Bob Siederer
25 August 2025
Hello again Science Fans!
In the month since I last wrote the SciSchmooze, I’ve been collecting articles, as always, that might interest you, our readers. I’ve noticed quite a trend, and today’s SciSchmooze will take a look at it. This trend deals with the current administration’s approach to science, and the damage that approach is causing.
While there are several areas where real science is being ignored, or replaced with very questionable science, much of what I found deals with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the organizations under his control.
I should point out that I didn’t go searching for articles on all this…they just showed up in my feeds, and leading me to make this topic the main one for this week’s SciSchmooze.
Remember, the scientific process is when you perform experiments to test a hypothesis, then adjust your hypothesis to match the results, testing again, and performing this in a loop until your results are consistent and repeatable by others. It is not picking data and results to match the outcome you want while ignoring the rest.
If you don’t believe in climate change, then overturn the science from 2009 where the EPA determined that pollutants from fossil fuels could be regulated under the Clean Air Act, a foundation for the EPA’s policies since then. Among the stated reasons is cost…the added costs to businesses and consumers to make products in responsible ways, with responsible fuels. Or misrepresent scientific research to support your position, as was done by the Department of Energy to downplay the role of human activity in global warming. The cited report contained inaccurate citations, flawed analysis, and editorial errors. and this isn’t the first time the agency has done this. In previous instances, citations were fabricated!
Don’t like the results coming from satellites that monitor greenhouse gases? Tell NASA to terminate their missions and destroy the satellites. Furthermore, NOAA is removing some objectives from future climate satellites planned for launch in the next 20 years that would collect information on climate and the environment. Eliminate the source of data and you can’t prove there’s a problem. See the ostrich, above.
The move towards renewable electrical energy has also been hampered. The administration has ordered all construction of an almost completed wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island stopped, claiming “concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United State.” Unnamed concerns, of course.
Here in California, the Federal Trade Commission has canceled the trucking industry’s agreement to abide by California’s emission rules which would have promoted electric trucks to replace diesels. The FTC called California’s agreement “unenforceable”.
It isn’t just the US. In Geneva last week, talks to reach a treaty to end plastic pollution fell apart when oil-producing nations, including the US, refused to agree to the proposed treaty, citing economic reasons.
One area we would hope would be based on sound science is medicine. But no…the FDA has replaced leadership with doctors who have done their “research”. “People say” isn’t research, it is hearsay.
Other attacks on medicine come from RFK Jr. He has canceled almost $500M in mRNA vaccine grants and contracts, this following cancelation of a $600M contract with Moderna to develop a bird flu vaccine. mRNA is the technology behind the COVID-19 vaccine, which was developed, in part, through the first Trump administration’s program Operation Warp Speed. The $500M cut has been called “the most dangerous public health decision” ever. Kennedy said he had “reviewed the science” and cited a 181 page document as justification for the cuts. An infectious disease physician has reviewed that “evidence” and found it makes the case for expanding mRNA vaccine development, not ending it. One can’t cherry pick the evidence. You must look at all of it.
Kennedy has repeatedly stated his convictions that aluminum in vaccines harms children, with no evidence showing that cause. I wrote about a study last month where data on 1.2 million children in Denmark was analyzed and no correlation was found. Kennedy has called for the Annals of Internal Medicine to retract that article and study. The journal has refused.
Meanwhile, a new study on a breakthrough mRNA cancer vaccine has shown incredible results. The vaccine accelarates the body’s immune system to act as if it is fighting a virus, with a significant shrinkage in cancerous tumors. In some cases, the tumors were wiped out completely. This study was performed on mice. The results were unexpectedly good. Researchers are working towards human clinical trials. This is the exact type of vaccine Kennedy wants to defund.
Kennedy said he had a goal to find the environmental causes of Autism. Now he has shut down the research trying to do exactly that.
There are occasional things Kennedy gets kind of right. He wants to close a loophole in the FDA’s regulations that allow companies to introduce new formulations of food products without FDA review as long as they self-certify them as “generally recognized as safe”, known as GRAS. The irony with this particular goal is that it goes against not only the food and snack industry, but the supplement industry, which Kennedy has supported.
So what can we do? The folks at Stand Up for Science are calling for Kennedy’s impeachment. There’s an online petition that they will present to Congress. While August is almost over, note that Stand Up for Science has called August a “31 Days of Action” month. There are things you can do each day to defend science from the government bent on destroying it. They shouldn’t be unique to August, so are still applicable. (Thanks to Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer for promoting this in his newsletter.)
On the positive side, last month I wrote that the Defense department was cutting off crucial satellite weather data that hurricane forecasters rely on. This month, access to that data resumed, although the resumption may be temporary, and is couched in some governmental double speak.
The main story in the August 13 NY Times newsletter “The Morning” looks at how the administration deals with “unfavorable data, not just science data, as well as the consequences.
Enough doom and gloom…let’s look at some better news.
Perhaps the most significant question facing humans is “Are we alone?” So far, life on Earth is the only example of life we have discovered in the entire universe. Sheer numbers would indicate that there has to be life elsewhere, whether it exists now, or it did in the past. There are billions of galaxies, with billions of stars, most with planets, some in the habitable zones of their stars. It just seems impossible that we’re the only example of life, given all the other potential places for it to start. Well, astronomers have found traces of 17 complex organic molecules in a planet-birthing disk of V883 Orionis. This is the closest we’ve come so far to finding signs of life outside of Earth.
When the James Webb Space Telescope showed its first images, astronomers saw hundreds of tiny, brilliant, red objects in the infant universe. They called them “little red dots” and have a new theory about just what they are…black hole stars!
We live in Silicon Valley, the heart of the Tech revolution that has transformed just about everything in our lives. The Tech culture that grew up with the companies that fostered it…no cubicles, no neckties, free food, free workout classes, breaks galore, has given way to a new focus, one that relies on hard skills, not soft ones, return to the office, lack of debate. Again, “The Morning” reported on this on August 4.
A massive fraud ring is publishing fake scientific studies…thousands of them! The consequences are significant.
Are you left handed? If so, an aspect of your vision known as high-frequency visual specialization, is reversed in left handers, with your brains processing this information in the right hemisphere. This is different from, say, high frequency sounds for language which both righties and lefties process on the left side of their brains. This article uses an example of hammering a nail, and how the vision required to perform this seemingly simple task might be processed differently for left and right handed people.
For me, this brings up a question. I’m somewhat ambidexterous, through training. I play drums and developed what’s called limb independence, something all drummers have, that allows our hands and feet to play different portions of the drum set with dynamic control and intensity, sometimes in different, syncopated patterns. I’m right handed, but learned to drive a car using my left foot to brake. Most people would put themselves and their passengers through the windshield if they used their left foot to brake. But through drumming, I learned how to control the force used by my left foot. I also hammer nails with both hands with fairly equal skill. Does my brain handle this high frequency vision task on both sides?
Fifty years ago, Benoit Mandelbrot wrote a math paper that created a new type of art…the fractal.
I saw real-time examples of fractal geometry as part of a “Computers in Art” exhibit that IBM sponsored. It toured museums in the US and came to Miami while I was working for IBM there. I had the task of organizing the exhibit at a Miami art museum, and staffing it with folks from our marketing office and we got to play with fractal art on a hands-on computer exhibit showcasing Mandelbrot’s fractals that was part of the overall exhibit.
In July, the Finnish capital, Helsinki, set a new global benchmark by going a year without a single traffic-related death. Oslo and Stockholm have also all but eliminated traffic fatalities. Here’s how they did it. Would their approach work in the US? (Stop laughing!)
Lastly, on July 30, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake occured off the Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia’s far east coast. That’s the 6th largest earthquake recorded since we started keeping track. Since then, six(!) nearby volcanoes in far eastern Russia have erupted. The first, Klyuchevskaya errupted the same day. It showed signs of unrest before the quake, perhaps foreshadowing the temblor.
That’s a lot to process. I hope you found at least some of these articles interesting. Have a great week in Science!
Bob
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