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Is a revolution brewing in evolutionary theory?

Is a revolution brewing in evolutionary theory?

Kevin Laland writes: When researchers at Emory University in Atlanta trained mice to fear the smell of almonds (by pairing it with electric shocks), they found, to their consternation, that both the children and grandchildren of these mice were spontaneously afraid of the same smell. That is not supposed to happen. Generations of schoolchildren have been taught that the inheritance of acquired characteristics is impossible. A mouse should not be born with something its parents have learned during their lifetimes,…

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If we can vaccinate the world, we can beat the climate crisis

If we can vaccinate the world, we can beat the climate crisis

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo write: It would only cost $50bn to ensure 40% of the world’s population is vaccinated by the end of the year, and 60% by the first half of 2022. This is a recent estimate from the IMF, the latest institution to join a chorus of voices calling for a global vaccination programme to bring Covid-19 under control. The IMF has highlighted the economic benefits of global vaccines, which would be huge. But there is another…

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The evidence still suggests the virus came from nature

The evidence still suggests the virus came from nature

Angela L. Rasmussen and Stephen A. Goldstein write: In March 2020, a group of renowned evolutionary virologists analyzed the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 and found it was overwhelmingly likely that this virus had never been manipulated in any laboratory. Like the earlier coronaviruses SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, they theorized, it “spilled over” from its natural reservoir host (bats) to a new one (humans). Viruses jump species frequently, with unpredictable consequences. Often a virus hits an evolutionary dead end if it cannot…

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Workers are gaining leverage over employers right before our eyes

Workers are gaining leverage over employers right before our eyes

Neil Irwin writes: The relationship between American businesses and their employees is undergoing a profound shift: For the first time in a generation, workers are gaining the upper hand. The change is broader than the pandemic-related signing bonuses at fast-food places. Up and down the wage scale, companies are becoming more willing to pay a little more, to train workers, to take chances on people without traditional qualifications, and to show greater flexibility in where and how people work. The…

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Secret legal battle to obtain emails ‘profoundly undermines press freedom’

Secret legal battle to obtain emails ‘profoundly undermines press freedom’

The New York Times reports: In the last weeks of the Trump administration and continuing under President Biden, the Justice Department fought a secret legal battle to obtain the email logs of four New York Times reporters in a hunt for their sources, a top lawyer for the newspaper said Friday night. While the Trump administration never informed The Times about the effort, the Biden administration continued waging the fight this year, telling a handful of top Times executives about…

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Meadows pressed Justice Dept. to investigate election fraud claims

Meadows pressed Justice Dept. to investigate election fraud claims

The New York Times reports: In Donald J. Trump’s final weeks in office, Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, repeatedly pushed the Justice Department to investigate unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, according to newly uncovered emails provided to Congress, portions of which were reviewed by The New York Times. In five emails sent during the last week of December and early January, Mr. Meadows asked Jeffrey A. Rosen, then the acting attorney general, to examine debunked claims…

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Facebook’s responses in the Trump case are better than a kick in the teeth, but not much

Facebook’s responses in the Trump case are better than a kick in the teeth, but not much

Evelyn Douek writes: One of the many ways that the Facebook Oversight Board (FOB) is different from many courts of law, let alone the Supreme Court, is that except on the narrowest of issues (the fate of the individual piece of content or account in a case) it doesn’t have the last word. The bulk and most consequential parts of the FOB’s decisions are non-binding policy recommendations; Facebook need not abide by them but does have an obligation to respond…

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Modi’s bulldozing of parliament shows him as the architect of a Hindu Taliban

Modi’s bulldozing of parliament shows him as the architect of a Hindu Taliban

Anish Kapoor writes: At the heart of New Delhi, the capital of India, sits a Mughal-inspired monument that houses the seat of the Indian parliament. Built by the British architect Edwin Lutyens between 1911 and 1931, the parliament buildings and their grand roadways and water channels follow the form established by the Islamic rulers of Iran and elaborated by the Islamic sultanate of Samarkand and the Mughal rulers of India. Lutyens designed perhaps the most important Islamic-inspired edifice of modern…

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Fauci calls on China to release medical records of Wuhan lab researchers

Fauci calls on China to release medical records of Wuhan lab researchers

The Financial Times reports that President Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, has called on China to release the medical records of nine people whose illnesses might provide vital clues into whether Covid-19 first emerged as the result of a lab leak. He told the FT that the records could help resolve the debate over the origins of a disease that has killed more than 3.5 million people worldwide. The records concern three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of…

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Attacks on Fauci grow more intense, personal and conspiratorial

Attacks on Fauci grow more intense, personal and conspiratorial

Politico reports: For over a year, Anthony Fauci has been a bogeyman for conservatives, who have questioned his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and accused him of quietly undermining then-President Donald Trump. But those attacks took on a whole new level of vitriol this week, to the point that one social media analysis described it as highly misleading and at least one platform pulled down some posts, citing false content. It all stemmed from a tranche of Fauci’s emails that…

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The mRNA vaccine revolution is just beginning

The mRNA vaccine revolution is just beginning

Stephen Buranyi writes: No one expected the first Covid-19 vaccine to be as good as it was. “We were hoping for around 70 per cent, that’s a success,” says Dr Ann Falsey, a professor of medicine at the University of Rochester, New York, who ran a 150-person trial site for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in 2020. Even Uğur Şahin, the co-founder and CEO of BioNTech, who had shepherded the drug from its earliest stages, had some doubts. All the preliminary laboratory…

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Republicans are accidentally suppressing their own voters

Republicans are accidentally suppressing their own voters

Timothy Noah writes: An unnamed Democratic congressional aide told The Washington Post this week that the mood in his party is “panic.” The cause of that panic is a raft of legislation in various Republican-controlled states that’s designed to limit voters’ access to the polls. These laws are genuine cause for concern, but their most common component—restrictions on mail-in balloting—will likely harm Republican candidates more than Democratic ones. It’s counterintuitive that partisan efforts to undermine democratic governance should hinder rather…

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Once again, America is becoming a nation of drunks

Once again, America is becoming a nation of drunks

Kate Julian writes: Few things are more American than drinking heavily. But worrying about how heavily other Americans are drinking is one of them. The Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock because, the crew feared, the Pilgrims were going through the beer too quickly. The ship had been headed for the mouth of the Hudson River, until its sailors (who, like most Europeans of that time, preferred beer to water) panicked at the possibility of running out before they got home,…

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Watchdog: Syria has likely used chemical weapons 17 times

Watchdog: Syria has likely used chemical weapons 17 times

The Associated Press reports: The head of the international chemical weapons watchdog told the U.N. Security Council that its experts have investigated 77 allegations against Syria, and concluded that in 17 cases chemical weapons were likely or definitely used. Fernando Arias called it “a disturbing reality” that eight years after Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the production or use of such weapons, many questions remain about its initial declaration of its weapons, stockpiles and precursors and its…

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