your science briefing for 04.28.2025

Why digital natives constantly fall for online lies and hoaxes, Zuck issues the death rattle for social media, the looming measles crisis, and more...

Younger generations today don’t trust experts of institutions. Their digital sources of information frequently lie to them for profit. Their educations are centered around an ever escalating sequence of high stakes tests. And, unfortunately, they don’t seem to be particularly interested in nuance, research, or critical analysis of the things they’re consuming through their digital devices. Researchers once assumed that as the first so-called digital natives, they’d develop a keen nose for lies and hoaxes, but as more and more studies are being done, they paint the exact opposite picture… (Politico)

Fibromyalgia is a mysterious condition that’s difficult to study since it symptoms tend to be vague and generalize. Fatigue, non-specific aches and pain, and brain fog, poor sleep, and stiff joints can be indicative of far too many things to narrow them down. To some doctors, the condition doesn’t actually exist and it probably a symptom of some autoimmune condition, but there is little evidence to point that way too. Finally, there’s light at the end of the diagnostic tunnel. New research in mice hints at a link between disruptions in gut biomes and chronic pain and fibromyalgia symptoms, and offers a potential treatment for suffers: restoring a healthy gut biome… (Nature)

Social media is over. It’s no longer about connecting with friends and family, planning parties and outings, getting in touch with local and likeminded groups, but to sit there and passively absorb influencer content and ads. It’s true that this is a rather popular complaint about what Meta platforms have become today, but this isn’t coming from me, or a study of social media users, or even an analysis of feeds for new users which were created solely for research purposes. It’s the verdict from Zuckerberg himself, in whose mind social media is over and social consumption of promotional content is the only thing that will be left after the final death rattle… (The New Yorker)

In this day and age, there’s no reason for any developed nation to have a problem with the spread of measles. But the United States under the watchful, brain wormed eye of Plague Secretary RFK Jr., is not a normal developed nation. As he tries to purge nearly 200 years of medical advances from the CDC and NIH in favor of pseudoscience that bears striking similarities to fascist eugenics programs, experts are warning that a lot of children will needlessly die or suffer lifelong complications by 2050. At this point, it seems that these days, Dunning-Kruger could indeed be terminal on a massive scale, just not to the those who have it, and primarily young children… (Newsweek)

Turns out that a third of Americans just can’t get enough Russian propaganda, and far too many in general fell for at least one lie spread by Russian bots and trolls online. In a very simple quiz with ten popular false claims, fewer than 1% correctly marked them as lies. More than 3 in 4 believed at least one, with 57% of Republicans among them. Independents did much better, being almost twice as discerning as Republicans, and fewer than 1 in 5 Democrats were fooled. Almost like having institutions that you can’t trust, politicians who constantly lie to you, an unreliable MSM, and the party in power now a cult of personality makes a country easy to exploit… (Fortune)