Tag: science

Taxpayer Dollars from NIH Used to Create ‘Transgender Monkeys’ to Inject with mRNA Vaccines

White Coat Waste Project (WCW), a watchdog group dedicated to ending taxpayer-funded animal experiments, has discovered that millions in taxpayer dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the State of Florida are being spent on bizarre experiments to create “transgender” monkeys by pumping male rhesus macaques full of estrogen and then injecting them with mRNA vaccines.

The research, published in Cell Reports earlier this month, says that the experiments are aimed at modeling feminizing hormone therapy (FHT) as used by transgender biological males transitioning to “female.”

According to the paper, “To investigate the immune effects of estrogen within a male biological system, we administered exogenous E2 [estrogen] to male RMs [rhesus monkeys], modeling FHT [feminizing hormone therapy] as prescribed to TGW [transgender women].” Twelve young male monkeys were divided into groups and implanted with slow-release pellets containing either estrogen or a placebo.

The results were grotesque.

“FHT [feminizing hormone therapy] induces physical changes in TGW [transgender women], such as breast development, fat and muscle redistribution, and reduction in facial hair. To determine whether exogenous E2 [estrogen] therapy triggered similar female characteristics in male RMs [rhesus monkeys], we evaluated body alterations in the E2-treated animals. We found that male RMs [rhesus monkeys] treated with E2 [estrogen], but not placebo, developed significantly enlarged nipples similar to those of non-pregnant non-lactating female macaques.”

The estrogen-treated males developed “significantly enlarged nipples similar to those of non-pregnant non-lactating female macaques.” Additionally, “skin in the [estrogen]-treated macaques’ hips and thighs also became increasingly reddish and vascularized in a manifestation that resembled sex skin.” To further disrupt their systems, the researchers “artificially disrupted immune homeostasis through LNP/mRNA vaccinations,” injecting the animals with mRNA-based vaccines.

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New AI tool flags more than 1,000 questionable science journals… but can it be trusted?

  • The open-access journal boom has fueled predatory publishers exploiting researchers with fees while skipping real peer review.
  • An AI tool trained on 14,500 journals flagged over 1,000 suspicious publications but has a 24% false positive rate.
  • Fake science is surging, with a 2025 study warning that paper mills are doubling fraudulent research output every 1.5 years.
  • Predatory journals threaten public trust, distorting medical guidelines and policy decisions while wasting taxpayer funds.
  • AI detection tools could be misused to censor legitimate but controversial research, raising concerns over truth control.

The explosion of open-access journals has democratized scientific research, but it has also given rise to a shadow industry of predatory publishers that exploit authors with publishing fees while offering little to no legitimate peer review. Now, researchers have developed an AI tool to detect these shady journals—but its 24% false positive rate means human experts are still essential.

Who’s behind it? A team of computational scientists, led by Daniel Acuña of the University of Colorado Boulder, trained an AI model on more than 14,500 journals—12,869 high-quality ones and 2,536 that had been removed from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) for violating ethical guidelines. The AI then analyzed nearly 94,000 open-access journals, flagging more than 1,000 previously unknown suspect publications.

The problem with predatory journals

The open-access model was supposed to make research freely available to everyone, breaking down paywalls that restrict knowledge. But as the system grew, so did the number of journals that prioritize profit over scientific integrity. These “questionable” journals often promise rapid publication with little to no peer review, charging authors hefty fees while producing low-quality—or even fraudulent—research.

A 2025 study in PNAS found that the number of fake papers churned out by “paper mills” is doubling every 1.5 years, threatening to flood academia with junk science. “If these trends are not stopped, science is going to be destroyed,” warned Luís A. Nunes Amaral, a data scientist at Northwestern University.

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EU science grants are funding Israeli military tech, data shows

The EU has given Israeli technology start-ups run by ex-IDF soldiers nearly half a billion euros in research grants since the start of the Gaza genocide. Some of the founders of these tech start-ups have served as reservists in Gaza, and in at least one instance the technology has been deployed to aid the genocide.

This article was originally published by ¡Do Not Panic!

The Horizon Europe program, described by the EU as ‘a scientific research initiative to develop a sustainable and livable society in Europe,’ has awarded around 475 million euros to 348 Israeli start-ups and research projects since October 2023, many of which are run by former IDF soldiers and intelligence officers.

In 2024, the EU awarded grants of €220m to 179 companies and initiatives run by Israelis. The scale of this funding, coming in a year when the world’s pre-eminent genocide experts all declared Israel was committing a genocide, a year in which entire cities were wiped out and tens of thousands of civilians murdered, is staggering.

In the same year Israel was also the third largest recipient, behind France and Germany, of ‘accelerator’ grants, a separate component of the Horizon program intended to support small and medium-sized companies working to improve life in Europe.

In 2025, the year in which Israel announced its full-scale ethnic cleansing plans and scholars estimated that 434,000 Palestinians in Gaza had been murdered by Israel, EU funding for Israeli tech initiatives still topped 110 million euros.

And this summer, with Gaza being driven officially into famine by Israel’s deliberate starvation campaign and as the Knesset was voting through a final solution, the EU was still dolling out tens of millions to companies run by ex-IDF personnel.

Horizon funding is critical to Israeli science and the Israeli economy. Since the inception of the programme in 1996, the EU has given Israeli companies, some of which have been directly spun out from the Israeli military, €3.4 billion euros. Israel is by far the largest non-EU recipient of Horizon, and its researchers are given an extremely generous, even curious amount of money for a program designed to support European researchers and European society. The president of Israel’s Academy of Sciences and Humanities said in May that cutting Israel off from EU research and innovation funds would be “almost a death sentence for Israeli science.”

Israel’s participation in the Horizon program has drawn attention in the past. Campaigners have argued the program is breaking its purely civilian mandate by giving money to Israeli institutions linked to the security state, and have demanded Israel is cut from the program. Under pressure with the genocide of Gaza moving into its final stages, the European Commission recently proposed a limited, partial ban on Israeli access to Horizon. It’s unclear though if the tepid move will garner enough votes from member states to pass. While Israel’s participation in Horizon has been the subject of controversy, the individuals behind these EU-funded initiatives, many of whom have a significant military background, have not previously been named. I’ve also found clear evidence that the program, which is mandated to support exclusively civilian applications, has funded military technology deployed during the genocide of Gaza.

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Cognitive Neuroscientist Claims ‘Gut Feeling’ Could Be a Memory From the Future

Precognition can have a scientific basis, according to some researchers. The assertion is shocking, as the practice is typically not associated with logic. The practice is essentially “gut feelings” that a human has about an incident that could happen in the future, according to Popular Mechanics. Across decades, many people have come forward with their claims of being able to predict the future. Many have believed, but several have responded with scepticism. Cognitive neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge herself claims to have this capability. Now, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has entered this debate by declassifying its extensive research on the topic, and the results support the believers. 

Examples of Precognition

Fatih Ozcan claimed in 2012 that he and his boss won a lottery due to his precognition dream, according to The Guardian. Other remarkable stories include Daz Smith using his psychic skills to predict cryptocurrency trends, and Michael D Austin hiring several “remote viewers” for his company, Soul Rider, to offer financial advice. Mossbridge has been recording her psychic dreams since the age of seven. These skills also have roots in ancient times, with several cultures, like the Tibetans, using precognition from shamans for various purposes.

CIA’s Take

CIA’s documents detailed several psychics who were using “remote viewing” to search for certain targets to help authorities, in both the past and present. These documents came to light in 1995 and were related to a project called “Stargate,” which spent around $20 million on this methodology for around two decades, since the 1970s. One of the major successes of this method was noted in 1976, when a psychic called Rosemary Smith found the location of a lost Soviet plane. The files concluded with a glowing review of the process and stated, “remote viewers can be used as collectors in conjunction with other intelligence sources.”

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The “Wow!” Signal Was Likely From An Extraterrestrial Source, And More Powerful Than We Thought

Anew study has re-examined the famous “Wow!” signal, finding that it likely has an extraterrestrial origin after all, and may have been even more intense than previously believed.

On August 15, 1977, at the Big Ear radio telescope observatory at Ohio State University, a narrowband radio signal was received. A few days later, astronomer Jerry Ehman reviewed the data and noticed the signal sequence, which lasted for a full 72 seconds. In the margin next to the printout, he simply wrote “Wow!”, and thus the puzzling signal had a name that would stick for the next 43 years at least.

The signal has, so far, defied explanation, and that’s not for a lack of trying. Researchers argued the case for it being a comet passing through the area Big Ear was listening to, only for that to be completely refuted about two days later by the team that detected the Wow! signal in the first place, as a comet would have produced a diffuse signal given the large area they cover, rather than the abruptly cut-off signal that was received.

The signal has been a source of speculation in the “aliens are out there” community, and not without reason. No other signal like it has been detected before or since. It was in a range of frequencies close to the hydrogen line, which is relatively free from background noise, making it a good range to pick were we to try and communicate with other civilizations ourselves. On top of that, the team themselves believed it to be a good candidate for extraterrestrial life.

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Yale’s Censored Vaccine Injury Research and the Urgent Need for Scientific Reform

One premier research group has bravely studied the vaccine-injured and provided many critical details about their multi-year illnesses.

•Unfortunately, despite their excellent research, medical journals have refused to publish their results, including the most recent study which showed clear differences exist between long COVID and COVID-19 vaccine injuries.

•Science is ultimately predicated upon the methods we use discern what is actually true (epistemology). As this subject has been neglected, our epistemological standards frequently result in existing dogmas and vested interests being reaffirmed while critically important data never reaches the public awareness (e.g., due to widespread medical journal censorship).

•During COVID-19, the severe abuses of the scientific community (which ultimately resulted from it having no accountability for failing to uphold its social responsibilities) broke the public trust in science, and allowed something previously inconceivable—MAHA to gain control of our corrupt scientific apparatus and have a mandate to reform it.

•NIH director Jay Bhattacharya has announced his commitment to fixing the scientific apparatus and has engaged in a variety of NIH initiatives and public discussions which are vital to allowing science to serve the people rather than vested-interests.

Yale’s medical school is widely considered to have one of the top autoimmunity research and treatment programs in America. As long COVID is considered to be immunological in nature, their researchers extensively studied it, and remarkably some of them then pivoted to also studying vaccine injuries (in part because the COVID vaccines rather than curing long COVID patients, sometimes made them much worse). A few days ago, they finished a new research paper on the subject, but like their previous ones, it was immediately summarily rejected by the “reputable” journals it was submitted to (including the one I feel was the most obligated to publish these findings). In this article, I aim to cover the importance of their most recent results and, more important, examine what their habitual censorship reveals about science in general.

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Scientists Find First Evidence of Rare Compounds in Cannabis Leaves

Scientists in South Africa say they have found the first evidence of a rare class of phenolics, called ‘flavoalkaloids’, in leaves from the cannabis plant.

Phenolic compounds, especially flavonoids, are well-known and sought after in the pharmaceutical industry because of their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-carcinogenic properties.

Researchers from Stellenbosch University have identified 79 phenolic compounds in three strains of cannabis grown commercially in South Africa, of which 25 were reported in the plant for the first time.

Sixteen of these compounds were tentatively identified as ‘flavoalkaloids’, and were mainly found in the leaves of only one of the strains. The findings are published in the Journal of Chromatography A,

First author, Dr Magriet Muller, an analytical chemist in the LC-MS laboratory of the Central Analytical Facility (CAF) at Stellenbosch University, says the analysis of plant phenolics is challenging due to their low concentration and extreme structural diversity.

“Most plants contain highly complex mixtures of phenolic compounds, and while flavonoids occur widely in the plant kingdom, the flavoalkaloids are very rare in nature,” she explains.

“We know that Cannabis is extremely complex – it contains more than 750 metabolites – but we did not expect such high variation in phenolic profiles between only three strains, nor to detect so many compounds for the first time in the species. Especially the first evidence of flavoalkaloids in Cannabis was very exciting.”

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Leaked Emails Show EPA Sought To Discredit Scientist After Ohio Train Derailment Disaster

Leaked emails from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) show that the agency sought to discredit an independent scientist who questioned official data on contamination following the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment and fire in February 2023.

Following the official EPA announcement that were no dangerous levels of toxins in the area and that it was safe for residents to return home, independent testing expert Scott Smith reported finding high levels of dioxins in the soil in East Palestine.

According to News Nation, when Smith’s findings were reported in spring of 2023, former EPA administrator Judith Enck said the agency should pay attention to Smith’s test results.

Instead of taking new samples and doing similar testing, leaked emails show that the EPA began collecting Smith’s personal information and monitoring his actions in an effort to discredit the environmental scientist.

Smith’s personal information and whereabouts were distributed to more than 50 EPA employees, his dog’s picture was circulated and drones were documented hovering near the scientist on multiple occasions.

Lesley Pacey, with the Government Accountability Project, told NewsNation that the EPA’s response was “troubling” since it was a matter of public health.

Pacey said, “What the EPA seems to have done here in East Palestine is that they were more interested in controlling the narrative and controlling what was going out to the community, from the community and back to the community,” adding, “They were definitely controlling the narrative of nothing to see here, no long-term health impacts.”

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California invested millions in STEM for women. The results are disappointing

Ten years ago, it seemed everyone was talking about women in science.

As the economy improved in the years after the Great Recession, women were slower to return to the workforce, causing alarm, especially in vital fields like computing. State and federal leaders turned their attention to women in science, technology, engineering and math, known by the acronym STEM.

Over the next few years, they poured millions of dollars into increasing the number of women pursuing STEM degrees. But the rate of women who attain those degrees has hardly improved, according to an analysis of colleges’ data by the Public Policy Institute of California on behalf of CalMatters.

“The unfortunate news is that the numbers haven’t changed much at all,” said Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the institute who conducted the analysis of California’s four-year colleges using data from the 2009-10 school year and comparing it to the most recent numbers, from 2022-23. The share of women who received a bachelor’s degree increased from roughly 19% to about 25% in engineering and from nearly 16% to about 23% in computer science. In math and statistics, the percentage of women who graduate with a degree has gone down in the last five years.

“It’s not nothing, but at this pace it would take a very long time to reach parity,” Johnson said.

Girls are also underrepresented in certain high school classes, such as AP computer science, and while women make up about 42% of California’s workforce, they comprise just a quarter of those working in STEM careers, according to a study by Mount Saint Mary’s University. Fewer women were working in math careers in 2023 than in the five or 10 years before that, the study found.

“It’s a cultural phenomenon, not a biological phenomenon,” said Mayya Tokman, a professor of applied mathematics at UC Merced. She said underrepresentation is a result of perceptions about women, the quality of their education, and a lack of role models in a given field.

Science and technology spurs innovation and economic growth while promoting national security, and these jobs are often lucrative and stable. Gender parity is critical, especially as U.S. science and technology industries struggle to find qualified workers, said Sue Rosser, provost emerita at San Francisco State and a longtime advocate for women in science. “We need more people in STEM. More people means immigrants, women, people of color as well as white men. There’s no point in excluding anyone.”

She said that recent cuts by the Trump administration to California’s research and education programs will stymie progress in science, technology and engineering — and hurt countless careers, including the women who aspire to join these fields.

Over the last eight months, the federal government has made extensive cuts to scientific research at California’s universities, affecting work on dementia, vaccines, women’s issues and on health problems affecting the LGBTQ+ community. The administration also ended programs that support undergraduate students in science. In June a federal judge ruled that the administration needs to restore some of those grants, but a Supreme Court decision could reverse that ruling.

More recently, the administration halted hundreds of grants to UCLA — representing hundreds of millions in research funding — in response to a U.S. Justice Department investigation into allegations of antisemitism. Now the Trump administration is asking for a $1 billion settlement in return for the grants. A California district judge ruled on Tuesday that at least some of those grants need to be restored.

‘The cultural conversation has changed’

In the past five years, attention has shifted away from women in science. Nonprofit leaders and researchers across the state say that many lawmakers and philanthropists turned away from women in STEM during the COVID-19 pandemic and focused more on racial justice following the police killing of George Floyd.

Since 1995, women have been outpacing men in college, and women are now much more likely to attain a bachelor’s degree. The unemployment rate for men is higher, too, and men without college degrees are opting out of the labor force at unprecedented rates.

On July 30 Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order saying the state needs to do more to address the “growing crisis of connection and opportunity for men and boys.” It’s not a “zero-sum” game, he wrote: the state can, and should, support everyone.

But some state investments for women’s education are lagging.

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Scientists Say This “Strange Physics Mechanism” Could Enable Objects to Levitate on Sunlight

Designed for flight forty-five miles above the Earth’s surface, Harvard SEAS researchers have devised a nanofabricated lightweight structure capable of sunlight-driven propulsion through a process called photophoresis, capable of monitoring one of Earth’s most challenging locations to navigate.

Stretching between 30 and 60 miles above the Earth’s surface, the mesosphere has proven extremely difficult to study, as the altitude is too high for planes and balloons, yet too low for satellites. Achieving regular direct access to this long-out-of-reach portion of the atmosphere could be a major boon to improving weather forecasts and climate model accuracy.

Now, a new breakthrough technology could make it possible, by allowing lightweight structures to reach largely unexplored heights powered by sunlight alone.

Photophoresis

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), the University of Chicago, and other institutions worked on the project, which was revealed in a new paper published in Nature.

“We are studying this strange physics mechanism called photophoresis and its ability to levitate very lightweight objects when you shine light on them,” said lead author Ben Schafer, a former Harvard graduate student at SEAS, now a professor at the University of Chicago.

Photophoresis is a physical process where gas molecules bounce off of an object’s warmer side more forcefully than its cooler side in extremely low-pressure environments. One such environment is the difficult-to-reach mesosphere.

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