Science
May 24, 2026 — John Hinderaker
Two weeks ago I gave a talk at a symposium on anti-Semitism on the right in New York. One of those who attended the symposium was Dr. Randall Bock. Dr. Bock has a podcast and a Substack. After the symposium, he asked me to be a guest on his podcast, to which I was happy to agree. We talked about a number of things, including Dr. Bock’s work on the
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February 14, 2026 — John Hinderaker
…to be taken seriously as a pundit. Check out this riff by Bill Maher. It is so stupid that at first I thought it must be an AI-generated fake. But apparently not: Bill Maher: “Doug Burgum, he’s the interior secretary. Listen to this… He said, CO2, carbon, was never a pollutant. He said when we breathe, we emit CO2.”⁰“Okay, Doug, you know what? Let’s try this little experiment. Um, tonight
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February 1, 2026 — John Hinderaker
Sure, but follow it where? There may have been a time when scientists were objective thinking machines, like Dr. Spock. No biases, just rationality: follow the facts wherever they lead. If there was ever such a golden age, it is long gone. Now, scientists are participants in the battle for control over American culture, just like the rest of us. Likely more so. Thus: “Scientists’ political views change how they
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August 23, 2025 — Scott Johnson
This is perhaps the most “unusual” message I have received in the 23 years I have been writing for Power Line: Dear Mr. Johnson, I have an article on American Thinker today [i.e., August 21], an article which I wrote in response to your July 15 post “Thinking About Natural Disasters.” Plato solved the Problem of Evil 2,300 years ago. Plato was a much, much deeper thinker than any of
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July 27, 2025 — Bill Glahn
From Politico, Researchers quietly planned a test to dim sunlight. They wanted to ‘avoid scaring’ the public. Good morning, dear readers. How’s your day going so far? Perhaps for the first time ever, I’m recommending that your read a Politico article in its entirety. The details outlined in funding requests, emails, texts and other records obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News raise new questions about a secretive billionaire-backed initiative that oversaw
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June 4, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Science has fallen into disrepute. Widespread fraud, studies that can’t be replicated, corruption in the World Health Organization, politics masquerading as science, the covid disaster–these and other developments have severely damaged the public’s trust in science and scientists. Can trust in science be restored? President Trump is going to try. On May 23, he issued an Executive Order titled “Restoring Gold Standard Science,” which hasn’t gotten as much attention as
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May 20, 2025 — Scott Johnson
In the Manhattan Institute 2024 President’s Update, Reihan Salam noes that Martin Kulldorf’s essay “Harvard tramples the truth” was City Journal’s most-read story last year. Dr. Kulldorf tells his story of the suppression of truth by academic and public-health in the first person: I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard. The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired.
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January 6, 2025 — John Hinderaker
As one who has been known to pop a beer and hoist a glass of wine, I was concerned to see headlines about America’s Surgeon General saying that we should put warnings on alcohol products similar to those on cigarettes. Because moderate drinking is a “leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States.” That would be significant news, if true. Happily, it isn’t. In the Wall Street Journal, Allysia
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December 14, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I usually don’t write about a topic unless I think I know something about it and have something to say. That doesn’t apply to the drones swarming over New Jersey. I have absolutely no idea what is going on. However, it seems clear that something is going on, and the Biden administration’s usual gaslighting–nothing to see here!–inspires zero confidence, as always. The New York Post has several stories on the
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October 23, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The most interesting thing about this story is that the New York Times is willing to publish it: “U.S. Study on Puberty Blockers Goes Unpublished Because of Politics, Doctor Says.” This was the study: The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to
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October 13, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I grew up during the early days of the Space Race. Getting into orbit, getting to the moon–these were frequent and exciting news stories. One day when I was in elementary school, I and other members of my class were late to school because we stayed home, with our parents’ permission, to watch a launch from Cape Canaveral. The level of public interest was sky-high. In those days, the interstate
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July 25, 2024 — Steven Hayward
This headline in today’s Nature magazine caught my eye: Heaviest element yet within reach after major breakthrough Researchers have demonstrated a new way to make superheavy elements, offering a method to create element 120 — which would be the heaviest element ever made. Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, announced today that they have for the first time used a beam of titanium to make a
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June 3, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Not much, actually. A number of arguments relevant to the global warming debate are raging, and generally, the realists–as opposed to the hysterics–are winning. There simply isn’t a sound scientific basis for the claim that CO2 threatens our civilization (not that liberals like our civilization, but that is another matter). A good example of how the global warming debate is going comes from Watts Up With That?, where Andy May
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April 8, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The eclipse was a bust here in Minnesota. We were supposed to get around a 70% eclipse, but it was cloudy and the Sun never came out, all day. So, a moot point. One of my daughters lives in Texas and reports that the eclipse turned out to be rather cool there. But what can you really say, on a politics-oriented web site, about a purely scientific phenomenon? You can
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April 8, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I thought that question was settled a long time ago. People have knows that the Earth is spherical (more or less) for millennia. The ancient Greeks not only knew it was round, they used triangulation to calculate its circumference to within a small margin of error. So, are there really still people who think the Earth is flat? Allegedly so. This video got a lot of circulation on social media.
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October 23, 2023 — Steven Hayward
I thought the New York Times had once again stolen the prize for the dumbest article of the last few days with this entry: Exxon Mobil’s Pioneer Acquisition Is a Direct Threat to Democracy Even the cliches in the article are 20 years out of date, but I’m sure the author, Jeff Colgan, professor of political science and the director of the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University, is already
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July 2, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a report on Friday about a relatively new technology called solar radiation modification that could be used in the fight against climate change. According to the report, SRM is a form of “geoengineering” that “offers the possibility of cooling the planet significantly on a timescale of a few years.” The University of Oxford defines “geoengineering” as “the deliberate large-scale intervention
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