Research Too much fluoride might lower IQ in kids, new federal report says: The sci and debate

[C C]

(2024) Too much fluoride might lower IQ in kids, a new federal report says. The science (and debate), explained.
https://www.vox.com/today-explained-news...ence-study

EXCERPT: Fluoride in our drinking water has inspired conspiracy theories for generations. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is also a prominent anti-vaxxer and Covid-19 skeptic, is one of the most vocal proponents of banning fluoridation to protect children from neurodevelopmental problems. This, though, isn’t a conspiracy theory.

Scientists have spent decades trying to figure out what level of fluoride strikes the best balance between oral health and healthy brain development. The NTP’s new 324-page report reviews results from over 500 experiments, lending more weight to the idea that fluoride can be connected to brain problems than, say, a single fraudulent, now-retracted study linking vaccines to autism... (MORE - missing details)
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Joseph Heller: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you." --Catch-22

Variation: "To use what nutjobs endorse -- as a benchmark for judging what's fact and what's not -- is to apply for membership in another such club ourselves."


(2020) Controversy: The evolving science of fluoride: when new evidence doesn’t conform with existing beliefs
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8

EXCERPTS: We typically fret about subtle biases, like recall bias and unmeasured confounding, but confirmation bias, the tendency to ignore or debunk data that does not conform to what we believe, is arguably a much larger problem. Failure to act on consistent evidence that indicates safety risks could amount to enormous costs at the population level. [...] We describe the challenges of conducting fluoride research and the overt cognitive biases we have witnessed in the polarized fluoride debate. The tendency to ignore new evidence that does not conform to widespread beliefs impedes the response to early warnings about fluoride as a potential developmental neurotoxin.

Dr. Strangelove ... https://youtu.be/J67wKhddWu4

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/J67wKhddWu4

[Magical Realist]

Boooyah!!

"For people used to thinking of Portland as the earnestly quirky liberal oasis portrayed in Portlandia and the style pages of The New York Times, the idea that Oregon's largest city agrees with the conspiracy-minded John Birch Society about dosing citizens with fluoride may seem odd. But on Tuesday, for the fourth time since 1956, Portland voters rejected a plan to fluoridate the city's drinking water. As Slate's Jake Blumgart asks, "What's the matter with Portland?"