Science Literacy Project Daily Digest Science Controversies in the Media (++++ ++++)

Science Literacy Project Daily Digest Science Controversies in the Media Viewpoint: America Last: From the Pentagon to universities, Trump’s corruption of science could inflict lasting, irreversible damage on U.S. research New York Times https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2026/11/02/viewpoint-america-last-from-the-pentagon-to-universities-trumps-corruption-of-science-could-inflict-lasting-irreversible-damage-on-u-s-research/ Washington is still spending about $200 billion a year on research, roughly what past administrations spent. But beneath that headline number, the federally funded science system that helped make the United States a superpower is buckling under Trump administration policies, as The New York Times’ Christopher Flavelle and colleagues report in the first installment of a series on how the administration has upended American science. Helpful until we’re helpless? Researchers warn AI is gradually eroding human control CBS News https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2026/11/02/helpful-until-were-helpless-researchers-warn-ai-is-gradually-eroding-human-control/ Forget killer robots. The AI catastrophe some researchers worry about most won’t arrive with a bang. It could slip in quietly, one delegated task at a time, until humans no longer have much say in how society runs, as CBS News’ Shaun Raviv reports. ‘Silent killer’: Hepatitis B could surge under Trump–RFK Jr. rollback of newborn vaccine recommendations Time https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2026/11/02/silent-killer-hepatitis-b-could-surge-under-trump-rfk-jr-rollback-of-newborn-vaccine-recommendations/ Scrapping the universal hepatitis B shot for newborns could sharply increase chronic infections in American children, a new modeling study finds — and as TIME’s Veronique Greenwood reports, the damage grows the fewer babies get vaccinated. An Earth-saving benefit of global warming?: How fossil fuel-burning humans stopped the looming Ice Age Wired https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2026/11/02/an-earth-saving-benefit-of-global-warming-how-fossil-fuel-burning-humans-stopped-the-looming-ice-age/ Humans may have already called off the next ice age. A new study, published in Science, finds that the Barnes Ice Cap on Canada’s Baffin Island — the last remnant of the Laurentide Ice Sheet that once smothered much of North America — grew for roughly 2,000 years before reversing course in the 1960s, just as carbon emissions took off, as Wired’s Molly Taft reports. RFK Jr. blames RSV on a chimpanzee lab leak: Dissecting false claims about the respiratory virus’s origins The Atlantic https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2026/10/30/rfk-jr-blames-rsv-on-a-chimpanzee-lab-leak-dissecting-false-claims-about-the-respiratory-viruss-origins/ Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. keeps insisting that RSV — respiratory syncytial virus, which puts more U.S. babies in the hospital than any other virus — escaped from a lab. It didn’t, and as The Atlantic’s Tom Bartlett reports, the historical record isn’t remotely ambiguous on the point. Solar engineering to cool the planet might well work. Could it touch off a geoengineering arms race? Popular Mechanics https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2026/10/30/solar-engineering-to-cool-the-planet-might-well-work-could-it-touch-off-a-geoengineering-arms-race/ Dimming the sun to cool an overheating planet may be scientifically plausible, but a U.K.-funded war game suggests the politics could be a disaster, as Popular Mechanics’ Darren Orf reports. When experts role-played competing nations and interests, the exercise quickly devolved into what one participant called a “geoengineering arms race.” ‘Warp-speeding this treatment’: Trump’s VA readies psychedelic therapy for up to 2 million veterans Politico https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2026/10/30/warp-speeding-this-treatment-trumps-va-readies-psychedelic-therapy-for-up-to-2-million-veterans/ The Veterans Health Administration wants to be ready to offer psychedelics like psilocybin and MDMA to as many as 2.1 million veterans with PTSD or depression — even though no regulator has yet deemed the drugs safe or effective for mental illness, as Politico’s Amanda Friedman reports. Viewpoint: Should doctors talk with their patients about the politics roiling medicine? Some say it’s their responsibility. MedPage Today https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2026/10/30/viewpoint-should-doctors-talk-with-their-patients-about-the-politics-roiling-medicine-some-say-its-their-responsibility/ Doctors are supposed to tell patients when they find a worrisome tumor. According to Harvard Medical School professor Jerry Avorn, they should also tell patients when Washington is about to cut off their healthcare. In a recent op-ed for MedPage Today, Avorn argues that with deep Medicaid cuts on the way, the old taboo against talking politics in the exam room has to go.