Noted

Alex Eben Meyer

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With the ubiquity of ads for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, a Yale research team wanted to test how easy it would be to obtain a prescription online without a legitimate clinical consultation.

The answer: alarmingly easy.

The investigation used a “secret shopper model” in which a 27-year-old male researcher posed as a 237-pound patient and requested prescriptions from 49 weight-loss websites. More than two-thirds of the sites required no personal interaction. Only 13 required video contact with a clinician and just three required a perfunctory phone call. Only around half asked about a history of eating disorders or diet and exercise habits. Ninety-two percent of the sites (45) wrote the prescriptions.

The research team stresses that the lack of in-depth discussion of individual medical history creates danger for the consumer, as does the fact that the drugs sold were compounded versions of GLP medications that are unregulated and have not undergone clinical trials.
 

Dark matter is considered the scaffolding of the universe, essential to the formation of galaxies. It is invisible, does not interact with light, and is not made of any of the standard particles that constitute the known universe and its inhabitants. A galaxy’s visible stars, planets, and gas typically make up only a minute fraction of its mass, and scientists infer the presence of dark matter by gravitational effects that cannot be otherwise explained. 

Now, Yale astronomers have found a third galaxy with little or no dark matter that lines up with two other dark-matter-free galaxies identified earlier by Yale-led research teams. Researchers propose that a galactic collision separated gas from dark matter, allowing new galaxies to form from ordinary matter alone. They say that discovery of three rare galaxies in a straight line offers strong evidence that dark matter is a real, physical substance.