Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery With Daily Postings Since 2002
Card Catalog: A complete guide to finding, reading, and evaluating scientific papers — and knowing what questions matter before you trust the findings. Hana Lee Goldin, MLIS: “We are living through a strange moment in the history of knowledge. More information is available to more people than at any point in human history, and yet …
Ars Technica: “A lawyer for the Trump administration told a federal judge Wednesday that anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has such ample authority over the country’s vaccine policies that he is “unreviewable.” His unfettered powers even allow Kennedy the freedom to recommend, if he chose to do so, that people ditch vaccines and …
Measures models’ ability to detect nonsense across 100 plausible-sounding nonsense prompts in software, medical, legal, finance, and physics. BullshitBench v2: Detection Rate by Model. Percentage of nonsense questions each model detected (green), partially challenged (amber), or accepted (red).
ABCNews: “In a study of nearly 28 million older Americans, long-term exposure to fine particle air pollution raised the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. That link held even after researchers accounted for common conditions like high blood pressure, stroke and depression. Fine particle air pollution, known as PM2.5, consists of tiny particles in the air that …
Privacat Insights: “I want you to take a minute and visualize yourself climbing a long ladder. The ladder is fixed in space, and you can’t tell exactly how many steps there are to climb. You heard from a friend that if you make it to the platform at the top of the ladder, you’ll receive …
404 Media – no paywall: “…Chatbots may be able to pass medical exams, but that doesn’t mean they make good doctors, according to a new, large-scale study of how people get medical advice from large language models. The controlled study of 1,298 UK-based participants, published today in Nature Medicine from the Oxford Internet Institute and …
Ars Technica: “Nearly half of the databases that public health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were updating on a monthly basis have been frozen without notice or explanation, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study—led by Janet Freilich, a law expert at Boston University, and …
WASHINGTON — January 22, 2026—The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of State today announced the United States’ completion of its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, …
Via LLRX – Hold Fast, Harvard – Since 2025 the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has engaged in battles with major American institutions of higher education and research. Using the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, McMahon demands strict adherence to “educational principles” that include elimination of ‘DEI’ programs to quality for ‘preferential federal …
Nature – A series of graphics reveals how the Trump administration has sought historic cuts to science and the research workforce. “More than 7,800 research grants terminated or frozen. Some 25,000 scientists and personnel gone from agencies that oversee research. Proposed budget cuts of 35% — amounting to US$32 billion. These are just a few …
The Atlantic Gift Article – Drug deaths are finally falling—but the cause may be far outside of U.S. policy makers’ control. “For two decades, the United States and Canada have struggled with a drug epidemic. From 2003 to 2022, annual overdose deaths in the United States rose from less than 26,000 to nearly 108,000—becoming the …
Wired [no paywall]: “A new EPIC report says data brokers, ad-tech surveillance, and ICE enforcement are among the factors leading to a “health privacy crisis” that is eroding trust and deterring people from seeking care. When immigration agents enter hospitals and private companies are allowed to buy and sell data that reveals who seeks medical …
