When I was younger, it felt like half the ppl I knew survived by being in medical studies as their source of income.
As a result, I sometimes have difficulty taking study outcomes seriously! Because let me tell you, ~nobody getting paid to be in studies is telling the truth.
And sure, studies are designed to filter for that, but it’s much more difficult to control for coordinated deception. It used to be that people doing studies were a cohesive community & would help each other. One person would figure out the right answers or behaviors and then spread the word.
I saw addiction studies with no addicts, smoking studies with no smokers, sleep studies with groups of people alternating responsibility for wearing the monitor each night, etc etc
Now whenever I see the results of some study I kind of squint and try to imagine what the results mean if the participants are a preformed active coordinated group attempting to maximize the income for themselves and their friends.
https://x.com/moxie/status/1773376847918621042?t=UrKVgDHAPE9AMr3Rkaxrag&s=19
You think you're just eating "cheese"?
Think again.
90% of the American cheese on store shelves right now is made with a lab-engineered fake rennet called FPC — fermentation-produced chymosin.
And it was originally developed and patented by Pfizer in 1990. Yeah, that Pfizer.
Here's how they did it: They took the gene for chymosin (the key clotting enzyme from a calf's stomach), spliced it into Aspergillus Niger — black mold — using CRISPR gene-editing tech, then let the mold ferment in giant vats like some dystopian bio-reactor. The result? A synthetic enzyme that's cheaper, faster, and more consistent than the real thing.
Big Food loved it. No more baby calves. No supply limits. Just endless, uniform cheese bricks rolling off the line. FDA called it "substantially equivalent" to real rennet and gave it GRAS status with zero long-term human safety studies — just a 90-day rat trial. Sound familiar?
The worst part? This stuff isn't even listed properly.
On ingredient labels it hides behind ...