Emily Oster Doesn't Mind the Haters
Shownotes
Emily Oster is not a doctor. She’s an economics professor at Brown University, and for years she’s been applying her economics lens and ability to read studies and analyze data to help decode health research. Her conclusions sometimes produce runaway hits – as in Expecting Better, her book upending the “conventional pregnancy wisdom” – and at other times are wildly unpopular – as with her recommendation to re-open schools while the pandemic was still raging. Emily tells us about the gaps that open up as science progresses, and how people jump into those gaps with theories, political agendas, and grifts. We talk about why we tend to make health and science a political team sport, if we can learn to parse data ourselves, and how to practice living with uncertainty.
Further reading:
Expecting Better, by Emily Oster
Schools Aren’t Super-Spreaders by Emily Oster
The Safety Turducken by Emily Oster
Can America’s Students Recover What They Lost During the Pandemic? by Alec MacGillis
Transformative Experience by L. A. Paul
The Rise of Female Autonomy and the Decline of Fertility: The Role of Mismatch, by Claudia Goldin
Earthing the Human Body Influences Physiologic Processes