded by the fact that these are your relatives who remember you when you were five and can't quite accept that you are now an actual expert on a topic. I argued a good half hour with one relative that there is no difference in calories between a serving of beer and a serving of wine. The Betty Crocker…

When your Ph.D. is in nutrition, there is no escaping it. Everyone thinks they know something about nutrition, and they are all dying to share it with you!

Thanks to all the dozens of studies conducted to test whether vaccines cause autism, we can now conclude that vaccines are probably one of the few things in the world that we know do not cause autism. :)

I got to the end of the scene where the old advisor gave Lessingham a leaf to open doors and spy on everyone and was totally, "Huh?" Magic made no sense in this book.

It is a very salient point. There is also the "shame" factor of admitting that your "snack" of chips/crisps was not one serving, it was half a bag.

Different studies have different purposes. A dietary survey captures what people say they are eating across the entire sampled population. Just because Dr. Archer wants to add on expensive or invasive measurements to dietary surveys does not make it the right thing to do. It would cost hundreds of millions more to…

Full disclosure: I have a Ph.D. in nutritional sciences, and I conduct nutrition research for a living in the private sector.

Well, said! This isn't the "Zero Charisma" sterotype of geeks.

That was really a lovely read. Thank you for sharing it!

A really lovely bit of reality storytelling, Annalee. Thank you!

Both the Berserker tales and the Man-Kzin War tales were individual short stories compiled into collections. There was a remarkable level of consistency despite both being a "too many cooks" scenario.

How can it be a null gravity stroll if your hair and scarf respond to gravity?

I think a sense that the villain is untouchable or invulnerable in some way helps focus the reader on their "evilness" without having to add new atrocities. Maybe the premise makes the hero's cost/sacrifice too high to stop the villain. Or, another example, maybe the crime the villain committed can never be…

Your section on "No benefit in Primary Prevention" is based on one meta-analysis by Ray, et al. (2010). Chodick and Shalev have pointed out a number of flaws in Ray, et al. including using the wrong numbers and putting questionable studies in the analysis - http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?a…

Dan Simmons does a particularly good job of explaining different world ecologies in the Endymion series.

I just saw an IMAX film today with a mantis prawn taking on an octopus, and the prawn stood its ground and kept digging into the octopus with its pincers (which had just cracked open a mussel shell the hard way) then retreating. The octopus finally got tired of it and left. It is really interesting to see the…

Number 5 reminds me of the writing of Douglas Adams or Kurt Vonnegut!

Sounds like a job I would love to do, but only my major qualifications are being a scientist and a reputation for swatting trolls in science forums.

My DM is a girl. My daughter loves D&D. I am truly blessed.

Not true. It only prevents courts from allowing nuisance lawsuits from ordering destruction of crops in the field unless they are classified as dangerous by the Plant Protection Act (which basically only requires a decision by the Secty. of Agriculture).