To future scholars, the 2020s may be the decade that the public discovered epidemiologists don't understand the difference between a hazard, absolute risk, and relative risk. And that skepticism in the next decade will have resulted from too many shoddy claims and spurious correlations in this one.

If you are an African-American hypertensive at high risk of developing associated cardiovascular disease, a new paper from Maharishi Institute - where yogic flying instructors get trained to levitate(1) - says Transcendental Meditation will prevent abnormal enlargement of your heart and reduce chronic heart failure.

New survey results in the Journal of Media Psychology find that how much you enjoy or hate the new "Star Wars" movie will depend a lot on your expectations. Nothing shocking in that, but there is a twist.

And the twist is not that the new movie will make a fortune this week no matter what reviewers or the more rabid fringe of the fan base say. That is entirely predictable.

The anti-vaccine movement tries to portray itself as scrappy grassroots outsiders standing up to Big Pharma and Big Government, but it's nothing of the kind, finds a recent Washington Post exposé.

The National Vaccine Information Center, which claims to be the largest "awareness" non-profit opposing vaccines, actually gets almost half of its funding from corporations. And their largest corporate benefactor is the osteopath Joe Mercola, head of a $100 million empire that sells alternatives to medicine for nearly everything.  And who funds lots of groups opposed to science, from medicine to food.

Two years ago we were helping my mother-in-law get settled into her new place and, with the manual labor done and my usefulness diminished, she and her daughters talked details and I sat in a chair. A Hallmark movie was on. I had never seen it before but I was convinced I had.

After about 10 minutes, when a seemingly avoidable misunderstanding occurred onscreen, I began taking notes on my phone and talking about the action. My family asked what I was doing and I declared that this was brilliant storytelling. This formula could work with anything, it was that rock solid.

Board games, where you play on an actual board, were once common in every household. Games have a long history, thousands of years, but board games took off in diversity in the 20th century, thanks to "Monopoly" and then others.

It's impossible to predict the future so they may never again reach the peak popularity they once had, or they may stage a resurgence as young people want to take a break from an increasingly digital society. They may even become bigger than ever. I never once played Texas Hold 'em as a young guy in Pennsylvania but in the 2000s it took off nationwide and has now become the most popular form of poker.(1) My kids have never played draw or stud but I showed them how to play Hold'em.