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When health goes global
“The impressive improvements in health status worldwide over the last century are a cause for celebration” proclaim Colin Mathers and Ruth Bonita in the second edition of “Global Public Health: a new era” (1). This statement says it all: improving the health and well-being of humans is a long and difficult process involving scientific discoveries, ...
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The origin and future of modern humans
Earlier this year, we published an article describing an exciting hypothesis that explains how two important observations, that on the surface appear incompatible, come together to provide insight into the evolution of modern man (1). Recent evidence demonstrates that modern humans share some genomic DNA with Neanderthals (2), yet decade-old analyses clearly demonstrate that modern human ...
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The History of Hypothesis and the Future of Science Publishing
This year the senior editorial team of Hypothesis met and discussed the origins of the journal with three of its founding editors, Wissam Assaily, Bart Kus, and Mariano Loza-Coll. With a certain nostalgia, the founders revisited and explained the forces that drove them to create Hypothesis, including an aspiration to establish a forum for scientific ...
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Trust in Science
A recent article by Lisa Gross in PLoS Biology provides a retrospective look at the vaccine-autism controversy (1). The report of a possible link between the MMR vaccine and an increased incidence of autism originated from a small case study published in 1998 in The Lancet, a well-respected medical journal (2). Public fear was further ...
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Interdisciplinary Communication
Many academic institutions are currently offering interdisciplinary research programs and promoting cross-disciplinary collaborations. The University of Toronto is no exception. For example, in July 2006 the university blurred the lines between plant and animal science by combining the departments of Botany and Zoology into two new departments: Cell & Systems Biology and Ecology & Evolutionary ...
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Food Science Gone Bad
In recent years, emerging health care technologies such as stem cell research have garnered media attention and spurred political debate due to their therapeutic potential and ethical implications. Meanwhile, scientific research has played a central, but less controversial role in a topic with universal relevance: proper nutrition. Scientific studies whose outcomes link a nutrient to ...