Science Controversies
‘Nicotine-free generation’: Should the U.S. emulate Britain and ban all nicotine products, from cigarettes to vapes?
The United Kingdom just adopted a tobacco-free generation law. Retailers can still sell tobacco to existing customers, but they will never ...
Some plants can poison you. So how did humans figure out what is safe to eat?
Have you ever eaten a green potato, or a bunch of rhubarb leaves? Hopefully not, because these two plant parts ...
‘Protecting religious liberty and parental authority’: Challenging expert guidance, Trump signs off on Kennedy’s gutting of childhood vaccine schedule
President Trump is signing off on a decision from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) earlier this year ...
Viewpoint: Who and what’s to blame for the surge in vaccine-preventable diseases?
What causes an epidemic to spread? Don’t underestimate the power of rhetoric and oratory by politicians. About 1,500 measles cases ...
Cases of brain inflammation surge as U.S. measles pandemic approaches 2000
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today confirmed 31 new measles cases in a nationwide outbreak that has ...
‘You don’t understand Tolkien’: Skeptic Pope trolls tech giants about the exaggerated, risk-less benefits of AI
[T]he Tolkien nod is particularly salient given some backward interpretations of Middle-earth mythology by right-wing billionaires like Peter Thiel and ...
Viewpoint: Double standard—Why does the wellness industry get a free pass while Big Healthcare is treated as morally suspect?
Despite public opinion, the wellness industry is profoundly and almost absurdly commercial. It sells, among its products and services, supplements, ...
Viewpoint—N.A.D.+: Why Gwenyth Paltrow’s heralded anti-aging supplement doesn’t work
Gwyneth Paltrow has tried it. So have Kendall Jenner and Hailey Bieber. ... Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or N.A.D.+, has been ...
Viewpoint: Why the hyper-promoted doping ‘enhanced games’ pseudo Olympics flopped
Testosterone, anabolic steroids, stimulants, metabolic modulators and a grabbag of peptides were just some elements of the “stacks” that these ...
Challenging anti-GMO disinformation: Why genetically-tweaked crops offer bushels of benefits
GMOs are one of the most controversial topics within our global food system. There are many misconceptions regarding what a GMO ...
Viewpoint—The end of ‘ivory tower science’: What does that even mean, and what comes next
We built American science like a skyscraper — centralized, concentrated, dependent on a single foundation. More than half of university research budgets ...
In first of more than 1300 cases, Google, Meta, and TikTok to pay $27 million to settle school district lawsuit claiming their products are dangerously addictive
A Kentucky school district reached a $27 million settlement with the owners of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube. Breathitt ...
Limiting gender affirming interventions: Trump administration targets Texas even though it already bans youth access
Since early 2025, the Trump Administration has sought to limit youth access to gender-affirming care, taking a comprehensive approach to ...
Viewpoint: Who is RFK, Jr.’s newly-appointed CDC senior counselor, Sara Brenner — Vaccine skeptic and self-proclaimed “MAHA mom”
When President Trump named a new leadership team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention two weeks ago, public ...
How Trump gutted Ebola research
As the world struggles to contain the rapidly growing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri province, a ...
Viewpoint: Greenpeace and poison: How environmental advocacy groups rely on compliant (and often ignorant) journalists to spread disinformation and spark litigation
Here we go again. Greenpeace released a report recently entitled Our Poisoned Land claiming 102 individual pesticides have been used across seven ...
Viewpoint: Can mRNA research survive the Trump administration?
In December 2020, mRNA vaccines leapt into the limelight as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, millions of ...
RFK, Jr.’s delusion: Anti-depressants are not harder to quit than heroin—but that does not mean tapering off is easy
There is a legitimate clinical problem at the center of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s initiative to help Americans ...
Viewpoint: Is Trump ‘vice-signaling’ to gain the support of vape users?
In December of 2019, Mitch Zeller, who at the time ran the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, got an urgent phone call from ...
Viewpoint: Scientists recently revised downward the likelihood of catastrophic global warming. Reassured? You shouldn’t be.
Even if global warming does not exceed two degrees, it could lead to more serious consequences than expected. This is ...
Viewpoint: There are more than 1,000 chemicals in a cup of coffee—including many substances that can cause cancer. Why isn’t it banned?
We live in a complex chemical landscape in which risks are notoriously difficult to evaluate. It can be pretty hairy ...
Can ‘Social Stress Indicators’ help contain social media misfluencers?
Misleading information online is often treated as a technical glitch, something that better algorithms or stricter moderation can fix. But research points ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr.’s FDA is on a screaming downward path—and why it may never recover
Whether you liked [Marty] Makary or not ..., the purge or whatever this was is not somehow going to miraculously ...
Viewpoint: Why the EPA mismeasures cancer risk of chemicals and what should be done to fix it
Every administration says it prioritizes getting the science right, and our current Administration has emphasized using “gold-standard science” as the ...
‘It’s not super useful’: As wariness about AI grows, Trump proposes rollback of healthcare safeguards
Paul Boyer, a psychotherapist for Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California, is experiencing the AI revolution firsthand. He’s a little underwhelmed ...
Facts & Fallacies Podcast: Nicotine vaping—public health miracle, or risk to children? Professor Cliff Douglas
E-cigarettes burst onto the scene nearly 20 years, disrupting the cigarette industry and leaving anti-smoking advocates uncertain about how to ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr.’s ‘sadistic’ solution to autism, depression, and other ills looks a lot like prison camp
... [Robert F. Kennedy] has a long history of talking about people on SSRIs in dehumanizing, often racist language that ...
