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The anti-vaxxers and anti-climate change fanatics treat science like it’s a religious orthodoxy. Like they’re the Protestants fighting the Roman Catholic Church. Scientist here. That’s not how it works. Science is based on facts and evidence. Science doesn’t deal in proof; it deals in the weight of evidence. It certainly doesn’t rest on the assertions of long-dead iron age authors. Scientists are eager consumers of new evidence. We thrive on debate. Got data to disprove anthropogenic climate change? Share it. If you’re right, you’ll be in line for a Nobel Prize in Physics. Got evidence that mRNA vaccines kill? Share it. Show us where those hundreds of millions of bodies are buried. The trials would make the Nurenburg trials look like a picnic. In science, you gotta bring the evidence. Just being a podcaster with tens of thousands of subscribers doesn’t confer scientific authority.  Wanna play in the science sandbox? Bring the data. Science isn’t based on how noisy you are, it’s bas...

According to press reports, the Trump Administration is considering military attacks on Iran. This act of war, like all wars, is likely to have unintended consequences. The myth is that such foreign attacks free domestic opposition to topple the regime (see, e.g., the Bay of Pigs). More often, they only serve to rally citizen support for the home government.   Like nearly everything else the Trump regime undertakes, the US appropriation of Venezuelan oil also looks to have unintended consequences. As Iran’s government struggles under the weight of sanctions, high inflation, internal oppression, a weak economy and climate change, it looks like the diversion of Venezuelan oil could help bail out the ayatollahs, at least for the short term. “ Siyi Liu and Florence Tan at Reuters   report that since Trump plans on diverting 2 million barrels a day of Venezuelan petroleum to the United States, the former buyer, China, will need to replace it. Most likely, it will replace it from Ir...

Things were looking grim for federally funded science earlier this year: • Trump proposed an overall cut in science funding from $198 to $154 billion, a reduction of 22% that would have been the largest reduction in federal science spending since World War II: • Trump proposed that the National Science Foundation budget be slashed from $8.8 billion to $3.9 billion, a drop of 56%. Now, it looks like the House and Senate are converging on a far more modest reduction in science spending. “So far, the House’s moves on this year’s science budgeting add up to an estimated total of $185 billion -- close to the Senate figure of $188 billion, and putting the two chambers not far apart for negotiations on a final budget.” Of course, Trump could veto the budget, but that would almost certainly lead to another unpopular government shutdown. It should be mentioned that that the effects of even modest budget cuts are magnified by the effects of inflation. So, two cheers instead of three. St...

I grew up Roman Catholic at the time of Vatican II. I do remember Latin mass with the priest facing the altar, but only a few years later, the mass was being said in English and the priest was facing the congregation. My church held a series of presentations from representatives of other faiths: Protestant (I don’t recall which denominations), Jewish, Muslim and Hindu. Ecumenism and tolerance were in the air. I don’t recall any intolerant words among the Catholics I knew until I attended mass at UT-Knoxville. During mass, someone offered a prayer for the Catholic Church’s ministry to gays, and afterwards, a woman in the music group expressed outrage. I found this odd, since Jesus was silent on the topic of homosexuality. That marked the beginning of my awareness of an intolerant, right-wing strain of Catholicism. It only took another couple of years, early in grad school, when I finally accepted the fact that I didn’t really believe in Church teaching, I only was going to mass out of h...

  A pediatrician’s thoughts on the new vaccine schedule The other day, I was getting my semi-annual cleaning at the dentist office. When the hygienist asked what I did before retirement, I told her I was a medical school professor. That touched off a 15-minute interrogation about childhood vaccination. She has an infant daughter. While she’s gotten all the recommended vaccines, she was plainly distressed by the Trump Administration anti-vax agenda and all the bogus anti-vax propaganda on the internet. I tried to answer her questions and put her at ease about her embrace of modern medicine over conspiracy theory, and she thanked me. Although I know something about infectious disease, immunology and vaccines, I’m not an authority on vaccines and I’ve never practiced medicine. So I’ll hand the microphone to Ken Haller, MD, a friend and former colleague. “Really, how many kids does  #RFKjr  want to kill? It's a valid question considering his reckless death-dealing In the disa...

“In an  interview with The New York Times  published Thursday, Trump was asked whether there were any constraints on what he could do on the world stage, following the U.S. military operation that seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and amid renewed rhetoric from senior Trump administration officials about the United States potentially taking control of Greenland. ““Yeah, there is one thing,” Trump replied. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”   “I don’t need international law,” he added.” This appears to be a new and unfamiliar use of the word “morality.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-limits-to-his-power_n_6960aa14e4b088e2524e3775?origin=home-latest-news-unit