A new paper accompanied by a scary-looking map claims "people who lived in cities with lead-contaminated water as children had worse baseline cognitive functioning at age 72" and may make every new parent worry their child's grades can be blamed on the water supply, but it leaves out important scientific context.

With a tiny fraction of the world population, the United States dominates science output. America dominates in Nobel prizes, and adult science literacy.

Yet leading the world in science literacy needs under 30% of its people, so it isn't that America is great, it is more that other countries are terrible. Anyone looking at the science policies of Europe - 'anything but science' is the default - when it comes to food, energy, and medicine knows they're regressing into the Dark Ages. Asia never stopped being the home of supplements and mysticism, it is why they lead the world in endangered-species-killed-for-folk-medicine occurrences.

Neuroscience is still in its infancy, despite claims by people using fMRI to suggest links between lots of things, but a few things are established, like that fear 'resides' in the amygdala.

Linking that same part of the brain to obesity in mice, and therefore humans, in a new paper warrants more skepticism. Mice are, as famously stated when science was science, not tiny people. We do have things in common with mice, just like we share 60% of our DNA with bananas, but no one suggests their study on bananas has 'implications' for humans the way every trial lawyer running a grift and wanting to sue an agriculture company suggests about mouse models.

When the federal government took over health care during the Obama years, a lot of promises were made while the concern when legislation was passed without knowing which parts of three competing plans would be implemented boiled down to high cost to get a million people insured who couldn't get insurance.

It ended up being worse than projected. Individual plans shot up 300% in just a few years and may never be affordable again. There are two big reasons the system is flawed, and they are why up to 40% of people will abandon their political party if a candidate on the other side says they want to fix the high cost of health care.(1)

The United States has some of the cleanest air in the world, at least when it comes to actual dangerous smog, PM₁₀ - particulate matter 10 microns in size. It is a clear killer, at one point leading to the deaths of over 10,000 in London during a weather anomaly that caused it to stay low.

In a recent paper calling to add even more regulations to legal gun owners, the American Academy of Pediatrics wrote "Each day, 28 U.S. children and teens -- the equivalent of a high school classroom -- die from gun violence, making it the No. 1 killer of youth through age 24."

How did they get their number, and why are they claiming a 24-year-old is a child? (1)