Free Republic

It should be clear by now that most of the world's leaders were stampeded over the lockdown cliff like so many lemmings. What caused the stampede is even more remarkable: a tiny coterie of obscure, soft-spoken epidemiologists in white lab coats playing with numbers. Americans trying to keep up with the torrid pace of new developments over the past few months have been hearing about that work — the data-modeling these people do by feeding selected data and a variety of assumptions into a computer. The computer then disgorges diagrams and charts that attempt to describe the future progress of...

The University of Washington School of Medicine’s Virology Lab is reporting encouraging results from trial runs of a new test from Abbott Laboratories that detects the antibodies created by people who have had COVID-19, whether they knew they had it or not. “This is a really fantastic test,” Keith Jerome, who leads UW Medicine’s virology program, told reporters today. He said UW’s lab could process 4,000 samples per day starting next week, and conceivably ramp up to 14,000 samples per day within a couple of weeks. The test will be made available through health care providers, in medical clinics or...

Every year, 150 climate scientists fly far into the wilderness and bore deep into Greenland’s largest glacier. Their work is complicated and important. The EastGRIP project is trying to understand how ice streams underneath the glacier are pushing vast amounts of ice into the ocean, and how this contributes to rising sea levels. But this year the drills will be silent. The ice streams will go unmeasured. The reason is the coronavirus. The fallout from measures to contain the outbreak have made the research impossible. Greenland is closed to foreigners. Its government is worried any outbreak could be particularly dangerous...

Is the federal government a disinterested player in the debate on climate science? Not based on an impressive video that outlines some of the shenanigans of government agencies, which supposedly watch the matter. Composed of 13 federal agencies that conduct research on global changes that impact society, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is a federal project that issues periodic reports about the climate in the United States. In 1989, the year it was established, USGCRP was mandated by Congress to coordinate federal research related to the human and natural forces that affect the global environment. Billed as the...

Yale Medicine Professor of Psychiatry Bandy X. Lee claims that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has the “right to have [Trump] submit to an involuntary evaluation.” Professor Lee, of the Yale University School of Medicine, also serves as president of the World Mental Health Coalition. She has been a longstanding and outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, providing “translations” of his communications on her Twitter feed. Lee was also an editor on The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, and is part of a movement demanding that the Judiciary Committee bring a panel of mental health experts to join impeachment...

Federal agencies will receive $25 million from Congress to study gun violence in a government spending deal reached by House and Senate negotiators — a major win for Democrats who have long pushed for dedicated funding to research the issue, a source told The Hill. "Democrats have broken the ban on funding for the first time in decades," the source said. The deal includes $12.5 million each for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health to study gun violence and ways to prevent it. It’s the first time in more than 20 years that...

Hold on to your hats, skeptics. The study of alien existence is about to become a real scientific field. Pennsylvania State University is gearing up to make the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) an established field of scientific study. This means that a degree in Alien Research, no matter how outlandish it might sound, is soon going to be a real thing. According to a report, the university is planning on doing this by offering courses on the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life in its course catalog. It will also conduct actual research into the subject through it’s newly-established Penn...

The Supreme Court on Friday will consider whether to take up a prominent climatologist's defamation suit against a venerated conservative magazine, in a case that pits climate scientists against the free speech rights of global warming skeptics. The dispute between scientist Michael Mann and the National Review has drawn attention from lawmakers, interest groups, academics and media, as the court weighs adding a potentially blockbuster First Amendment showdown to an already politically charged docket. Scientists hail Mann’s lawsuit as a necessary defense against efforts to erode public confidence in the scientific consensus that climate change is an urgent threat, while...

It turns out network television isn’t done lecturing us on abortion yet. We’ve had series after series come at us with pro-abortion stories, but NBC’s The Blacklist may have brought us the strangest case of them all. Let’s just say if this is where the propaganda is headed, liberals should stick to copying The Handmaid’s Tale. The November 15 episode “Hannah Hayes” concerns the strange case of a kidnapped governor reappearing on the day of a new election. The governor, however, isn’t sharing any details of his abduction, forcing the FBI to investigate the crime on their own. The agents...

11,000 scientists demand population control because of ‘climate emergency’ November 5, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – 11,000 scientists have signed onto an article declaring that “the world population must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced,” because a “climate emergency” threatens “the fate of humanity.” Written by the Alliance of World Scientists and full of alarmist, apocalyptic language, the article was published today in BioScience.  “Still increasing by roughly 80 million people per year, or more than 200,000 per day...the world population must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced—within a framework that ensures social integrity,” the authors wrote.  “There are proven and effective policies...

European Union leaders failed Thursday to back a plan to make the bloc’s economy carbon neutral by 2050 in spite of promises to protesters across the continent to fight harder against climate change. Ahead of a U.N. meeting in the fall, the proposal was relegated to a non-binding footnote in the final statement of Thursday’s summit of EU leaders in Brussels. “For a large majority of Member States, climate neutrality must be achieved by 2050,” the footnote read. However, for the change in approach to become an official target, all 28 EU countries need to back the change. The non-decision...

President Donald Trump's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations has broken with his viewpoint on climate change, saying it "poses real risks". Kelly Craft told lawmakers at her confirmation hearing she would "be an advocate for all countries to do their part in addressing climate change". In the past, she had claimed to believe "both sides" of the climate debate. Mr Trump has previously called climate change a "hoax" and questioned the scientific consensus on the matter. Earlier this month, Mr Trump said climate change "goes both ways" and blamed other nations for worsening air and water quality. In...

There's room for all types in a newly described fossil that shows 259 baby fish swimming together in a school, approximately 50 million years ago. According to the authors of a new study published Wednesday (May 29) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, this ex-school may be the earliest known fossil evidence that prehistoric fish swam in unison, just as modern fish do today. A team of Arizona researchers stumbled upon this remarkable rock during a visit to the Oishi Fossils Gallery of Mizuta Memorial Museum in Japan. Working with the museum, the researchers determined that the...

For all their hollow declarations that they are “pro-science”, the left continually demonstrates that they only accept “science” that affirms their own radical science-defying ideology. This is never truer when applied to the increasingly fascistic and dominant “gender ideology.” If you are a college professor and would like to lose your job, your tenure, your credibility, and even your access to social media, go ahead and present your clinical findings that contradict social justice warrior talking points. Ray Blanchard, the groundbreaking psychologist who helped craft the diagnostic and treatment procedures for clinicians dealing with transgenderism, was blocked on Twitter this...

Climate change is widening the world’s gap between the haves and have-nots, worsening economic inequality between rich and poor countries, according to a new analysis by Stanford scientists.

Actress Dame Emma Thompson has been defending her decision to fly from the US to attend a climate change protest in central London. Speaking to reporters from the Extinction Rebellion campaign group's pink boat, she said did not fly as much as she used to - and planted a lot of trees. Ms Thompson also compared the protest to the campaign of disruption by the Suffragettes.

Which risk factor is responsible for more deaths around the world than any other? Not smoking. Not even high blood pressure. It's a poor diet. "In many countries, poor diet now causes more deaths than tobacco smoking and high blood pressure," said Ashkan Afshin, an assistant professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Drinking two or more diet beverages a day linked to high risk of stroke, heart attacks Drinking two or more diet beverages a day linked to high risk of stroke, heart attacks And it's not just that people are choosing...

WASHINGTON — Anti-vaccination activists, some with their (presumably unvaccinated) children, packed the Dirksen Senate Office Building Tuesday morning for a hearing that they hoped would vindicate, or at least recognize as legitimate, their fear that protecting their families from measles runs the risk of something worse, including autism and other disorders. As the doors closed on the room where the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions was meeting, a woman could be heard pleading to be allowed in to give her side of what has become a heated, and potentially dangerous, controversy. That hope would be quickly dashed....

SCIENCEDIRECT.COM A mid-2000’s study linking anti-gay prejudice to shorter lifespans for lesbians, gays, and bisexual individuals has been retracted on grounds that it was an “erroneous” finding.The study “Structural stigma and all-cause mortality in sexual minority populations” was conducted by researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and was published by the peer-reviewed academic journal Social Science & Medicine in February 2014.The study purported to have found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who live in communities with high levels of anti-gay sentiment tend to die earlier than lesbians, gays and bisexuals who live in communities that are...

CNN)In a sea of users live-tweeting the Oscars last night, one account stood out: the CIA. Apparently, the agency is into movies -- especially "Black Panther." Throughout the night, the CIA Twitter feed explored the feasibility of the technology seen in the Marvel superhero flick. The agency also tested its followers' knowledge of metals, asking if they thought the fictional metal vibranium is real...