How to (not) Argue with Anti-Vaxxers

This post is also available in video form on Youtube: https://youtu.be/eojTc0Hu0Fg

Are mRNA vaccines safe and effective?

People argue about the mRNA vaccines. Are they safe and effective? And if people get it wrong, should we bother trying to convince them? This has become a contentious (and political) issue. I’m Dr. Peter Allen. I earned a PhD in bioanalytical chemistry. I am not employed by any company with an interest in vaccines, and this video represents my personal thoughts and opinions. I want to share some 2026 research on the vaccine safety. Thankfully we don’t need a lot of expertise to understand the broad strokes of this recent study. I want to examine what it means to the anti-vax position.

Frankly, this is the kind of research that is so clear, so understandable, that it should settle the arguments. This is how an evidence-based argument is supposed to work.

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Iron Battery 3.0 is Published!

Here’s the Paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ohx.2025.e00629

The youtube version of this post is live https://youtu.be/ojolTZqfv-k

I’ve been working on the all-iron battery for eight years now. That feels wild to me. I’m happy to announce that version 3.0 is published! This paper is absolutely Dipak Koirala’s work more than mine. The newest incarnation of the Iron Battery is significantly more powerful than the previous version; it can completely discharge in ~10 hours (still slow compared to a lithium ion, but now in a practical range). To get there, we did 3 major changes:

Commercial membrane
Improved electrolyte and paste material
Soluble electrochemical mediators

First, a recap.

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Which is more important: Diet or Exercise?

I just posted a new video:
https://youtu.be/KHY5XfMfdig

This post is the text version of that video. I didn’t send my last blog by email (I want to limit emails to one per month). In that last blog post, I linked to 3 videos. In case you missed them, I worked on two vlogs about burning Iron:

Attempt 1: Classic demo and solid oxidizer failure to ignite:
https://youtu.be/46YlW8qjp_c

Attempt 2: Steel wool burning in pure(ish) oxygen:
https://youtu.be/SURy8xRsRp4

And a video essay about robotics and automation:
https://youtu.be/TisXw8zS5r0

This latest work is a bit of a rant about a research rabbit hole. I was trying to ask what seemed like a simple question. Which is more important to longevity: diet or exercise? That seems pretty straightforward. I was surprised to find that it was almost impossible to get a clear comparison between two effects.

And then I found this study by Atefatfar et al. (2023). This study examined all four possible cases of the good/bad diet versus exercise/no exercise. I expected them to have similar, additive effects. But that’s not what they found.

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Video essay on Robots (plus a DIY chemistry demo)

I managed to post three videos since my last update.

A vlog about burning Iron: https://youtu.be/46YlW8qjp_c

Burning Iron Attempt 2: pure-ish oxygen: https://youtu.be/SURy8xRsRp4

A video essay about robotics and automation: https://youtu.be/TisXw8zS5r0

The slightly expanded essay is below for your reading pleasure.

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Aluminum is Wealth and Knowledge is Better than Gold

This post is also available in video form: https://youtu.be/pXXad5FmkiU

Aluminum is wealth. That sounds strange – it’s cheap, and it’s a recent invention. But the fact that we can all get use (goods and services) because of things made of aluminum is a kind of wealth. And it’s an example of a bigger principle. When someone tells you something is rare or scarce and equates that to value, remember this. Value comes from enabling more people to enjoy something, not from preserving its exclusivity.

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