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As if the government and media haven't screwed up the story of the so-called "opioid crisis" thoroughly enough, why not add some meaningless and confusing terms to the mix? That way, absolutely no one can know what the hell is going on. Let's take a look at the confusion. There's plenty of it.

Though well-intentioned, "at all costs" breastfeeding messages are routinely misguided. And even intellectually dishonest.

The CDC recently cautioned that there's a wide range of diseases being transmitted by ticks, and the caseload is growing. Some, like Lyme’s disease, we are familiar with. To take it an important step further, let's take a look at some others that aren't necessarily on our radar – but should be. 

The second edition of "The Next Plague and How Science Will Stop It" comes with a new preface for COVID-19. Download a free copy!

At the end of life, how do you balance comfort and autonomy? An already-complicated emotional question is made even more difficult when your loved one is severely demented. Families and physicians face this dilemma every day. 

The "American healthcare costs vs the rest of the world" narrative has been with us forever and this is unlikely to change. But it is not a simple problem, even though it is portrayed as just that. Pfizer's Dr. Robert Popovian takes his usual thoughtful look at thorny issues in his latest piece in Morning Consult. Don't miss.

Dr. Oz is a fraud who ought to be fired from Columbia University and have his medical license revoked. Instead, he's headed to the White House.

In a move steeped in nonsense, Dr. Mehmet Oz has been appointed by Donald Trump to the President's Council on Sport, Fitness and Nutrition. Since his views on health and medicine are so lacking in scientific evidence, we have no idea why anyone is still listening to him at all anymore. 

With the cancellation of "The Dr. Oz Show", his alternative medicine audience should not think of it as a time to mourn. but instead should take a moment to celebrate the man who created all their worst fears; they should rejoice a guy who wore medical scrubs during a show in which he suggested apple juice was as dangerous for children as plutonium, who taught concerned viewers to fear chicken and to love juice cleanses.

Now that the results of his posthumous brain examination are in, we now must add Jeff Parker, who played briefly in the 1980s and died last September at 53, to the running list of former hockey players who developed CTE during their careers. Everyone gets the link between head trauma and this devastating brain disease. Everyone, that is, except the head of the NHL.

We started a media firestorm in the Pacific Northwest, and we set the record straight on chemicals for an agricultural trade publication. And we also took a peek into a baseball dugout to see how statistical analysis – personally delivered to field managers by stat geeks – is continually reshaping the game. 

There's nothing magical about a rattlesnake. Just because rattlesnakes are tough and cool doesn't mean that you'll be tough and cool if you eat them. Instead, you might just be a dope.

How far will behavioral economics go to improve our health and decrease costs?

A study from the Commonwealth countries indicates that it will take two weeks longer to get pregnant if you eat fast food. Huh? And you can save yourself a week or so by eating fruit, not vegetables. Really? And, no surprise, It goes without saying that this incomplete study came complete with grievous limitations.

Governments gave subsidies to farmers, who implemented political beliefs about biodiversity, like planting flowers among their rows of food. Did any of it work? Sort of. But there's more to it than that.

The proverbial searching for "the needle in a haystack" can help us understand science's problem with p-values, and why so many studies find contrary things.  

A few weeks ago, a paper claimed that an extra glass of wine will shorten your life. The story circled the globe in minutes. A new paper, with better methodology, concluded what we all knew: Moderate alcohol consumption can be integrated into a healthy lifestyle. It, however, won't receive nearly as much attention as the sensationalist report. Such is the power of the academic PR hype machine combined with a gullible, sensationalist press.

More than 140 children and 200 llamas, dating back to the 1400s, were discovered along the northern coast of Peru. Why is it believed this was likely an unprecedented child sacrifice?

The co-founder of Microsoft recently met with health experts in Boston and pledged $12 million to help speed the development of a universal flu vaccine, which he argued is badly needed. Gates warned that the U.S., as well as the world, is distinctly unprepared for the next big pandemic that will eventually strike.

A few folks from the University of Rochester got together and analyzed the recorded sounds of ice when dropped into a glacier borehole in Antarctica. As to what caused the odd sounds of plummeting ice, their research found that the answer centers around sound dispersion in acoustic waveguides.

Dr. Harold Bornstein, Donald Trump’s original physician, may have violated patient privacy when discussing the president's medications. But that was not the case in the "raid."

Carey Gillam is a well-known anti-GMO activist who rejects the scientific consensus, regularly reports easily provable lies, and works for an organization that gets most of its money from 9/11 truthers.

The FDA is going after the most egregious violators of common sense: those who are clearly targeting children. To name and shame the bad actors who are doing a great harm to legitimate smoking cessation efforts, we offer them up here. Take a look; it's truly shameful.

Over nearly a century, vaccines for genital herpes have come and gone. Make that gone and gone, because there's not a single vaccine that can treat or prevent either oral or genital herpes. But some good news might be coming from Vical, when phase II results of its VCL-HB01 vaccine is released, hopefully in mid-2018.

American air quality is terrific. And despite the calls for more regulations on business, U.S. technology is way ahead of regulators. Huge emissions reductions aren't due to runaway solar or wind subsidies, but instead to modern natural gas extraction techniques, such as fracking, which caused power plant emissions to decline nearly percent from 2005 to 2017.