science

Faced with federal funding cuts, scientists are learning to communicate about what they do — and why it matters.

Scientists searching for a cure for cancer have no trouble finding public support. But for those studying potato disease, it’s a tougher sell.

The Trump administration seems to have banked on the idea that the public will see much of scientific research as wasteful or arcane. It has slashed — or proposed slashing — billions in research funding.

Faced with this existential crisis, academics are seeking new ways to rally public and political support to fight the cuts and preserve their funding.

Enter a group of Cornell University graduate students with an ambitious plan to change the way people think about science. They have recruited more than 500 researchers across all 50 states to write op-eds for local news outlets, to be published over the next week. The idea, said Emma Scales, a Cornell doctoral student involved in the effort, is to have scientists introduce themselves to the public.

Scientists have discovered a giant planet orbiting a tiny red dwarf star, something they believed wasn t even possible. The planet, TOI-6894b, is about the size of Saturn but orbits a star just a fifth the mass of our Sun. This challenges long-standing ideas about how big planets form, especially around small stars.

The National Institutes of Health is responsible for more than 80% of the world’s grant investment in biomedical research. Its funding has sparked countless medical breakthroughs — on cancer, diabetes, strokes — and plays a fundamental role in the development of pharmaceutical drugs.

Scientists compete vigorously for a slice of the more than $30 billion that the agency doles out annually; they can spend years assembling grant applications that stretch thousands of pages in hopes of convincing peer reviewers of the promise of their projects. Only 1 in 5 gets chosen.

The NIH has rarely revoked funding once it has been awarded. Out of the tens of thousands of grants overseen by the institution since 2012, it terminated fewer than five for violations of the agency’s terms and conditions.

Then Donald Trump was reelected.

Since his January inauguration, his administration has terminated more than 1,450 grants, withholding more than $750 million in funds; officials have said they are curbing wasteful spending and “unscientific” research. The Department of Government Efficiency gave the agency direction on what to cut and why, ProPublica has previously found, bypassing the NIH’s established review process.

“The decision to terminate certain grants is part of a deliberate effort to ensure taxpayer dollars prioritize high-impact, urgent science,” said Andrew G. Nixon, the director of communications for the Department of Health and Human Services. He did not respond to questions about the terminated grants or how patients may be impacted, but he said, “Many discontinued projects were duplicative or misaligned with NIH’s core mission. NIH remains focused on supporting rigorous biomedical research that delivers real results — not radical ideology.”

Targeted projects, however, were seeking cures for future pandemics, examining the causes of dementia and trying to prevent HIV transmission.

The mass cancellation of grants in response to political policy shifts has no precedent, former and current NIH officials told ProPublica. It threatens the stability of the institution and the scientific enterprise of the nation at large. Hundreds of current and former NIH staffers published a declaration this week — cosigned by thousands of scientists across the world, including more than 20 Nobel laureates — decrying the politicization of science at the agency and urging its director to reinstate the canceled grants. Many researchers have appealed the terminations, and several lawsuits are underway challenging the cuts.

It has been difficult for scientists and journalists to convey the enormity of what has happened these past few months and what it portends for the years and decades to come. News organizations have chronicled cuts to individual projects and sought to quantify the effects of lost spending on broad fields of study. To gain a deeper understanding of the toll, ProPublica reached out to more than 500 researchers, scientists and investigators whose grants were terminated.

More than 150 responded to share their experiences, which reveal consequences that experts say run counter to scientific logic and even common sense.

They spoke of the tremendous waste generated by an effort intended to save money — years of government-funded research that may never be published, blood samples in danger of spoiling before they can be analyzed.

Work to address disparities in health, once considered so critical to medical advancement that it was mandated by Congress, is now being cut if the administration determines it has any connection to “diversity,” “equity” or “gender ideology.” Caught in this culling were projects to curb stillbirths, child suicides and infant brain damage.

Researchers catalogued many fears — about the questions they won’t get to answer, the cures they will fail to find and the colleagues they will lose to more supportive countries. But most of all, they said they worried about the people who, because of these cuts, will die.

Ocean acidification has already crossed a crucial threshold for planetary health, scientists say in unexpected finding

The world’s oceans are in worse health than realised, scientists have said today, as they warn that a key measurement shows we are “running out of time” to protect marine ecosystems.

Ocean acidification, often called the “evil twin” of the climate crisis, is caused when carbon dioxide is rapidly absorbed by the ocean, where it reacts with water molecules leading to a fall in the pH level of the seawater. It damages coral reefs and other ocean habitats and, in extreme cases, can dissolve the shells of marine creatures.

Until now, ocean acidification had not been deemed to have crossed its “planetary boundary”. The planetary boundaries are the natural limits of key global systems – such as climate, water and wildlife diversity – beyond which their ability to maintain a healthy planet is in danger of failing. Six of the nine had been crossed already, scientists said last year.

However, a new study by the UK’s Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), the Washington-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University’s Co-operative Institute for Marine Resources Studies found that ocean acidification’s “boundary” was also reached about five years ago.

Professor Andrea Sella (UCL Department of Chemistry) returned the Royal Society's prestigeous Faraday Prize in protest over "its failure to take stronger action against Elon Musk, a fellow of the UK academy, for presiding over onslaughts on US science"

Archived link https://archive.ph/MBbO8

The study shows rainbow trout endure an average of 10 minutes of intense pain during air asphyxia, with estimates ranging from 2 to 22 minutes depending on factors like fish size and water temperature. This translates to approximately 24 minutes of pain per kilogram of fish. These estimates are based on a comprehensive review of existing research to assess the intensity and duration of pain and distress experienced by the fish.

Crucially, the study also assesses the cost-effectiveness of interventions. If implemented properly, electrical stunning could avert 60 to 1,200 minutes of moderate to extreme pain for every U.S. dollar of capital cost.

Archived link of the article

The Collection of Open Science Integrity Guides (COSIG) brings together 27 freely available resources that explain how to spot image duplication, citation manipulation, plagiarism, tortured phrases and other hallmarks of paper mills — businesses that produce fake papers to order. The guides also provide tips for reviewing papers in specific disciplines, including biology, chemistry, statistics and computer science.

“A lot of people assume that you need some special talent, you need eagle eyes to see things, or you need to be at your computer ten hours a day looking through the scientific literature. But really, anybody can do it,” says Richardson. “That’s one of our mantras.”

apparently it's fairly safe as well https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11983583/

Psychologist and writer’s appearance on Aporia condemned for helping to normalise ‘dangerous, discredited ideas’

The Harvard psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker appeared on the podcast of Aporia, an outlet whose owners advocate for a revival of race science and have spoken of seeking “legitimation by association” by platforming more mainstream figures.

The appearance underlines past incidents in which Pinker has encountered criticism for his association with advocates of so-called “human biodiversity”, which other academics have called a “rebranding” of racial genetic essentialism and scientific racism.

Pinker’s appearance marks another milestone in the efforts of many in Silicon Valley and rightwing media and at the fringes of science to rehabilitate previously discredited models of a biologically determined racial hierarchy.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/66350481

WASHINGTON (AP) — In his confirmation hearings to lead the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya pledged his openness to views that might conflict with his own. “Dissent,” he said, ”is the very essence of science.”

That commitment is being put to the test.

On Monday, scores of scientists at the agency sent their Trump-appointed leader a letter titled the Bethesda Declaration, challenging “policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.”

It says: “We dissent.”

In a capital where insiders often insist on anonymity to say such things publicly, 92 NIH researchers, program directors, branch chiefs and scientific review officers put their signatures on the letter — and their careers on the line. Another 250 of their colleagues across the agency endorsed the declaration without using their names.

The four-page letter, addressed to Bhattacharya, also was sent to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress who oversee the NIH. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.