Why Do You Love a L.O.L. Surprise?

According to our e-commerce and big-box retail overlords, the hottest toy this holiday season was the L.O.L. Surprise! Bigger Surprise. It didn’t reach fist-fighting-in-store-aisles levels of frenzy; it’s no Tickle Me Elmo, and it’s not 1996. But, according to NPD Group, a market research firm, L.O.L. Surprise! was the best-selling toy brand of the year…

Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Season of Turmoil

This article was reported and written in collaboration with ProPublica, the nonprofit journalism organization. Hundreds of doctors packed an auditorium at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on Oct. 1, deeply angered by revelations that the hospital’s top medical officer and other leaders had cultivated lucrative relationships with for-profit companies. One by one, they stood up…

When Doctors Serve on Company Boards

Cancer centers are re-evaluating their relationships with health care companies, including when, if ever, doctors and researchers should serve on corporate boards. Here are some hospital executives and cancer researchers who sit on the boards of publicly traded companies, in dual roles that may raise questions about conflicts of interest. Dr. Laurie H. Glimcher Image…

What to Cook: Happy New Year!

For the crabs and lobster and scallops: Champagne, as Eric Asimov has taught. But if you’re eating caviar, have no Champagne, as Eric has also advised: The eggs make the wine taste metallic. Better is chilled vodka and plenty of it. Alternatively, like, you have no interest in celebrating this turning of the calendar page,…