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There has been a great deal of hyperbole and confusion about the recent and future direction of science and health in America, both in the applied and basic research sense, but for the public it's hard to separate what is a legitimate worry versus what has been manufactured due to lingering animosity over a contentious 2016 campaign season.
As usual, the loudest political activists have hijacked the discourse.

Two psychologists are the subject of Michael Lewis’s latest book, The Undoing Project. Their collaboration was the nursery that has given us the field of behavioral economics, and the story of an intellectual marriage.

The relative size of the human male's penis and testes can be reduced to our species' mating strategies, and can provide some surprising insights into early human culture.

Will a new dietary supplement turn you into a porn star? The company that markets Red Fortera wants you to think just that – and backs it up with "clinical data." Good luck finding it. You will come up short. 

As a busy working parent, I admit that I sometimes (ok, frequently) grab a granola bar as a substitute for lunch... and breakfast.
I am not saying that it is the healthiest choice. But, in today's world of running from work to school to the gym to everything else - sometimes there is no time to sit down and prepare a well balanced meal - or any meal at all. 
This is exactly the space that Soylent, a full time meal replacement product, is trying to fill. 

The controversy over GMOs lives on, despite the scientific community's best efforts to quell the scaremongering. In order to gather the public's concerns, the FDA is requesting comments on the topic of genome editing, in the production of plants that would be eaten by both humans and animals.

With parents' safety concerns growing about their own kids playing football, over the last few years the drumbeat for change has gotten increasingly louder. As a result, USA Football, the nation's governing body of youth football, will begin to fundamentally alter how the game is played and taught.

It seems that every other package in the supermarket touts the "naturalness" of the product inside — implying that that makes the contents either more nutritious or safer, or both. But a recent case in India of children dying after eating lychee nuts underscores the truth — that natural isn't always either safer or better.

Sometimes general assignment reporters are asked to cover complex science and health stories, which produces an entirely predictable product: Articles that are nothing more than rehashed press releases, topped with click-bait headlines based on misunderstandings of the original research. And here are some other ways it happens. 
 

Multiple myeloma is a type of blood cancer. B-cells, immune cells that play a crucial role in adaptive immunity, differentiate into plasma cells that secrete the antibodies we need to fight infections and other foreign invaders.

With a recent hospital outbreak of scabies, is there a better time to clarify some misperceptions about them – and other things that go itch in the night? Nope, so take a look.

A team of University of Pennsylvania researchers recently found that those "who are more mindful are more receptive to health messaging," in order to physically improve themselves, "and more likely to be motivated to change."

Your dog loves rawhides - that's a fact. But someone may have told you to stay away from them. Why? Take a look at the Good, the Bad, and the Debunked about your pet's favorite chew bone. 

Some scientific discoveries, like human genome editing, challenge our thinking on many levels. And there are many voices getting into the mix of the debate on this subject, taking on the unenviable task of "playing God." 

Thanks to the efforts of plant scientists, we may see a return to tomatoes that ...actually taste like tomatoes. An international collaborative effort has identified both the chemicals that provide the flavor and the genes that control them. But because of anti-GMO scare-mongering, we will have to wait longer than necessary.

How has President Trump done so far in picking science and health leadership? We provide a scorecard.

A large outbreak in Washington State of hundreds of cases of mumps – a disease projected to be eliminated from the United States by 2010 – is raising new questions, two in particular. Why is it back? And can we ever rid the nation of it for good?  

A fungus harvested from termite nests has been traditionally used to treat these two conditions. Now, Taiwanese scientists think they have discovered a plausible scientific rationale for this practice.

1. Nutella scare redux. After we criticized the EU food safety in USA Today for its badly-reasoned claim that nutella was going to give people cancer, they have promised to reexamine palm oil health risks.

Given the media attention devoted to weak observational claims about health (miracle vegetables, chemophobia of the month) and the rampant mistrust of science that has resulted from them, it is worth asking if they're worth the expense. The answer: They probably are – but only for smaller programs. 

A grassroots science movement has amassed a gigantic following on social media, which in turn has resulted in substantial mainstream media coverage. The site, still in development, states that "anyone who values empirical science" can participate. That's good. Unfortunately, other statements are sending mixed messages.

According to a recent study, those who had the opportunity to receive "individual wellness coaching by telephone for weight management lost an average of 10 pounds each and changed their weight trajectories from upward to downward."

Don't have the money for an elite wellness getaway? Here are some low-budget alternatives.

There are so many fad weight-loss diets out there that it's hard to pick a few favorites — but we did. Some are based on pseudoscience, and others on nothing at all. But all demonstrate the amazing creativity that can be brought to bear on a serious problem like obesity.

Human genome editing, like self-driving cars or drone delivery, may become part of our everyday lives faster than we realize it. A panel discussion entitled "The Future of Gene Editing" brought together four experts to tackle the challenges, as they apply to humans, from different approaches and perspectives.