Bluesky Says Kremlin Is Hacking Its Platform to Spread Propaganda www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/b... "While Russians have long flooded social media platforms with fake accounts and content, hacking into real accounts appeared to be a novel strategy."

Science-y sounding positions often undermine trust in science…”the trust and credibility of science is used to undermine public trust in, and the credibility of, science. The respected place of science in society is being used to destroy the place of science in society.” — @caulfieldtim.bsky.social

Can extra snoozing reverse the health hazards of a bad night’s sleep? www.science.org/content/arti... via @science.org “…the body’s ability to recover after periods of insufficient sleep may also matter.” #Sleep! 😴

Let's be clear: - Hantavirus is NOT a bioweapon - Ivermectin doesn't help. - It has nothing to do with COVID vaccine - Etc etc etc Uncertainty & fear fertile ground for bunk. Hantavirus conspiracies are spreading open.substack.com/pub/garyschw... by @garyschw.bsky.social

People judge rap music fans as more capable of murder, study www.psypost.org/people-judge... Studies consistently find musical taste mostly about personal identity. How you see yourself & want others to see you. But also associated with harmful stereotypes (read: racism) of fans (the "others").

No surprise. And as technology (rapidly!) evolves, will get more and more challenging. Average Briton now struggles to identify deepfakes, study finds www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

‼️ 36% of U.S. youth take supplements!? 60% of adults do!? In general, supplements are a grift. Yes, times when (quality) supplements needed. But for most, little evidence of benefit & possible harm. Win for science-free Big Supplement. See: stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/252... via NCHS

The anti-science death cult spiral continues... Kennedy fires heads of task force that sets insurance coverage rules www.axios.com/2026/05/20/k...

The death & suffering caused by MAGA public health policies – international & domestic...? Horrifying, criminal, and cruel. But it is gas prices that angers voters? Trump’s cuts to foreign aid are undermining the Ebola response www.statnews.com/2026/05/19/u... via @statnews.com

This album IS the template. In the early 1980s [⚠️ warning: major flex coming] I had the privilege of opening for The Ramones. They did not disappoint. So authentic. So cool. So loud. So punk. And great tunes! See: Greatest albums www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

Our A.I. world! 👇 More books, more scientific papers, more music... all created by A.I. Much of this is slop, polluting & confusing our information environment and making it more difficult to find quality content. wapo.st/4dncIVu via @washingtonpost.com

Need MORE policies like this... 👇 Researchers who use hallucinated references to face arXiv ban www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“Our sources of information, especially social media platforms, incentivize the spread of misinformation and misleading fear-mongering. The information economy is driven not by the profiling of truth but by the accumulation of attention.” — @caulfieldtim.bsky.social

Yep, serious problems with higher education. But Yale's report fails to note that MUCH of the distrust – which the report legitimizes – has been manufactured for political gain. Ideological diversity issue also mishandled. Some perspectives are factually wrong. cc @timothysnyder.bsky.social

Red flags a chiropractor pushing bunk: 🚩 offers services for anything other than possible modest benefit for lower back pain 🚩 sells supplements & gizmos 🚩 pushes idea of subscriptions & "maintenance" 🚩 the word "subluxation" 🚩 they're a chiropractor

Should You Trust Your Health to a Chiropractor? www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/w... Sum: NO 🛑 Little evidence of benefit (some studies find as good as other stuff that doesn't work well for back pain) & possible harm. Me: “There are other, kind of broader, social harms" (embrace of pseudoscience).

While ALL movement is great, more physical activity better for cardiovascular protection. 💪 See: bjsm.bmj.com/content/earl... Study: "Current MVPA guidelines provide a universal but modest safety margin, whereas optimal cardiovascular protection may require substantially higher activity volumes."

A controversy that seems to perfectly fit our time. 👇 Book on Truth in the Age of A.I. Contains Quotes Made Up by A.I. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/b...

🚨 Joe Rogan + (unhinged) Mel Gibson = bunk crisis! Influencers playing to fear & identity having huge adverse impact. Cancer patients seek unproven antiparasitic treatments after actor's podcast appearance www.cidrap.umn.edu/public-healt...

1 in 8 women drink during pregnancy. Experts dread the consequences www.statnews.com/2026/05/19/d... via @statnews.com "Overall, drinking among pregnant women has remained about the same, with 12.5% of women reporting past-month alcohol use in 2024..." "...a leading driver of disability in the US"

How to stop AI from turning your brain to mush www.bbc.com/future/artic... @thomasgermain.bsky.social "There's plenty of evidence that if you are not doing as much of the actual thinking, then your capability to do that kind of thinking is going to atrophy." Be critical. And create – paper & pen.

Study finds people more cynical toward news more likely to believe #misinformation news.ku.edu/news/article... "...important that in news literacy education we talk about what the news media does right and why it’s important in a functioning democracy..."

MASSIVE increase in (unproven) Leucovorin prescriptions for children with autism linked to media hype, #misinformation, and unverified anecdotes...👇 "...an increase of over 24-fold compared with the 2023 to 2025." See: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

How racial resentment relates to political conservatism across different White religious groups www.psypost.org/how-racial-r... "...harboring racial resentment provides evidence of a conservative political shift among White religious moderates, liberals, and nonreligious individuals."

Excited to start my new book! cc @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social 🙏

‼️ Hear, hear! 👇 How teaching the history of science can help equip students to face polarized times theconversation.com/how-teaching... "...we now face situations where some ill-intentioned people or anti-democratic agitators sow distrust in society, sometimes related to science..."

Polluting our knowledge base...👇 AI research papers are getting better, and it’s a big problem for scientists www.theverge.com/ai-artificia... YEP: "If you introduce an infinite paper-writing machine to a system that defines productivity by the number of papers written, people will use it..."

Providing feedback without verification: The hidden risk of trust in AI www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... "AI encourages feedback but reduces verification." "...as trust increases, users may reinforce existing errors in the system by providing unverified feedback (eg, clicking 'thumb up')"

He said, she said, AI said: Wall Street sex scandal rivets and confounds www.enca.com/opinion/he-s... Me: "This trend hints at how AI is going to increasingly pollute our feeds and pollute public discourse on both important and frivolous topics."

Hilarious data on the degree to which MAGA is a cult...👇 Only 33% of Republicans say they could beat Trump in a fight. 54% of Democrats say an eight-year-old boy could. The unshakeable worship of Dear Leader...

Midlife fitness linked to longer, healthier lives, study wapo.st/42E9vuI From study: "Higher midlife CRF was associated with longer health span, lower multimorbidity, and longer lifespan among men and women." #Move! 💪

It increasingly feels like a cult. Despite the objective reality of cruelty, corruption, and total incompetence... Despite ICE, Epstein, Iran, the deadly destruction of public health & science, and the total indifference to the lives of Americans... MAGA follows. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/16/u...

Yes, more babies suffered before vitamin K shots, recommended as routine in US in 1961. Without shot, risk of bleeding 81 times higher. “Brain bleeds are among the most serious outcomes.” publichealth.jhu.edu/2026/why-new...

Politics Is Breaking Us — Just Ask These Therapists www.politico.com/news/magazin... “...the first time that we’re really seeing people initiating therapy because of political [anxiety]." "65% of Americans said politics was a significant source of stress in their lives last year." AB too. Ugh.

🚨 The growing KNOWLEDGE CRISIS.👇 LLM hallucinations in the wild: Large-scale evidence from non-existent citations arxiv.org/abs/2605.07723 [pre-print] "LLM hallucinations are infiltrating knowledge production at scale, threatening both the reliability & equity of future scientific discovery..."

Good example of the expanding impact of health misinformation.👇 Babies Are Bleeding to Death as Parents Reject a Vitamin Shot Given at Birth www.propublica.org/article/more... "...hospitals have seen a rise in parents opting out of the shots for their newborns, often driven by unfounded fears."

“Our information environment is becoming increasingly chaotic, spun, polarized & rage-filled…in early 2024, the President of the European Union went so far as to suggest that disinformation, misinformation & polarization are currently the world’s most significant threats.”— @caulfieldtim.bsky.social

Alcohol is wreaking havoc on U.S. public health. American society looks the other way www.statnews.com/2026/05/12/a... via @statnews.com "It is a drug that kills nearly 500 Americans every day, and causes more deaths in a typical year than every infectious disease combined."

👇 Rarely see bipartisan support. Action needed! Many Americans Pessimistic about AI’s Impact – and Want More Regulation www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-pe... via @appc.upenn.edu "The most pessimistic assessments are reserved for mental health and well-being..."

Things to know about Surgeon General nominee [Sum: another grifter] open.substack.com/pub/garyschw... @angierasmussen.bsky.social: "The Surgeon General should not use their platform as America’s top doctor to peddle MAHA propaganda and sell snake oil and cures for diseases that don’t exist."

Recent COVID Vaccination & Risk of SARS-CoV-2 Transmission jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... "...vaccination may have an indirect benefit of decreasing transmission and thus reducing overall exposure to SARS-CoV-2." #VaccinesWork

Health coverage is getting killed by Google AI Overviews pressgazette.co.uk/media-audien... by @charlottetobitt.bsky.social "...links to articles supplanted by an AI-written summary 72% of the time in Google search results." "...clickthrough decline of almost 60%."

"80% of Canadians think they are seeing 'misleading, false, or inaccurate' information online at least once a month" 15-34 yrs old: social media most prevalent source (78%) 61% “very” or “extremely” concerned about misinformation 1/2 find it difficult to ID bunk globalnews.ca/news/1184917...

🚨 Embrace of health misinformation is killing conservatives. The political polarization of health outcomes in the USA www.nature.com/articles/s41... "...growing ideological divides in health behaviours are leaving conservative Americans increasingly vulnerable to preventable health risks."

Sleep linked to slower ageing: huge study pinpoints the right amount www.nature.com/articles/d41... "...data provide a glimpse into how sleep affects not just the brain but also organs and processes throughout the body." 6 to 8 hrs sweet spot for most. #Sleep! 😴

Longevity trends: What's fact and what's fiction? www.ctvnews.ca/edmonton/vid... Should you get a full-body MRI? My take: NO! No evidence of benefit. Lots of possible harm. #Longevity = basic healthy lifestyle. Plus, pick the right parents (genes & socioeconomics key)!

🚩 Ivermectin mentioned? Major red flag! 🚩 Hantavirus Conspiracy Theories Are Already Spreading www.wired.com/story/hantav... “One of the most striking shifts since the Covid pandemic is how rapidly misinformation narratives now organize themselves around emerging outbreaks.”

Males who discuss suicide seek help less often than females, report finds www.statnews.com/2026/05/12/s... via @statnews.com "Out of 1.5 million messages it received in 2025, the organization found that less then 20% of the texters identified as male..." Regressive #manosphere noise ain't helping.

Great work on this book, @caulfieldtim.bsky.social ! I especially liked these reflective meta comments on the uncertainty of science being cited for a book on uncertainty:

Preexisting beliefs deeply influence how we learn new information www.psypost.org/your-eyes-re... From study: Misinformation pathway = "...rigidity in belief-related choices may arise from predecisional reinforcement dynamics that stabilize existing epistemic structures."