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It’s neither hot, sunny, nor anywhere near National Egg Cream Day. Could there be a better reason to write about it?

If you're a parent of young children, chances are the Elf on the Shelf comes to your home during the holiday season. You give it a name, prop it on a shelf, and instantly you have Santa’s personal surveillance drone watching your family's every move. But how exactly does the little tyrant do it-- watch our every move and report back to Santa, that is? We'll help you explain the fun, light-hearted science to your curious kids.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices' move away from recommending routine hepatitis B vaccination at birth is being treated as either a triumph of “medical freedom” or a looming public-health disaster. Strip away the heat, and the situation is simpler: hepatitis B is still dangerous, the newborn vaccine is still remarkably safe, and the real-world care system is imperfect. The question isn’t whether parents can choose—they always could—it’s whether policy should keep nudging toward the choice that prevents the most avoidable infections.

The search for answers in autism is deeply emotional, and unscrupulous actors know it. Miracle Mineral Solution exploits that emotion by offering false hope in the form of a potent industrial bleach. This article unpacks the science and exposes the dangers behind this misleading—and potentially harmful—“treatment.”

The past twenty years have seen gluten sensitivity transformed from a fringe concern into a mainstream cultural identity, powered more by consumer experience, psychology, and industry dynamics than by definitive biological mechanisms. This rapid rise has left many people unsure where scientific consensus ends and popular belief begins.

Scromiting” is a grim slang term for the severe nausea and vomiting that can come with cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS), a complication linked to long-term heavy cannabis use. As ER clinicians report seeing more cases, the condition is forcing a fresh look at the gap between marijuana’s “harmless” reputation and its real-world risks.

Every year, as the holidays approach, headlines warn of “holiday blues” and Seasonal Affective Disorder—but that familiar narrative often leans more on anecdotes than on solid evidence. Depression doesn’t reliably rise with less winter sunlight or the holidays. While a seasonal slump is real for some, the idea that many Americans are destined for holiday misery isn’t well supported.

In the final days of the Biden Administration, the EPA locked in a formaldehyde risk evaluation built on the Agency’s long-controversial IRIS assessment—only for the next EPA to do something genuinely unexpected. Rather than tweak the rule and keep IRIS at the center, the Agency recalculated key benchmarks using alternative science, signaling a potential turning point in how chemical risks get judged. If that shift holds, it could loosen IRIS’s grip on rulemaking far beyond formaldehyde.

RCTs, randomized controlled trials, are often hailed as the ultimate test of whether an intervention works, yet relying solely on RCTs leaves significant blind spots in science and public health. Ethics, cost, and real-world complexity sometimes make RCTs impossible or uninformative, requiring other methods to fill in the gaps. A complete picture of evidence comes only from weaving together many types of studies.

The CMS star ratings began as faint points of light helping patients navigate an increasingly complex galaxy of healthcare options. But over time, those points of light became financial Novas, reshaping the orbits of federal dollars across insurers, physicians, and health systems. Now, they burn at the center of who gets to define “quality” in American healthcare, and who is illuminated or eclipsed by its glow.

A proposed CMS rule hints that some Medicare plans could cover certain legal CBD products, bringing cannabinoids a step closer to “real medicine” status for seniors. But even as that possibility opens, Congress is simultaneously considering a hemp redefinition that could close off access to many of those same products.

This essay is the second in a two-part series examining the CDC’s revised autism–vaccine messaging and the broader politicization of CDC science. While Part 1 focused on the November 19, 2025 change to the CDC’s “Autism and Vaccines” page and its impact on families, clinicians, and vaccine confidence, Part 2 traces the longer history of political interference at the agency and proposes structural reforms to help restore trust.

Blood sugar spikes have become the latest villain in wellness culture, thanks to influencers peddling hacks to “flatten your curve.” But here’s the thing: for healthy people, glucose rising after a meal isn’t a crisis—it’s biology doing exactly what it’s supposed to. Before you panic over a perfectly normal blip on a fancy sensor, remember that your body already has the system figured out.

Following the emergence of COVID-19, "follow the science" became a stark ideological divide that pitted one American against another. This partisan framing weaponized the scientific method instead of letting it solve a critical public-health crisis. Is it time to abandon this unhelpful slogan and rethink our broken understanding of science?

Celebrities can turn almost anything into a must-try beauty treatment—even facials with shock-value nicknames like “salmon sperm” and “penis” facials. But behind the viral labels are lab-made ingredients and marketing, and the real question is simple: do they work well enough to justify the hype and cost? The article argues the effects look modest compared with more proven options—and that sun protection still beats most “miracle” fixes.

Fentanyl overdoses can happen in minutes, and the usual tools respond after the damage is already underway. A proposed vaccine tries a different approach: keep fentanyl tied up in the bloodstream so less reaches the brain. According to an article in Wired, a first human trial is coming soon, which should tell us whether the rodent results hold up in people.

CMS tried to turn diabetes prevention into a coach-led lifestyle “playlist” for Medicare, aiming at achieving at least 5% weight loss and staving off Type II diabetes. On paper, MDPP fits MAHA’s preventive-care ambitions perfectly: broader eligibility and more types of community providers. But the program kept missing the beat where it mattered most—tiny enrollment, uneven geographic access, and leaving the evidence for real-world diabetes prevention frustratingly inconclusive.

Modern healthcare is increasingly organized as a marketplace, yet much of what makes medicine healing resists pricing or counting. Anyone who has felt steadied by a clinician who lingered, listened, or noticed fear understands this intuitively. This essay explores care as a gift economy, grounded in relationship and presence rather than transaction, and argues that patient dissatisfaction and clinician burnout arise when this gift is treated as a commodity.

A curious term has emerged among the anti-vaccine community, following the Covid pandemic, that has scientists baffled as to how it could be receiving much online attention. Are turbo-cancers real? Or just another overblown scare?

A curious old folk practice claimed that contact with ants could transfer their energy and vitality to humans. This belief grew from ideas of sympathetic magic, where traits of animals were thought to pass through touch or consumption. Modern science, however, offers little support—except for the intriguing possibility of ants helping ferment milk into yogurt.

Black box warnings are the FDA’s bluntest regulatory instrument short of a recall. Yet despite what headlines, pundits, and influencers often suggest, they are neither a moral verdict nor the final word on a drug’s safety. They are ideally evidence-informed, but like any human institution, they reflect scientific uncertainty and, at times, political and social pressures.

The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) has published a position paper in its flagship journal about the promises and potential of Lifestyle Medicine (LM). They argue that LM can address the chronic disease burden and can be the spark that transforms healthcare. However, digging into their evidence and claims reveals a less rosy colored picture.

Myocarditis has become a flashpoint in debates about COVID vaccines; however, new research suggests this rare heart inflammation is a window into how powerful immune technologies sometimes misfire in specific biological contexts. By tracing the immune signals involved, scientists are learning how to reduce risk while preserving protection.

American primary-care doctors can prescribe methadone for pain—but not for addiction. Meanwhile, their counterparts in Australia, Canada, and the UK have used methadone to treat addiction for over 50 years. A new randomized controlled trial shows they were right the whole time.

December 16 is National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day, which is either a celebration of culinary creativity or an excuse to use juvenile humor. Either way, chocolate has a long history of being marketed as a cure for just about everything. Let’s see what it can actually do—and what it absolutely can’t.