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The Office of Management and Budget is proposing a set of new rules that would put OMB officials in charge of all federal scientific grants, allowing them to overrule peer review panels. They can also cancel grants at any time for essentially any reason. This would end the current grant review mechanism and turn it into a kind of political patronage system. Any research or research institutions could immediately be cut off if they offend the Administration.  What’s being proposed here reminds me of political commissars of Stalin's USSR. In science, it brought about the imprisonment or death of eminent geneticists and the rise of Lysenkoism, which set Soviet agriculture back decades. For someone who grew up during the Cold War, the idea a Republican administration would embrace the practices of communism is a breathtaking inversion.   Or consider what happened to German and Italian physics during fascism. Many of the world’s best fled to the West and served in the development o...

The world is a much-changed place since I was born. While that hasn’t always been for the better, there are technologies that I have embraced enthusiastically and wouldn’t want to retreat from: Word processing on computer: I learned touch typing on a typewriter. My parents gave me a portable manual typewriter as a high school graduation present. I used it all through college and made a little pocket change typing up assignments for friends. As I was finishing my PhD, my mentor got an Apple II, and I learned word processing with WordStar. Flash forward, and I write everything except grocery lists and checks using my laptop. I compose directly at the keyboard, without the intermediation of stylus and paper.  I would hate to go back to typewriters and paper. Calculators: I learned the basics of the slide rule in high school, but midway through my freshman year in college, cheap hand-held calculators appeared. I did my regressions for my dissertation on a hand-held calculator I bo...

The idea of a robotaxi appeals to me. The day is not far off when someone—my wife, my daughter—will tell me I’m no longer safe behind the wheel. It would certainly be handy to call or text a robotaxi to drive to the grocery store, a show or a dentist appointment. So is that happening? “It turns out not even the people building Tesla’s self-driving tech trust Elon Musk’s extravagant claims about the company’s autonomous vehicles. “New reporting by Reuters interviewed nine former data labelers and a former self-driving engineer about their take on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode. The results were overwhelmingly negative, with seven of the data specialists admitting they wouldn’t ride in a Tesla in FSD.” *snip* “ In recent months, Tesla operating on FSD move have driven riders   into lakes ,   off bridges , and even into the path of   oncoming trains   — and those are just the incidents that get media exposure. Given these insiders’ direct access to terabytes’ worth of p...

We should be clear: Bari Weiss is murdering 60 Minutes. She is doing so not out of incompetence or foolishness, but with malice aforethought. She is doing it at the behest of her corporate patron, because while she may cause CBS News to lose millions of dollars, her stroking of Trump will gain David Ellison billions of dollars.   That’s what is happening. And anyone who pretends that this is about “free speech,” or adapting to an age of “new media,” or confronting “dangerous ideas,” or reclaiming some “forgotten audience” is selling you something.   ~Jonathan V. Last

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has claimed that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is ending contracts for mRNA vaccine development, citing concerns that the technology may pose “more risks than benefits.” According to Kennedy Jr., HHS’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) reviewed 22 mRNA vaccine projects — most focused on flu and COVID — and began canceling them. He argued that mRNA vaccines only code for a small portion of viral proteins, usually a single antigen. This makes them vulnerable to mutations, which can render the vaccine less effective. Kennedy Jr. pointed to the Omicron variant as an example, noting that millions contracted it despite vaccination. He further warned that this dynamic could drive antigenic shift, encouraging new mutations and potentially prolonging pandemics. Look, the point of the COVID vaccine is to keep you out of the ED and the morgue. Nobody said it *prevents* infection. Yes, viruses evolve. Some, like flu virus ...

First the disclaimers: I’m a PhD scientist with a well-trained crap detector. And I was a medical school (allopathic medicine) professor for 37 years. While I’ve never practiced medicine, I have a pretty deep understanding of evidence-based medicine. “At a time when people are increasingly concerned about drug side effects, some consider acupuncture an attractive non-medication option. Unfortunately, many studies show that the potential benefits of acupuncture are short-lived. In my experience, I put acupuncture, massage, and chiropractic interventions in the same bucket. You may feel better for a day or two, but there is limited lasting improvement.” It’s not like acupuncture hadn’t been examined by the same rigorous scientific studies that drug and vaccines are subject to. “In one study, 249 people with migraines occurring two to eight times per month received either acupuncture, sham (fake/placebo) acupuncture, or were put on an acupuncture waiting list. The two treatment groups rec...