Blog

WASHINGTON — When you buy eyedrops at a U.S. store, you might assume you're getting a product made in a clean, well-maintained factory that’s passed muster with health regulators. But repeated recalls involving over-the-counter drops are drawing new attention to just how little U.S. officials know about the conditions at some manufacturing plants on the other side of the world—and the limited tools they have to intervene when there's a problem. The Food and Drug Administration is asking Congress for new powers, including the ability to mandate drug recalls and require eyedrop makers to undergo inspections before shipping products to the U.S. But experts say those capabilities will do little without more staff and resources for foreign inspections, which we...

When Evan Ozmat, a Ph.D. student in psychology at the University of Albany, first began counseling undergraduates about HIV and substance abuse, he expected to hear about their health issues. Instead, he heard about problem gambling.“Since the beginning of the project three years ago, students have brought up, unprompted, gambling,” Ozmat says. “We started asking about it in every appointment and everyone has something to say. It’s everywhere.”The majority of the gambling takes place on mobile phones, Ozmat says, largely—although not exclusively—on sports betting apps. Served up to students through ubiquitous ads that offer promises of “free” bets and easy wins, the apps sink their hooks deep into students, leading them to spend their financial aid money, lie to their parents, and ignore t...

Conversion therapy—a practice aimed at changing someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity—has been widely discredited and is banned in 22 states and the District of Columbia. But more than 1,300 practitioners still offer conversion therapy in the U.S., according to a new report shared exclusively with TIME.“It is shocking to still see so many different conversion therapy programs across the U.S., because all those programs are fraudulent,” says California Rep. Ted Lieu, who in June introduced a bill to ban conversion therapy at the federal level. “There is no scientific or medical basis for conversion therapy. It is a huge scam.”The new report comes from the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that aims to prevent suicide among LGBTQ youth. Lead author Casey Pick, director of law and policy ...

Don’t stress about turning down that holiday party invitation. A new study suggests your host won’t care as much as you think.The research, published Dec. 11 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, finds that people tend to overestimate the negative ramifications of declining social plans, assuming that saying no will upset the person who invited them and damage the relationship. But in a series of experiments, the researchers found that hosts just weren’t that bothered when people declined invites—certainly less than their invitees expected.Some study participants played the role of host, while others played the role of invitee. The inviters were told to imagine they’d asked a friend out for a fun activity, like seeing a museum exhibition or attending a dinner prepared by a c...