Vitamins Come from Living Things

Every vitamin is made by living cells — either our own, or in other species. Vitamin D is produced in our skin, for example, when sunlight strikes a precursor of cholesterol. A lemon tree makes vitamin C out of glucose. Making a vitamin is often an enormously baroque process. In some species, it takes 22 different proteins to craft a vitamin B12 molecule. While a protein may be made up of thousands of atoms, a vitamin may be made up of just a few dozen. And yet, despite their small size, v...

 Intellectual Quackery in Academia

Intellectual quackery extends throughout the landscape of academia; tenured professors in the humanities and social sciences, on the right and left, are constantly purveying theories that are the philosophical, literary, and artistic equivalents of junk science. That many of the researchers consider themselves intellectuals is sad but unremarkable in the annals of quackery withing academia: junk thought with an intellectual patina fosters anti-intellectualism as effectively as junk science wi...