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Our national experience of influenza, as one disease with a set season, makes it difficult to recognize that flu is not a monolith. The global exposure to influenza has a lot more variation, and vaccination rates are influenced by much more than we might expect.

Foodborne illness happens; it's one of the hazards of eating. But when a company makes a concerted effort to claim its food is holy and righteous – while everybody else serves poison – management shouldn't be surprised when public backlash is severe. It's entirely predictable, self-inflicted and deserved.
 

Many stereotypes just aren't true, like that men are smarter than woman. And yet, girls as young as six have ben found to be less likely than boys to believe that members of their own gender are “really, really smart." It's simply wrong for these types of insecurities and biases to be taking hold at all – much less at such an early age.

Although it's easy to become blase about liftoffs, and orbits, and missions, and spacewalks and the intermittent hubbub emanating from the International Space Station, maybe a moment of reflection is warranted to recognize NASA's first satellite launch and "America’s very first space science discovery" on January 31, 1958.

State officials across the country are extremely worried about the flu. They tell us that we have to do "everything in our power to fight this virus" and stay safe. But after a staggering 37 childhood deaths so far, are we? Shouldn't "everything" include adding the flu shot to the list of vaccinations needed for kids to attend school?

We've been seeing news reports about runs on Imodium. The FDA has the anti-diarrheal medicine in its sights because it is being abused and is also really dangerous. How dangerous? You have a 4.6 times greater chance of dying from a coconut hitting you on the head. 

A California judge is going to determine whether or not coffee causes cancer. Think about that. We live in a society where judges and lawyers – not medical doctors or scientists – get to determine the credibility of biomedical research. And guess who paid in the process?

We all tend to do certain things because “it’s just what you do,” or it's out of passive acceptance of conventional wisdom. And especially in the medical realm, it's important not to overlook issues that could be of even greater importance.

It sounds like something right out of a horror movie, but it's real life. Parents in the United Kingdom — desperate to cure their children of autism — fall prey to snake oil, and to the con men that sell it. But this type of snake oil — doing away with autism by drinking bleach, is deadly. 

For many major league baseball players, the placebo effect is alive and well. This is indisputable, especially following a bizarre, public display of one of the most extreme cases of "cupping" – the dubious practice of applying suction to the skin to supposedly enhance muscle relief. Really, who'd do this? The answer is right here.
 

A Florida orthopedic surgeon charged with possession and distribution of an analog of fentanyl called furanylfentanyl, which resulted in the death of a young woman, has had his trial postponed until April. 

Naked mole rats, which are neither moles nor rats, have unusually long lifespans compared to other rodents, and also seem to not develop cancer. Researchers are diligently searching for the key(s) to their success, and recent work sheds some light on how these critters manage to avoid both.

How did the honeybee go, in one year, from poster insect for environmental concerns to invasive species? It's because environmental groups change the story as they are debunked.

Stopping the transmission of Zika and dengue viruses is a top priority in the fields of infectious disease and global health. A novel strategy, one that infects the mosquitoes with bacteria, may just be the key to stopping these viruses in their tracks. 

Another product for suckers. Bulletproof-360 Coffee, brought to you by David (Avocado) Wolfe, easily one of the most annoying people on the planet. Does it really work? Will you really be bulletproof? Enough so to piss off narcoterrorists just to see what happens? Oh, and the company has had two products recalled in the past seven months. Maybe not such a good idea after all.

The current flu season is a nightmare, spreading ferociously. If that's not bad enough, there are instances where it kills within hours – just like it's 100-year-old ancestor, the Spanish Flu of 1918. What is going on here? 

Here's a case of a 13-year-old boy who pierced his skull with a 6-inch screw after an accidental fall. With unintentional injury the fourth-leading cause of death, here's how best to avoid a negative outcome.

One of the worst junk science trends in recent years is for grocery stores and restaurants to claim that they serve "clean food." Obviously, the not-so-subtle message is that everybody else is serving poison, so to be safe, you better eat their food. It's well past time to put aside the snobbish notion that eating clean, local, organic food makes you a superior, healthier human.

While obesity has been reliably linked to many serious health problems – such as diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers – there's a minority of obese people who are metabolically healthy. A new study points to physical fitness as being a key component in these folks' avoidance of some of the usual obesity-linked health issues.

You probably haven't had an earache or ear infection since you were a child, but adults are not immune to infections in the middle ear, especially after they've been exposed to the flu.

Bones are not inert objects, but instead living tissue that responds to a host of mechanical forces. So what if the reason some elderly fall and "break" their hip is that – similar to a bridge collapsing from mechanical fatigue – their bones just gave way? 

While Gary Hirshberg is a marketing genius, in a #MeToo world even those on his side of the political spectrum have been calling Stonyfield out for sexism. The vitriol stems from its newest anti-science commercial, one that features little girls – and the message that girls can't understand science.

In what's become an eagerly anticipated tradition, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warns us that we're all moments away from annihilation. The international media uncritically reports this nonsense, even though the Doomsday Clock has been around since 1947. Yet we're still here. Guess there's something wrong with the clock.

Rarely does Lyme Disease manifest itself as a neuro-invasive condition known, in shorthand, as Bannwarth Syndrome. It's a complicated version of Lyme, and when a cluster of five cases surfaced late last summer, all in the upper midwest, a few red flags were raised.
 

When your doctor insists that you must exercise, that's often received as necessary drudgery. But what if that mandate was to go out and play? A new European study found that recreational soccer can lower "blood pressure, fat mass, and LDL cholesterol" regardless of age or gender, and can do so "after only 12 weeks of training."