Tag: science

Ivy League university webinar says science is too male, too hetero, and too fetus-centric

According to a recent article on thecollegefix.com, during a recent online event at Cornell University, feminist ‘scholars’ discussed their concerns about science being too male, too “hetero,” and too “feto-centric.”

Really.

The presentation, titled, “Is Fat Female? Evolution, Feminism, and Getting the Story Right,” featured scholar ‘Cat’ Bohannon and philosophy Professor Kate Manne. (Bohannon is the author of the best-selling book “Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution.”)

During the Cornell Keynotes webinar, Bohannon stated: “The male norm is a thing that we are trying to fix from the ground up right now in biological and biomedical research.”

You’re trying to fix the “male norm?” Can’t have that! Anything most males do can’t be right!

To that end, Professor Kate brought up research that has allegedly been done on elephants’ sexual activities. She claimed that when male and female elephants mate for the purpose of producing offspring, “it’s very fast,” yet when the males are alone together for long periods of time, some will “form these tightly, intimately-bonded relationships and have penetrative sex for up to an hour.” (I don’t even want to know what they are penetrating in the latter example, but it can’t be that good if they can do it for an hour non-stop.)

Bohannon went on to aver that “It’s hard to say whether or not your basic wild elephant is straight,” adding, “Who knows what sexuality is exactly for animal friends, but animals are very queer.”

Objection! Projection! If animals were “very queer” there would be no more animals. There would have been a universal extinction event.

But Bohannon wasn’t satisfied just grousing about traditional, straight human males, no, siree. She also flatly stated that society has been too “feto-centric,” or centered on the fetus.

The Nutty Professor confessed that she worries about the “feto-centric view where our babies matter more than our girls.”

Not done yet, Bohannon bemoaned her belief that society has a poor view of fat, particularly the fat clinging to women, and claimed that new understandings about the different types and functions of fat in the body suggest that fat is actually an organ, ergo removing it via liposuction –- or dieting while pregnant — can be harmful to women and their unborn babies. (Though the latter concern sounds oddly feto-centric to me.)

Bohannon was apparently asked how one could avoid “transphobia while centering female bodies,” to which she replied by saying research should include representative samples of the population in clinical trials while lamenting that “quite a lot” of clinical trials “continue to be white.” Moreover, she said researchers should be specifically studying “transgender females” (biological males).

To recap: males are bad. Straight males are worse. Babies are bad. Fat can be good.

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Ultrasonic Beams Create Private Sound Pockets

Ultrasonic beams fired through a 3D-printed metasurface can create localized pockets of sound that are inaudible to passers-by. The technique could be used to create private speech zones for secure communications or enable personalized audio spaces in public spaces and vehicles.

The ability to deliver sounds to a specific listener without the need for headphones, known as directional sound, has been a long standing area of research in audio engineering. But achieving this typically requires large and complicated sound sources and it is often possible to hear the audio signal along the path of the beam.

A new approach from researchers at The Pennsylvania State University gets round these limitations by combining a compact array of ultrasonic emitters with a specially patterned 2D structure, which is designed to manipulate the properties of waves. This structure, known as a metasurface, creates “self-bending” ultrasound beams that are inaudible to humans and can steer round obstacles. When two of these beams cross paths they interact in a way that generates sound in a human’s audible range but confined to a spot just a few centimeters across, which the researchers call an “audible enclave.”

“The key innovation is that sound is only generated where two beams intersect, making it possible to deliver audio to a precise spot while keeping the beams themselves silent,” says Jia-Xin Zhong, a postdoctoral research at Penn State and lead author of a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that describes the new approach.

Previous research has demonstrated audible self-bending beams that can curve around obstacles. But the long wavelengths of audible sound mean the sources typically have to be on the scale of meters and it is possible to hear the signal anywhere along the path of the beam.

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Bureaucrats Defy Trump’s Cuts: Nearly 40 Transgender Animal Experiments, $400M in Tax Dollars, Still Active

Despite early intervention efforts on the part of the Trump Administration [and its Department of Governmental Efficiency] to revoke, freeze, and eliminate a number of unorthodox government-sponsored experiments involving transgender hormone testing on animals, nearly 40 such federal grants – including one disbursed via the Department of Veteran’s Affairs – remain active according to the most recent data available.

Last week, among the sweeping cuts outlined as part of the administration’s efforts to increase government efficiency and tamp down government waste, included seven grants funding such animal experiments, but three programs similarly recognized and named by the White House press release remain active with almost $4 million taxpayer dollars still slated to flow into these experiments.

These programs include Duke University’s $455,000 grant allocation for the purposes of injecting mice with cross-sex hormones to study the impacts of gender-affirming estrogen therapy and how it might impact HIV vaccine response. Additionally, Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center was awarded a currently active grant just shy of $300,000 to study how testosterone therapy might support female mice induced with breast cancer. Finally, Indiana University continues to benefit from over $3.1 million in taxpayer funding for the purposes of studying how transgender hormone therapy in animals may impact their risk of asthma.

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Transgender Brain Studies are Fatally Flawed

Earlier this week, City Journal published the tragic story of Yarden Silveira, a young detransitioner—someone who pursues hormonal and/or surgical “sex change” procedures but then seeks to reverse course—whose life ended abruptly after suffering severe complications from a gender-related genital surgery. What led Yarden to adopt a transgender identity in the first place? In 2014, after encountering the growing wave of pro-trans narratives in popular culture, Yarden told his family that he believed he had a “female brain.” Though initially uncertain, his mother was ultimately convinced by scientific papers that suggested that her son could have a female brain trapped in a male body, and that this mismatch caused him unimaginable distress.

“A trans woman (such as myself) was born with a male body, but she has always had her female brain. Literally born with a female brain,” Yarden wrote in 2016.

This belief was widespread back then—and it still is. On January 31, Wisconsin Public Radio featured an interview with a mother, Carri, concerned about President Trump’s new executive order banning federally funded medical and surgical “sex change” procedures for minors. Carri spoke about her daughter, who identified as transgender at 15 and was allowed to medically transition. She said, “Those hormones really helped match his brain with his body which, to me, that’s just the basic level of care we can provide individuals that identify as trans.”

The power of this narrative in persuading people to pursue, or to allow their children to pursue, irreversible medical procedures cannot be overstated. But the notion that males can have “female brains,” and vice versa, rests on a flawed interpretation of “brain sex” studies that in no way demonstrate or even suggest a definitive biological basis for “gender identity.” Little effort has been made to correct this misleading assertion.

The theory is advanced for relatively straightforward reasons. Civil rights lawyers, activists, and researchers contend that people who identify as transgender possess a “brain sex” misaligned with their physical body, thereby establishing a biological basis for “gender identity” akin to immutable traits like race. This framing carries significant legal weight, as U.S. civil rights law offers strong protections for characteristics considered “innate” or rooted in biology.

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300 Beagles Per Week!? US Continues To Fund Dog Experiments in China

Topline: A Chinese lab is continuing to receive funds from the U.S. to conduct cruel studies on beagles, according to contracts obtained by the nonprofit White Coat Waste Project and shared with the New York Post.

Key facts: The $124,200 contract was awarded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences using money from the Pentagon, for the experiments on beagle puppies — as well as mice and rats — at the Beijing-based company’s lab from September 2023 until May 2025.

The Chinese company Pharmaron uses the funds to test pharmaceuticals for neurological disorders on 300 beagles per week, as well as mice and rats, White Coat Waste found. Some of the dogs are as young as eight months. Those that suffer organ dysfunction are euthanized, the contract states.

Pharmaron’s proposal to the NIH promises to comply with the Animal Welfare Act and notes that “Beagle dog is docile, cute and easy to domesticate.”

It describes how the hundreds of dogs, some as young as eight months, “will be reused” throughout the study “to save animals and decrease cost,” while saying those suffering organ dysfunction will be “euthanized.”

The DOD’s Office of Inspector General conducted an audit in June, citing Pharmaron, as well as the Chinese biotech firms WuXi AppTec and Genscript Inc., as so-called “companies of concern” and blacklisted from doing business with U.S. firms. A bill to this effect passed the U.S. House of Representatives but was not voted on in the Senate.

Background: The research contract is just one example of how the U.S. and China fund each other’s medical research, often resulting in payouts for government scientists and potential national security concerns at taxpayers’ expense.

In 2023, 139 foreign companies licensed medical technology invented by NIH scientists, compared to only 102 domestic companies. The businesses included Pokrov Biologics Plant, which researched the weaponization of smallpox for the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and WuXi AppTec, a Chinese firm with alleged military ties and alleged access to American genetic information.

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Federal Memo From National Cancer Institute Lists Marijuana As ‘Controversial ‘Topic That Needs Special Approval Before Publication

“Marijuana” is one of nearly two dozen “controversial or high-profile topics” that staff and researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) are required to clear with higher-ups before writing about, according to a newly leaked memo from within the federal agency.

The government directive puts marijuana and opioids on a list along with vaccines, COVID-19, fluoride, measles, abortion, autism, diversity and gender ideology and other issues that are believed to be personal priorities of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Donald Trump.

NCI is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which itself is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Prior to publishing anything on the specified topics, NCI staff are required to send the materials to an agency clearance team, says the new memo, first reported by ProPublica.

“Depending on the nature of the information, additional review and clearance by the NCI director, deputy directors, NIH, and HHS may be required,” it advises staff. “In some cases, the material will not need further review, but the NCI Clearance Team will share it with NCI leadership, NIH, and/or HHS for their awareness.”

It notes that staff “do not need to share content describing the routine conduct of science if it will not get major media attention, is not controversial or sensitive, and does not touch on an administration priority,” according to the ProPublica report.

The investigative news outlet says the directive “was circulated by the institute’s communications team, and the content was not discussed at the leadership level,” adding that “it is not clear in which exact office the directive originated.”

Experts said the policy could have a chilling effect, slowing publication of important findings and pushing researchers to censor their work.

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Laser Light Transformed Into a Supersolid in Groundbreaking Experiment

An international team of physicists has transformed laser light into a supersolid, marking an entirely new process for achieving this mysterious state of matter.

On the quantum level, matter often exhibits strange behaviors, and the supersolid state is one of the most counterintuitive examples. In this state, atoms arrange into a crystal lattice like a solid but also flow without friction, a property typically associated with liquids.

The Quest to Understand Supersolids

Scientists first proposed the idea of a solid that could demonstrate fluid-like flow in the 1960s, with theoretical exploration intensifying in the 1970s.

Helium was initially considered the most promising candidate for achieving this exotic phase of matter. However, early experiments attempting to produce a solid with superfluid properties yielded disappointing results. In the 1980s, physicist John Goodkind used ultrasound techniques to identify anomalies in matter that suggested supersolids might be feasible.

By the 2000s, new experimental data provided stronger hints of supersolid behavior, though some findings conflicted with theoretical predictions, making the state even more elusive.

Creating a Supersolid With Laser Light

For decades, researchers believed that achieving a supersolid state required ultracold atomic Bose-Einstein condensates combined with electromagnetic fields. This method, which was only successfully demonstrated in recent years, produced a material structured like table salt but also capable of flowing.

The latest research, however, takes an entirely different approach, creating a supersolid without using atoms at all.

The team began with a piece of gallium oxide designed with precise ridges to interact with an incoming laser beam. When the laser light struck the semiconductor’s ridges, it produced a quasiparticle known as a polariton. The shape of the ridges then constrained the polariton’s motion, forcing it into a supersolid state.

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CNN Retracts Fact-Check Over Trump’s Transgender Mice Claim

Following President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, CNN attempted to issue a fact-check on his claim of government spending on experimentation with transgender mice; the network was subsequently forced to make a retraction.

As the Daily Caller reports, President Trump revealed during the speech – his first address to Congress as the 47th President – that his administration had uncovered $8.2 million in funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use “gender-affirming” treatments on mice. 

CNN’s Deidre McPhillips tried to claim this was false, and that only about $500,000 was spent on these experiments.

“Trump falsely claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency identified government spending of ‘$8 million for making mice transgender,’” said CNN’s original statement.

The White House responded by issuing a statement confirming that the original amount of $8.2 million was accurate.

“Last night, President Donald J. Trump highlighted many of the egregious examples of waste, fraud and abuse funded by the American taxpayers, including $8 million spent by the Biden Administration ‘for making mice transgender,’” the statement from the White House declared. 

“The Fake News losers at CNN immediately tried to fact check it, but President Trump was right (as usual).”

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Is Science Rigged for the Rich?

A recent paper published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research, titled “Access to Opportunity in the Sciences: Evidence From the Nobel Laureates,” found that 67 percent of science Nobel Prize winners have “fathers from above the 90th income percentile in their birth country.” The authors, affiliated with Imperial College London, Dartmouth College, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania, claim that their paper reveals extreme inequality in the science world and suggests that undiscovered geniuses from poor backgrounds never had the chance to show what they could do for humanity.

The study received considerable press attention, including a piece in The Guardian claiming that it showed “a lot of talent wasted…and breakthroughs lost.”

“The Nobel prizes highlight that we have a biased system in science and little is being done to even out the playing field,” wrote scientist Kate Shaw in Physics World. “We should not accept that such a tiny demographic are born ‘better’ at science than anyone else.” 

This study contains several statistical and conceptual errors, making its findings meaningless. It provides no evidence that unequal opportunity in science limits human progress. 

For starters, how did the authors determine who was “born better” and thus had a better chance of winning a Nobel Prize? The study examined what their fathers did for a living. It found that since 1901, people with scientists for fathers had 150 times the chance of winning a science Nobel than the average person. 

Scientists earn more on average, which allegedly shows that coming from a wealthier family gave them a boost. But it’s common sense that the children of scientists will have an advantage in winning Nobel Prizes. Children of successful people often excel in the same fields as their parents. The size of the advantage may seem surprising, but this is typical when you look at the extremes of the bell curve. Even small initial advantages can result in extreme differences in outcome.

Suppose instead of Nobel Prizes in science we were talking about an Olympic gold medal for the 100-meter dash. Suppose everyone in the world got to participate. There would be thousands of people a step or two behind the winner.

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CNN Embarrasses Itself Yet Again: Trump Was Right About Transgender Mice Studies

CNN went on a fact-checking frenzy after Trump’s Tuesday night speech to a joint session of Congress, but they forgot to do one thing: check the facts. In one of the epic diatribes of the address, the president lambasted the waste in the federal government that has been uncovered by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and pointed out many of the most ridiculous examples—including transgender studies on mice.

Trump:

Just listen to some of the appalling waste we have already identified: $22 billion from HHS to provide free housing and cars for illegal aliens, $45 million for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma, $40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants. Nobody knows what that is. $8 million to promote LGBTQ+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of, $60 million for indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment in Central America. $60 million. $8 million for making mice transgender. [Laughter.]

This is real.

Well, it didn’t take long for CNN to get their knickers in a twist and try to trip up the president, but they failed badly:

CNN’s Deidre McPhillips initially tried to dispute the claim, arguing only about $500,000 had been allocated for similar research in monkeys — she was later forced to issue a correction after the White House proved CNN’s “fact check” inaccurate in a statement. 

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