I don't think that being overly confident and wrong hurts you more than being measured and wrong. Actually I think that if you are confident enough people *don't even notice* that you were wrong a lot of the time. And if you are too measured, people don't ever notice when you were right.

"1) Using a wet tampon for vaginal penetrationWho's fucking idea was THAT? I can think of a few things LESS likely to provoke arousal, but not many."

Mental health is not the right angle from which to approach this issue. We do need much better mental health care in the US, and better access to it, but the proportion of psychiatric patients who ever become violent is so low, and it is so difficult to predict with precision which ones those will be, that it would…

Well, I think the data say that homebirth *can* be comparable to hospital birth in safety (for low risk mothers, always), and is so in countries where midwives are well trained and well connected to hospitals/physicians.

Want data? I got data. I've been following the homebirth discussion for years. Here's my synopsis:

There are always going to be some babies who are not born in hospitals. My younger one shot out in 90 minutes; I ended up having her entirely alone at home because there was nobody home and I was in no condition to drive myself anywhere. Clearly not the safest situation. If I have a third kid, I'd really like the…

US homebirths attended by CPMs and lay midwives both have higher rates of neonatal death than homebirths attended by CNMs, which have neonatal death rates comparable to those in a hospital.

"Psychology Today's advice? If you're the woodpecker, just stop talking."

Cleaning stethoscope with an alcohol wipe between patients is completely standard. I was taught this in medical school a decade ago. I'd like to point out that this study looked at bugs on the stethoscope after an exam - it wasn't a sociological study looking at whether doctors clean their stethoscopes between…

Not even a joke. This happened to me. I had the baby all by myself at home and caught a ride to the hospital in the ambulance after. Bill to insurance was $2500 for "labor and delivery" (my copay was smaller, I think around $500). I called the hospital to contest the charge and they said that since I had spent…

Huh. I had the parents who didn't put much emphasis on looks. Nobody in my family wore makeup (I think one of my sisters uses it a little now when she is going out). I mean, if you were dressed up you'd get a compliment, and if you asked how you looked in something you'd get an honest answer. None of us were…

Ahem. When I was in graduate school, a prospective postdoc came to give a job talk. In later discussions about the candidate, my PI said he wasn't going to make her an offer, citing among other things that she was "too pretty" to be a scientist. (Thereby insulting all of the female graduate students and postdocs…

The poverty thing makes sense in theory but if you look at the graph, the poor southeastern states (La, Ark, Ala, etc.) actually have the highest rates of vaccination, and the states with the most unvaccinated are not the poorest states, but the ones with high rates of off-the-gridders (Oregon and New Hampshire). …

I don't think very many people are bothered by interracial relationships among strangers. It's a theoretical issue and doesn't affect them.

OK the fact that genetic diversity is higher in Africa (due to founder effects everywhere else) doesn't mean race-based health disparities don't exist. E.g. prevalence of slower variants of liver metabolic enzymes in many Asians is really important to know about because it can change the blood levels of prescription…

Hubster? Hubcap? Hubba bubba? ...nm, I'm obviously way too immature to be married :)

That's totally not true. We have a number of targeted therapies for specific cancers now - Gleevec/imatinib was the first but there are many others now. Anti-estrogen receptor therapy for estrogen-positive breast cancers is also quite targeted, I wouldn't characterize it as 'slash and burn.' But each cancer type…

Read the ingredients. If they say 'polyethylene' it's plastic.

I'm not trying to counter your feeling that it's harder to be multiethnic (by the way I'm half Jewish as well and I also spend plenty of time explaining my ethnic affiliations, though I've never thought of it as a burden). I'm just offering the perspective that the 'loss' of the culture of previous generations can…

Totally!! You need more stars for this. *******************