Science Controversies
COVID is outsmarting our immune systems — and it’s rendering essential monoclonal antibody treatments less effective
The use of monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of COVID gained national and international attention last October, when President Trump ...
From smelly roadside nuisance to key biofuel crop? How gene editing could transform stinkweed into an essential canola alternative
Botanists, businessmen, farmers and federal lawmakers, they all gathered to peer at the waist-high plant usually considered a pest and ...
Viewpoint: Patenting human embryo gene editing? Two rival universities push the ethical and legal debate
Two prominent groups of scientists, and two major American universities, are trying to patent methods for editing human embryos, with ...
Viewpoint: How right wingers are pumping up the Wuhan lab leak theory — and why it’s still an unlikely explanation for COVID
Even as far back as February 2020, I noted that antivaxxer James Lyons-Weiler was falsely claiming that he had “broken ...
Top US scientists concluded last spring that the Wuhan COVID lab leak theory is plausible and should be investigated, leaked classified documents show
A report on the origins of Covid-19 by a U.S. government national laboratory concluded that the hypothesis claiming the virus ...
Infographic: From the Spanish flu to COVID — How long has it taken to develop vaccines?
In the graphic [below], we explore how long it has historically taken to bring a vaccine to market during pandemics ...
‘COVID is well on its way to becoming endemic’: With hopes for herd immunity fading, living with the coronavirus could be long term reality
Experts now say [SARS-CoV-2] is changing too quickly, new more contagious variants are spreading too easily and vaccinations are happening ...
Most grade schools require all students to show proof of diphtheria, tetanus, MMR and other vaccines. Will they mandate COVID shots as well?
Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine was authorized for use in children as young as 12 by the U.S. Food and ...
Academic study: Minimal safety concerns about off-target mutations should not be used to block gene editing and other sustainability-focused new breeding techniques
For thousands of years, humans have been improving crops to better suit their needs. These enhancements are driven by changes ...
FDA approves first Alzheimer’s drug in nearly 20 years — but some experts say there’s not enough evidence it actually works
[On June 7, the FDA approved Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab,] the first drug cleared that is designed to alter the course ...
Viewpoint: ‘Potent political weapon’ – The early and wholesale rejection of lab-leak COVID origin theory is now fully politicized
Democrats and public-health experts have asked: What should we do? Former President Donald Trump, for his part, minimized the need ...
Europe offers alternative to US-backed proposal to waive COVID vaccine property rights, saying its plan would spur innovation and help developing countries
The European Union is pushing back hard against U.S.-backed calls to temporarily waive intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines, preparing ...
Viewpoint: Getting approval for CRISPR gene edited crops in Europe is proving perilous. Here’s a guide for scientists and politicians
Should genome-editing products be considered genetically modified organisms (GMOs) subject to the same regulations as products derived from transgenesis? There ...
From Trumpian conspiracy theory to credible scenario: Here’s the Wuhan lab-leak theory timeline
[I]n recent months the idea that [SARS-CoV-2] emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) — once dismissed as a ...
Infographic: COVID myths — Which are most pervasive, and who is most likely to believe them?
Big myths about COVID vaccines are showing real staying power among Americans who are not vaccinated. They are not the ...
Will your college mandate vaccines this fall? It depends — mostly — on whether Democrats or Republicans control your state
In a divided nation, college vaccine mandates are mostly following familiar fault lines. As of [May 22] only 34 — ...
‘We don’t want to be human guinea pigs’: Vaccine-rejecting medical workers sue, invoking Nuremberg Code designed to prevent experimentation on human subjects
A group of 117 unvaccinated staffers from Houston Methodist Hospital filed a lawsuit [May 28] seeking to avoid the hospital’s ...
‘Post-coronavirus trauma’: Why a growing group of ‘perma-maskers’ say they won’t forgo face coverings anytime soon
Last year, protesters staged rallies against official requirements to wear masks, built pyres to burn them in protest and touched ...
If COVID-19 resulted from a Chinese lab leak, it wouldn’t be the country’s first biohazard accident. Here’s a history
In the aftermath of a small outbreak of the original SARS virus, well after the main outbreak that ended in ...
Sickle cell mystery or excuse? Sudden deaths of many young Black people while in police custody are often blamed on genetics. What does the science say?
The New York Times has found at least 46… instances over the past 25 years in which medical examiners, law ...
How did the Wuhan lab leak theory go from conspiracy theory hunch to genuine national security question?
Throughout much of the pandemic, the “lab leak” hypothesis has been ridiculed by scientists as a baseless conspiracy theory, fueled ...
Should food derived from CRISPR gene-edited seeds be labeled as GMO — all but ensuring they will not be adopted? Many EU food retailers say ‘yes’
Leading EU supermarkets such as Aldi, Rewe and Lidl say that all products stemming from new genetic engineering methods such ...
Podcast: COVID has left many with survivor’s guilt. How can we process this onslaught of ‘cascading collective traumas’?
At least 580,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, and this official tally probably omits hundreds of thousands of uncounted deaths ...
How former New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade shifted global opinion on the credibility of ‘farfetched’ Wuhan lab leak theory
From early 2020 onward, the mainstream narrative had been that the virus was completely natural, and anyone who suggested that ...
International guidance limiting human embryo research to 14 days has been relaxed, opening door to advanced human development and disease breakthroughs. Here are the scientific and ethical implications
Previously, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) recommended that scientists culture human embryos for no more than two ...
Need a vaccine passport but don’t want a shot? It’s easy to forge one — but here’s why that’s a bad idea
Not everyone wants to get vaccinated. Combine that with a desire to keep up with rising documentation requirements as society ...
Viewpoint: ‘If it’s organic, it’s non-GMO’: Why consumers don’t need this recently introduced ‘irrelevant food label’ on grocery store shelves
While I typically try and shop around labels that are not supportive or have no relation to the actual product ...
