Daily Human Digest
Every day, the staff of the Genetic Literacy Project scours the Web for stories on a range of human genetics issues, including gene editing, regulations and bioethics, gene therapy, epigenetics, personal genomics, evolution, ancestry and artificial intelligence. We publish excerpts of those stories and encourage our readers to visit the original publications for the complete stories.
Why smart people believe nonsense?
The intuitive explanation is straightforward: people believe fake stories because they lack knowledge or education. The “science literacy model,” which ...
Dictators are manufacturing visual misinformation about the Iran war
A deluge of misrepresented or fabricated videos has spread widely online since the Iran war began last weekend, fueled in part ...
RFK, Jr. and MAHA wellness influencers are wrong about seed oils. Here’s a guide
Are seed oils harmful? Social media trends and wellness influencers often say yes. Some restaurants now advertise seed oil–free menus. The ...
Viewpoint: Trump’s ‘fake news’ war on environmental science
President Trump, who frequently denounces accurate journalism he dislikes as “fake news,” is demanding that national parks, monuments, museums and ...
Case study on conspiracy theories in the digital age: Bill Gates and Covid
Long before COVID-19, [Bill] Gates was a leading voice in advocating for pandemic preparedness, funding vaccine research and infrastructure in ...
‘You only need to put a few knicks in the brain’: FDA is bizarrely demanding fake brain surgery to assess Huntington’s disease therapy
Katie Jackson desperately wants a new treatment for Huntington’s disease. Her husband died from the devastating brain disorder. And because ...
‘More conversational and informal’: AI written ‘fake news’ is perceived as more credible than human disinformation promoters
In 2017, ‘fake news’ was chosen as the new word of the year by the Language Council of Norway. But ...
RFK, Jr. getting heat from MAHA for bowing to Trump and ‘abandoning’ anti-vaccine dogma
On Mr. Kennedy’s watch, millions of children in recent months still received Covid shots, “the deadliest vaccine ever made,” as ...
Iranians have long fought disinformation by using the internet. Access is now at 1%
[A]s the US and Israel’s war on Iran intensifies, the conflict is adding a new dimension to what would otherwise be ...
Viewpoint — The Lancet on RFK, Jr.: A year of failure
... Politicians are known to break promises, but Kennedy's record, 1 year in, has been a failure by most measures, ...
Viewpoint—Challenging misinformation spreaders: Three prominent doctors speak out
Should doctors engage with “misinformation spreaders?” That’s the question Dr. Jeremy Faust asked vaccine promoter Dr. Paul Offit and social ...
Eerily human-like embryo models are being crafted from stem cells in laboratories, raising ethical concerns
Researchers are racing to engineer highly realistic human embryo models using stem cells in the lab. Some of the newest ...
Viewpoint: Trump derides climate research. Here’s how scientists are fighting back
As climate change has grown from a distant threat to a present danger, federal support for global change research also grew: from ...
Anti-aging peptide therapies don’t work despite touts by RFK, Jr., Jennifer Anison and Gwenyth Paltrow—and millions of their followers
Droves of wellness enthusiasts, biohackers, social-media influencers, and celebrities are injecting experimental “anti-aging” peptides in the hopes of boosting energy, ...
How U.S. global aid cuts are hurting science journalism
In 2024, US lawmakers earmarked $272 million in foreign assistance for ‘independent media and free flow of information’, according to ...
Stung by polls, Trump retreats from anti-vax rhetoric. Florida aligns with RFK, Jr. rejectionism
President Donald Trump is urging Republicans nationwide to move away from anti-vaccine messaging ahead of the Midterms. Still, in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is ...
Supreme Court sides with conservatives, requires schools to automatically notify parents if their children identify as transgender
The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for California schools to tell parents if their children identify as transgender without ...
As measles cases soar in South Carolina, RFK, Jr.’s disciples lobby to gut vaccine mandates
As South Carolina grapples with a measles outbreak that has infected nearly 1,000 people, groups with ties to the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy ...
Make Europe Healthy Again? MAHA movement crosses the Atlantic
... Robert Malone, a medical doctor and prominent adviser to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., spoke for more than 45 minutes ...
How to spot fake science news
How to choose your news video describes tips to choose news and separate face from opinion. Our Evaluate news information ...
Scientists take to TikTok to challenge wellness woo, vaccine denialism and climate denialism
One of Simon Clark’s most popular TikTok videos begins with him playing the part of a clueless climate contrarian. Adopting ...
Viewpoint: Is the air in America getting cleaner? Who knows, the EPA just junked the 55-year-old metric
Since the passage of the Clean Air Act, signed by Richard Nixon in 1970, the EPA has used a metric ...
RFK, Jr. is wrong—measles do not boost your immune system
Last year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., participated in an interview with Fox Nation during which he claimed ...
AI is accelerating climate disinformation. It’s going to get worse
Climate disinformation has evolved over the last decade. What was once straightforward climate denial has given way to more subtle ...
Menopause symptoms? Social media is rife with misinformation
A women's health expert is warning against taking advice from social media feeds when it comes to hormone therapy. The ...
Longevity cure? Don’t waste your money on NAD anti-aging supplements. They don’t work
Recent studies on aging have latched onto a “player” in longevity that had hitherto received little attention: nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, ...
Here’s how social media turbocharges the rising wave of health misinformation
Social media has turned everyone into a wellness expert. A gym selfie becomes proof of medical authority. A viral reel ...
