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RFK Jr.: HHS Will Investigate All Possible Causes of Chronic Disease — Including Vaccines

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 18, 2025

In his first address to his staff, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged to subject potential causes of chronic disease to “unbiased scientific investigation.”

“Nothing is going to be off limits,” including his personal past beliefs, Kennedy said at his welcome ceremony today.

On Feb. 13, the White House issued an executive order establishing the Make America Healthy Again Commission, which Kennedy will lead.

Kennedy said today that as part of that agenda, he will direct HHS to investigate many possible causes of the chronic disease epidemic in the U.S.

“Some of the possible factors we will investigate were formally taboo or insufficiently scrutinized,” he said. “Those who are unwilling to embrace those kinds of ideas can retire,” he said.

Before and during his confirmation hearings, Kennedy came under fire from Democrats and the mainstream media for raising questions about vaccine safety. Today, he included the childhood vaccine schedule as one of the formerly “taboo” areas he planned to investigate.

Other potential drivers of the chronic disease epidemic the agency will investigate will include electromagnetic radiation, glyphosate and other pesticides, ultraprocessed foods, artificial food additives, antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, a group of chemicals known as PFAS and microplastics.

Kennedy said he plans to convene stakeholders “of all viewpoints,” and to set study protocols in advance that won’t be changed when the results look like they will be “inconvenient.”

“Let’s all depoliticize these issues and reestablish a common ground or action and renew the search for existential truths with no political impediments and no preconceptions,” he said.

Kennedy also said he’ll work to remove “conflicts of interest” on HHS advisory committees in order to reestablish the public’s trust, Bloomberg Law reported.

Related articles in The Defender

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

February 19, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Senator Mitch McConnell Sole Republican Who Didn’t Vote to Confirm RFK, Jr.

Cites his childhood polio experience as rationale

By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | February 13, 2025

Senator Mitch McConnell was the sole Republican to vote against RFK, Jr.’s confirmation as HHS Secretary. As he explained in his statement.

I’m a survivor of childhood polio. In my lifetime, I’ve watched vaccines save millions of lives from devastating diseases across America and around the world. I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles… a record of trafficking in dangerous conspiracy theories and eroding trust in public health institutions does not entitle Mr. Kennedy to lead these important efforts.

A public heath report titled “Incidence of Poliomyelitis in the United States in 1944” reported an above average national incidence of polio that year, with a total of 19,053 cases. However, no outbreak in Alabama was noted, indicating that the two-year-old Mitch McConnell was an exceedingly unlucky isolated case.

Alone among infectious diseases, polio only became a serious problem in the 20th century. The conventional explanation is that—while every other infectious disease was dramatically reduced by improvements in public sanitation—the increasing availability of clean drinking water apparently resulted in fewer children being exposed to the polio virus during their early childhood years (between 6 months and 5 years) when the disease is typically very mild. This, in turn, resulted in fewer mothers acquiring immunity and passing it on to their nursing infants.

The experience of the American South seemed to support this theory. Without widespread electrification or water filtration systems, the South had poor sanitation, which led to mild infant infection and widespread adult immunity. This could explain why the region saw no major polio epidemics until the late 1940s.

As Senator McConnell described his case in his memoir: “The disease struck and weakened my left leg, the worst of it my quadriceps.”

Given that he was two years old at the time—when the disease is usually very mild—and given that it was apparently an isolated case in Alabama that year, his was an especially bad piece of luck.

I wonder how the local doctor in Five Points, Alabama—which currently has a population of 114— obtained a definitive diagnosis in 1944. Laboratory testing for polio was not widespread prior to 1958.

February 13, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

New Executive Order Leads America’s Health Revival as RFK Jr. Takes HHS Helm

By Jefferey Jaxen | February 13, 2025

America has just took the exit ramp off the long, failed highway of disease management towards a better direction to ensure our healthcare system actually promotes health.

How exactly?

We now see the first vestiges of a blueprint emerging in the form of President Trumps first Executive Order with Robert F. Kennedy Jr officially at the helm of U.S. Health and Human Service.

The order, titled Establishing the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission is now the founding document outlining where we are at, where we need to go, and what directions need to be aimed at to get there.

What’s clear during the first read-through of the document is that the days of petty pot shots and baseless smears upon RFK Jr. the public endured for years, up through and during his confirmation process, are over.

The adults are in the room and are stating their intentions to go to work on the ideals that propelled both Trump and RFK Jr. to populist symbols of change.

The order directs all departments and agencies to “aggressively combat… reversing “… rising rates of mental health disorders, obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases.

Federal funding will now prioritize “gold-standard research on the root causes of why Americans are getting sick.

The work extends beyond the medical space.

“… agencies shall work with farmers to ensure that United States food is the healthiest, most abundant, and most affordable in the world” states the order. A revolutionary act in and of itself.

The newly-formed council will advise the President on how best to exercise his authority to address the childhood chronic disease crisis.

In order to do this, the council and federal funds will “study the scope of the childhood chronic disease crisis and any potential contributing causes, including the American diet, absorption of toxic material, medical treatments, lifestyle, environmental factors, Government policies, food production techniques, electromagnetic radiation, and corporate influence or cronyism

Of particular note regarding the assessment and strategy of the council’s assessment and strategy will be the following:

(iii) assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs;

(iv) identify and report on best practices for preventing childhood health issues, including through proper nutrition and the promotion of healthy lifestyles;

(v) evaluate the effectiveness of existing educational programs with regard to nutrition, physical activity, and mental health for children;

(vi) identify and evaluate existing Federal programs and funding intended to prevent and treat childhood health issues for their scope and effectiveness;

(vii) ensure transparency of all current data and unpublished analyses related to the childhood chronic disease crisis, consistent with applicable law

The council will also tackle conflicts of interest that have long-hurt public trust – a herculean task in the shadow of the failed pandemic response.

To those ends, a framework for transparency and ethics will be created to review industry-funded projects. Enforcement of this process will be key for its success.

The hopeful work to shift the weary direction of American health is just starting.

Per this Executive Order, an official strategy shall be delivered in 180 days to “address appropriately restructuring the Federal Government’s response to the childhood chronic disease crisis, including by ending Federal practices that exacerbate the health crisis or unsuccessfully attempt to address it, and by adding powerful new solutions that will end childhood chronic disease.”

The public is watching every moment and at every step of this process. Action and accountability will be key.

February 13, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

BBC Rides to the Rescue as Scientists Inconveniently Find the Gulf Stream Isn’t Getting Weaker

By Chris Morrison | The Daily Sceptic | February 6, 2025

Last month a group of scientists published a paper in Nature stating that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) had shown no decline in strength since the 1960s. Helped by publicity in the Daily Sceptic, the story went viral on social media, although it was largely ignored in narrative-driven mainstream publications. The collapse of the Gulf Stream, a key component of the AMOC, is an important ‘tipping point’ story used to induce mass climate psychosis and make it easier to impose the Net Zero fantasy on increasingly resentful and questioning populations. Obviously, reinforcements to back up such an important weaponised scare needed to be rushed to the front and the BBC has risen to the challenge. The AMOC “appears to be getting weaker” state BBC activists Simon King and Mark Poynting. Their long article is a classic of its kind in trying to deflect scientific findings that blow holes in the ‘settled’ narrative.

In the Nature paper, three scientists working out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution stated that they came to their conclusion showing the stability of the AMOC after examining heat transfers between the sea and the atmosphere. It was noted that the AMOC had not weakened from 1963 to 2017, “although substantial variability exists at all latitudes”. This variability is the basis for much of the Gulf Stream fear-mongering. The BBC notes that the presence of larger grains of sediment on the ocean floor suggests the existence of stronger currents, pointing to a “cold blob” in the Atlantic that appears to have cooled of late. Thin pickings, it might be thought, to run an article titled ‘Could the UK actually get colder with global warming?’ The Woods Hole scientists note that records “are not long enough to differentiate between low frequency variability and long-term trends”.

The Nature story is not the only recent scientific finding that suggests the Day After Tomorrow alarm about the AMOC is a tad overdone. In 2023, Georgina Rannard of the BBC reported that “scientists say” a weakening Gulf Stream could collapse as early as 2025. There was no later reporting, needless to say, of subsequent work from a group of scientists at the US weather service NOAA that discovered the huge flow of Gulf Stream tropical water through the Florida Straits had remained “remarkably stable” for over 40 years.

Of course the BBC, along with most of the legacy media, has form as long as your arm when it comes to producing deflective copy seemingly designed to head off inconvenient scientific findings. The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is the largest and best observed collection of tropical coral in the world. Any sign of ill health is a boon for green propogandists who argue that warming measured in tenths of a degree centigrade will destroy an organism that has survived for millions of years in temperatures between 24-32°C. For the last three years, coral on the GBR has hit recent record levels with scarcely a mention in mainstream media. Days before last year’s record was announced, the places where journalism goes to die were full of stories from a paper that conveniently noted climate change posed an “existential threat” to the reef. “The science tells us that the GBR is in danger and we should be guided by the science,” Professor Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong told Victoria Gill of BBC News. Professor McGregor’s statement was an opinion readily broadcast by the BBC, a courtesy that does not appear to have been extended to the fact that coral on the GBR was at its highest level since detailed observations began.

It beggars belief that the BBC and all its fellow alarmists can run this stuff with a straight face knowing that crucial scientific information is missing from their reports. Important findings from reputable sources emerge about the current stability of the Gulf Stream and the response is to blow more smoke around that raises wholly unnecessary fears.

The main concern is that the AMOC “could suddenly switch off”, state King and Poynting. To back up their statement and provide the inevitable political message they note the comment of Matthew England, Professor of Oceanography at the University of South Wales: “We’re playing a bit of a Russian roulette game. The more we stack up the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the more we warm the system, the more chance we have of an AMOC slowdown and collapse.” Now look what you plebs have done with your steak chomping, gas-guzzling central heating and naff holidays in Benidorm, is an unpleasant subtext here.

Of course, keen and dedicated followers of climate alarmists will note a master craftsman at work. In 2023, aided by 35 million computer hours and using an improbable rise in temperature of up to 4°C in less than 80 years, Professor Matthews suggested that there was a dramatic slowdown in deep Antarctica ocean currents. Melting Antarctica ice could lead to a 40% slowdown in just 30 years. The fact that Antarctica has barely warmed in 70 years is ignored.

Who needs Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters when we have the BBC.

February 11, 2025 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Soft Power, German-Style: What Does Germany’s GIZ Have in Common With USAID?

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – February 11, 2025

NATO countries’ ‘aid’ agencies are reeling amid Trump’s freeze on USAID and revelations on the agency’s record of global meddling and largesse. Sputnik has already explored the shady activities of USAID’s British and French cousins. Now it’s Germany’s turn.

The German Corporation for International Cooperation (German acronym GIZ) gets most of its €4 bln ($4.1 bln US) straight from the federal budget, plus EU ‘co-financing’, to support up to 1,700 projects in 120 countries.

Many of GIZ’s projects revolve around ‘climate action’ and ‘sustainability’. From organic farming in Africa to solar/wind power in Latin America, GIZ is involved in pushing countries trying to break out of poverty to adhere to development goals set by the West.

GIZ also supports things like the digitization of governance, local media, Africa’s film industry, and refugee reintegration. In Ukraine, they’ve provided over 1,100 microloans for small businesses from dance studios to fashion ateliers.

A damning 2024 Focus Magazine exposé uncovered tens of millions in questionable GIZ spending, from “vague” multi-million euro grants for “climate awareness” and monitoring projects in Thailand and Turkiye, to €5M spent to make mosques “green” in Morocco, to €44M for bike lanes in Lima as part of a €529M “climate and development partnership.”

In April 2023, the Federal Audit Office revealed, in Focus’s paraphrasing, that “nobody knows what GIZ actually does,” with lack of economic success criteria for projects, lavish salaries up to €240k, first-class flights and a fleet of luxury cars for top officials highlighting the agency’s extravagance.

Waste, combined with the increasingly sorry state of Germany’s own infrastructure amid an unprecedented economic crunch, has prompted opposition figures including the AfD’s Alice Weidel to blast the government for “squandering” millions in tax money on GIZ projects in developing nations “while the transport infrastructure in its own country is in ruins.”

GIZ-USAID cooperation has been extensive, ranging from “climate finance” projects in the developing world to small business development projects in Georgia for the EU’s Eastern Partnership (which aims to sway Russia’s neighbors toward eventual EU membership).

In Ukraine, GIZ has provided “advisory” assistance on the implementation of the EU-Ukraine association agreement – the fateful pact that triggered the 2014 coup and the present European crisis.

February 11, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

New Report Contradicts Telecom Industry Claim That Wireless Radiation Is Safe

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 6, 2025

The basis for the wireless industry’s claim that radiation is safe for humans is scientifically erroneous, according to the author of a new peer-reviewed scientific report.

Paul Héroux, Ph.D., authored the report, which was published Jan. 30 in Heliyon, one of Elsevier’s journals on its ScienceDirect platform.

Héroux, an associate professor of medicine at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and a medical scientist in McGill University Health Center’s surgery department, has years of experience in physics and electrical engineering.

He is also vice chair of the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF), a “consortium of scientists, doctors and researchers” who study wireless radiation and make recommendations for wireless radiation exposure guidelines “based on the best peer-reviewed research publications.”

Héroux told The Defender :

“Industry’s most important argument to deny the health impacts of electromagnetic radiation has been that these health effects are impossible based on solid physics, specifically that the radiation is ‘non-ionizing.”

Héroux detailed the scientific faultiness of that argument:

“Ionization by the radiation itself is irrelevant because life processes produce ionization within the body itself.

“In fact, the basic laws of physics (Maxwell’s Equations and the Second Law of Thermodynamics) together with established biology confirm that health effects of electromagnetic radiation are in fact inevitable, and at levels much lower than those considered safe by industry.”

Dr. Robert Brown, a diagnostic radiologist with more than 30 years of experience and the vice president of Scientific Research and Clinical Affairs for the Environmental Health Trust (EHT), praised Héroux’s report.

Brown said the report “effectively outlines a mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can disrupt the biology of living systems” — even at levels much lower than what’s needed to heat tissues.

Fariha Husain, manager of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless Program, called the report “groundbreaking.”

“Héroux’s report fundamentally challenges the flawed ‘thermal-only paradigm,’ which falsely claims that non-ionizing radiation — including radiofrequency (RF) radiation emitted by Wi-Fi routers, cell towers, smart meters and cellphones — can harm biological tissue only via excessive heating,” Husain said.

The report is novel in that it systematically breaks down the flawed industry arguments used to justify the thermal-only paradigm.

“But the truth of the matter is that the harm caused by RF radiation has been known for decades,” Husain said. “Unfortunately, this knowledge has been intentionally suppressed by industry.”

The wireless industry and regulatory agencies, including the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), contend that harm can occur only at radiation levels high enough to cause tissue heating.

Lawyers with CHD and EHT in 2021 successfully showed before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the FCC ignored massive scientific evidence suggesting that RF radiation has negative biological effects at levels currently allowed by the FCC.

CHD and EHT’s historic case alleged that the FCC failed to provide a reasoned explanation for its determination that its current RF exposure guidelines — which haven’t been updated since 1996 — adequately protect against the harmful effects of exposure to RF radiation.

The FCC has yet to comply with the court’s mandate to explain how the agency determined that its current guidelines adequately protect humans and the environment against the harmful effects of exposure to wireless radiation.

Studies on dead tissues can’t detect health effects

In the report, Héroux provides a scientific rationale for why biological harm occurs at non-thermal levels of RF radiation.

Brown summarized key parts of that rationale:

“Héroux initially explains the difference in physical distance between redox reactions occurring in inorganic matter and those occurring in living systems. The ongoing processes of glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation require electrons and protons to continually engage long pathways in mitochondria to produce chemical energy from the breakdown of sugars.

“He clearly details why it is this increased distance that makes living systems vulnerable to the effects of non-ionizing radiation.

“I believe Dr. Héroux has presented a compelling case that non-ionizing radiation can impact the path of these charged particles and affect not only the efficiency of energy production in the cell but also increase the production of reactive oxygen species, which can lead to cellular oxidative stress.”

Oxidative stress due to RF radiation exposure has been “clearly documented” in the scientific literature, Brown added.

Héroux said his report also shows that the FCC’s safety assessments of RF radiation failed to consider basic physics in addition to its biological effects.

The current regulatory limits “completely ignore” this science, Husain said. “The expansion of wireless technology is in direct conflict with protecting public health and the environment and it is long overdue for regulators to acknowledge the growing body of evidence and take immediate action to establish safety standards that protect both human health and the environment.”

The report also explains why health effects from non-ionizing radiation cannot be detected in experiments performed on dead tissue.

“No electron transport occurs in dead tissue, regardless of whether or not it is ‘fresh.’” Brown said. “Research performed on the effects of electromagnetic radiation on dead tissue has led to erroneous conclusions in many in vitro scientific studies.”

Scientists call out WHO-funded study for ‘serious flaws’

Héroux published his report just weeks after he and other scientists with ICBE-EMF published a scathing letter to the editor of Environmental International criticizing a recent systematic review funded by the World Health Organization (WHO) that claimed it found no link between cellphone use and brain cancer.

The study — part of a WHO-commissioned series of scientific reviews of the possible health risks of wireless radiation — was available online Aug. 30, 2024, in Environmental International.

In their letter, the IBCE-EMF scientists said the WHO’s study had “serious flaws” that undermined the validity of the study’s conclusions.

“It is dishonest to assure the public that cell phones and wireless radiation are safe based upon such a flawed review,” said Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D., in an ICBE-EMF press release.

Moskowitz is director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, and an ICBE-EMF member.

The WHO commissioned 10 systematic reviews on the evidence of the health risks from wireless radiation, according to the ICBE-EMF.

So far, nine have been published. All “suffer from serious methodological problems and seem biased to dismiss the substantial evidence of heart risk reported in the peer-reviewed scientific literature,” Moskowitz said in a Sept. 30, 2024, presentation.

Once all 10 are published, the WHO plans to use the reviews as the basis for updating its 1993 “Environmental Health Criteria Monograph” on RF-EMF, ICBE-EMF said.

“A monograph is a report which overviews the scientific evidence on biological effects, identifies gaps in knowledge to direct future research and provides information for health authorities and regulatory agencies regarding public health,” according to ICBE-EMF.

In a post on his Electromagnetic Radiation Safety website, Moskowitz noted that all of the WHO’s scientific review teams have one or more ICNIRP members.

ICNIRP, which Moskowitz called a “cartel,” is a German nonprofit that issues RF radiation exposure limits “produced by its own members, their former students and close colleagues.”

According to EHT, ICNIRP is an invite-only group with “deep industry ties” and no oversight.

Scientists in 2020 sent a letter to the WHO’s leadership asking how the research teams were selected but did not receive a response, according to EHT.

Related articles in The Defender

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

February 9, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

No long-term trend in global hurricane activity

The 2024 Hurricane Season

By Paul Homewood | Global Warming Policy Foundation | January 28, 2025

London – The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has today published its periodic review of global hurricane activity. The review is based on the findings of key scientific bodies, comparing them to sensationalist news reporting and popular perceptions.

  • Trends in landfalling Atlantic/western Pacific hurricanes have been stable or decreasing since 1950.
  • There is also no global trend in overall hurricane frequency since reliable records began in the 1970s.
  • The apparent increase in the number of hurricanes since the 19th century has been due to changes in observation practices over the years, rather than an actual increase.
  • Data show no long-term trends in US landfalling hurricanes since the mid-19th century, when systematic records began, either in terms of frequency or intensity.
  • Similarly, after allowing for the fact that many storms were not spotted prior to the satellite era, there are no such trends in Atlantic hurricanes either.
  • There is growing evidence that wind speeds of the most powerful hurricanes may now be overestimated in comparison to pre-satellite era ones, because of changing methods of measurement.
  • The increase in Atlantic hurricanes in the last fifty years is not part of a long-term trend, but is linked to a recovery from a deep minimum in hurricane activity in the 1970s, associated with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.

The author, climate researcher Paul Homewood, said:

“The observational findings of meteorological agencies in 2024 once again confound those who claim to see a ‘climate crisis’ in the hurricane data. It is clear that we have not seen an increase in hurricane frequency, even though the public have been scared into thinking that tropical storms are getting worse.”

GWPF Director, Dr Benny Peiser, said:

“The gap between media hype, popular perceptions and the reality of empirical data is becoming ever more evident. This report sets out the facts and is a welcome corrective to misleading news coverage of hurricanes.”

Read the full paper here: The 2024 Hurricane Season (pdf)

February 9, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

BBC’s Fake Wildfire Claims

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | January 30, 2025

The climate establishment are going to great lengths to blame the Los Angeles fires on global warming.

One attempt has already bitten the dust, with claims of increasing winter droughts contradicted by the real world data.

So another team of so-called scientists have come up with an even more ridiculous idea – that it is now both to wet and too dry in California.

The BBC report:

Climate change has made the grasses and shrubs that are fuelling the Los Angeles fires more vulnerable to burning, scientists say.

Rapid swings between dry and wet conditions in the region in recent years have created a massive amount of tinder-dry vegetation that is ready to ignite.

Decades of drought in California were followed by extremely heavy rainfall for two years in 2022 and 2023, but that then flipped again to very dry conditions in the autumn and winter of 2024.

“Scientists” say in a new study, external that climate change has boosted what they call these “whiplash” conditions globally by 31-66% since the middle of the 20th Century.

“This whiplash sequence in California has increased fire risk twofold,” said lead author Daniel Swain from UCLA.

“First, by greatly increasing the growth of flammable grass and brush in the months leading up to fire season, and then by drying it out to exceptionally high levels with the extreme dryness and warmth that followed.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0ewe4p9128o

Once again though the actual data shows the new study to be just as fake as the previous one. Most of California’s rain comes in the winter half, October to March; the last two years have been wetter than average, but no more so than many other years on record:

 

The same applies to the South Coast Drainage Division, which includes Los Angeles:

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/national/time-series

Neither is there any evidence of bigger swings from year to year.

Patrick Brown of the Breakthrough Institute has written a full scientific rebuttal here, which demolishes this latest fake science.

This is his summary:

Summary

So, let’s recap. At the annual timescale that is most relevant to the Los Angeles fires…

    • Figure 1: There is no clear increase in overall whiplash occurrence or wet-to-dry whiplash occurrence in Los Angeles in the premiere observational dataset (ERA5) using data directly from Swain et al. (2025).
    • Figure 2: There is no clear increase in overall whiplash occurrence or wet-to-dry whiplash occurrence over southern California in the premiere observational dataset (ERA5) using data directly from Swain et al. (2025).
    • Figure 3: There is a long-term decrease in whiplash events globally over land (where it matters) in the premiere observational dataset (ERA5) using data directly from Swain et al. (2025).
    • Figure 5: There is no increase in the variability (standard deviation) of annual SPEI either for all months or centered on January) in the Los Angeles grid point using the pre-existing standard SPEI dataset.
    • Figure 6: There has been a decrease in the variability (standard deviation) of SPEI over global land since the 1980s using the pre-existing standard SPEI dataset.
    • Figure 7: There is no agreement on the direction of change (if any) in annual precipitation variability (standard deviation) over the Los Angeles area across eight different precipitation datasets.
    • Figures 8 and 9: There is no agreement on the direction of change (if any) in annual precipitation variability (standard deviation) globally across eight different precipitation datasets.

While “climate whiplash events” may be increasing in frequency under most of the very specific, selected definitions used and datasets investigated in Swain et al. (2025), the general idea that annual precipitation (or more generally, the water cycle, which includes evaporation) is becoming dramatically more variable is not supported when a broader set of datasets and definitions are used.

Would a reader of Swain et al. (2025), or especially its coverage, have any idea about the weakness of its broader conclusions or the lack of robustness of its results to different definitions and datasets? Almost certainly not, and I contend that this is a major problem for public understanding and trust in climate science.

Why don’t we see a robust increase in water cycle variability given the strong theory underpinning “wet gets wetter, dry gets drier”? For one thing, the theoretical size of the effect is known to be quite small relative to natural, unforced variability, making it inherently difficult to detect. For example, we see in Figure 7 above that year-to-year rainfall in Los Angeles naturally varies by as much as 300%, yet the signal we are looking for is one to two orders of magnitude less than this. It is also apparently the case that observational uncertainty is larger than the signal (or there would not be such disagreement between datasets). Physically, perhaps increasing mean precipitation is offsetting the increase in calculated evaporation in the SPEI index, reducing its variability. Maybe reduced temperature variability (via arctic amplification) is reducing calculated evaporation variability.

I don’t know the full answer, but these would be great research questions to identify and outline in a Nature review like Swain et al. (2025). Unfortunately, Swain et al. (2025) missed this opportunity because the paper seemed so focused on assembling evidence in favor of increasing water cycle variability that contradictory evidence was never presented or seriously grappled with.

My main discomfort with Swain et al. (2025) and its rollout is that it appears that the primary goal was to create and disseminate the “climate whiplash” meme rather than conduct a truly rigorous evaluation of the evidence, including countervailing evidence. Ultimately, this makes the research a much larger advance in marketing than an advance in science.

https://www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/how-much-did-increasing-climate-whiplash

Of course, studies like Swain’s are not intended to be serious science; they are written to generate headlines.

And the climate industry is now highly organised to ensure that theses fake studies are disseminated worldwide via a corrupt media.

February 9, 2025 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Whose Universities are Better – China vs. the US? Nature Magazine might upset the conventional wisdom

By Hua Bin | February 9, 2025

It’s a widely held truism that the US has the best universities in the world despite a mediocre secondary education system. Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale and U Penn are marque brands that are admired worldwide. They attract students from every country and enjoy enormous financial resources from tuitions, endowments, and grants.

On the other hand, Chinese universities are generally considered by the west as diploma mills with unrecognizable and generic names – who can remember the Southern University of Technology.

While Chinese universities may not graduate many students that command astronomical starting salaries or hotly sought after by high flying hedge funds, they seem to be progressing quite nicely in one of the core missions of academic research institutions, i.e. conducing world class research in science and technology.

The prestigious Nature Magazine published its annual Nature Index ranking of the world’s top research institutions and universities in 2024. The Index is illuminating.

– The ranking was based on 75,000 high impact papers in the Nature Index 2024 Global Research Leaders from Nov 2023 to Oct 2024

– It ranked 18,588 research institutes and universities worldwide

– China Academy of Sciences (CAS) is ranked No. 1 global research institute, with 8881 counts of top research output, more than double of No. 2 ranked Harvard University (3830 counts). I wrote about the research prowess of CAS in an earlier Substack article.

– 8 out of top 10 research institutes are Chinese. They include the University of Science and Technology of China, Peking University, Zhejiang University (where the DeepSeek founder graduated from), and Tsinghua University. The other non-Chinese institutes are Harvard University and Max Planck Society in Germany.

– 12 out of top 20 research universities are Chinese. 3 are American (Harvard, Stanford, and MIT). Sichuan University (No. 15), a regional university in Southwest China, is ranked higher than Stanford (No. 16), MIT (No. 17), Oxford (No. 18) and University of Tokyo (No. 19).

– 26 out of top 50 are Chinese. 14 are American. Soochow University (No. 30), decidedly not considered a top tier school by Chinese high schoolers, outranks Yale (No. 31). Xiamen University (No. 37) is ranked higher than Berkeley (No. 38), Columbia (No. 39), Cornell (No. 44), and University of Chicago (No. 49).

– Roughly half of top 100 are Chinese. Hunan University (No. 51) outranks Princeton (No. 52). You get the drift. Interestingly, Russia Academy of Sciences (RAS) made a cameo at No. 98. No universities from India or Australia made it to the top 100 list.

Westerners look at Chinese technological breakthroughs like DeepSeek or Huawei in disbelief and sour envy. Once you dig into the foundational causes of the emergence of these tech successes, you will understand they only represent the tip of the iceberg. Soon enough, you will see the Bummock, i.e. the bulk of the iceberg. Many upsets waiting ahead.

February 9, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Operation Outbreak’: CDC Grooming Teens, Kids to Fear Pandemics, Critics Say

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 6, 2025

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) educational resources for K-12 students on disease outbreaks, the transmission of pathogens and how to trace their spread, on the surface, appear well-intended.

However, critics said the materials — which include lesson plans and classroom activities titled “Operation Outbreak” and a graphic novel targeting teens — also could be interpreted as propaganda designed to encourage compliance with public health policies and initiatives.

The materials present hypothetical scenarios necessitating a public health response to the outbreak and spread of a disease with a zoonotic — or animal — origin. Students are asked to employ a “One Health” approach and methods such as contact tracing to respond to these hypothetical outbreaks.

According to the materials, “One Health recognizes that human health, animal health, and the environment are connected.”

The One Health approach “requires human, animal, and environmental health professionals to work together at the local, state, federal, and global levels to improve the health of people, animals, and their shared environment.”

Dr. Michelle Perro, a pediatrician, said the CDC’s educational initiatives “appear to be a well-intentioned educational effort under the One Health framework.” But instead, “a closer examination suggests it may also serve to acclimate students to compliance during future public health crises.”

Perro said:

“By emphasizing the inevitability of ‘the next pandemic’ and reinforcing a specific perspective on zoonotic transmission, these materials can condition naive minds to accept certain public health policies without room for opposing discussions. … This initiative prioritizes messaging over genuine scientific inquiry.”

Dr. Margaret Christensen, a clinical educator called the materials “propaganda,” that “groom the younger generation early to believe our biggest threat is from some disease jumping out of an animal, whether birds or cows or pigs, and attacking us without defense, unless we’ve been vaccinated.”

According to attorney Sheri Snow Powers, the educational resources are intended to foster an uncritical attitude toward public health authorities.

“These materials are inappropriate for teenagers and children because they promote and idolize public health authorities as heroes and saviors,” Powers said. “This is detrimental to young developing minds and conditions children to be future compliant citizens.”

CDC educational resources use ‘a fear-based narrative’

The CDC’s educational resources include material meant to teach students “about the roots of American public health,” including the history and role of the CDC in domestic and global disease outbreaks.

The materials include modules on “lessons learned” during the 1976 swine flu outbreak, the CDC’s role in food and water safety, and in responding to the “21st century public health challenge” of chronic diseases.

However, the main focus of the materials for high school students is the “Operation Outbreak” series of classroom activities, centered around a graphic novel targeting teenagers.

Featuring a cover page reminiscent of the popular series “Stranger Things,” “The Junior Disease Detectives: Operation Outbreak a novel produced in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, presents a fictional disease outbreak scenario involving teenagers and animals. It’s connected to three in-class activities focusing on “zoonotic disease prevention and response.”

The first activity, “The Outbreak Team,” focuses on the “various roles and responsibilities of the professionals involved in an outbreak response. The next two activities, “Eddie’s Story” and “Hamlet’s Story,” focus on investigating a disease outbreak and its subsequent spread from a pig (Hamlet) to a teenager (Eddie).

According to the CDC, upon completion of the activities, students should be able to “identify steps in an influenza outbreak investigation,” “identify roles and responsibilities of public health, animal health, environmental health, and other relevant professionals” and “describe why using a One Health approach … is best when investigating or preventing zoonotic diseases.”

Students are also expected to learn how to define a series of terms, including “zoonotic influenza virus,” “novel influenza virus,” and “case” — including the differences between “suspected,” “probable” and “confirmed” cases.

“Most human infections with novel influenza A viruses have occurred after close contact with infected animals,” the materials state, noting that “global surveillance” is necessary “to detect the emergence of novel influenza A viruses that could trigger a pandemic.”

The materials also state, “There are associations between zoonotic influenza viruses and pandemics.”

But according to Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, the graphic novel and activities use a “fear-based” narrative. She said the materials lack “a balanced and factual approach that pathogens, viruses and bacteria are a natural part of life that can be mostly handled by each person’s immune system.”

Vaccination also is prominently featured in the educational materials. According to the graphic novel:

“As we learned during Disease Detective Camp, our bodies’ immune system produces antibodies to fight against infection, and the safest way to get antibodies is through vaccination.

“Although the flu vaccine isn’t designed to protect against variant flu, it is still important to get, because it can help protect us from getting the flu and spreading it to others.”

One Health approach ‘subtly promotes compliance over critical thinking’

Perro questioned the CDC’s focus on the One Health approach, “due to its biased, one-sided narrative.”

“By focusing solely on zoonotic transmission, it ignores key factors like environmental toxicants, industrial farming and genetic engineering risks,” Perro said. This promotes “compliance over critical thinking” and serves as “institutional propaganda,” she said.

The materials ultimately “shape narratives about the origins of pandemics — particularly regarding COVID-19 having emerged ‘naturally’ rather than from a lab-related incident,” Perro said.

Powers said the materials “condition” children to fear specific pathogens and “to be ignorant of their own bodies’ amazing immune system, by not mentioning it.”

“Teaching children how to take care of themselves with healthy food, exercise, and sunshine is a much more valuable lesson,” Powers said.

The CDC’s focus on the flu and children is not new. Documents Children’s Health Defense obtained in 2023 through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealed that the agency hired an advertising firm to write “news” articles promoting flu shots for kids and the elderly.

The CDC’s “Operation Outbreak” materials appear to be unrelated to an online simulation activity by the same name, developed by the Broad Institute, UMass Chan Medical School and The Inspire Project — funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

This simulation, introduced in 2017 and described as an “infectious way to learn,” operates through a mobile app and “unleashes a virtual pathogen through Bluetooth across participant devices, prompting a contagious outbreak that participants strive to contain.”

Related articles in The Defender

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

February 8, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Top Breakthroughs Proving China’s Tech Edge Over US

Sputnik – 01.02.2025

China’s newly unveiled DeepSeek AI model rivals US-made ChatGPT in efficiency but at a much lower cost.

This is just one example of China’s more cost-effective technological solutions compared to US analogs.

  • Space: China’s Chang’e 6 successfully retrieved the first-ever samples from the Moon’s far side while the US struggles to bring two astronauts back from the ISS.
  • Quantum computers: In 2020, China’s Jiuzhang became the first photonic quantum computer to achieve quantum supremacy. With Jiuzhang 2.0 and Zuchongzhi 2.1, China remains a top player in the field.
  • Quantum communications: China launched the world’s first quantum communication satellite, Micius, in 2016. In 2024, Chinese and Russian scientists tested quantum communication over 3,800 km.
  • Robots: China’s Unitree Go2 quadruped and G1 humanoid robots push global robotics leadership, offering cheaper alternatives to Boston Dynamics.
  • Telecommunications: ZTE and Huawei made China a 5G leader. As the US imposes sanctions instead of competing on quality, China eyes 6G by 2030.
  • High-speed trains: With over 40,000 km of high-speed rail, China has the world’s longest network, while the US rail system remains in disrepair.
  • Drones: Chinese firms like DJI dominate the UAV market with affordable drones spreading worldwide, unlike pricier US alternatives.

February 8, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Are U.S. Taxpayers Funding ‘Corrupt Dark-money Network’ That Censored CHD, RFK Jr. and Others?

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender |February 7, 2025

A new analysis of government spending revealed that several major U.S. taxpayer-funded organizations are linked to the U.K.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), according to a Substack report by Sayer Ji of GreenMedInfo.

CCDH, an influential nonprofit anti-disinformation organization, authored “The Disinformation Dozen” list. The group allegedly collaborated with U.S. and foreign governments and Big Tech to censor Ji, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD founder and former chairman, and others for spreading “disinformation.”

A new analysis of government spending published by DataRepublican.com showed that at least 17 heavily taxpayer-funded U.S. organizations also may have funneled money into CCDH’s operations, Ji reported.

“The revelation that so many U.S.-based organizations are funding CCDH confirms what many of us have been warning about: that censorship efforts are not merely private initiatives but part of a broader, coordinated strategy involving government-linked entities and foreign influence networks,” Ji told The Defender.

Ji said this provides more evidence that censorship is being outsourced, “creating a system of plausible deniability for those seeking to silence dissenting voices under the guise of combating ‘misinformation.’”

CCDH famously drafted a list of the so-called “Disinformation Dozen” — which included Ji, founder of the natural health website GreenMedInfo ; Kennedy; Dr. Joseph Mercola; and Ty and Charlene Bollinger, founders of The Truth About Vaccines and The Truth About Cancer websites.

CCDH alleged in its report that just 12 accounts produced the majority of “anti-vaccine … disinformation” on social media.

Meta investigated and dismissed the report, and released a statement that there “isn’t any evidence” to support the report’s claims and that the small sample used in CCDH’s analysis was “in no way representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about COVID-19 vaccines” on Facebook.

“There is no justification for [CCDH’s] claim that their data constitute a ‘representative sample’ of the content shared across our apps,” Meta stated.

Yet, the report was used by the White House and Twitter, now X, to censor the people and organizations on CCDH’s list, and by legacy media outlets such as NPR, The Guardian and others to discredit the people on the list.

Twitter Files” documents published in 2023 by investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker detailed how Twitter and the White House used CCHD’s “Disinformation Dozen” report to justify censoring the people on the list.

Last year, reporting by Thacker and Matt Taibbi, based on internal documents leaked by CCDH insiders, revealed that CCDH planned to “kill” X, shut down popular social media accounts on other platforms, censor non-establishment voices and “bring back” attacks on “antivaxx” voices, among other things.

According to the documents, CCDH planned to organize “black ops” against Kennedy, who was a U.S. presidential candidate at the time. The group also planned to pressure Substack to remove COVID-19 vaccine critics Mercola and Alex Berenson from its platform.

The documents reveal that CCDH has pushed for a U.S. social media censorship law akin to the European Union’s “Digital Services Act” and the U.K.’s “Online Safety Act.”

Ji said:

“Despite their baseless claims and accusations, CCDH and similar organizations have had a powerful impact. They have provided the justification for widespread deplatforming, demonetization, and reputational attacks against independent journalists, scientists, and advocates.

“Their reports — often methodologically flawed and politically motivated — are treated as authoritative sources by mainstream media and tech platforms, leading to real-world suppression of speech. The fact that they are now directly linked to potential violations of U.S. election laws raises serious questions about accountability and transparency.”

Who is behind CCDH?

CCDH does not disclose its funders — even though journalists, including Thacker, and a U.S. congressional committee have requested that information.

CCDH also did not respond to The Defender’s request for information on its funding sources.

Imran Ahmed, CCDH’s CEO and founder, previously worked for Merrill Lynch. He was a British Labour Party political operative and is the co-author of “The New Serfdom: The Triumph of Conservative Ideas and How to Defeat Them.”

Ahmed emerged during the pandemic as a “vaccine and disinformation expert,” although he lacked any experience that would qualify him as such, Thacker reported.

The organization’s website states only that it is funded by “philanthropic trusts and members of the public.” It has denied receiving any grants, contracts or funding from the U.S. government.

DataRepublican.com used a financial tracing tool to follow donations made by taxpayer-funded organizations to other nonprofits.

CCDH has a relatively small budget of under $2.5 million. Publicly available information shows where some of those donations come from, including the Tides Foundation, Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund and Schwab Charitable Fund.

However, some of the funding for the organizations making direct donations to CCDH can be traced back to nonprofit and philanthropic organizations that receive major funding from the U.S. government and redistribute that money to other organizations, DataRepublican.com showed.

Some of the 17 organizations that fund CCDH’s direct funders include the National Endowment for Democracy, the sister nonprofit of USAID; Freedom House; the National Democratic Institute; Global Communities; World Vision; Save the Children Federation; Columbia University; Princeton University and others.

Other investigations have also shown that CCDH has connections to key political and Hollywood figures.

For example, a 2023 investigation by Thacker revealed the CCDH received anonymous donations of upwards of $1 million and hired a lobbying firm. A search of the 2021 tax filings of the Schwab Charitable Fund — a donor-advised fund that allows anyone to donate anonymously — revealed a $1.1 million donation to CCDH.

Thacker also discovered that CCDH’s chairman is Simon Clark, a former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP). He also uncovered ties between CCDH, Ahmed and Hollywood.

A subsequent investigation by Ji traced some of the organizations that financially support CCDH, including several U.K.-based nonprofits affiliated with legacy media organizations, the U.K. government and major philanthropic organizations such as the Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation.

“These hidden contributions reveal a coordinated pipeline of financial influence involving U.S. intelligence-adjacent entities, UK Crown interests, and Soros-backed organizations like the Tides Foundation,” Ji wrote.

Questions about the organization’s activities and funding sources led Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to subpoena CCDH as part of a 2023 congressional investigation into the nonprofit’s censorship-related activities.

The subpoena requested all communications and documents “between or among CCDH, the Executive Branch, or third parties, including social media companies, relating to the identification of groups, accounts, channels, or posts for moderation, deletion, suppression, restriction, or reduced circulation.”

It also requested details about any grants, contracts or funds from the U.S. government, CCDH replied that such information doesn’t exist. However, Ji’s report this week throws that response into question.

Ahmed continues to appear in mainstream media as a critic of X and the Trump administration calling for “transparency and accountability.”

“CCDH’s role as a foreign influence operation masquerading as a ‘nonprofit’ watchdog must be fully investigated,” Ji wrote. “Congress, media and civil rights organizations must demand answers.”

He added:

“This corrupt dark-money network must be exposed and dismantled. CCDH is not a ‘hate speech watchdog’ but a weaponized political hit squad, funded by taxpayer dollars and foreign actors, used to silence voices that challenge establishment power.”

Related stories in The Defender

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

February 8, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment