Articulatory Loop

The science of marijuana research has been tainted for a long time by political motives. Regulators desperately need reasons that this plant is more criminalized than most actual crimes. It's easier to get out on parole for violent crimes than pot possession. And it's shit like this that helps. So some kids who smoked pot also had strokes. I bet they also had genetic risk factors, they probably smoked tobacco, and might have been, say, overweight and inactive (as is the trend these days). Calling marijuana a 'risk factor' by pure correlational data is what's known as a Hack Job. Let's say it slowly together....Haaaa-ck. Joa-buh. Goooood.

More bad science, or really science journalism, comes from research saying that since the invention of sign language, deafness has become more common. It makes sense: now that deaf people can communicate with each other better than with non-deaf (who don't usually learn sign language), they get married more and have more kids. Thus passing on recessive deafness genes. Well yeah. Duh. Obviously. But my problem here is the title of the article: "Signing 'Increases Deafness Rates,'" as if to say that sign language itself causes deafness. Fucking stupid.