Can Coffee Kill You?

Scribblers like me can’t resist coffee news. Scientists toil for months—presumably in windowless labs full of microscopes and pipettes—to collect, sort, and interpret mountains of data about the health effects of the world’s most popular drug and publish the results in meticulous detail in a peer-reviewed journal. And, after downing probably a little more than our share of the 400 million cups of coffee Americans drink every day, we spring into action, or at least sit down and type out pandering headlines like: