your science briefing for 05.02.2025

RFK Jr. takes on the imaginary scourge of chemtrails, why conservatives lie about their mental health, the EPA wants to make lung disease great again, and more...

When planes fly, disrupting humid air, they form condensation trails, which is normal physics in action. But if you’re RFK Jr., who is clearly relishing his role as MAGA Nurgle in his quest to set modern medicine and public health back by 200 years and possibly revive a full blown eugenics program, you side with the full mental jacket crowd in the insistence that all civilian aviation is in on a conspiracy to spray whatever chemicals a sinister cabal tells them to on hapless civilians below with the goal being whatever it is you want that goal to be. I’m glad we’re shutting down national parks while defunding our top scientists, but spending taxpayer dollars on this lunacy… (Gizmodo)

One old and frequently appropriated by comedians joke says that the definition of an intellectual is a person who analyzes things others just do. And a new study of 37,000 subjects surveyed in the UK and U.S. lends some credence to the punchline. It turned out that those who perform well on tests intended to measure intelligence are having fewer children and having them later. (Yes, the opening scene of Idiocracy does come to mind for me as well.) They also wait to have sex and start relationships. But there’s a twist. It turns out that they undergo puberty earlier, which poses a very interesting paradox for researchers, as early puberty should mean the opposite… (PsyPost)

Don’t Worry, Be Happy is an oft debated song based on a catchphrase of a then very popular Indian guru named Meher Baba. Depending on who you ask, it’s a parody of how utterly absurd toxic optimism of self help can become or the completely sincere declaration of that said toxic optimism is a terrific philosophy for life. Now, scientists are having the same debate over the mental health of conservatives. As a group, they tend to report being less depressed and anxious than liberals, but paradoxically also claim greater loneliness and higher rates of suicide. So, what’s going on? One study’s hypothesis is that social pressures in conservative circles will often keep people from being honest about how they’re really doing and feeling… (PLOS One)

In a result that should surprise exactly no one, vaping — a form of smoking which at one time was billed as better and safer, but not by that much, and is now a revenue stream for Big Tobacco — was linked to more than doubling your odds of developing COPD. Now, to be fair, smoking raises that risk by a factor of three at least , but the data is clear on the outcomes. Vaping is effectively diet smoking, and if you haven’t started, you absolutely shouldn’t… (RNZ)

Despite the claims of previous Trump appointees that the air in the U.S. is “too clean” since they clearly suffered from Big Fossil Wallet Overload Syndrome, the country is actually still dealing with pretty significant levels of air pollution linked to conditions like COPD and lung cancer. In a recent survey of half a million health outcomes over 150 cities, the data pretty clearly shows thousands of premature deaths from known side effects of this pollution. Which is why current promises to roll back regulations already killing us early are so dangerous and alarming… (NPR)