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The White House Releases its 2026 Budget Request for NASA. Cuts to SLS, Gateway and Orion

Regions from Ukraine to Mongolia are seeing a spike in paired heatwave-drought events as climate change alters weather patterns across the planet

As the number of electric vehicles increases, their increased demand could strain the grid – but small financial incentives convinced drivers to ease that demand by charging during off-peak hours

Scientists have created an antivenom that has shown promise against some of the world's deadliest snakes after collecting antibodies from a hyperimmune man who exposed himself to their toxins

As climate change pushes summer temperatures to new highs, energy infrastructure such as cabling and transformers will struggle to cope

Has your dinner time conversations been dragging a bit of late? Feel like raising its knowledge level to a bit higher than the usual synopsis of the most recent reality TV show? Then take the challenge presented by Sean Carroll in his book "The Biggest Ideas in the Universe – Space, Time and Motion". Using this, your conversation might soon be sparkling with grand thoughts about modern physics, time travel, going faster than light and the curvature of the universe.

A watched pot never boils, goes the old saying, but many of us have at least kept an eye on the pot, waiting for the bubbling to start. It's satisfying to finally see the rolling boil, behind which complex physical mechanisms are at play. When this happens, the bubbles that form continuously change in shape and size. These dynamic movements influence the surrounding fluid flow, thereby affecting the efficiency of heat transfer from the heat source to the water. Manipulating small amounts of liquid at high speeds and frequencies is essential for processing large numbers of samples in medical and chemical fields, such as in cell sorting. Microbubble vibrations can create flows and sound waves, aiding in liquid manipulation. However, the collective behavior and interactions of multiple bubbles is poorly understood, so their applications have been limited.

While dolphins are known to transmit information in their whistles, until now it hasn't been clear whether the marine mammals used the same sounds to indicate a shared understanding of a concept

‘Shocking’ results from a major astronomical study have raised doubts about the standard model of cosmology, forcing scientists to consider new ways of understanding dark energy and gravity

Our Medical Establishment stood up for the right of anti-vaxxers to die in droves. They reject your bodily autonomy and medical freedom.

The post How Our Medical Establishment Went From”Don’t Make Anyone Get a Vaccine” to “Don’t Let Anyone Get a Vaccine” first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

The Juno spacecraft circling in Jovian space is the planetary science gift that just keeps on giving. Although it's spending a lot of time in the strong (and damaging) Jovian radiation belts, the spacecraft's instruments are hanging in there quite well. In the process, they're peering into Jupiter's cloud tops and looking beneath the surface of the volcanic moon Io.

We have known for years that the gut microbiome can alter brain function, but now research in mice is suggesting that the opposite is also true – that the brain modifies gut bacteria

While investigating Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) for the UK Ministry of Defence, I was exposed to conspiracy theories that allege that the government is covering up proof of an alien presence. I’ve since become an occasional media commentator on conspiracy theories and have even been the subject of one myself, with some people claiming that I’m still secretly working for the government on the UAP issue. Most conspiracy theories are binary: we either did or didn’t go to the moon; Lee Harvey Oswald either did or didn’t act alone; 9/11 either was or wasn’t an inside job—and if it was an inside job, the choice is binary again: The Government Made It Happen or The Government Let It Happen.

The Covid pandemic generated multiple conspiracy theories, but the fact that most have been proven to be false shouldn’t lead people to conclude that what might be termed “the official narrative” about Covid is necessarily true in all aspects. It wasn’t.

A flawed “everyone’s at risk” narrative was promoted.

Covid wasn’t a “plandemic” orchestrated by nefarious Deep State players. Neither did the vaccines contain nanobots activated by 5G phone signals. But not everything we were told about Covid was correct: lockdowns and cloth masks didn’t have anywhere near the impact on slowing community spread or lowering mortality rates that was originally hoped for and subsequently claimed. Some studies now suggest the benefits were statistically insignificant. The vaccines didn’t stop transmission. And in one staggering admission—written by a New York Times journalist, no less!—a child was statistically more likely to die in a car accident on the way to school, than of Covid caught at school: “Severe versions of Covid, including long Covid, are extremely rare in children. For them, the virus resembles a typical flu. Children face more risk from car rides than Covid.”

A flawed “everyone’s at risk” narrative was promoted, in a situation where elderly people and others with comorbidities were vastly more likely to have serious health outcomes. The benefits of natural immunity were downplayed, and obesity as a risk factor was hardly discussed, perhaps because of politically correct sensitivities about fat-shaming. Partly, all this was because Covid was new, with key pieces of the puzzle unknown—especially in the early days of the pandemic. Later, it reflected the difficulty of interpreting statistics and analyzing data, especially where there were different ways of doing so, in different countries, or at different times. The debate over whether someone died of Covid (i.e., the virus killed them) or died with Covid (they died of some other cause and happened to be infected with the virus) is one example of this.

Obesity as a risk factor was hardly discussed, perhaps because of politically correct sensitivities about fat-shaming.

Nothing exemplifies the more nuanced nature of Covid conspiracy theories than the lab leak debate. Was Covid a case of zoonotic emergence, centered on a wet market in Wuhan, or an accident involving the Wuhan Institute of Virology? According to previous assessments by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, some parts of the U.S. Intelligence community favored one theory, some favored the other, while some were undecided. Then, on April 18, 2025,  www.covid.gov and www.covidtests.gov were both redirected to a new White House website titled “Lab Leak: The True Origins of Covid-19.”

Screenshot of the White House webpage: “Lab Leak: The True Origins of Covid-19.”

Particularly in the early days of the pandemic, the lab leak hypothesis was portrayed as a crazy conspiracy theory and was seen by many as being a rightwing dog whistle, along with any mention of Sweden’s more laissez-faire policies, the Danish Mask Study, and much more besides. This was part of the wider politicization of the virus, or rather, the official response to the virus. Broadly speaking, in the first weeks of the pandemic the American Left downplayed it, while the Right rang alarm bells, a trend that soon reversed entirely—ultimately the Left believed the pandemic was more serious than did the Right, and the Left supported the various mandates to a greater extent than the Right.

Should we err on the side of caution, especially in the beginning when we just don’t know, but do know the history of earlier pandemics?

Defining a conspiracy theory is tricky, and we shouldn’t conflate an elaborately constructed false narrative with a disputed fact. But when the line can be blurred, and when “conspiracy theorist” is itself sometimes used as a pejorative, the polarized debate over Covid can be tricky to navigate. “Covid vaccines didn't work” is false, but “Covid vaccines didn’t stop transmission, so mandating them, especially for those at little risk, was unnecessary” is true. Then again, if there’s any doubt at the time, why not err on the side of caution? Vaccination has proven to be among the most successful methods of modern medicine and much, much cheaper and less disruptive than shutdowns. “Masks didn’t work” is false, but “cloth masks generally had only a statistically insignificant health benefit” when deployed at scale is true. Then again, when in doubt, should we err on the side of caution, especially in the beginning when we just don’t know, but do know the history of earlier pandemics?

Why does any of this matter, especially as the pandemic fades into the rearview mirror? First, the truth is important, and we owe it to ourselves and to posterity to tell as full and accurate a story as possible, especially about such a major, impactful event. Secondly, we need to have a conversation about the failed response to Covid because not only were the various mandates on lockdowns, masks, vaccines and school closures much less effective than claimed, but also, many of those who questioned governmental and institutional narratives were demonized.

Authorities bet the farm on measures that were both divisive—mandates are almost always going to fall into this category—and ineffective.

On social media, dissenting voices were deplatformed or shadow-banned (a user’s content is made less visible or even hidden from others without the user being explicitly banned, or notified, or even aware that it has happened). So we never had an open and honest debate about possible alternative strategies, such as the Great Barrington Declaration authored by the Stanford physician-scientist and current NIH director Jay Bhattacharya. The authorities bet the farm on measures that were both divisive—mandates are almost always going to fall into this category—and ineffective. Dying on the hill of dragging traumatized 2-year old children off airplanes because they couldn’t keep a mask on was bizarre and even perverse, as was closing playgrounds, hiking trails, and beaches, and even the risibly ridiculous arresting of a lone paddleboarder off the coast of Malibu. Across the board, civil liberties were set back for years, while the consequences of school closures—both in terms of education and social development—have yet to be properly assessed (although preliminary studies indicate that students may be at least one year behind where they should be). And what about the level of preparedness of hospitals and medical equipment manufacturers? We need to talk about all this.

The next pandemic may have an attack rate and a case fatality ratio that would make Covid look like, well, the flu.

But most of all, this matters because of the next pandemic. It may be bird flu, the Nipah virus or mpox. Alternatively, it’ll be a Disease X that comes suddenly and unexpectedly from left field. But it’s inevitable, and the next pandemic may have an attack rate and a case fatality ratio that would make Covid look like, well, the flu. Such a pandemic would need a “we’re all in this together” response, just when half the country would regard such a soundbite as an Orwellian reminder of what many refer to as “Covid tyranny.” Trust in the public health system, and many other institutions, is at an all-time low. We need to depoliticize healthcare and ensure that never again do people misappropriate science by appealing to it but not following it (“masks and lockdowns, except for mass BLM protests”). We need a data-led approach and not a dogma-led one.

Having a full, robust and open national conversation about Covid—with accountability and apologies where necessary—is vital. That’s because identifying the mistakes and learning the lessons of the failed response to the last pandemic is essential in preparing to combat the next one.

Nick Pope’s new documentary film on which this essay is based is Apocalypse Covid. Watch the trailer here and the full film here.

A team has discovered how certain bacteria breathe by generating electricity, using a natural process that pushes electrons into their surroundings instead of breathing on oxygen. The findings could enable new developments in clean energy and industrial biotechnology.

As young stars form, they exert a powerful influence on their surroundings and create complex interactions between them and their environments. As they gobble up gas and dust, they generate a rotating disk of material. This protoplanetary disk is where planets form, and new research shows that stars can feed too quickly and end up regurgitating material back into the disk.

A different kind of human cell division could improve our understanding of cancer and help us grow specific tissues

A team of researchers led by the Los Alamos National Laboratory examined the possibility that the jets coming from collapsing stars could be responsible for creating the heaviest elements in the Universe.

This article from Skeptic Magazine notes how the calendar of the indigenous Māori people became a craze in New Zealand, taking over and regulating many human activities when there’s no evidence that the calendar is useful for those purposes. Click on the title to read; excerpts are indented:

The article begins by noting the unfair denigration that the Māori and their culture received after the British colonized the islands. That culture is is, says Bartholomew (an “Honorary Senior Lecturer in Psychological Medicine at the University of Auckland,” and a prolific author), a rich culture that makes empirical claims, some of which can be verified by modern science. But Bartholomew’s thesis is that the indigenous (lunar) calendar, while having some minimal value in predicting regular events, is “not science.” That disparity was, of course, was the subject of the infamous 2021 Listener letter that got its Auckland University authors unfairly demonized, with some suffering professional consequences.

Māori knowledge often holds great spiritual significance and should be respected. Like all indigenous knowledge, it contains valuable wisdom obtained over millennia, and while it contains some ideas that can be tested and replicated, it is not the same as science.

. . . we should [not] discount the significance of indigenous knowledge—but these two systems of looking at the world operate in different domains. As much as indigenous knowledge deserves our respect, we should not become so enamoured with it that we give it the same weight as scientific knowledge.

And onto the Calendar Craze:

Infatuation with indigenous knowledge and the fear of criticising claims surrounding it has infiltrated many of the country’s key institutions, from the health and education systems to the mainstream media. The result has been a proliferation of pseudoscience. There is no better example of just how extreme the situation has become than the craze over the Māori Lunar Calendar. Its rise is a direct result of what can happen when political activism enters the scientific arena and affects policymaking. Interest in the Calendar began to gain traction in late 2017.

You can see how the calendar is constructed here, and the Skeptic article also gives a diagram.  The figure below from the article shows how its usage in the news, from the Dow Jones Factiva database, has changed since 2016. Mentions been decreasing over the last two years, but they’re still much, much more numerous than in 2016:

As the author notes, the calendar was useful to the Māori for tracking the seasons in a way that could help the locals schedule hunting, fishing, and planting.  But it’s gone far beyond that:

Two studies have shown a slight increase in fish catch using the Calendar. However, there is no support for the belief that lunar phases influence human health and behavior, plant growth, or the weather. Despite this, government ministries began providing online materials that feature an array of claims about the moon’s impact on human affairs. Fearful of causing offense by publicly criticizing Māori knowledge, the scientific position was usually nowhere to be found.

And so, as happens in New Zealand, the calendar took off as a way to schedule all kinds of things for which it wasn’t appropriate. The ways it’s been used are amazing:

Since [2017], many Kiwis have been led to believe that it can impact everything from horticulture to health to human behavior. The problem is that the science is lacking, but because of the ugly history of the mistreatment of the Māori people, public institutions are afraid to criticize or even take issue anything to do with Māori culture. Consider, for example, media coverage. Between 2020 and 2024, there were no less than 853 articles that mention “maramataka”—the Māori word for the Calendar which translates to “the turning of the moon.” After reading through each text, I was unable to identify a single skeptical article. Many openly gush about the wonders of the Calendar, and gave no hint that it has little scientific backing.

. . . Soon primary and secondary schools began holding workshops to familiarize staff with the Calendar and how to teach it. These materials were confusing for students and teachers alike because most were breathtakingly uncritical and there was an implication that it was all backed by science. Before long, teachers began consulting the maramataka to determine which days were best to conduct assessments, which days were optimal for sporting activities, and which days were aligned with “calmer activities at times of lower energy phases.” Others used it to predict days when problem students were more likely to misbehave.

As one primary teacher observed: “If it’s a low energy day, I might not test that week. We’ll do meditation, mirimiri (massage). I slowly build their learning up, and by the time of high energy days we know the kids will be energetic. You’re not fighting with the children, it’s a win-win, for both the children and myself. Your outcomes are better. The link between the Calendar and human behavior was even promoted by one of the country’s largest education unions.  Some teachers and government officials began scheduling meetings on days deemed less likely to trigger conflict, while some media outlets began publishing what were essentially horoscopes under the guise of ‘ancient Māori knowledge.

The Calendar also gained widespread popularity among the public as many Kiwis began using online apps and visiting the homepages of maramataka enthusiasts to guide their daily activities. In 2022, a Māori psychiatrist published a popular book on how to navigate the fluctuating energy levels of Hina—the moon goddess. In Wawata Moon Dreaming, Dr. Hinemoa Elder advises that during the Tamatea Kai-ariki phase people should: “Be wary of destructive energies,” while the Māwharu phase is said to be a time of “female sexual energy … and great sex.” Elder is one of many “maramataka whisperers” who have popped up across the country.

The calendar, while having these more or less frivolous uses, still demonstrates the unwarranted fealty that Kiwis, whether Māori or descendants of Europeans, pay to indigenous “ways of knowing,” for you can well suffer professionally if you push back on them. In fact, the author, who wrote a book on this topic, was discouraged from writing it because Māori claim that they have “control over their own data.” This is a common claim by indigenous people, whether in New Zealand or North America, but it makes their data totally unscientific—off limits to those who wish to analyze or replicate it.

Further, some uses are not so frivolous. The author notes that people have managed contraception using the calendar, and even used it to discontinue medication for bipolar disorder. Again, remember that there is no evidence that the calendar has any connection with human behavior, health, or well being.

Once again we see that indigenous “ways of knowing” may be useful in conveying a bit of observational knowledge useful to locals, but have now been appropriated to a state that is coequal to science. (The debate still continues in New Zealand about whether Mātauranga Māori, the sum of indigenous “ways of knowing” (and which also includes religion, ethics, superstition, legend, and other non-science stuff), should be taught in science classes. That is a very bad idea, and if really implemented would ruin science in New Zealand.  Adopting the lunar calendar as having epistemic value would be part of this degradation.

Bartholomew finishes this way, and I hope he doesn’t get fired for saying stuff like this—for these are firing words!

This is a reminder of just how extreme attempts to protect indigenous knowledge have become in New Zealand. It is a dangerous world where subjective truths are given equal standing with science under the guise of relativism, blurring the line between fact and fiction. It is a world where group identity and indigenous rights are often given priority over empirical evidence. The assertion that forms of “ancient knowledge” such as the Calendar, cannot be subjected to scientific scrutiny as it has protected cultural status, undermines the very foundations of scientific inquiry. The expectation that indigenous representatives must serve as gatekeepers who must give their consent before someone can engage in research on certain topics is troubling. The notion that only indigenous people can decide which topics are acceptable to research undermines intellectual freedom and stifles academic inquiry.

While indigenous knowledge deserves our respect, its uncritical introduction into New Zealand schools and health institutions is worrisome and should serve as a warning to other countries. When cultural beliefs are given parity with science, it jeopardizes public trust in scientific institutions and can foster misinformation, especially in areas such as public health, where the stakes are especially high.

Respect for indigenous people is not only fine, but is proper and moral. But it should not extend to giving scientific credibility to untested claims simply because they are part of “traditional knowledge.”

A mathematician has built an algebraic solution to an equation that was once believed impossible to solve.