Science Literacy Project Daily Digest
RFK, Jr. vaccine rebuke: Judge reverses Trump administration childhood and Covid vaccine policies
In a severe blow to the Trump administration’s health agenda, a federal judge in Massachusetts [on March 16, 2026] blocked the ...
U.S. defunding International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), UN-affiliated group that issued cancer warnings for glyphosate, steak, and getting a haircut
The United States’s withdrawal this year from the World Health Organization (WHO) is having knock-on effects on an influential global ...
Iran creates an alternate war reality: Social networks awash with AI-generated videos showing its fake destructive power
A torrent of fake videos and images generated by artificial intelligence have overrun social networks during the first weeks of ...
Viewpoint: Is the Republican-backed farm bill an agriculture industry giveaway?
The newly proposed, Republican-led farm bill includes a range of provisions opponents say constitute a “pesticide industry wishlist” that would ...
White House clamps down on RFK, Jr.’s vaccine rejectionism but he reportedly retains Trump’s support
The White House is more tightly controlling the messaging and policies—including around vaccines—coming from the Department of Health and Human ...
AI tools designed to combat misinformation may actually promote it
As online misinformation grows harder to detect, new artificial-intelligence tools promise to help us separate fact from fiction. But do ...
The intersection of vaccinations and faith: Should the ultra-religious get exemptions from mandatory vaccines shots?
From the perspective of mainstream scientific medicine, the choice between vaccination and potentially fatal diseases seem obvious. So are religious ...
Malaysia fighting a losing battle against climate disinformation
In today’s digital and AI-shaped information environment, disinformation has become a systemic risk, weakening trust, distorting decision-making, and ultimately undermining ...
Viewpoint: Why health practitioners need to be disciplined for spreading misinformation—and why that’s so challenging
Unfortunately, in most cases health misinformation has been allowed to stand with very few, if any, professional consequences. Some prominent ...
Viewpoint—Liberal delusion: No, RFK, Jr. would not have made a great Secretary of Agriculture
The standard non-MAGA take on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is that it’s too bad he’s such a brain-wormed lunatic about ...
U.S. government accused of pushing ‘fake news’ about UFOs to cover-up secret dark-project drone and aircraft technology
Donald Trump’s pledge to release official files relating to UFOs has intrigued conspiracy theorists who suspect the US government has ...
Cosmetics offers a case study in the dangers of science misinformation
When we think about misinformation, we tend to picture election interference, geopolitical propaganda or pandemic conspiracy theories. But misinformation does ...
RFK, Jr.’s attacks on Big Pharma and Big Ag are finding surprising new allies among Republican voters and leaders: Predatory tort lawyers
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s demonization of food and pharma has put the Trump administration on the wrong side of its ...
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 ...
EU’s imminent embrace of gene-edited crops threatens to leave New Zealand a science laggard
The European Union is poised to make changes to allow gene editing technology in mid-May that, if passed, would put ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Target targets May to remove synthetic colors from breakfast foods
The Make America Healthy Again movement has made its mark on one of America’s largest retailers. Target announced [on February ...
‘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 ...
