experience
I have never commented on football before on this blog (I am not even a big fan, yet I have been involved in doctoring for a team many years ago). Today, I make an exception because, in the very early hours of 6 July (UK time), England will be playing Mexico in the World Cup. This would, of course, not be worth writing about, were it not for a crucial detail: the match will be at the ‘Estadio Azteca’ in Mexico City, at about 2,240 meters above sea level, at a hight of roughly 2250 metres above seal level.
It is almost 40 years ago that I was interested in the human physiology at high altitudes. At the time, we concluded that this affects the fluidity of blood unfavourably, an effect that is likely to limit physical performance. But this is just one factor of several that can prove to be a significant handicap for a non-adapted athlete.
Playing at high altitude is medically significant mainly because the thinner air lowers the partial pressure of oxygen, so England’s players will absorb less oxygen with each breath. That means the muscles receive less oxygen when they need it most, e.g. during repeated sprints, accelerations, and recoveries.
The immediate consequence is a higher heart rate, heavier breathing, and faster, profounder and longer-lasting fatigue. In a football match, that can reduce high-intensity running, impair decision-making, and slow recovery between bursts of effort. The extraordinary fitness of professonal football players does not fully protect against low oxygen availability, because the body’s aerobic energy system is being forced to work under a constraint it is not used to. The body can adapt to high altitudes by making more red blood cells, but that process takes days to weeks, so a short turnaround leaves little time for meaningful acclimatisation.
Altitude also creates problems that are less obvious but might still turn out to be important. Sleep would be worse after arrival at high altitude, and poor sleep impairs recovery and performance the next day. In addition, there may also be a tactical issue that few have thought about. The ball travels a little faster and farther in thin air. This obviously can alter passing, shooting, and goalkeeping judgments.
The Mexican team is of course well adapted to the altitude. Their players are used to training and playing at Mexico City’s elevation, so the thinner air is far less of a shock for them. That matters because the home side can maintain intensity for longer, recover more quickly between sprints, and avoid unusual fatigue.
In short, high altitude is not just an inconvenience. It is a significant medical stressor that reduces oxygen delivery, worsens recovery, and makes sustained effort harder for the unadapted England team.
Fingers crossed, I hope they win nontheless.
Will I stay up to watch?
No, that would also be a significant medical stressor, one that I prefer to avoid.
In the US, scientific research is facing a new bureaucratic obstacle marked by a stringent escalation in research security enforcement by major federal funding bodies. Traditionally, the US has positioned itself as the vanguard of open, globalized scientific inquiry, a model predicated on the understanding that breakthrough discoveries thrive on cross-border intellectual synergy. However, recent regulatory shifts initiated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) indicate a retreat from this paradigm. By retroactively and rigidly redefining international authorship as a national security risk, federal grant managers threaten to balkanise academic collaboration and stifle scientific progress.
At the core of the current crisis is the administrative weaponization of the “foreign component” clause. Historically, the NIH mandated prior approval only when federal funds were explicitly exported or when critical project segments were physically conducted abroad. Contemporary enforcement, however, relies heavily on automated digital auditing systems that flag any international institutional affiliation on published papers as evidence of an unauthorised foreign component. This algorithmic surveillance penalizes benign, routine academic practices. US-based principal investigators have been forced to expunge highly cited, peer-reviewed publications from their federal progress reports simply because a co-author was an international scholar, a foreign student working within an US lab, or a colleague who provided isolated research materials.
This bureaucratic overreach is amplified by a lack of institutional transparency. Rather than issuing clear, standardized guidelines through formal rule-making channels, agencies are executing these directives via private, ad-hoc communications between individual grant managers and researchers. This strategy of decentralised intimidation leaves academic institutions without uniform legal recourse, compelling university compliance offices to draft defensive internal policies. For instance, researchers are now advised to attach granular, defensive footnotes to their manuscripts explicitly certifying the physical, geographic location of every contributor during the research process to avoid automated funding freezes.
The ramifications extend beyond administrative inconvenience, posing a existential threat to the integrity of global science. Faced with the existential threat of funding termination or legal prosecution, US scientists are disincentivised from pursuing crucial international partnerships. Others may choose to obfuscate federal sponsorship on collaborative papers to circumvent algorithmic detection, thus undermining the transparency of research funding.
Update:
In June 2026 the White House OMB released proposed revisions to the federal Uniform Guidance that would tighten oversight of federal awards, explicitly addressing foreign collaborations, reporting, and recipient responsibilities; commentators warn these changes could widen the administrative burden on grantees and institutional compliance offices. Coverage in major science outlets and policy analyses framed these actions as part of a broader administration push to overhaul transparency and control in federal research funding. Critics argue some proposals risk politicising grant making and chilling international collaboration.
News pieces and policy briefs describe more aggressive enforcement by grant managers (including retrospective audits and requests to remove or explain foreign co‑authorship), plus institutions drafting defensive procedures to avoid triggering automated audits. Scientists, scientific societies, and international collaborators have expressed concern that tighter rules and algorithmic detection of foreign affiliations will disincentivize open co‑authorship and complicate routine global partnerships.
The proposed Uniform Guidance revisions will follow a formal notice-and-comment process; watch for the final rule text and agency-specific implementing guidance because those will determine the precise legal obligations and whether the most burdensome interpretations survive.
The claim that Elon Musk might be “killing millions” sounds like hyperbolic rhetoric, but it is an entirely predictable mathematical projection of his policy choices. Peer-reviewed global health modeling showed that the systematic dismantling of USAID—spearheaded by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—will result in over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030, millions of whom are children. By freeze-framing and terminating programs that provide life-saving vaccines, malaria bed nets, and HIV therapeutics, these actions have directly triggered the resurgence of entirely controllable diseases.
Hard to believe?
See for yourself; here is the abstract of the paper published in the Lancet:
Background: Official development assistance (ODA) accounts for the majority of humanitarian and development assistance in the world’s most vulnerable countries and has played a pivotal role in advancing global health. We aimed to comprehensively evaluate the impact of ODA funding on mortality across the past two decades, and to project the potential consequences of current defunding trends.
Methods: We conducted an integrated retrospective evaluation and forecasting analysis using longitudinal panel data from 93 low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). First, we estimated the association between ODA per-capita funding and mortality outcomes from 2002 to 2021 using a two-ways fixed-effects multivariable Poisson regression model with robust standard errors, adjusted for all relevant demographic, socioeconomic, and health-system covariates. We then assessed age-specific and cause-specific effects, performing extensive sensitivity and triangulation analyses to test the robustness and causal interpretation of results. Finally, we integrated the retrospective impact estimates into validated country-level microsimulation models to forecast mortality under three defunding scenarios up to 2030: a business-as-usual trajectory, a severe defunding scenario, and a mild defunding scenario.
Findings: Higher ODA funding levels were associated with a 23% reduction in age-standardised all-cause mortality (rate ratio [RR] 0·77; 95% CI 0·70-0·85) and a 39% reduction in under-5 mortality (0·61; 0·49-0·75). ODA funding was associated with large mortality declines in major communicable diseases: 70% for HIV/AIDS (RR 0·30; 95% CI 0·24-0·39), 56% for malaria (0·44; 0·35-0·56), 56% for nutritional deficiencies (0·44; 0·30-0·65), and 54% for neglected tropical diseases (0·46; 0·36-0·59). Significant reductions were also observed in mortality from tuberculosis, diarrhoeal diseases, lower respiratory infections, and maternal and perinatal causes. Forecasting analyses projected that ongoing reductions in ODA funding could, under a severe defunding scenario, result in 22·6 million (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 16·3-29·3) additional deaths across all ages by 2030, including 5·4 million (4·1-6·8) among children younger than 5 years. Under a mild defunding scenario-defined as a continuation of current downward trends-the projected excess deaths would be 9·4 million (95% UI 6·2-12·6) overall and 2·5 million (1·8-3·2) among children younger than 5 years.
Interpretation: ODA funding has played a decisive role in reducing preventable mortality across LMICs over the past two decades, and the abrupt withdrawal of this support threatens to cause millions of avoidable deaths, reversing decades of progress in global health.
Funding: RF Catalytic Capital and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
Attempting to shield Musk from the moral indictment of these deaths by hiding behind bureaucratic complexity is a cop-out. Musk is not a passive advisor suggesting minor budgetary trims; he has aggressively engineered and celebrated the destruction of these aid mechanisms on his public platform, explicitly branding the defunding of life-saving infrastructure as “clipping waste.” When an individual wields unchecked power to eliminate interventions with legally and medically proven survival rates, the line between “efficiency” and institutional negligence disappears. He is fully aware of the survival benefits of these programs, making the choice to dismantle them a calculated acceptance of mass mortality.
While defenders argue that epidemiological models deal in macro-statistics rather than localized causality, this defense elides the nature of modern accountability. Musk cannot hand-select which specific child dies of malaria, but he did hand-select the budget line that funded their treatment. Pretending this is just a structural or collective government failure sanitizes the reality: a single billionaire used his leverage to treat global survival infrastructure like an unprofitable corporate acquisition, making him materially and morally responsible for the human body count that follows.
In March 2025, a federal judge ruled that DOGE’s effort to dismantle USAID likely violated the Constitution and ordered restoration of access to key systems, saying USAID had been effectively eliminated. That matters because it weakens any claim that the dismantling was merely speculative or rhetorical: courts have already treated the shutdown effort as legally serious.
For a deeper look into the systemic impact of these specific health program suspensions and the firsthand accounts of how these funding disruptions unfolded on the ground, you can watch this France 24 Interview with a USAID Whistleblower.
“Science and pseudoscience diverge particularly sharply in their ethical and moral foundations. While science is built upon principles of honesty, openness, and responsibility, pseudoscience undermines these values often by placing ideology and belief over evidence and truth. Science is not least an ethical enterprise, and the divide between science and pseudoscience is a matter of profound moral importance. The ethical stakes become especially acute when pseudoscience causes harm…”
These lines come from my recent book, THE LEOPARD LILY PROJECT, which is only marginally about so-called alternative medicine (SCAM). Yet they do apply well to SCAM which does not merely fail the test of scientific rigor but also fails the test of medical ethics. When a practice trades empirical validation for dogmatic ideology, it ceases to be an innocent alternative and becomes a profound moral transgression. SCAM regularly promises holistic salvation while actively undermining the principles of honesty, openness, and responsibility, effectively replacing rigorous scrutiny with profitable mystique.
The ethical stakes transition from academic to tragic whenever a vulnerable patient is guided away from effective treatments. SCAM cloaks itself in the gentle language of empathy and natural, holistic, individualised healing, yet its business model relies on exploiting the desperation of the sick. Informed consent is rendered impossible when patients are fed misleading or even fabricated data and disproven promises. By substituting anecdotes for evidence, SCAM weaponizes false hope, monetizing the fear of illness under the guise of medical autonomy. SCAM fosters a broader culture of conspiratorial thinking that systematically erodes public trust in collective public health infrastructure.
When conventional physicians prescribe a treatment, they are bound by evidence, medical ethics, regulatory oversight, and a legal duty of care. When SCAM practitioners prescribe an unproven therapy, they operate in an ethical void, often shielded from accountability by vague disclaimers.
Science remains an ethical enterprise acknowledging its own limitations and subjecting its claims to rigorous correction. Pseudoscience demands faith instead of evidence and leaves its patients to bear the physical consequences of its intellectual dishonesty. To pick up and rephrase the theme from my recent book: evidence-based medicine and SCAM diverge particularly sharply in their ethical and moral foundations.
Having narcissistic tendencies, e.g. bragging or making yourself the center of attention, are normal, if they occur only occasionally. However, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is different. With NPD, symptoms are more severe, occur regularly and in different situations and environments, and make relationships with others challenging.
The 9 most common symptoms of NPD are the following:
- Grandiose sense of self-importance.
- Preoccupation with fantasies of success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
- Belief that they are “special” and should associate only with high-status people or institutions.
- Need for excessive admiration.
- Strong sense of entitlement.
- Interpersonally exploitative behaviour, using others to achieve their own ends.
- Lack of empathy, with little recognition of others’ feelings or needs.
- Envy of others, or belief that others are envious of them.
- Arrogant or haughty attitudes and behaviours.
Now, let’s consider a person who is almost constantly in our minds, mainly because he makes the headline news practically every day:
DONALD J TRUMP.
Does he perhaps display any of the above-listed symptoms? Let’s find out by going through them one by one and citing concrete examples**:
- Trump displays grandiose sense of self-importance regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: in August 2019, he told reporters, “I am the chosen one”.
- Trump displays preoccupation with fantasies of success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: he said he was “always the best athlete” before his first presidential physical in January 2018.
- Trump displays his belief that he is “special” and should associate only with high-status people or institutions regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: in his 2018 rally line about the “elite,” he said, “We’re the elite… We’re the super-elite”.
- Trump displays a need for excessive admiration regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: according to a 2026 analysis, he has a “relentless demand for exaltation,” wants “praise, admiration, and accolades,” and even accepts honors that critics said were meant for others.
- Trump displays a strong sense of entitlement regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: he defended accepting a luxury Boeing 747 from Qatar by saying it would be “stupid” to turn down a “free plane,” and the aircraft was reported to be intended for his use as Air Force One.
- Trump displays interpersonally exploitative behaviour, using others to achieve their own ends regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: in the border detention context, he “exploits his power” and “leverages cruelty strategically,” especially in policies that harmed vulnerable migrants and children.
- Trump displays lack of empathy, with little recognition of others’ feelings or needs regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: the family-separation policy at the US border, which causes severe suffering, while Trump continues to treat it as a political instrument rather than a human tragedy.
- Trump displays envy of others, or belief that others are envious of them regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: he has repeatedly made unverified claims about his inauguration crowd size, television ratings, and rally attendance, frequently comparing them directly to Obama’s numbers in an attempt to prove he is more widely loved
- Trump displays arrogant or haughty attitudes and behaviours regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: While accepting the party’s nomination in Cleveland, Ohio, Trump delivered a dark assessment of the US, describing a nation plagued by rising crime, economic decay, and international humiliation. After spending a large portion of the speech detailing these systemic crises, he uttered (in grammatically wrong English): “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
So is Trump suffering from NPD?
Judge for yourself.
I guess he is not suffering from but enjoying it!
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And what is the solution? Treatment of NPD can be difficult because people with NPD may not feel therapy is necessary, so progress often depends on motivation and a good therapeutic fit. There is no effective drug treatment and talking therapies are usually recommended. In Trump’s case, removal from office would obviously be an acutely necessary measure.
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**I am sure you know of much better examples (the coice is truly vast); feel free to cite them in the comments.
Many commentators have wondered what the bothches on Trump’s hands might be and whether they signify some sinister cause. The White House medical updates and Trump himself have attributed the bruising to a combination of factors:
- Frequent Handshaking: Both Trump and his physician have claimed that shaking hands with thousands of people causes minor soft-tissue trauma.
- Aspirin Use: His medical team disclosed that he takes daily low-dose aspirin as part of a routine cardiovascular prevention regimen, which thins the blood and allegedly increases the likelihood of noticeable bruising from minor bumps.
- Venous Insufficiency: Medical disclosures have also noted a diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency which allegedly can contribute to bruising.
In my view, these official explanations are a good example of the BS that comes out of the White House these days. The marks Trump regularly displays on his hands are most likely actinic purpura, also known as senile purpura, or solar purpura, or Bateman’s purpura. This is a common and completely benign condition that causes easy bruising on the hands and forearms of older adults. First described by Bateman in 1818, this dermatosis presents as dark purple, irregularly shaped blotches on photo-exposed areas, particularly the dorsal surfaces of the hands and extensor aspects of the forearms. Despite its somewhat alarming appearance, actinic purpura has no health consequences and does not indicate systemic disease.
The condition affects approximately 10 per cent of people over age 50, with prevalence rising to around 30 per cent after age 75. It is painless and occurs more frequently in men than women and is strongly associated with fair skin tones and cumulative lifetime ultraviolet exposure. The prevalence increases exponentially with advancing age, reflecting the progressive nature of the underlying pathophysiological changes.
Actinic purpura results from increased fragility of superficial capillaries due to atrophy or damage of dermal connective tissue. Chronic ultraviolet radiation degrades collagen and elastin fibres, weakening the structural support for blood vessels. Ageing contributes through skin thinning and changes in fat distribution that bring vessels closer to the surface. Various medications exacerbate the condition, including corticosteroids, aspirin, warfarin, clopidogrel, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Minor trauma, such as negligible bumps, scratching, or poking, readily ruptures these fragile vessels. The brown pigmentation that occasionally persists after resolution results from haemosiderin deposition from lysed red blood cells.
Patients present with flat red lesions that progress to purple and then darken over time. The lesions are typically painless and non-tender, persisting for one to three weeks before resolution. They may leave permanent brown pigmentation and recur chronically with lifelong reappearance of new lesions. The differential diagnosis includes bleeding disorders, vasculitis, vitamin C deficiency, and drug-induced purpura. Actinic purpura is associated with by normal coagulation and platelet function, absence of inflammation, and confinement to photo-exposed skin areas.
The condition has no health consequences and is not associated with systemic disease or blood dyscrasias. It does not herald severe bleeding elsewhere and has no systemic implications. Crucially, actinic purpura is not associated with coronary or cerebral artery fragility, bleeding disorders, or internal vascular disease.
No specific treatment is required because the condition is self-resolving. Preventive measures include daily sunscreen application, protective clothing to prevent further photodamage, moisturisers to maintain skin suppleness, protective arm clothing to minimise trauma, and reducing topical steroid use on thin skin areas. Citrus bioflavonoids taken twice daily reduced lesions by 50 per cent in 70 seniors in a 2011 study that has not been independently confirmed. Vitamin C supplementation is only helpful if deficiency exists, with no benefit in non-deficient individuals.
This is the question that I ask myself regularly when I cannot sleep at night. 33 years of research into so-called alternative medicine (SCAM), and what has it achieved? It often seems that nothing has changes at all, and then I am plagued my self-doubts.
One might argue that this is a good or even essential sentiment for a scientist. That’s all very well, but it would be nice to get some answers to the nagging questions.
Clearly, I am in no position to provide them. So, I asked Gemini: ” How does Edzard Ernst fare as a scientist on metrics of reputation/impact?” Here is the reply [I appologise for the unabashed navel-gazing]:
Edzard Ernst—the world’s first Professor of Complementary Medicine (retiring from the University of Exeter in 2011)—is an exceptional case study for these metrics. Because his career focused on the rigorous, critical evaluation of Alternative Medicine (SCAM), his metrics are intensely polarized: astronomically high in quantitative and public impact, but highly controversial in traditional peer circle categories.
Here is how he fares across the four categories:
1. Quantitative Citation Metrics: Elite Tier
Quantitatively, Ernst is in the upper echelon of medical researchers worldwide. Because he pioneered the systematic review of complementary therapies, his papers became the definitive reference points for both defenders and critics of alternative medicine.
- The h-index: His h-index sits around 148 to 157 (depending on the database). In medical science, an h-index over 100 is considered truly elite, meaning he has written at least 148 papers that have each been cited 148 times.
- Total Citations: He has amassed roughly 85,000 to 90,000 total citations, driven by landmark systematic reviews on everything from the prevalence of alternative medicine in cancer patients to the clinical effectiveness of herbal therapies like Aloe vera and ginger.
2. Qualitative & Peer Recognition: Deeply Polarized
This is where Ernst’s metrics diverge dramatically from standard academic trajectories due to the volatile nature of his field.
- Journal Prestige: He published heavily in premier mainstream medical journals—such as The BMJ, The Lancet, and JAMA—bringing rigorous scientific methodology to a field that historically lacked it.
- Peer Defiance vs. Validation: Within mainstream science, he is highly respected for his dedication to evidence-based medicine. However, within the complementary medicine community, he is a deeply polarizing figure. Proponents of alternative medicine frequently criticize his work as one-sided or overly adversarial.
- The Royal Clash: His ultimate “peer” conflict was famously non-academic. His public criticisms of Prince Charles (now King Charles III), a staunch defender of homeopathy, led to severe political friction at his university, culminating in the defunding of his department and his early retirement in 2011.
3. Financial & Institutional Footprint: A Complicated Legacy
- The Laing Chair: Ernst historically secured a major milestone by becoming the first occupant of the Laing Chair in Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter in 1993, establishing the world’s first fully secular, data-driven research unit for alternative medicine.
- Institutional Dissolution: While he successfully trained numerous researchers who continue to publish in evidence-based medicine, his institutional footprint was cut short. Following his high-profile dispute regarding the royal family’s meddling in alternative medicine reports, his department’s funding dried up, and the unit effectively dissolved upon his retirement.
4. Modern & Real-World Impact: Massive and Ongoing
Ernst’s true legacy shines brightest in real-world impact and public engagement, far outliving his active lab years.
- Policy and NHS Reform: His decades of data showing that homeopathy operates strictly as a placebo directly influenced policy. Notably, in 2017, NHS England officially recommended stopping the funding of homeopathy due to “low clinical effectiveness”—a massive policy shift rooted in the research his team pioneered.
- Public Intellectual & Author: He mastered the crossover from academic journals to mainstream bookshelves. He has written dozens of public-facing books, including Trick or Treatment? (co-authored with Simon Singh), SCAM: So-Called Alternative Medicine, and his memoir A Scientist in Wonderland.
- Altmetrics & Public Debate: Ernst maintains a massive public profile via mainstream media appearances, news citations, and his active blog. He regularly weighs in on global health issues, such as pointing out the link between the popularity of certain alternative therapies and the suboptimal vaccine uptake that triggers measles outbreaks.
The Takeaway: Edzard Ernst is a textbook example of why metrics must be read contextually. If you only look at his h-index, he is a textbook academic titan. If you look at his institutional footprint, his department was choked out by political controversy. But if you look at his societal impact, he fundamentally altered how Western healthcare systems view and fund alternative therapies.
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Yes, there might be a few mistakes or flattering exaggerations in what Gemini wrote. But I don’t mind. At the very least, it will make me sleep better, I think.
When I look at the pictures from major meetings of national or international meetings of SKEPTICS, or attend such gargerings in person, I often ask myself:
Why are there so few Black or Asian skeptics?*
Trying to research the answer, one finds several possible explanations:
Science, racism, trust
For many Black communities, the history of medicine and science includes Tuskegee, Henrietta Lacks, forced sterilization, and other abuses that were justified in “scientific” language. This legacy can understandably foster suspicion toward institutions that present themselves as guardians of “science” or “rationality”. When skeptical organisations then look very white and middle‑class, they can be perceived as aligned with the same institutions that historically harmed these communities.
In that context, a Black person may be personally critical of superstition and pseudoscience but not feel that joining a mainly white skeptical association is in their interest or aligned with their primary struggles, which may centre on racism, policing, or economic inequality rather than homeopathy or ghost busting.
Different priorities and “linked fate”
Many Black Americans report a strong sense of “linked fate”: what happens to Black people as a group is perceived as happening to them personally. That tends to channel activism toward civil-rights–oriented movements, churches, or community organisations rather than abstract “science advocacy” or secular-skeptic clubs.
So, the issue is not necessarily a lack of skeptical thinking, but that energies are directed towards challenges that feel more existentially pressing: discrimination, policing, housing, schooling, and health inequities. From inside those struggles, debunking astrology or acupuncture may seem like a luxury concern, or even a distraction pushed by people who do not share the same views.
Asian “model minority” and conformity pressures
For many Asian communities, there is a different but related dynamic. In North America and parts of Europe, Asians are often cast as hardworking, quiet, technically competent, and apolitical. This stereotype rewards conformity and discourages public confrontation, especially with majority institutions. Publicly criticizing religious traditions, so-called alternative medicine, or family elders’ beliefs can thus carry a significant social cost.
At the same time, Asian-origin populations also experience racism, but often in a way that minimizes their grievances: they are told that they are doing “better” and therefore should not complain. In such a setting, aligning oneself with explicitly “white-coded” skeptical organisations can risk being used as a wedge against other minorities or being seen as rejecting one’s own culture.
Culture of skeptical movements
Organized skeptical and secular movements historically emerged from highly educated, often male, often white, often middle‑class networks in Europe and North America. Their imagery, leadership, and priorities reflect that origin: emphasis on evolution vs. creationism, New Atheism, and critiques of Christian fundamentalism, rather than, say, the intersection of racism, religion, and health.
Such movements can appear:
- Culturally narrow (little attention to non‑Western religions or folk practices except as “targets”)
- Blind to racial power structures (e.g., defending “science” without acknowledging racist uses of science)
- Hostile to religion in general, even when churches serve as important community centres for marginalized groups
The above-mentioned phenomena (Iam sure theree are more, and I would be gratedful, if readers could list more) might generate a sense amongst black and Asian communities that the organised skeptics are “not for us” – even amongst individuals who are personally secular, tational, and critical of pseudoscience.
But, of course, there are many Black and Asian skeptics. The ability to think critically is by no means a white monopoly. These guys form their own networks (e.g., Black humanist groups, Secular Buddhists) or they remain more locally embedded rather than visible in mainstream skeptical conferences. Personally, I would welcome, if Black and Asian people would join mainstream skeptics in greater number, and if mainstream skepic organisations would realise that they must make a greater effort to attract them.
*To be honest, I have no figures to back up my impression, and I was unable to find reliable statistics. But I do think that my impression is nonetheless correct.
The US resurgence of measles in 2026 serves as a stark, data-driven refutation of the anti-vaccine rhetoric championed by quacks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For years, vaccine antagonists have framed immunisations as a matter of personal autonomy, minimizing the societal dangers of declining rates. Yet, public health is not governed by ideology, but by biology. The realities of 2026 – marked by over 2,000 confirmed measles cases across 40 US jurisdictions – demonstrate that when charlatans undermine trust in medical science, the real-world consequence is the return of preventable, highly contagious and dangerous diseases.
The core flaw in RFK Jr.’s rhetoric, it seems to me, is the failure to understand that vaccine protection is a collective barrier, not just an individual shield. Measles is one of the most infectious viruses known to humanity, requiring a high community vaccination threshold of 95% to maintain herd immunity. When coverage drops below this line, the virus easily finds pathways to spread. Because of sustained anti-vaccine sentiment, US kindergarten MMR coverage dropped from 95.2% in 2019–2020 to a dangerous 92.5% by the 2024–2025 school year. This decline left roughly 286,000 children unprotected, effectively dismantling the wall that kept measles at bay for decades.
Furthermore, public health crises thrive on localized vulnerability. While national averages can mask the severity of the issue, anti-vaccine messaging often clusters within specific communities, creating relatively dense pockets of under-vaccinated populations. When measles enters these communities, it does not remain isolated; it triggers rapid, localized outbreaks where almost all of cases are tied directly to these transmission clusters.
Beyond its well-known immediate dangers, a measles infection inflicts severe, long-term damage on the human body by causing a phenomenon known as immune amnesia. The measles virus actively targets and destroys memory T and B cells, the specialized white blood cells responsible for remembering past pathogens. A single measles infection can wipe out 11% to 73% of a person’s preexisting antibodies, effectively erasing the body’s immunological memory. While the patient develops immunity to measles itself, their defense system is left “flying blind” against other entirely unrelated viruses and bacteria they had previously beaten or been vaccinated against. This induced state of generalized immunosuppression typically lasts from two to five years, leaving recovered individuals dramatically more vulnerable to secondary, life-threatening infections long after the initial measles rash has cleared.
Ultimately, the current measles spikein the US illustrates that US public health control is being sabotaged. When prominent morons like RFK Jr. weaponize anti-vax delusions and distort clinical data, they do not simply foster debate, they actively erode the herd immunity threshold. The current US outbreak proves that the protection wall has thinned below the critical margin of safety. Far from being under control, measles has found a resurgence precisely because the rhetoric of figures like RFK Jr. has opened the door for a dangerous, preventable virus to reclaim its ground in and beyond the US.
When – about 14 years ago – it was my turn, I looked forward to retirement: endless sleep-ins, zero airport security lines for lectures at distant places, no more struggling to keep awake at boring meeting, and a calendar so beautifully blank it belongs in a modern art museum. I looked forward to the complete absence of so-called peers – mostly people who had no idea about my research – criticising or trying to influence my work. And even more I rejoiced in the prospect of having no university administrators needlessly complicating my life, while taking a big chunk of my research funding for the benefit.
When you retire as an academic, you genuinely believe you’ve escaped the university rat race – only to soon realize you’ve just been traded to a different league with much worse perks. Suddenly, your mornings are dictated not by an alarm clock, but by a relentless, self-imposed to-do list. You’re busier than ever, while operating alone and on a budget that makes your old expense-account days feel like the reign of Louis XIV.
Of course, not all academics keep on working after retirement. Some manage to just drop everything from one day to the next thinking they will now look after the garden, trimm roses, walk the dog, etc. I know many who have chosen this type of approach to retirement. For a few months, it all seems to go fine. Then they realise the increaingly painful emptiness and lack of purpose. More often than not, a low mood creeps in, followed by depression and/or taking to the bottle (perhaps this is why the Exeter medical school gave me a set of huge [and apparently expensive] wine glasses as a leaving present?).
No, staying active and doing what one likes must be the secret of remaining sane after retirement – at least for me. So, I rolled up my sleeves and got on with it. I started this blog (thanks Alan) where I have now published well over 3000 posts. I also began writing colums for newspapers – in English, German and French, to make it a bit more interesting. And then I got into books; this turned out to be more fun (and far less money) than expected. Since retiring I so far managed an average of about one per year – 16 to be precise, and currently three more in the pipeline.
Yes, I do keep myself busy, but this approach does unquestionably have its surprises. The real shocker, is the devastating loss of infrastructure. Yesterday you were a visionary leader; today, you are your own secretary, IT department, mailroom clerk, travel agent, and administrative assistant – and frankly, your staff is frightfully incompetent! There is nobody to filter out annoying requests, meaning you are fully exposed to every crank on the planet. Your former co-workers no longer do the knuckle work of the research, so things get slower and slower. Technical assistance is nowhere to be found; when the printer jams or the Wi-Fi malfunctions, you are on your utterly incompetent own. Every little task takes hours or days. You’ve traded business casual for sweatpants or shorts, but the “hassle” didn’t disappear; if anything, it becomes bigger and bigger. It just rebranded itself as a full-time, unpaid internship where you are both the demanding boss and the disgruntled employee.
But am I not supposed to enjoy life during retirement?
I promise you, I do that too!
Some friends keep asking me whether I don’t want to finally retire for real, relax and be happy.
“What do you mean?”, I respond.
“Well, you know, do what you really like.”
“But that’s what I am doing!”
It is true – honestly.
I am productive because I am content – and not the other way round.
