Science Literacy Project Daily Digest
Well-intentioned but scientifically misguided activist claims of what constitutes biological diversity hinder actual biodiversity and agricultural progress
... [S]ince the 1990s, well-intentioned laws shifted the governance of biodiversity from a shared global resource to the sovereign control ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr., MAHA, and USDA close ranks in support of ‘regenerative agriculture’. Here’s why this trendy concept is bad policy
[On December 10, 2025], Kennedy, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, and Dr. “Snakeoil” Oz trotted out in front of the cameras ...
Who’s my daddy? Chinese billionaire has hundreds of U.S.-born babies. Who has custody?
Chinese gaming tycoon Xu Bo's company [December 16, 2025] pushed back against claims he had fathered more than 100 children ...
AI doomerism is so passé. Or is it?
It’s a weird time to be an AI doomer. This small but influential community of researchers, scientists, and policy experts ...
Okay, but not nearly enough: EU’s loosened restrictions on CRISPR and other gene-edited crops help, but it’s still a wasteful long-haul for approvals
The first part of the EU’s Biotech Act has been published. The act, which is mainly focused on health, also ...
AI hype takes a hit—For most businesses, the revolutionary tool falls short
Some disillusionment was inevitable. When OpenAI released a free web app called ChatGPT in late 2022, it changed the course of an ...
Viewpoint: Crazy left meets crazy right—The tort machine created by activist environmentalists to target aspartame, Gardasil, and glyphosate is now turning its sights on vaccines and other MAHA pet grieves
Anti-vaxxers have found a powerful new weapon: the plaintiffs’ bar. Armed with repurposed federal claims and fueled by political momentum, ...
CRISPR chicken: Could gene editing be the key to cheaper poultry?
Chicken is one of the world’s most affordable and widely consumed proteins, yet its price remains surprisingly sensitive to feed ...
Discovery of growth ‘switch’ in cold-hardy plants could unlock pathways to develop more cold-resilient crops
Scientists in South Korea have discovered a rapid molecular “switch” that reprograms plant growth in response to cold stress. The ...
Viewpoint: ‘Increasingly futile’—Why debating MAHA influencers with science and reason doesn’t work
... Dr. Mikhail Varshavski, the New Jersey-based family medicine physician and medical social media influencer better known as Dr. Mike, appeared ...
Corporate control, ecological challenges and food safety: Challenges await expansion of the gene-editing crop revolution
Ethical considerations surrounding genome editing are as complex as the science itself. As the debate rages on about the safety ...
Europe’s veggie burger wars: Farmer backlash against plant-based labeling restrictions stall
EU wrangling over whether to give plant-based "sausages" and veggie "burgers" the chop and restrict such labels to meat products ...
Hype adjustment: Probiotic supplements don’t help much to improve your gut function and overall health, and are a waste of money
There are microbes living in medicine cabinets across the U.S., next to the aspirin and the Band-Aids. And people want ...
New U.S. cancer policy head falsely believes COVID vaccines ‘turbocharge’ cancer and horse dewormer ivermectin is a miracle drug
An epidemiologist who has speculated about whether there is a connection between Covid-19 vaccines and “turbo cancer” in young people, ...
AI morality? Don’t hold your breath
It’s not the AI overlords destroying humanity that we need to worry about so much as a hyperpolarized, hyperweaponized humanity destroying ...
Bitter dark chocolate appears to slow the aging process
The same chemical that makes dark chocolate taste bitter could help slow the ticking of your biological clock. A new ...
The expanding role of robotics in agriculture … on Earth and in space
Despite challenges, agriculture remains an appealing sector for robotics applications. ... In recent decades, agri-tech companies have been investing in ...
‘Like an atom bomb’: Under RFK Jr.’s broken leadership, handpicked vaccine skeptic tapped to oversee the FDA’s drug office
On [December 3, 2005], Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg was tapped as acting director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation ...
What diseases lurk in your DNA? AI has many new answers
Scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed a novel artificial intelligence tool that not only ...
Alert to Donald Trump: Tanning bed users at higher risk for skin cancer
Hop onto TikTok and you'll find lots of videos of young people — mostly women — fake baking under the ...
Viewpoint: The U.S. has entered a dark period in public health, thank you Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
We expect [medical] breakthroughs to occur on a regular basis, and 2025 delivered; successful trials of gene therapies for diseases ...
What’s a ‘food fraud vulnerability assessment’?
Food fraud is the intentional and deliberate substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food products, food ingredients, and food packaging ...
Fungus ‘meat’? Yes, it could be a less expensive, environmentally sustainable —and tasty— chicken substitute
Chinese scientists have genetically tweaked a fungus to make protein-rich “meat”, which they say can be a low-cost, environmentally friendly alternative ...
Trouble getting pregnant: AI is the energizer bunny way to supercharge sperm
Doctors at Columbia University's fertility centre ... have developed an imaging technology, Sperm Tracking and Recovery (STAR), which they believe ...
Outside the boundaries of modern science? Gene editing opens the door to treat rare diseases
Fyodor Urnov, the scientific director of UC Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), showed me a list of rare diseases and ...
Viewpoint: Fake news about Italy’s 2023 ‘unenforceable’ ban on lab grown meat reignites fact-twisted furor
Italy passed a law banning cultivated or cell-based meat years ago, but posts online suggesting that it has just happened ...
Yield, resilience and profits: Seed technology is put to the test
Dr Godfrey Kgatle, plant pathologist and research coordinator at Grain SA, offers insight into how traditional breeding, hybrids, genetically modified ...
