Thalidomide, one of the most infamous drugs of all, caused severe birth defects in the children of pregnant women who took the drug for nausea in the 1950s. Its story has been repeated over and over – mostly wrong. Here's why.

Australia plans to turn e-cigarettes into prescription drugs and will ban people from buying them without a doctor’s prescription. Vaping retailers publicly vow they will move to the underground. We have seen this prohibition movie before. It doesn’t have a happy ending.

It's finally time to consider Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries proposals to reclaim and reset Earth Systems Boundaries. First up, the three most significant (at least in my view): climate, water, and nutrients. The authors of the paper in Nature challenged us to read their proposals and then discuss them. In the spirit of that challenge, I will let them do the talking.

The New York Times’ “Well” section recently published an article entitled, “What Dentists Wish You Knew,” which listed five points. We found them to be a somewhat odd and incomplete collection.  We list the Times' offerings, with our commentary and some bonus suggestions of our own.

In Part I, I presented a precis of the methodology the authors of Nature’s Earth System Boundaries had for the “… multiple levels of likelihoods to reflect underlying scientific uncertainties and variabilities.” As their findings “are meant as a transparent proposal for further debate” let’s now consider and debate the more contentious methodology underlying their proposed action – justice.

The nightly news often brings a surfeit of environmental disasters: forest fires, floods, tornados, drought, iceberg melting. What have we done to deserve them? Here I draw on various sources of climate change data to provide some understanding of what may lie ahead.

Science and law are both relatively recent human creations. Applied science made its appearance well before its written version. The people of the British Isles erected Stonehenge, and the Egyptians built the pyramids. The science of that time was goal-directed, finding a better way to live in the world and connect with the controlling powers of their gods. Today, science has taken on new roles, especially in understanding those controlling powers and seeking ways to better predict and manage them.

In December, a federal judge dismissed 50,000 Zantac cases because the scientific evidence establishing cancer causation didn’t pass legal muster. In March, a California state judge reached the opposite conclusion. What happens next?

“Humans are taking colossal risks with the future of civilization and everything that lives on Earth.” So begins a report in Nature attempting to quantify Safe and Just Earth boundaries. The findings “are meant as a transparent proposal for further debate and refinement by scholars and wider society.” I took them at their word; let’s consider and then debate their proposals.

One of the (many) overhyped "miracle cures" we're seeing constantly is apple cider vinegar. Sure sounds nice, right? Of the dozens of health claims about the stuff perhaps the claim that it treats heartburn and acid reflux makes the least sense since vinegar is acidic enough to dissolve steel wool. What's the deal?