1. In Puget Sound Business Journal, Dr. Alex Berezow takes Seattle to task for engaging in Californication - desiring to play nanny state to the rest of the country while ignoring its problems at home. Like it's runaway homeless drug user population that is driving people and businesses away. You can read it here.

The pediatric group recently issued a policy statement riddled with chemophobic nonsense. Why are officials there whining so much? Here's why.

Though human noses get dismissed as amateurs as compared to the snouts on some animals, there is one compound where we do really well. We can smell geosmin, a chemical released by dead microbes at a level of 5 parts per trillion. That's right, trillion.

The Guardian's health page is scaremongering about e-cigarettes and pushing bizarre solutions to obesity. This is what happens when political activists write about public health.

Findings of a new study show that increased exposure to contact sports raises the chances of developing Lewy Body Disease, a condition that can trigger the onset of Parkinson's disease. 

There's "transplant commercialism" and “transplant tourism,” which sees patients travel abroad for transplants they might struggle to otherwise obtain quickly. Meanwhile, the global reach of social media makes it increasingly easy for organs to be offered for sale online. How common is this, and what are the larger implications? 

These type of studies are increasingly found in the literature. But for many of us, the research approach is new, and it's hard to separate the good from the bad. So here are the basics of how these studies work, along with their benefits and limitations. 

Plastic pollution in the ocean is almost exclusively due to the actions of Asia and Africa, not the United States. Banning straws and plastic bags will do nothing to solve the problem.

With so many 50-and-older adults having already received the first of a two-part vaccination, there's simply not enough of the medicine, called Shingrix, to go around. Instead of getting their second shot to complete the series, what many have received instead is a spot on a waiting list. But the manufacturer of the promising anti-shingles vaccine says it's ramping up production to meet "unprecedented” demand.

Medicare wants to change how much physicians are paid for office visits. And physician societies worry about how much their constituents' income is impacted. Did anyone notice that physicians are being put on the clock, like every other assembly-line worker?