your science briefing for 03.05.2025

The absurd way the anti-science right picks research to attack, how we're delaying the next ice age, the media panic the mainstream media often ignores, and more...

For the past 65 years, the American right has openly loathed scientists and colleges, calling them “centers of Marxist indoctrination.” And following a playbook that by now is eligible for Medicare, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX when it’s warm and Cancun when the weather sucks) paraded around $2 billion in “woke, commie, Marxists science grants” that we must cut before the United States becomes the United Soviet States. What is so subversively woke and Marxist about this research? They used right wing trigger words when describing new medical treatments, tracking pandemics and infections, and hypotheses about astronomy, cosmology, and animal biomes… (ProPublica)

Thanks to less than honest and objective researchers trying to sell moral panics, it’s a widely accepted notion that too much exposure to TikTok and other short form video causes “brain rot.” It was even Oxford’s word of the year. But does it really exist? And do the studies actually show YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram Reels slowly but surely corrupting your brain? According to a neuroscientist, no, not at all, and instead of trying to pathologize scrolling through video feeds, we should be focused on how to instill healthy media habits… (BBC)

According to climatologists, we should be in a relatively cool period and preparing for the slow start of another ice age in 4,300 years, with massive glaciation starting to set in by 11,000 years from now. But given how much greenhouse gas and pollution we’ve dumped into the atmosphere, scientists think we might have delayed that new ice age by as much as 50,000 years… (New Scientist)

As pundits were worried about that Tiki Toki thing from “Cha’yna” rotting the minds of youngins, they blithely ignored the gray media panic that Millennials and older Gen Zs have been talking about for years: watching their Boomer parents tune into Fox News and open Facebook, disappearing into the world of far right propaganda for months at a time, then emerging as completely different, nearly unrecognizable people. They’re angry, paranoid, delusional, and incredibly aggressive, as if their empathy and regular, civilized manners have been stripped away. And often, there’s no happy ending. Only a lot of loneliness, grief, and bitter compromises… (NPR)

Sure, there’s a comprehensive study showing that hybrid and remote work makes you more productive, saves companies money, and improves morale by giving workers an important perk guaranteed to boost employee happiness and motivation: autonomy. But far too many bosses are not happy, paranoid that somehow, somewhere, slackers aren’t getting work done fast enough to their liking. And so, they’re recalling more and more workers back to the office and turning to companies that want to make offices feel like high tech prisons where one wrong move could summon your boss breathing down your neck in anger… (Wired)