Science Literacy Project Daily Digest
STOMP—Scientists skeptical of RFK, Jr.’s dubious crusade on microplastics
The Trump administration is going after microplastics in drinking water. A new plan to study and regulate plastic pollution was announced ...
Trump science funding cuts sending scientists abroad
[T]he Partnership for Public Service, [a] nonpartisan organization in Washington, estimated that 95,000 employees had departed federal science agencies from September 2024 ...
Reviewing the evidence on the benefits and dangers of glyphosate
President Trump recently signed an Executive Order that expands U.S. production of glyphosate, a herbicide contained in commercial and domestic ...
Google and search engines opened the door to online misinformation. AI could help address that.
The democratic nature of digital media initially inspired utopian hopes. It promised to expose the blind spots of cultural elites, ...
Viewpoint: The religion of vaccine hesitancy
One of the biggest modern American medical stories has been the rise of vaccine hesitancy. From the decline in childhood ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr.-founded Children’s Health Defense false claims long-dead belief that wireless radiation causes health problems
Dire warnings about the dangers of wireless technology have been around for as long as the technology itself, and they ...
A new tool can spot diet and nutrition misinformation—and measure its risk of harm
A new tool that not only identifies diet and nutrition misinformation online but also evaluates the content’s risk for potential ...
AI with human feelings? Anthropic’s Claude edges closer
... A new study from Anthropic suggests models have digital representations of human emotions like happiness, sadness, joy, and fear, ...
Bulldozing science: As America slips, China is overtaking U.S. as superpower
The Trump administration has taken a bulldozer to science funding over the last year and change, wiping out more than 7,800 research ...
‘Tech bro hype’ vs. serious science: The inside story on Colossal’s attempt to create a real-life Jurassic Park
Can and should we resurrect animal species that have been extinct for thousands of years? Such weighty, existential questions were ...
Social media sharing: Americans are caught in a health and science ‘misinformation paradox’
The Harris Poll announced the results from a landmark survey, "Science Under Siege: The Battle Between Viral Misinformation and Shared ...
Viewpoint — ‘Miracle’ peptides: Regulatory greyzone and RFK, Jr. propaganda opens the U.S. to a perilous biohacking experiment
On February 27, 2026, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and announced that the FDA is preparing ...
With the Strait of Hormuz mostly shut-down, the last oil shipments of oil going to Europe and Asia will land in mid-April. They are turning to coal.
[Soon], the final deliveries of oil and liquefied natural gas to Asia that passed through the Strait of Hormuz before ...
AI can now generate academic papers that pass peer review. What are the risks?
In 2024, the Tokyo-based start-up Sakana.ai introduced "The AI scientist" — an AI system that can create new machine learning ...
PTSD is almost incurable. Psychedelics can help — but only in three U.S. states and Australia
Over the past two years, Australia, a country long known for its strict drug laws, has been allowing psychiatrists to ...
Many nail polishes contain dangerous chemicals
"The substance can cause serious health problems," says Amalie Gravelle. She's an adviser at the Norwegian Food Safety Authority and ...
Viewpoint: How AI-enabled corruption of the information environment might lead to an increased risk of nuclear escalation
In recent years, analysts and scholars have noted that corruption or dysfunction in the global information ecosystem could have the ...
How China engineered its agricultural revolution
Between 1959 and 1961, an estimated 30 to 45 million Chinese people died in a famine resulting from Leader Mao Zedong’s Great ...
Aspirin for your heart? Decongestants? Here are 5 popular medications that you should avoid
Every year, medical guidance evolves — sometimes quietly — and our cabinets don’t always keep up. ... ... Here are ...
As China’s science investment soars, U.S. cuts spending dramatically
The Chinese government is ramping up its support for science, announcing plans to boost two key budgets at the country’s ...
Palantir: The company in the middle of the first AI war
Generative AI has helped fuel Palantir’s rise, supercharging the hands-on support the company provides to its customers. Early in its ...
Under pressure from the Trump administration, medical schools are dropping health inequity education
The leading medical school accreditation body in the U.S. has removed language from its standards that had required schools it ...
Viewpoint: Horror story—what happens if RFK, Jr. prevails and most people stop vaccinating?
Before vaccines, death and disability stalked children. Then shots turned once-common infections into something doctors only read about in textbooks ...
Viewpoint — Dirty Dozen produce ranking flop: Environmental Working Group is at it again with its scientifically ignorant rankings
Spring has sprung. And along with the change of season comes the annual release of Environmental Working Group’s “Shopper’s Guide to ...
Circular research: Google’s chatbot programmed to steer users to Google, not the best sources
Google seems to have a Google addiction. If you click on a hyperlink in Google’s chatbot-style search tool, AI Mode, you are likely to ...
Viewpoint: Cheddar cheese from unpasteurized milk? Cheese linked to e coli outbreak but Raw Farm and organic grocery stores reject recalls
Pasteurization exists for a reason: It is a time-tested way to make sure that dairy products don’t contain bacteria that ...
Viewpoint: The ‘link to cancer’ myth—Activist and trial lawyers misrepresent the potential danger of glyphosate and other herbicides
President Trump recently signed an Executive Order invoking the Defense Production Act to ensure increased domestic supplies of elemental phosphorus ...
