UV or not UV
14th September 2026
Lance Kennedy’s article from a couple of weeks ago seems to have put the cat among the pigeons. I messaged Bronwyn and Katrina the day before I sent out the last newsletter, saying about Lance’s article on UV exposure “Lance’s might be a little pseudoscientific but we’ll let our readers figure that out and respond”. It turns out I could be “kind of psychic”, as we’ve received responses from not one but three readers.
Max Crowe wrote “I notice that one of the contributors referenced Rowan Jacobsen as a credible source regarding the benefits of UV exposure. Rowan is not the worst “science journalist” out there, but if his recent appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast is anything to go by, he runs dangerously close to woo-woo territory, including claims that chemical exposure from sunscreen is dangerous.” Sydney Moore also wrote in voicing their concern. And Ed Adie was kind enough to put an entire article together for us, which you can read below.
Personally, I tripped on Lance’s assertion that “The most important [benefit of vitamin D] is a reduction in incidence of heart attacks and stroke. Since there are 100 times as many deaths from this as from melanoma, that alone justified increasing exposure to sunlight or UV lamps.” The claim feels like it’s making a direct comparison between heart attack/stroke deaths and melanoma deaths, saying that there’s a clear advantage to exposure to vitamin D given the 100x disparity between deaths on each side. Even if we read this generously, and assume that what Lance was trying to say was that 1% or more of the “100 times as many” deaths from heart attacks and strokes are due to a lack of vitamin D, he’s still not provided any evidence that vitamin D deficiency, as one of many risk factors for heart attacks and strokes, is 1% or more responsible. In fact, I’d wager that it would be pretty hard to pick apart the relative importance of the various risk factors, and I certainly couldn’t find any scientific literature that managed to do that. And all of this is just for comparing deaths - there’s no comparison of non-fatal negative health outcomes, and again I suspect that would be fairly hard to calculate.
Lance has offered to write follow-up articles on toxicology and radiation, but I’m in two minds as to whether we should publish more articles like the UV one, where they’re potentially somewhat fringe in nature. On the one hand, it’s been great to see some good, skeptical response to this controversial article. But on the other hand, I’m reluctant to publish articles like this on our website, giving them a legitimacy that maybe we shouldn’t be giving them. I’m okay with controversial or new ideas being discussed in the context of properly examining the evidence on both sides, but I don’t think it does us any favours to uncritically publish an article where it fails to engage with legitimate science on the opposing side. Maybe the solution is for us to start linking articles like Lance’s with their responses, so that a reader can see both sides and doesn’t walk away with only half the story.
One potential reason for posting more articles like this that I don’t think is legitimate is that it generates outrage and provokes responses from you, our readers. Much as it’s been nice to have received the responses we’ve received to the last issue of our newsletter, I don’t think that engagement at any cost is a good way to go. Having said that, if any of you has any thoughts on how cases like this should be handled, feel free to send your musings to me. If I receive something from you I’d be happy to either publish it for all our members to read in the next newsletter, or just share it with the committee and we can privately discuss your ideas.
I guess a lot of the things us regulars write about are less controversial, and more obviously pseudoscientific. And those kinds of articles are usually much easier to write and to publish, as we’re unlikely to have got things wildly wrong, and also unlikely to receive much pushback. As a prime example of this, I’ve written this week about Destiny Swapping, which is another article idea I’ve farmed from my teenage kids, and which came from daft TikTok videos. I’ve also collated a short email to and fro we’ve had with Bhuvah Thurston, who Bronwyn originally wrote about in the middle of COVID. Craig has returned from his trip to the UK, and has looked into the feasibility of hydrogen powered cars. Katrina is worried about the robot (vacuum) uprising, and apparently she’s not the only one. And finally Bronwyn’s continued to delve into the issues around child sponsorships, and has promised us a part three!
