In this week's special episode, we cover some recent news (medical groups suing HHS, NSF grants icing out biomedicine, and sleuths being leveraged for anti-science), dive into the recent interview the Director of the NIH had with Charlie Kirk, give a book update, and share our Discoveries of the Week.

We summarize a terrible week for science, provide a book update, share some News of the Week, add a couple of justifiable rants, and provide two nice science-based discoveries you can use. Four thumbs up!

Link to the third thumb.

Newsletters are reshaping science policy in new ways thanks to various technologies and business models. We explore. Also, our new "Rant of the Week" feature gets a test drive, so let us know what you think! And, new "Discoveries of the Week" — two great new summer reads from the non-fiction aisle.

One of our first episodes, with lots of good stuff about how bioRxiv and medRxiv are carrying water for MAHA, our first look at "gaslight science," and a recommendation for "The AI Con" and pickleball in an abandoned Dick's.

MAHA and RFK Jr. denigrate independent, high-quality scientific journals while hinting that they will launch journals of their own. These "gaslight journals" already exist and are having massive effects on public health policy with their intentional science meant to deceive the public — their "gaslight science." We explore one of these papers used in Congressional testimony, and how it all is part of a larger grift.

Everyone is rushing to integrate AI and brag to shareholders about it, but we stop to think a little bit harder about how it applies to humanity's major discovery initiatives — science! Turns out, it's not exactly compatible.