Science

"Former EPA science experts and nonprofit groups today came one step closer to striking down a policy limiting membership on the agency's advisory committees."

"Kathryn Foxhall remembers a time when reporters could call up any doctor or researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and ask them questions on the record. A journalist might even get them to open up for a “background” interview, offering candid information on the condition the expert’s name would not be used."

"A vast region of the western United States, extending from California, Arizona and New Mexico north to Oregon and Idaho, is in the grips of the first climate change-induced megadrought observed in the past 1,200 years, a study shows. The finding means the phenomenon is no longer a threat for millions to worry about in the future, but is already here."

"The Trump administration on Thursday  weakened regulations on the release of mercury and other toxic metals from oil and coal-fired power plants, another step toward rolling back health protections in the middle of a pandemic."

"A team of retirees that scours the remote ravines and windswept plains of the Pacific Northwest for long-forgotten pioneer orchards has rediscovered 10 apple varieties that were believed to be extinct — the largest number ever unearthed in a single season by the nonprofit Lost Apple Project."

"A decade of health disinformation promoted by President Vladimir Putin of Russia has sown wide confusion, hurt major institutions and encouraged the spread of deadly illnesses."

"On Feb. 3, soon after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus to be a global health emergency, an obscure Twitter account in Moscow began retweeting an American blog. It said the pathogen was a germ weapon designed to incapacitate and kill. The headline called the evidence “irrefutable” even though top scientists had already debunked that claim and declared the novel virus to be natural.

"NASA rejected a formal request by a group that questions climate change to remove a statement on the space agency's website about the scientific consensus on global warming."

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot bar recipients of its own grants from serving on agency boards, a New York district court ruled Wednesday."