Part the First: Functional Art from the Enigmatic Daunians. William Morris famously wrote, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” Of course, his beauty in response to the immiseration of the working class was for the English rich but nothing is perfect. Our old […]
Read more...Public health continues to rely on failed Covid response as it also ignores how Covid has weakened immune systems and made other outbreaks more likely.
Read more...Albert Einstein was chosen by Time magazine as the Person of the Twentieth Century. It was a good choice (and now is a good time to read Einstein more than seventy years after his death in April 1955, here and here). As noted by Thomas Plümper and Eric Neumayer in their newly published book, The […]
Read more...Part the First: The Attack on American Science Continues, Unabated. A few days ago the president fired the National Science Board (NSB), all twenty-two members of a statutory twenty-five, who served staggered six-year terms that preserved institutional memory. The NSB was created pursuant to the National Science Foundation Act of 1950 to “recommend and encourage […]
Read more...The Make America Great Again mega yacht springs another leak.
Read more...Part the First: Anti-amyloid Antibodies and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). A Cochrane review of monoclonal antibodies targeting amyloid plaques in AD has found that these drugs have little to no effect on cognitive function of AD patients. Cochrane reviews are, to use one of the favorite tropes of the current administration, considered the “gold standard” of […]
Read more...Part the First: Dealing with Scientific Misconduct. Trust in science has declined during my professional work life. Some, but not all, of this is due to misconduct by scientists, as it should be. The recent case of Sylvain Lesné is one of the more spectacular examples. We have discussed this previously. Dr. Lesné published a […]
Read more...Part the First: War Begets War, A Conversation. Daedalus hosted a conversation among Robert Jay Lifton (1926-2025), Neta C. Crawford, and Matthew Evangelista last year. It was preprinted recently in The MIT Press Reader. I immediately noticed the participation of Robert Jay Lifton. Back in my dark ages, when the university had a University Bookstore […]
Read more...Less is known about psilocybin mushrooms than you might think even as their popularity and potency of products like edibles rises.
Read more...Research suggests that rocket exhaust and debris could be threatening the ozone layer, though uncertainties persist.
Read more...Part the First: The Slow Death of Biomedical Research Continues in the United States. We have covered this before, but the entire unfolding situation gets more surreal by the week. STAT News has been a go-to source, as in NIH will spend its full budget this year, agency director promises House appropriators. The first shot […]
Read more...Recently published studies raise basic methodology questions about the tests used to vet firearms ballistic analysts.
Read more...“A tipping point commonly means a point of no return. But conservation can still help ecosystems restore their balance.”
Read more...Trump’s war on universities, like Iran, is doing great damage to the US, here via success in reducing research funding and causing chaos.
Read more...Newsom backs the PMC over anti-vaxxers, even though Northern California is a stronghold of RFK Jr. health fetishists and quacks.
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