Dr. Murphy, my long-time dentist, recently retired. During a cleaning last week, I met one of the new practice owners for the second time. As she manipulated my tongue (for the oral cancer screening), two thoughts struck me: I still don't like the taste of gauze, and I have only ever seen this woman upside down. At this office, the dentist approaches from behind the headrest while the hygienist cleans. So in our two-visit, six-month relationship, my new dentist exists entirely as an inverted face—an upside-down bobbing chin admonishing me about brushing and flossing like a bad medical TikTok. Of course, she probably sees me the same way—another upside-down mouth with 50-year-old teeth subjected to too much coffee and tea. Perspective can be so relative.
Article:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2503304?query=featured_home
AI-supported analysis:
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/585f7942-14b4-4430-baa7-aa8fd3b085a4
Last week's doctor-email clickbait rabbit hole led me to tattoo-related uveitis, a rare reaction in which tattoo ink triggers irritation and inflammation at the tattoo site and the middle layer of the eye. While this is rare (the review article cited 33 studies with 44 total patients published between 1969 and 2025), it raises several interesting issues: 1) It is a diagnosis of exclusion; to make the diagnosis, other autoimmune systemic diseases and infections need to be ruled out. 2) The mechanism is unclear - is it a typical allergic reaction (to an embedded allergen)? A triggered autoimmune disease? Something else? 3) This is a fantastic example of why being a thorough clinician is important - tattoos are not often asked about, and for the vast, vast majority of those who have tattoos, they never become an issue. Think about how many visits it must take to make this diagnosis. (Will AI even ask about tattoos?) The clickbait article link:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0039625725001833
AI-supported analysis (with some more background):
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/48b17c61-27e8-47d1-8fbf-7403521ddba6
Adam! WTF! What is a uvea?:
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/uvea
The rabbit hole was deep. I ended up searching for updates on e-tattoos, including embedded biosensors, microneedle patches, nanomaterial electrodes, and temporary tattoo sensors that can measure various biological signals, such as heart rhythms, chemical signals, and body fluid composition. To be clear, this is technology that is real, but still immature. The vast majority of devices are workable proofs of concept, not validated medical devices.:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11048663/pdf/bioengineering-11-00376.pdf
AI-supported analysis:
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/51ba3061-e272-4365-9bf2-489de60762c0
Adam's Coffee Confirmation Bias Corner - February 2026 edition (part of my ongoing search for data justifying my coffee, tea, and caffeine consumption). JAMA published research using data from the Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study, which followed 131,000 health professionals for 43(!) years. Drinking 2-3 cups of caffeinated coffee or 1-2 cups of caffeinated tea daily was associated with an 18% lower risk of dementia. Decaf showed no benefit, suggesting caffeine may be protective. Drinking more than 2-3 cups didn't provide additional benefits, and the association held regardless of genetic risk factors. Article:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2844764?guestAccessKey=26244c24-61b6-44b9-b351-089619df4a47
AI-supported analysis:
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/d9e9f285-8110-4329-bd91-2b258e2fda96
Related: Older Adults in Japan who own dogs also have lower rates of dementia. It is unclear whether there is synergy between older Japanese adults and/or their dogs when caffeine is administered.:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10583170/
Anti-Anti-Science Last week, the FDA refused to evaluate Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine despite positive trial data on efficacy and safety. Moderna had run the trials under a framework the Biden administration's FDA had agreed to. But the current FDA leadership (Dr. Vinay Prasad, Chief Medical Officer) found the control groups inadequate and declined review, overruling the FDA vaccine lead who supported the trial design. I'm struggling to separate the issues here. It is the FDA's prerogative to set regulatory standards. And this feels like the goalposts are moving under the guise of letting 'perfect be the enemy of the good' (the Nirvana logical fallacy). The confusion may be the point. Either way, this regulatory inconsistency undermines biotech investment. STAT News Article:
https://www.statnews.com/2026/02/12/fda-moderna-rejection-upends-vaccine-industry/?utm_campaign=stat_plus_today&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=403478719&utm_content=403478719&utm_source=hs_email
X Thread by the STAT news article author, which goes through the Moderna data, which is promising.:
https://x.com/matthewherper/status/2022142316232777951?s=42
Related: discussion of a September 2025 JAMA article looking at recall rates of AI-enabled FDA-approved devices and tools:
https://www.medtechdive.com/news/ai-medical-devices-no-validation-more-recalls-jama/758991/
(Adam observation: the irony is that AI-enabled surgical tools seem to face less scrutiny than control groups in mRNA vaccine trials.) I found a fascinating (and unsettling) website called "The AI 2027 Scenario," the first major release from the:
AI Futures Project
, a nonprofit focused on AI future forecasting composed of AI safety researchers, many of whom worked in industry.:
https://ai-2027.com/summary
I asked Perplexity what it thought of the future predictions (essentially, AI will achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI) and take over human society in the next few years, and that will be catastrophic, or we will figure out how to control it). Perplexity's analysis: This is serious, well-researched work by credentialed forecasters aimed at quantifying AGI risks. It's more rigorous than typical AI doom scenarios, with explicit models and active error correction. However, the scenario format inherently emphasizes vivid specific outcomes over probability distributions, and the aggressive timeline (even if "modal") deserves scrutiny. Worth engaging with critically but not accepting uncritically. I wonder what bias Perplexity brings to forecasting its own rise to power?
I learned that Australia has the most genetically diverse feral camel herds in the entire world. Apparently, camels were brought to Australia for exploration of the western deserts, and now roam freely. In fact, some of these feral camels are rounded up and, via air transport, hundreds are sent each year from Australia to the Middle East for breeding, racing, and consumption.:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2017-05-02/outback-camels-flights-middle-east-exported-for-breeding/8485948
Video of camels on cargo planes. Business class for sure.:
https://x.com/doctorlemma/status/2021162728207843466?s=42
In case you are thinking of importing camels, learn all about Ngaanyatjarra Camel Company's rules for air-camel transport. I admire their strong stance on not delivering camels to active war zones. It is good to have principles.:
http://www.camelexports.com/index.php/export
I learned about the Purdubik's Cube, a Purdue engineering school-designed robotic system that holds the Guinness World Record for fastest puzzle cube solve at 0.103 seconds (faster than a blink, requiring high-speed photography to capture).:
https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECE/News/2025/purdue-ece-students-shatter-guinness-world-record-for-fastest-puzzle-cube-solving-robot
Related: Last week, a 9-year-old Polish boy set the human record at 2.76 seconds. Purdue's robot could solve a Rubik's Cube 26.8 times in that span.:
https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7789/Artykul/3647358,polish-9yearold-breaks-rubik%E2%80%99s-cube-world-record
Images: Chat:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iWalnClJ_HEAvb5lhFGRA6Ew4IhDDr3s/view?usp=sharing
Gemini:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mCsndMI0E_Slb13b6JUjVrCtX05GFtIh/view?usp=sharing
Perplexity:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g-6SKxwcnBj5FZyVDvpLh2FE0OOkm65q/view?usp=sharing
Grok:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xZ8wcc2CT7SES6MzwzdOpgNmnCHfXc63/view?usp=sharing
The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) uses wastewater viral RNA levels to forecast COVID-19 rates over the next 4 weeks.:
https://pmc19.com/data/
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam