Tag: science

New Zealand media’s go-to source for expert opinions supports a bill to deregulate the use of genetic modification; Dr. Guy Hatchard responds

Guy Hatchard, PhD, was formerly Director of Natural Products at Genetic ID (now FoodChain ID) a global food safety testing and certification company. He presented to the original Royal Commission on Genetic Modification in New Zealand in 2000 which helped to clarify the safety ground rules and labelling requirements for genetically modified organisms (“GMOs”) which currently form a part of the New Zealand Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (“HSNO”) legislation. Dr. Hatchard is retired and has no financial interest in the outcomes of the current legislative initiative to deregulate biotechnology experimentation.

The following is his formal response to the Science Media Centre (“SMC”) – an “independent” source of information for the media on all issues related to research, science and innovation – which has published expert opinions in support of the Bill.

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“Nobody Knows How They Can Do This.” New Evidence of Cells “Learning” Upends Past Thinking on Cellular Function

According to groundbreaking new findings, single cells may be capable of learning without the need for complex brains and nervous systems.

Researchers from the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona and Harvard Medical School in Boston recently published their work in Current Biology. Their work presents insights that may affect the future of medicine, providing a deeper understanding of how specific ailments can avoid treatment. 

CElls Learning from Their Environment

“Rather than following pre-programmed genetic instructions, cells are elevated to entities equipped with a very basic form of decision-making based on learning from their environments,” explained co-author Jeremy Gunawardena, Associate Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School.

The biologists’ observations involved habituation, one of the simplest forms of learning, where an organism acclimates to a repeated stimulus and begins to ignore it. Examples include ticking clocks or flashing lights, stimuli that eventually fade into the background for humans as our perceptions start ignoring them after some time.

Since the early 20th century, biologists have debated studies indicating learning-like behaviors in single-celled ciliates. The search picked up steam in the 1970s and 1980s, and current research provides additional mounting evidence for cell learning capabilities.

Examining Cell Learning

“These creatures are so different from animals with brains,” says co-author Rosa Martinez of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona. “To learn would mean they use internal molecular networks that somehow perform functions similar to those carried out by networks of neurons in brains.”

“Nobody knows how they can do this, so we thought it is a question that needed to be explored,” Martinez said.

Cells process information through biochemical reactions, such as adding or removing a phosphate tag to a protein to switch it on and off like a binary code. The team modeled those chemical interactions in a computer simulation. The biologists chose this method because it allowed them to test many scenarios more rapidly than setting up many observations. Analyzing the math permitted the researchers to decode the cell’s chemical language as responses to repeated stimuli changed over time.

The biologists focused on negative feedback loops and incoherent feedforward loops to help better understand how the cells processed information and reacted. Negative feedback loops describe information that signals a process should end, like a thermostat registering the desired temperature and turning off the heat. In an incoherent feedforward loop, a signal turns a process both on and off, such as when a motion-activated light turns on after registering movement but turns off again after a set amount of time elapses.

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How Scientific American’s Departing Editor Helped Degrade Science

Earlier this week, Laura Helmuth resigned as editor in chief of Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. “I’ve decided to leave Scientific American after an exciting 4.5 years as editor in chief,” she wrote on Bluesky. “I’m going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching), but for now I’d like to share a very small sample of the work I’ve been so proud to support (thread).”

Helmuth may in fact have been itching to spend more time bird watching—who wouldn’t be?—but it seems likely that her departure was precipitated by a bilious Bluesky rant she posted after Donald Trump was reelected.

In it, she accused her generation, Generation X, of being “full of fucking fascists,” complained about how sexist and racist her home state of Indiana was, and so on.

“Fuck them to the moon and back,” she said of the dumb high school bullies supposedly celebrating Trump’s victory.

Whether or not Helmuth’s resignation was voluntary, it should go without saying that a few bad social media posts should not end someone’s job. If that were the whole story here—an otherwise well-performing editor was ousted over a few bad posts—this would arguably be a case of “cancel culture,” or whatever we’re calling it these days.

But Helmuth’s posts were symptoms of a much larger problem with her reign as editor. They accurately reflected the political agenda she brought with her when she came on as EiC at SciAm—a political agenda that has turned the once-respected magazine into a frequent laughingstock.

Sometimes, yes, SciAm still acts like the leading popular science magazine it used to be—a magazine, I should add, that I received in print form every month during my childhood. 

But increasingly, during Helmuth’s tenure, SciAm seemed a bit more like a marketing firm dedicated to churning out borderline-unreadable press releases for the day’s social justice cause du jour. In the process, SciAm played a small but important role in the self-immolation of scientific authority—a terrible event whose fallout we’ll be living with for a long time.

When Scientific American was bad under Helmuth, it was really bad. For example, did you know that “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy“? Or that the normal distribution—a vital and basic statistical concept—is inherently suspect? No, really: Three days after the legendary biologist and author E.O. Wilson died, SciAm published a surreal hit piece about him in which the author lamented “his dangerous ideas on what factors influence human behavior.” That author also explained that “the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against.” But the normal distribution doesn’t make any such value judgments, and only someone lacking in basic education about stats—someone who definitely shouldn’t be writing about the subject for a top magazine—could make such a claim.

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Scientists Are Developing CRISPR Gene-editing Tools to Cure Inherited Diseases — But There’s a Catch

CRISPR-based gene-editing tools are being developed to correct specific defective sections of the genome to cure inherited genetic diseases, with some applications already in clinical trials.

However, there is a catch: under certain conditions, the repair can lead to large-scale deletions and rearrangements of DNA — as in the case of targeting the NCF1 gene in chronic granulomatous disease (CGD). This was reported by a team of researchers and physicians from the ImmuGene clinical research program at the University of Zurich.

Their findings have important implications not just for gene editing-based therapy, but also for CRISPR-mediated gene editing of animals and plants, where the same types of large-scale genetic damage could be triggered.

Indeed, because such editing is carried out with much less caution in non-human organisms, the likelihood of such large-scale damage occurring is hugely increased (see below on multiplexing).

The study also shows that attempts to avoid these problems by using adaptations of CRISPR gene editing technologies, such as prime and base editing, may not succeed.

This research on CGD is also only the latest in a series of studies that have repeatedly shown that different types of unintended mutations resulting from gene editing can affect the functioning of multiple gene systems, with potentially damaging consequences.

What is CGD?

CGD is a rare hereditary disease that affects about one in 120,000 people. The disease impairs the component of the immune system responsible for fighting off infections, which can be life-threatening to the patient.

One variant of CGD is caused by the absence of two letters in the DNA base unit gene sequence which codes for the NCF1 protein. This error results in the inability of blood cells known as neutrophils to produce an enzyme complex that plays an essential role in the immune defense against bacterial, yeast, and fungal infections.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Embarrasses Himself as Bill Maher Exposes Him as ‘Part of the Problem’

Famous astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson exposed himself as a clueless buffoon Friday night when Bill Maher confronted him about a year-old Scientific American article. The piece made the baffling claim that the “inequity” between male and female athletes isn’t due to natural biological differences but rather to how they’re treated in sports.

The article, approved a year ago by former editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth, was emblematic of the “woke mind virus” taking precedent over scientific reality. Tyson, however, dismissed the controversy, relying on the fact Helmuth was recently fired for an expletive and unhinged anti-Trump post to justify the piece as no big deal.

The astrophysicist’s baffling failure to grasp the significance of the issue left Maher visibly frustrated, leading him to lose faith in Tyson as a credible scientist.

MAHER: “But engage with the idea here. What I’m asking is, Scientific American is saying basically that the reason why a WNBA team can’t beat the Lakers is because of societal bias.”

TYSON: “What you’re saying is not Scientific American says that. An editor for Scientific American says that, who no longer has the job. So don’t indict a 170-year-old magazine because somebody—”

MAHER: “Okay, this is called Scientific American, and they’re printing something. Why can’t you just talk about science? Why can’t you just say this is not scientific and Scientific American should do better?”

TYSON: “Well, does she still have her job?”

MAHER: “No, not because of this. I said the scandal is not her tweet. I think a year ago [when this was printed], women still couldn’t beat men in basketball or any other sport. And it wasn’t because of society. You don’t see a problem?… Well, I’m gonna file you under part of the problem.”

Maher’s confidence in Tyson sank even lower when he was challenged on vaccines and medical doctors, leaving him no choice but to school the astrophysicist on “trusting the Science™.” The exchange left viewers in shock, capped off by Maher delivering an unexpected zinger at the end.

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Scientist who battled for COVID common sense over media and government censors wins top award

Few in the media seemed eager to attend a ceremony last week in Washington, D.C., where the prestigious American Academy of Sciences and Letters was awarding its top intellectual freedom award.

The problem may have been the recipient: Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

Bhattacharya has spent years being vilified by the media over his dissenting views on the pandemic. As one of the signatories of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, he was canceled, censored, and even received death threats.

That open letter called on government officials and public health authorities to rethink the mandatory lockdowns and other extreme measures in light of past pandemics.

All the signatories became targets of an orthodoxy enforced by an alliance of political, corporate, media, and academic groups. Most were blocked on social media despite being accomplished scientists with expertise in this area.

It did not matter that positions once denounced as “conspiracy theories” have been recognized or embraced by many.

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What Science Can Say About Vaccines: And What It Can’t Say

Interesting times for science are in store given the incoming administration. RFK, Jr. has been tasked to make America Healthy Again. He will fail where he encourages women to kill the lives inside them, because killing (in case you’ve forgotten) is the opposite of health.

But he might have some success with vaccines. For instance, at a recent interview he said he is against mandatory vaccinations. This brings up the excellent question of what can Science say about vaccines, and what it cannot. The answer will turn out to the same, with only small differences, for many questions similar to vaccination.

Science can answer questions like these, all with more or less certainty, depending on circumstance:

What is the projected range of vaccine protection in a population of given or assumed characteristics? If the vaccine is given in this group at this location, how and with what speed might the disease it protects against progress or decline? What is the range of symptoms and maladies the unvaccinated will experience? What is the protective benefit in the source of these diseases of naturally acquired immunity? How much better is that acquired immunity than the vaccine?

What is the proper dose, perhaps tailored by biology, to achieve the claimed effect?

What are the projected harms caused by the vaccine? Does the vaccine cause other diseases? In what distribution will injuries and other diseases be found?

Science cannot answer questions like these:

Who should get the vaccine? When should it be administered? Where should it be administered? What is the population that will receive the vaccine?

Is it better or worse to suffer the disease? What level of vaccine injury is acceptable? What level of risk of vaccine injury is acceptable? How much better or worse are the symptoms of the disease than the vaccine?

At what level of protection, adjusted by whatever circumstance, should the vaccine be administered? What level of risk for the disease is acceptable and what unacceptable? Is naturally acquired immunity better or worse than the vaccine?

Should it be made mandatory? For all ages in all circumstances? All doses? Should people be made to carry proof of their vaccination? Should a person be fired or otherwise hounded from society for preferring naturally acquired immunity, or because this person does not care about the disease? Should people be forced to care about a disease? Should people be barred from worship until they are vaccinated?

What should be done to scientists who are wrong in their predictions? What about those scientists who lie or are caught exaggerating?

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Can Consciousness Exist Without A Brain?

“As a neurosurgeon, I was taught that the brain creates consciousness,” said Dr. Eben Alexander, who wrote in detail about his experiences with consciousness while in a deep coma.

Many doctors and biomedical students may have been taught the same about consciousness. However, scientists are still debating whether that theory holds true.

Imagine a child observing an elephant for the first time. Light reflects off the animal and enters the child’s eyes. Retinal photoreceptors in the back of the eyes convert this light into electrical signals, which travel through the optic nerve to the brain’s cortex. This forms vision or visual consciousness.

How do these electrical signals miraculously transform into a vivid mental image? How do they turn into the child’s thoughts, followed by an emotional reaction—“Wow, the elephant is so big!”

The question of how the brain generates subjective perceptions, including images, feelings, and experiences, was coined by Australian cognitive scientist David Chalmers in 1995 as the “hard problem.”

As it turns out, having a brain may not be a prerequisite for consciousness.

‘Brainless’ but Not Mindless

The Lancet recorded a case of a French man diagnosed with postnatal hydrocephalus—excess cerebrospinal fluid on or around the brain—at the age of 6 months.

Despite his condition, he grew up healthy, became a married father of two children, and worked as a civil servant.

When he was 44 years old, he went to the doctor due to a mild weakness in his left leg. The doctors scanned his head thoroughly and discovered that his brain tissue was almost entirely gone. Most of the space in his skull was filled with fluid, with only a thin sheet of brain tissue.

“The brain was virtually absent,” wrote the lead author of the case study, Dr. Lionel Feuillet, of the Department of Neurology, Hôpital de la Timone in Marseille, France.

The man had been living a normal life and had no problem seeing, feeling, or perceiving things.

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Geology is racist as it is ‘linked to white supremacy’ claims Queen Mary University of London professor

A geography professor at a leading British university has described the study of rocks and the natural world as racist and linked the academic field to ‘white supremacy’.

Kathryn Yusoff, who lectures at the prestigious Queen Mary University of London, said that the geology as a subject was ‘riven by systematic racism’ and influenced heavily by colonialism.

The study of prehistoric life through fossils was also branded as an enabler for racism, with the professor referring to the field of palaeontology as ‘pale-ontology’.

Arguing that geology began as a ‘colonial practice’, Professor Yusoff stated in her book ‘Geologic Life’ that the extraction of metals such as gold and iron had created hierarchies, pushed materialism, ravaged environments and was the route cause of climate change.

Claiming that ‘geology continues to function within a white supremacist praxis’, the academic referenced the theft of land, mining and other geological practices as having led to the creation of white supremacy and a resulting ‘geotrauma’.

Professor Yusoff’s new book focuses on geology between the 17th and 19th centuries and puts forward the notion that non-white people have a closer relationship to land than white people.

‘Broadly, black, brown, and indigenous subjects… have an intimacy with the earth that is unknown to the structural position of whiteness,’ she wrote. 

Ms Yusoff is described as a professor of ‘inhuman geography’ on the official Queen Mary University website.

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U.S. Advocates Urge White House Support for ‘RISE’ Initiative to Keep U.S. Ahead in ‘Edge Science’

A coalition of scientists and former intelligence officials is urging White House support for an initiative to advance U.S. research in ‘edge science’ and controversial fields like quantum computing and consciousness studies, The Debrief has learned.

As American advancements in technology and science rapidly evolve amid global competition, officials from the Executive Office of the President at the White House in Washington, D.C. recently met with a group of scientists and former intelligence officials advocating for a groundbreaking new initiative, Research and Innovation at the Scientific Edge (RISE), which aims to push the boundaries of scientific exploration.

RISE seeks support for projects dedicated to unconventional or cutting-edge research areas, such as quantum computing, consciousness studies, remote viewing, micro-psychokinesis (PK), time-agnostic cryptography, evidence-based tools informed by Indigenous knowledge, and potential applications for the study of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). RISE advocates argue that pursuing these fields is essential to maintain America’s competitive edge against rapidly advancing nations like China.

The initiative’s proponents further argue that the U.S. can overcome obstacles and stigma surrounding unconventional research with Chief Executive support, allowing the U.S. to develop game-changing advantages related to everything from national security to human resilience.

The organization consists of heavy hitters from not only the science community, but former internal government officials with a diversity of agency insights, including Neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, Ph.D.; Chitra Sivanandam from the National Security Institute; Daniel “Rags” Rasgdale, Ph.D., Former Assistant Director for Cyber in the Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (Research & Technology); and Carmen Medina, a retired Senior Federal Executive with more than three decades in the Intelligence Community, including work with the CIA.

“During my more than 30 years in national security, too many times we were surprised by things that others claimed could never happen,” Medina said in a recent statement announcing the initiative. “The best way to prevent that in the future in the science and technology domains is to have a dedicated program to scan the horizon for new discoveries.”

Discussions about foreign adversaries gaining a technological edge have recently intensified, with reports suggesting that China is investing significantly in fields like quantum computing, photonics, and brain-machine interfaces.

In July, the Chinese government announced an ambitious goal to set a new world standard for brain-machine interfaces. Parallel to these efforts, China has already invested $15.3 billion in quantum technology compared to the U.S.’s $3.7 billion, an investment gap that highlights the urgent need for the U.S. to prioritize advanced research.

Along similar lines, a February 2022 RAND Corporation report comparing the U.S. and Chinese industrial bases with relation to advancements in quantum technology emphasized that Chinese efforts are primarily concentrated in government-funded laboratories, some of which have made rapid progress.

Given such concerning advancements by adversary nations, a related area of focus for RISE also involves problems associated with over-classification within the U.S. intelligence community, which even U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines has said potentially “undermines critical democratic objectives” by limiting access to information that could help advance U.S. capabilities.

“Over-classification is a considerable burden,” said neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, Ph.D., in an email to The Debrief. “Even just bureaucratically, it weighs down government functioning. But beyond that, it has a dampening effect on science and technology ecosystems, any form of exploration, and democracy itself.”

Mossbridge told The Debrief that problems like over-classification are paralleled by separate issues that include stigmas that have long hampered serious studies into unconventional research topics.

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