Review (1/5): Not talc anymore
It appears that, due to an observational study finding a small correlation between talc and cancer, many now believe that ‘science has prove talc bad‘. This is due, primarily, to ubiquitous misunderstanding of what constitutes ’science’ and how enormous a difference there is between the reliability of actual science and observational studies—the former, after repeated and properly-designed experiments, provides a strong basis for causal inference, while observational studies provide little more than a reason to conduct an experiment. Of course, we never hear about any actual experimental results, i.e. actual science, with things like this, because, either the observation result was merely promoted as a sensational headline and the people who conducted it know very well a minor correlation doesn’t even justify the time and expense of an experiment, or because experiments were conducted and didn’t produce the sensational result.
Unfortunately, when media takes advantage of this widespread misunderstanding, good products are removed from shelves and good companies producing good products lose money. Here, it appears the company chose to give in to the hysteria, which is a shame. I suspect that, if their actual customers had much of a voice, they’d find out this was a bad decision. They may find out anyway after people get tired of gelatinous gravy covering parts of their bodies after rubbing corn starch on them and sweating.