Science Controversies
Doomsday cult? Why we should be suspicious of end-of-the-world claims
Marc Andreessen is done listening to AI's doomsayers, and he wants everyone else to stop too. The venture capitalist behind ...
Viewpoint: Childhood deaths in dispute: Why the CDC vs Pennsylvania conflict over measles vaccines matters
If you’ve been following the dispute between Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy ...
AI is being used in dangerous bioscience experiments
Anthropic disrupted five attempts to misuse its Claude models for possible bioweapons development between December and August, including two cases ...
Viewpoint: Emotion-driven stories of doctors allegedly ignoring patient concerns are driving vaccine hesitancy
As long as there have been vaccines, there have been people who doubted their science and safety. Back in 19th-century ...
Bayer urges court to approve $7.25 billion Monsanto Roundup settlement that could limit its future liabilities
Bayer is asking a Missouri court to grant final approval to a $7.25 billion settlement covering roughly 65,000 lawsuits claiming ...
“Hit the brakes”: Anthropic warns the race to superintelligence could spawn internet-seizing AI swarms—and empower authoritarians. Here’s how to stop it.
I have worked on AI for the last twelve years because I believe it could dramatically raise the quality of ...
Leucovorin for autism: Prescriptions surged 700% after Trump endorsed “a random drug that probably doesn’t work”
Following a White House press conference suggesting leucovorin as a treatment for autism in September 2025, and despite a lack ...
It’s not 2020, but COVID is still a health threat
A mom in my local parent group posted last week asking whether anyone else had recently had COVID. She’d just ...
Facing ridicule, Hegseth rescinds Pentagon’s new testosterone mandates
The Pentagon abruptly yanked its new testosterone-screening rules just a day after posting them, as ABC News' Luis Martinez reports. Defense ...
Flattening culture and cognition: Is AI eroding our singularity?
AI chatbots aren't just imitating human creativity — they may be flattening it, according to a growing body of research ...
Con game: What happens when people are overly concerned they may be suckered
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine. Which would make you feel worse — losing $100 to a pickpocket ...
The promise and peril of gene editing
Gene-editing therapies are delivering real breakthroughs — and real tragedies. As bioethicists Emily Packard Dawson and Lainie Friedman Ross write ...
Viewpoint: Nazi chic? Trump’s Space Force crosses the line from militarism to parody
President Donald Trump's newly proposed Space Force uniform has sparked comparisons to Nazi military attire as the science fiction movie ...
Death of a Chinese girl in a gene-editing trial raises concerns about China’s rush to become a biomedical superpower
Six-year-old "Mei" had Snijders Blok-Campeau syndrome, a disorder diagnosed in just 237 people worldwide, marked by developmental delays and simple ...
Innovation vs. regulation? AI is revolutionizing biotechnology—but raising unintended risks and ethical concerns
The recent announcement of novel, viable viruses created by artificial intelligence (AI) was celebrated as a major advance in the ...
Who’s getting vaccinated? Scientific American ranks states by kindergarten vaccination rates
America's kindergartners are heading back to school less vaccinated than ever. New CDC data analyzed by Scientific American's Jackie Flynn Mogensen and Sanidhya ...
‘On the brink’: RFK Jr.’s HHS guts agency built to help fix America’s broken healthcare system
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has quietly gutted the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), ...
Elderly are increasingly befuddled by mass-produced AI health videos
A 68-year-old man in Gumi, South Korea, took a YouTube "doctor" at his word: "200g of blueberries has the same ...
Creepy and cool ways cloning may be used on animals and humans
Cloning is having a moment, and not for the reason you'd guess. A new piece from MIT Technology Review, by senior ...
‘The cure for measles is chicken soup and vitamin A’: Kennedy’s dangerous history of mocking vaccines
In 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stood on a Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, farm and told 1,500 Amish attendees that health ...
Viewpoint: CDC website is wrong. Yet another study shows MMR vaccines do not cause autism
A new study of more than 2.5 million children has delivered the same verdict researchers have reached for over two ...
Testosterone therapy is having a moment. The science hasn’t caught up.
The Pentagon is preparing to screen service members for low testosterone. The Trump administration wants the FDA to loosen who ...
The emerging Republican campaign to ban human-AI marriages
As reported by Jason Parham for WIRED, a small but growing number of Americans don't just chat with their AI companions—they ...
Backlash against AI data centers is a flashpoint in midterm elections
Data centers have quietly become the most contentious infrastructure fight in America, and the opposition is borrowing its playbook straight ...
Challenging common wisdom: Social media doesn’t much change what you believe
For years, social media companies have faced pressure from users and government watchdogs to stop misinformation from distorting elections, deepening ...
Viewpoint: Mel Gibson’s goofy endorsement of ivermectin as a cancer cure worries responsible physicians
The buzz started after actor Mel Gibson went on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast and said that his friends with ...
Chips, sodas and other ultraprocessed foods made with GMO corn or soybeans will have to carry bioengineered labels
[A federal] court’s ruling tees up a major rewrite of the U.S.’ bioengineered labeling rule, which for the first time ...
