Today's big story sure to "cancel the news" (as Randi would put it) is all about a report appearing in the journal Nature about how scientists have discovered that a nasal spray containing oxytocin, a chemical that is produced naturally in the brain (as opposed to oxycontin, the "hillbilly heroin" to which Rush Limbaugh was addicted), makes people more likely to be mindlessly trusting and, say, give their cash to a complete stranger. This merits over 200 articles on Google today. Yes, it's important in a sense, it'll be great fodder for comic book plots and movies I suppose and, in real life, the implications may be equally chilling (particularly for a large part of the American populace that seems to have given up critical thought by this point anyway), but I can't help but wonder what real news it's obscuring. That I have a bit of a jones for nasal spray may or may not make me a prime candidate for imminent loss of skepticism, but for now I highly doubt it.
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