Hole lot of nuthin.

The ‘supervoid’, which is 1.8 billion light-years across, is the largest known structure ever discovered in the universe but scientists are baffled about what it is and why it is so barren.
It sits in a region of space which is much colder than other parts of the universe and although it is not a vacuum, it seems to have around 20 per cent less matter than other regions.
Although the Big Bang theory allows for areas that are cooler and hotter, the size of the void does not fit with predicted models. Simply put, it is too big to exist.

They should have used computer models;

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.
[…]
The admissions mark a watershed in one of the country’s largest forensic scandals, highlighting the failure of the nation’s courts for decades to keep bogus scientific information from juries, legal analysts said. The question now, they said, is how state authorities and the courts will respond to findings that confirm long-suspected problems with subjective, pattern-based forensic techniques — like hair and bite-mark comparisons — that have contributed to wrongful convictions in more than one-quarter of 329 DNA-exoneration cases since 1989.

Pass me the chips, Einstein;

A surprising study contradicting all previous research found that being fat in middle age appears to cut the risk of developing dementia rather than increase it, the Lancet scientific journal has reported.
A study of two million people found that the underweight were far more likely to develop dementia, a growing problem among the elderly in the Western world.
Underweight people had a 34 percent higher risk of developing dementia than those of a normal weight, the study found, while the very obese had a 29 percent lower risk of becoming forgetful and confused and showing other signs of senility

BBC;

A recent study reported that joggers who exercise strenuously have the same life expectancy as people who do barely any exercise at all. But the author has now admitted he hasn’t actually proved this.

h/t Meatriarchy

WaPo;

“There is no longer any valid basis for the current salt guidelines,” said Andrew Mente, a professor at McMaster University in Ontario and one of the researchers involved in a major study published last year by the New England Journal of Medicine. “So why are we still scaring people about salt?”

Fish oil is now the third most widely used dietary supplement in the United States, after vitamins and minerals, according to a recent report from the National Institutes of Health. At least 10 percent of Americans take fish oil regularly, most believing that the omega-3 fatty acids in the supplements will protect their cardiovascular health. […]
From 2005 to 2012, at least two dozen rigorous studies of fish oil were published in leading medical journals, most of which looked at whether fish oil could prevent cardiovascular events in high-risk populations. These were people who had a history of heart disease or strong risk factors for it, like high cholesterol, hypertension or Type 2 diabetes.
All but two of these studies found that compared with a placebo, fish oil showed no benefit.

Margaret Wente;

Last month, in an epic climbdown, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advice Committee, whose guidelines influence millions of people, finally dropped its recommendation to restrict cholesterol. “Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption,” it said. So go ahead – eat all the eggs you want.
Just about everything we thought we knew about the evils of cholesterol and fats has turned out to be wrong. The doctors, the nutritionists, the dietitians, the heart societies, the experts at Health Canada, the food pyramid that hung on the wall in school – the entire health and medical establishment, in fact, have been perpetuating a big fat fraud.
It gets worse…

It’s not the first time I’ve posted on this. And it won’t be the last. (h/t Ottawa MJ)

Scientists surprised;

This week in the journal Nature, an international team of scientists reported evidence for hydrothermal vents on the Saturnian moon Enceladus, with temperatures of its rocky core surpassing 90C in spots. The discovery, if confirmed, would make Enceladus the only place other than Earth where such chemical reactions between rock and heated water are known to be occurring today — and for many scientists, it would make Enceladus a most promising place to look for life.
“The most surprising part is the high temperature,” said Hsiang-Wen Hsu, a scientist at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and lead author of the paper. “But that’s the number we could derive.”

h/t Kevin B

Out of Africa: A new twist on predicting U.S. hurricanes.

“More research is needed,” say all the people who make money from such pointless research.

Say, about that cholesterol – “a move that could undo almost 40 years of government warnings about its consumption.”
h/t Kevin B.

Accountable Science;

The new peer-reviewed paper, authored by a team of prominent researchers led by Dr. Corrine Keet of John’s Hopkins Children’s Center, studied over 23,000 U.S. children and found no statistically significant difference in asthma rates between those who live in inner-city neighborhoods (and are thus subject to higher pollution levels) and those who do not (once controlling for other factors). Instead, researchers concluded that poverty was a greater predictor for higher asthma rates than outdoor air pollution.
The study still points to air pollution as a cause for asthma, only it’s indoor air pollution–think second hand smoke, rodents, mold, etc.–that may be the main culprit.
It’s a radical finding. The study upends more than half a century of research that assumed outdoor air pollution in cities was to blame for higher asthma rates–a hypothesis repeatedly used by EPA regulators to justify the agency’s regulations.
The study couldn’t come at a worse time for the agency. EPA is preparing to tighten national standards for ground-level ozone (the main ingredient in smog) by as much as 20 percent. To justify the move, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy argued she was “following science” to “protect those most at-risk–our children, our elderly, and people already suffering from lung diseases like asthma.”