Tag: science

‘Science Is on Our Side’: Critics Fire Back at AP Report on ‘Wave of Anti-Science Bills’

The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement and allied organizations are supporting “a wave of anti-science bills” in state legislatures across the U.S. — and some of the organizations may be profiting from their MAHA advocacy, The Associated Press reported.

During the current legislative session, lawmakers have introduced more than 420 bills that “strip away public health protections,” including measures that target vaccines, milk safety and fluoride, according to the AP’s four reports, published Monday.

The bills, which the AP said stem from “conspiracy-driven ideas,” are supported by Trump administration officials, including U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom the AP accused of “elevating anti-science ideas nationally.”

Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), told The Defender that the AP’s characterization of these bills as “anti-science” is irresponsible. She said:

“AP irresponsibly characterizes anything that does not track the ‘scientific consensus’ as ‘anti-science.’ Science only develops by challenging consensus and dogma and marshalling empirical evidence to support the claims.

“AP parrots corporate science as if it were true, without checking or comparing the evidence of new claims against those of the so-called consensus. AP has devolved into pure propaganda.”

The AP said several organizations “connected to Kennedy,” including CHD, support these state-level legislative efforts. State legislatures have enacted or adopted about 30 of the bills in 12 states.

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“We’re Living Through A Coordinated Sabotage Of Truth-Seeking Institutions”

“A civilization is defined by its ability to discern truth from falsehood,” writes ‘Camus’ (@newstart_2024) in a post on X.

So, what happens when every apparatus built for that purpose is systematically dismantled?

Bret Weinstein issues a stark warning: we are living through a coordinated sabotage of our truth-seeking institutions.

This is not a minor critique; it is a fundamental attack on the very mechanisms of a functional society.

He argues that the assault is comprehensive:

  • The University System: Once a beacon of knowledge, now a source of unreliable research and curricula that teach verifiably false concepts as truth. The cornerstone of academic rigor has been cracked.
  • Regulatory Agencies: These bodies have been inverted. Their purpose is no longer to protect citizens from harm, but to protect the regulators and the system from the citizens they are meant to serve.
  • Scientific Integrity: We are left grappling in the dark on critical issues. Determining something as scientifically straightforward as the potential link between mRNA vaccines and turbo cancers should be a matter of transparent data. Instead, we are forced to rely on buried anecdotes and studies designed to fail.

This is the realization of René Descartes’ deepest fear – that the very foundations of what we believe to be factual cannot be trusted.

We have been severed from the tools of the Enlightenment, left in a precarious state where anecdote replaces evidence and ideology replaces inquiry.

We are now navigating a world without a compass.

The predicament is not just dangerous; it is existential.

The question is no longer just “what is true?” but “how do we find out, when the paths to truth have been deliberately destroyed?”

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Dinosaur egg unearthed in perfect condition after 70M years— and it could hold genetic material

It was in egg-cellent condition.

Argentine paleontologists found a real diamond in the rough after happening across a perfectly preserved 70-million-year-old dinosaur egg during an excavation.

“It was a complete and utter surprise,” Gonzalo Leonel Muñoz, a Vertebrate paleontologist at the Bernardo Rivadavia Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences, told National Geographic of the “spectacular” find. “‘It’s not uncommon to find dinosaur fossils, but the issue with eggs is that they are much less common.”

The team of paleontologists was reportedly conducting an excavation campaign in the fossil-rich region of Río Negro, when they stumbled across the primeval embryo.

While dinosaur eggs had been excavated in the area before, finding one this well-preserved was super rare.

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RFK Jr. Gave Ed Martin a List of 28 Scientific Studies that Defrauded the American Public – The Scientific Journals Have Been Put on Notice

On Wednesday morning James Lyons-Weiler joined Steve Bannon on The War Room to discuss the “weaponization of science” and its destructive effects on the American people.

James Lyons-Weiler is an American scientist and activist who operates the non-profit organization Institute for Pure and Applied Knoledge. Lyons-Weiler holds a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology.

Lyons-Weiler explained the epidemic of fraud in today’s scientific community.

James Lyons-Weilor: I know for a fact that if there’s a narrative that the former CDC or NIAID with Anthony Fauci had to have for public health. If you’re at a university and you actually went against the green, your university got a call and all of your NIH funding was threatened over, let’s say, HPV vaccine safety or MMR vaccine safety… There’s a mix of fraud in weaponized science and then use of science in a way that is just fooling the public, right?

Steve Bannon: Can you give me a specific example of either fraud or weaponization in this regards?

James Lyons-Weilor: Yeah, absolutely. So when the CDC whistleblower, who I’m sure you’ve heard about, William Thompson came out. He told Brian Hooker that a study that was published in 2004 by Frank DeStefano and a lot of people at the CDC actually buried data so the institutes of medicine could look at it, that the MMR vaccine did indeed seem to contribute to an increased risk of autism in African-American boys. And they manipulated the study by dropping everybody from the study that didn’t have a Georgia birth certificate just to reduce the sample size, which is the number of people in the study. So the statistics couldn’t pick it up. And that’s fraud. So the demarcation between science and fraud is something that’s been going on for decades, over 100 years…

…Coleen Boyle, Frank DeStefano, others. They were absolutely hired to go to work at CDC because they knew how to fix the science, the data, the fraud.

Lyons-Weilor says we are likely going to see prosecutions over the science fraud.

James Lyons-Weilor: I think that we’re going to probably see some prosecutions on the basis of defrauding the federal government. If I’m funded by the federal government to do science, to do research, and I falsify the data, I can be fined personally, and I can be banned from doing research for 10 years…

…Ed Martin. He was at the Association of Physicians and Surgeons meeting last month. I was there Yes. And he made an announcement that Mr. Kennedy, Secretary Kennedy, gave him a list of 28 studies with the journals and layperson’s summaries that actually they were wrongfully retracted and that those journals have been put on notice by the attorney general’s office. And I was asked by Secretary Kennedy to put that list together for him.

Lyons Weilor ended the interview suggesting that there is a government investigation into the individuals who scammed the American public and lied to them about the dangers of particular vaccines.

These deceitful officials may finally face justice for the dangerous policies they pushed on the American public.

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3I/ATLAS is Leaving a Mysterious “Hidden” Trail of Particles in Its Wake—Now Scientists Have a Plan to Intercept It

While comet 3I/ATLAS and its dusty tail remain far out of the reach of Earthly spacecraft, astronomers say the unusual interstellar object has produced a secondary “hidden” trail of charged particles marking its path through our solar system.

Now, a pair of scientists with the European Space Agency (ESA) has proposed a bold idea: it may be possible to sail a pair of NASA and ESA spacecraft through the mysterious visitor’s “ion tail.”

The idea was advanced by a pair of researchers in a new paper, which argues that the trajectory of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera spacecraft could allow them to pass directly through the trail of ions left in 3I/ATLAS’s wake.

Doing so might offer astronomers a rare opportunity to collect samples of material from other worlds, which the odd interstellar comet has ejected during its unprecedented visit.

Mission Into an Interstellar Object’s Odd “Ion Tail”

Between October 30 and November 6, 2025, the trajectories of the Europa Clipper and Hera space missions may briefly align with the ion trail left by 3I/ATLAS, allowing their instruments to collect information through detections of charged particles carried outward from the object by the solar wind.

“During the period 30 October – 6 November 2025, it is predicted that Europa Clipper will potentially be immersed within the ion tail of 3I/ATLAS, providing the opportunity to detect the signatures of an interstellar comet’s ion tail, write authors Samuel Grant and Geraint Jones in their paper, which appeared on the preprint arXiv.org server on October 15, 2025.

“Characteristic changes to the solar wind are also expected to be observed,” the authors say, which will likely include what they characterize as “a magnetic draping structure” potentially emanating from the comet.

Even prior to Europa Clipper’s potential passage through the mysterious ion tail of 3I/ATLAS, Grant and Jones believe that the ESA’s Hera spacecraft “will possibly be immersed within the ion tail of 3I/ATLAS during the period 25 October – 1 November 2025.”

Neither spacecraft will be endangered during their potential transit of the interstellar comet’s tail of charged particles, although the implications of doing so could end up being profound, in that they may offer the first opportunity to make indirect observations of material samples from another star system.

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The Brain’s Hidden Radar: How Theta Waves Sweep the Mind to Spot the Unexpected

New research from MIT suggests that brainwaves sweep across the cerebral cortex much like radar scans the sky, helping the brain detect unexpected visual anomalies.

Neuroscientists at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, led by Hio-Been Han in Professor Earl K. Miller’s lab, made the discovery while studying how the brain stores and processes visual information in the short term—a process known as visual working memory.

The Cortex

The cerebral cortex maps what the brain perceives in space. When we focus on our surroundings, theta-frequency waves sweep across them, searching for visual anomalies that might demand attention. Using animal subjects, the researchers sought to understand why performance in visual working memory tasks varies and why memory capacity appears limited.

Their work builds on previous studies identifying theta waves as being strongly correlated with attention—particularly during tasks requiring the brain to track multiple points at once. Miller’s earlier research supported the theory that different brainwave frequencies act as carriers for distinct forms of neural computation. The new study takes this a step further, revealing how those traveling waves may actively drive such computations.

“It shows that waves impact performance as they sweep across the surface of the cortex,” said Professor Miller, also of MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. “This raises the possibility that traveling waves are organizing, or even performing, neural computation.”

Brainwaves and Video Games

For their experiments, the team trained animals to play a simple video game: an array of colored squares appeared briefly on-screen, followed by a second array in which one square had changed color. The animals’ task was to look at the altered square as quickly as possible. Researchers tracked their eye movements and reaction times while recording brainwave activity in the frontal eye fields—a region of the cortex responsible for mapping visual information from the retina.

After analyzing hundreds of trials, the researchers found that both theta brainwave activity and the vertical location of the changed square were strongly correlated with how accurately and quickly the animals detected changes. Certain horizontal bands of the cortex appeared tuned to specific theta frequencies, meaning that a subject’s performance depended on whether the brain’s internal rhythm aligned with the position of the visual change.

“The optimal theta phase for behavior varied by retinotopic target location, progressing from the top to the bottom of the visual field,” the researchers wrote in Neuron. “This could be explained by a traveling wave of activity across the cortical surface during the memory delay.”

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“We Don’t Know Why It Happens”: Scientists Discover Bats That Glow an Eerie Green Under UV Light

University of Georgia (UGA) scientists studying North American bats have discovered six different species that glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light.

Although several animals and plant species possess the ability to generate their own light, called bioluminescence, and some mammals, like pocket gophers, also emit a glow under ultraviolet light, called photoluminescence, the team says this is the first known evidence of bats in this part of the world emitting light in any spectrum.

The research team that discovered the glowing bats says they are not sure if this trait, which has been passed down to several generations from one original species, offers a current survival advantage or is simply a genetic relic that once offered enough survival benefits to propagate over time since it first evolved, but is no longer needed.

“It’s cool, but we don’t know why it happens,” said Steven Castleberry, corresponding author of the study and a UGA professor in wildlife ecology and management. “What is the evolutionary or adaptive function? Does it actually serve a function for the bats?”

In a statement detailing the team’s work, the researchers note that the illuminating discovery was made when examining 60 bat specimens stored at the Georgia Museum of Natural History. Specifically, the team found that when they exposed the specimens to UV light, several of the bat’s wings and hind limbs produced an eerie but clearly visible glow.

To determine the nature of the emitted light, the team measured the unexplained photoluminescence with a light-measuring sensor and found that the unexpected glow was a shade of green. Although they couldn’t immediately determine its function, the team said its location and color are likely to rule out an environmental cause. Instead, they suggest the ability to glow in the dark is likely a genetic trait.

“It’s ultimately some sort of mutation, and then that mutation somehow gets perpetuated, usually because it’s beneficial,” Castleberry explained. “Individuals that have that trait tend to survive and reproduce better, so it gets more common in the population.”

“There is evidence that glowing is a common trait,” the researcher added.

The study, co-authored by UGA alumnus Santiago Perea and Warnell graduate student Daniel DeRose-Broecker, details six bat species that glow in the dark. The photoluminescent species highlighted in the study included big brown bats, eastern red bats, Seminole bats, southeastern myotis, gray bats, and Brazilian free-tailed bats.

Briana Roberson, lead author of the study and a UGA alumna, noted that it’s possible that the function of glowing in animals may be “more diverse” than researchers previously thought.

“Bats have very unique social ecology and sensory systems, and the characteristics we found in these species differ from many other observations in nocturnal mammals,” Roberson explained.

When discussing possible reasons for the genetic mutation that causes bats that glow in the dark, the team noted that the color emitted under UV light was similar between the sexes. This similarity makes it less likely that the glowing ability is for reproduction or species recognition.

Further analysis seemed to rule out the glow being used as camouflage. Instead, the research team suspects the photoluminescence may represent an inherited trait once used for communication. Whatever the reason for these bats’ unusual ability to glow in the dark, the team says it probably comes from a single mutation that was likely passed along for a currently unknown survival advantage.

“The data suggests that all these species of bats got it from a common ancestor. Castleberry said. “They didn’t come about this independently.”

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DARPA is Exploring Physics’ Strangest New Frontier to Develop the Next Generation of Defense Technology

In an effort to reshape the foundations of military computing and electronics, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is exploring one of the newest and strangest frontiers in physics: altermagnetism.

Recently, the agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO) issued a Request for Information (RFI) titled “Altermagnetism for Devices,” inviting researchers to help chart a course toward practical electronic and spintronic technologies that could harness this exotic magnetic behavior. 

Altermagnetism sounds like something pulled from science fiction. It combines properties of two long-known types of magnetism—ferromagnetism (the kind that drives refrigerator magnets) and antiferromagnetism (found in many metals but invisible to the naked eye). 

However, its true intrigue lies in what DARPA calls its “non-relativistic spin splitting,” a phenomenon that allows materials to act magnetically without producing any net magnetic field.

In practical terms, altermagnetic materials could enable circuits that manipulate the quantum spin of electrons without the interference, power drain, or sluggishness that plague conventional electronics.

The RFI notes altermagnetism “exhibits features of both ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism.” Like the latter, the magnetic spins inside these materials point in opposite directions, canceling each other out. However, unlike antiferromagnets, the spins are related by a rotational symmetry that still allows for energy band splitting, a property more like ferromagnets.

That seemingly small structural quirk could be transformative. The agency notes that altermagnets “might sidestep the major roadblocks ferromagnets and antiferromagnets face when designing spintronic devices.” This makes it possible to design “ultralow energy computation” technologies that vastly outperform the energy efficiency of traditional semiconductor architectures.

If successful, DARPA’s program could lay the groundwork for an entirely new category of computing systems that are smaller, faster, and orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than anything in existence today.

Spintronics, short for “spin electronics,” has already found its way into the real world. Modern hard drives, magnetic sensors, and emerging MRAM chips all rely on the quantum spin of electrons rather than their charge to read, store, or sense information. These technologies are fast, durable, and energy-efficient. However,  they still use spin only in a limited way.

DARPA is looking to do something more ambitious by using spin to not only store data but also compute with it. That would require materials capable of switching and controlling spin states as quickly and precisely as transistors manipulate charge. 

Current existing options fall short. Ferromagnets, though easy to magnetize, create interfering magnetic fields and switch too slowly for logic operations. Antiferromagnets avoid interference but lack the internal spin-splitting needed to manipulate spin-polarized currents.

However, altermagnets could change that balance. With zero net magnetization yet naturally spin-split electronic bands, they offer the tantalizing possibility of fast, interference-free spin-based computation. This breakthrough could finally make true spintronic processors possible.

The big problem? No one yet knows how to build a working device out of altermagnets. “While several device-switching proposals have been put forward, the ideas remain experimentally untested,” DARPA writes. 

Additionally, as DARPA notes, “characterization of altermagnetism is also a challenge.” The current “gold standards” for verifying altermagnetism rely on techniques usually reserved for large-scale physics facilities, and methods like spin-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy, muon spin rotation, and neutron scattering.

That means many potential research groups lack the infrastructure to explore these materials at all, let alone integrate them into working prototypes.

To change that, DARPA is soliciting “realistic, data- or theory-supported information on the types of improvements expected when using altermagnetism versus state-of-the-art computing architectures.” The agency also wants feedback on the fundamental limitations of such devices, and on the technical hurdles that must be overcome to make them practical.

This suggests DARPA isn’t merely chasing a curiosity—it’s laying the groundwork for a new national research initiative that could parallel other efforts like “INSPIRE” (Investigating how Neurological Systems Process Information in Reality), which seeks to understand how the human brain constructs reality. 

While DARPA’s notice doesn’t explicitly mention defense applications, the potential implications are clear. Altermagnetic devices could become the foundation for ultralow-power AI processors, cryptographic accelerators, or radiation-resistant electronics suitable for space and battlefield conditions.

The Department of Defense has long sought to reduce power requirements for deployed systems, whether in satellites, autonomous drones, or field-deployable sensors. Altermagnetism could offer a way to shrink computational energy costs by orders of magnitude, enabling persistent surveillance and decision-making at the edge without the need for constant resupply or cooling.

It could also revolutionize secure communications. Spintronic devices based on altermagnets might allow quantum-level control of electron spins, paving the way for tamper-resistant data encoding and secure hardware architectures that are inherently immune to many forms of cyberattack.

All of these potential defense applications could also ripple far beyond the battlefield, shaping the commercial technology sector in profound ways. For example, a study published earlier this year showed that the Pentagon’s drive to cut fuel costs during the height of the Global War on Terror inadvertently helped ignite America’s modern clean energy boom.

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Researchers consider infecting Americans with ticks to make them allergic to red meat

There have been countless examples of liberalism being a mental disorder.

Here is another one:

Two researchers from Western Michigan University have written a paper titled “Beneficial Bloodsucking,” which was published by the journal Bioethics this past July. (No, it isn’t about vampires.)

The paper argues that intentionally spreading alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a potentially life-threatening allergy to red meat, could be not only morally defensible, but perhaps even necessary, in order to reduce animal suffering and combat climate change.

Here are the authors, Parker Crutchfield and Blake Hereth, in their own words:

Because promoting tickborne AGS prevents something bad from happening, doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, and promotes virtuous action or character, it follows that promoting tickborne AGS is strongly pro tanto (‘to that extent’) morally obligatory.

Say what?

Enlisting genetically engineered ticks to curb the consumption of hamburgers, steaks, and other red meats violates the hell out of everyone’s rights.

It is a “bad” thing in and of itself.

Ticks can carry Lyme disease, as well, which also can be deadly.

Who do they think they are? They have no right to force others to give up red meat … or drive a Prius for that matter, whether it be via overt or covert acts.

As one might expect, there were numerous negative online comments, prompting Crutchfield to characterize the paper as “just a thought experiment and not an endorsement of spreading the allergy-causing ailment.” 

A thought experiment? The hell it was!

The authors actually wrote that promoting tickborne AGS is “morally obligatory.”

Those in the “Earth would be better off if there were nobody here but me” crowd are enough to make the rest of us sick.

Pointy-headed academic asshats who live in a lab and/or bubble have already caused far too much damage.

These two really ticked me off. In fact, I’m seeing red (meat).

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The Net Zero, extreme weather, climate science consensus is breaking apart as COP30 nears

The 30th Conference of the Parties on climate change (“COP30”) will promote its climate, energy and economic fantasies and demands from 10 to 21 November in Belém, Brazil. Some 70,000 grifter scientists, activists, politicians and journalists (plus observers) will attend.

Despite pre-summit hype and proclamations of hope, the summiteers are nervous.

Increasing evidence demonstrates that claims of a planetary crisis are rooted in meaningless computer models and fearmongering, not in actual science, data or fact.

More voters worldwide are rejecting and rebelling against Net Zero/anti-fossil fuel policies that have raised energy costs, destroyed jobs and industries, and crushed hopes and living standards.

Even the poorest US state (Mississippi) now boasts a higher GDP per capita than climate-obsessed Britain, where the average household price of electricity is US$0.35 per kilowatt hour (likely to rise to $0.55/kWh by 2027) compared to a 17.5¢ US average and 13.5¢ in Mississippi.

UK industries now pay the world’s highest electricity prices – 27% more than equally obsessed Germany – and conservative or alternative political parties in both countries are surging in popularity against the entrenched interests that imposed these destructive, job-killing, unsustainable policies.

The United States economy is outpacing Europe’s largely because the Trump Administration has re-embraced abundant, reliable, affordable fuels, petrochemicals and electricity, while Britain, Germany and most of Europe refuse to drill or frack for oil and gas or retreat from their unattainable climate pledges.

Trump agencies have slashed subsidies, favouritism and environmental fast-tracks for wind and solar projects – and clawed back billions of dollars that the Biden Administration had given to “green energy” and “climate justice” groups during its last weeks in office.

President Trump again withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement, may not let US representatives participate in COP30 and is unlikely to allow US taxpayer money to flow into UN slush funds for climate “reparations,” “resilience” or “losses and damages.”

Mr. Trump also excoriated Net Zero policies before the UN General Assembly, calling them a “green scam” concocted by “stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success.” UN member states chastened by the Russia-Ukraine war, growing dependence on Russian gas and Chinese minerals and wind turbines, and their own economic demise were hard-pressed to disagree. Developing countries also paid attention.

Meanwhile, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance – beloved by eco-imperialists for opposing and preventing financing for fossil fuel projects in Africa and around the world – has ceased all operations, following a mass exodus by its US, Canadian, British and Swiss bank members.

“The 2.1 billion humans who suffer in abject energy poverty” and families of “the 16.5 million loved ones” who died from “indoor air pollution during the 5-1/2 years the Alliance was working” can now breathe sighs of relief, said energy realist and human rights campaigner Ryan Zorn.

The EU Parliament agreed to roll back multiple environmentalist mandates and regulations on businesses, in what Politico calls an “emerging rightward rupture that is reshaping European policymaking.”

Criticism of junk climate and energy science in the UN, US and other government and academic institutions has become frequent and furious since President Trump was re-elected in November 2024, and the shackles of government, media, social media and search-engine censorship have been loosened.

The world is rapidly learning about wind and solar power shortcomings; their decimation of raptors and other wildlife; the massive mining and pollution involved in manufacturing these “clean, green” energy systems; the millions of acres of farm, habitat and scenic lands impacted by them; the trillion-dollar costs of battery and gas backup systems for windless and sunless periods; and the economic devastation that climate-centric policies are inflicting worldwide.

Developed and developing nations alike are beginning to realise they have been asked to destroy the world with wind-solar-battery systems that can never meet growing electricity demands – to save it from climate crises that exist only in computer models and fevered imaginations.

The Net Zero, extreme weather, climate science consensus is breaking apart as COP30 nears. 

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