ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, TORRIPHOTO
Last Friday (June 21) at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in San Francisco, Ada Hagan, a postdoc at the University of Michigan, and Michael Schmidt, a microbiologist at the Medical University of South Carolina, had a rapid-fire discussion about some of the biggest myths in microbiology, such as starving a fever to get over a sickness. It’s the second year the researchers have busted myths at the meeting, and before the session Hagan spoke with The Scientist about which old wives’ tales are fictitious, and which ones have a kernel of fact.
The Scientist: So is it true, should you feed a cold and starve a fever?
Ada Hagan: You should always feed a cold, and you should never starve yourself if you have a fever. If you’re hungry, eat. When it comes to starving a fever, that actually comes from a misspelling. The original ...
