Research

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Massachusetts governor calls Trump’s attacks on Harvard ‘bad for science’

      by

      Massachusetts governor Maura Healey said on Sunday that Donald Trump’s attacks on Harvard University and other schools are having detrimental ripple effects, with the shutdown of research labs and cuts to hospitals linked to colleges.During an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Democratic governor said that the effects on Harvard are damaging “American competitiveness”, since a number of researchers are leaving the US for opportunities in other countries. After decades of investment in science and innovation, she said: “intellectual assets are being given away.”In the past week, the US president cut off billions of dollars to Harvard in federal funds, after the university refused to concede to a number of the administration’s demands. Trump also called for its tax-exempt status to be revoked, a potentially illegal move, against the world-famous college in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Of the moves against colleges, Healey said: “It’s bad for patients, it’s bad for science, and it’s really bad for American competitiveness. There’s no way a state can make up for the cuts from federal funding.”She added: “I was in a hospital recently, Boston Children’s, where some of the sickest kids in the country receive care. Cuts to Boston Children’s and other hospitals are a direct result of Donald Trump’s actions, as these are part of a teaching hospital system.“These cuts to universities have significant ripple effects, resulting in layoffs of scientists and doctors, and clinical trials for cancer treatments have been shut down.“As governor, I want Massachusetts and America to soar. What Donald Trump is doing is essentially inviting other countries, like China, to take our scientists and researchers. This is terrible, especially considering what he has done to the economy. I am working hard every day to lower costs in my state, cut taxes, and build more housing, while Donald Trump is making life more expensive and harder for all of us.”Since Trump took office, his administration has deployed an “antisemitism taskforce” to demand various policy changes at different universities around the country.Columbia University, one of the first institutions targeted by the taskforce, quickly caved to the Trump administration’s demands to restore $400m in federal funding. Some of the measures that Columbia conceded to included banning face masks on campus, empowering security officers to arrest people, and placing control of the Middle Eastern department under a new senior vice-provost.Former Columbia University president Lee Bollinger said on Sunday that the Trump administration’s attacks on academic institutions represent a significant attack on first amendment rights.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This is a kind of weaponization of the government’s power,” Bolinger said on CNN, adding that it “seems like a campaign of intimidation”.“This is a kind of weaponization of the government’s power,” he said.Earlier this month, the federal government sent Harvard two separate letters with specific demands. After the university publicly rejected those demands, the administration quickly froze nearly $2.3bn in federal funding.The conflict between the administration and the elite university took a strange turn on Friday, with the New York Times reporting that an 11 April letter from the administration with additional demands – which escalated the showdown – was “unauthorized”. The university disputed that the letter was “unauthorized,” claiming the federal government has “doubled down” on its offensive. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Ex-Harvard Medical School Morgue Chief to Plead Guilty in Sale of Body Parts

      by

      Cedric Lodge stole organs from cadavers that had been donated for medical research, prosecutors said. The university fired him in 2023.A former manager of the morgue at Harvard Medical School will plead guilty to stealing body parts that had been donated for research and selling them for thousands of dollars to people who collected them as macabre curiosities, according to court documents.The supervisor, Cedric Lodge, 57, who was fired by the university in 2023, had been entrusted with handling cadavers that were part of the medical school’s Anatomical Gift Program and were supposed to be cremated after the research on them had been completed, prosecutors said.But according to a sweeping federal investigation, Mr. Lodge turned the morgue into a shopping emporium for brains, skin and other body parts, supplying them to collectors in several states as part of a criminal network that involved several people, including his wife. Investigators said he drove the stolen body parts to his home in New Hampshire.The breach went undetected from about 2018 until March 2023, tainting one of the nation’s most prestigious medical schools.In a filing on Wednesday in federal court in Pennsylvania, Mr. Lodge agreed that he would plead guilty to one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000. Under the plea deal, he will no longer face a conspiracy charge. Prosecutors recommended that he receive less than the maximum sentence, but a judge will make the final decision.In a statement on Friday, Dr. George Q. Daley, the dean of Harvard Medical School, condemned Mr. Lodge’s misconduct.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Trump-Allied Prosecutor Sends Letters to Medical Journals Alleging Bias

      by

      An interim U.S. attorney is demanding information about the selection of research articles and the role of N.I.H. Experts worry this will have a chilling effect on publications.A federal prosecutor has sent letters to at least three medical journals accusing them of political bias and asking a series of probing questions suggesting that the journals mislead readers, suppress opposing viewpoints and are inappropriately swayed by their funders.The letters were signed by Edward Martin Jr., a Republican activist serving as interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. He has been criticized for using his office to target opponents of President Trump.Some scientists and doctors said they viewed the letters as a threat from the Trump administration that could have a chilling effect on what journals publish. The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has said he wants to prosecute medical journals, accusing them of lying to the public and colluding with pharmaceutical companies.One of the letters was sent to the journal Chest, published by the American College of Chest Physicians. The New York Times obtained a copy of the letter.The Times confirmed that at least two other publishers had received nearly identically worded letters, but those publishers would not speak publicly because they feared retribution from the Trump administration.In the letter to Chest, dated Monday, Mr. Martin wrote, “It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      A Harvard Scientist’s Tuberculosis Research Is Threatened by Trump’s Cuts

      by

      Researchers who have lost funds warned of long-term repercussions, but several said their school should still refuse to comply with the federal government.Dr. Sarah Fortune, an immunologist who spends a lot of time in her laboratory at Harvard, never expected to be caught in a battle with the White House.But early Tuesday morning, she received an official notice to “stop work” on her lab’s federally funded research on tuberculosis, an infectious disease that kills more than a million people a year worldwide.Just hours earlier, the Trump administration had vowed to freeze $2.2 billion in research funding at Harvard. If fully executed, it will be the deepest cut yet in a White House campaign against elite universities that began shortly after President Trump took office in January. Other universities, including Princeton, Cornell and Columbia, have also seen deep cuts to research funding.Dr. Fortune’s contract, a $60 million National Institutes of Health agreement involving Harvard and other universities across the country, appeared to be one of the first projects affected. Stop-work notices also began arriving this week at an obscure Harvard office called “sponsored programs” that coordinates federal research funding.One Harvard professor, David R. Walt, received a notice that his research toward a diagnostic tool for Lou Gehrig’s disease, or A.L.S., must stop immediately. Two other orders will affect research on space travel and radiation sickness, just weeks after the scientist, Dr. Donald E. Ingber, who engineers fake organs that are useful in studies of human illnesses, was approached by the government to expand his work.David R. Walt at his lab at Harvard Medical School, where he does research searching for a diagnostic tool for Lou Gehrig’s disease, or A.L.S.Cody O’Loughlin for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      DOGE Cuts Hobble Office That Would Aid NASA and SpaceX Mars Landings

      by

      The Astrogeology Science Center, which has helped astronauts and robots reach other worlds safely, is facing a substantial number of job reductions.An office in an obscure corner of the federal government that NASA has relied on to safely land astronauts on the moon and robotic probes on Mars is facing pressure to cut its tight-knit team of experts by at least 20 percent, according to two people familiar with the mandate.The thinning of the staff has already started at the Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Ariz., the people said, the result of an assortment of voluntary resignation offers put forward by the Department of Government Efficiency, led by the billionaire Elon Musk. More employees are expected to be laid off in the coming weeks, following a new open call for early retirements and resignations on April 4. The office, which is part of the U.S. Geological Survey under the Department of the Interior, has been subject to the cost-cutting efforts initiated in a mass email that Mr. Musk’s team sent across the federal government in January.Representatives for the Interior Department, the U.S.G.S. and the astrogeology center did not reply to requests for comment on the staff reductions or their potential ramifications.The cuts could affect crewed missions to Mars in the future, a key goal of Mr. Musk, who founded SpaceX. He has said he conceived of the company to make human life multiplanetary.Matthew Golombek, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who has worked on the selection of landing sites for multiple probes to Mars, described the Astrogeology Science Center’s precision mapping as “the gold standard that basically everyone in the community uses.”At the start of the year, the office had 53 employees. Eight are already set to leave, with more encouraged to consider the latest offer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      5 Takeaways From New Research About A.D.H.D.

      by

      Scientists who study the condition are wrestling with some fundamental questions about the way we define and treat it.As diagnoses of A.D.H.D. and prescriptions for medications hit new record highs, scientists who study the condition are wrestling with some fundamental questions about the way we define and treat it. More than 15 percent of American adolescents have been diagnosed with A.D.H.D., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including 23 percent of 17-year-old boys. A total of seven million American children have received a diagnosis.Normally, when a diagnosis booms like this, it’s because of some novel scientific breakthrough — a newly discovered treatment or a fresh understanding of what causes the underlying symptoms. I spent the last year interviewing A.D.H.D. scientists around the world for my magazine article, and what I heard from them was, in fact, the opposite: In many ways, we now understand A.D.H.D. less well than we thought we did a couple of decades ago. Recent studies have shaken some of the field’s previous assumptions about A.D.H.D. At the same time, scientists have made important discoveries, including some that are leading to a new understanding of the role of a child’s environment in the progression of his symptoms.At a moment of national concern about our shrinking attention spans, this science suggests that there may be some new and more effective ways to help the millions of young people who are struggling to focus.Below are the key findings from the new research.A.D.H.D. is hard to define — and recent science has made it harder, not easier.A.D.H.D. has always been a tricky condition to diagnose. One patient’s behavior may look quite different from another’s, and certain A.D.H.D. symptoms can also be signs of other problems, from anxiety and depression to childhood trauma and autism spectrum disorder. Twenty years ago, researchers thought they were on the verge of ending that controversy by finding a distinct “biomarker” for A.D.H.D. — a single gene that would reliably predict the disorder, or a physical difference in the brain that you could spot on an M.R.I. But today scientists acknowledge that the search for a biomarker has mostly come up empty, which means the diagnosis remains fluid and somewhat subjective.Adding to the confusion, a study published last October found that only about one in nine children diagnosed with A.D.H.D. experiences consistent symptoms all the way through childhood. More often, the researchers found, symptoms come and go, sometimes disappearing for a few years, sometimes returning. Together with other research, this study has led some in the field to conclude that our traditional conception of A.D.H.D. as an inherent biological fact — something you simply have or don’t have, something wired deep in your brain — is both inaccurate and unhelpful. A new model considers A.D.H.D. differently: not as a disorder you always have in some essential way, but as a condition you experience, sometimes temporarily.Medications like Adderall and Ritalin can have a positive effect on children’s behavior – but the results often don’t last.The biggest long-term study of A.D.H.D. treatments found that after 14 months of treatment, a daily dose of Ritalin did a better job of reducing children’s symptoms than nondrug interventions like therapy or parent coaching. But then the effect started to fade, and by 36 months, the relative benefit of the drug treatment had disappeared altogether. The symptoms of the children in the medication treatment group were no better than those of the ones assigned to behavioral interventions — and no better than a comparison group that was given no intervention at all.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      She Worked in a Harvard Lab to Reverse Aging, Until ICE Jailed Her

      by

      A barracks-style detention center in Louisiana is jammed with around 90 immigrant women, mostly undocumented workers from central and South America, sharing five toilets and following orders shouted by guards.There is also, among them, a Russian scientist.She is 30 years old, shy and prone to nervous laughter. She cannot work, because her laptop was confiscated. She plays chess with other women when the guards allow it. Otherwise, she passes the time reading books about evolution and cell development.For nearly eight weeks, Kseniia Petrova has been captive to the hard-line immigration policies of the Trump administration. A graduate of a renowned Russian physics and technology institute, Ms. Petrova was recruited to work at a laboratory at Harvard Medical School. She was part of a team investigating how cells can rejuvenate themselves, with the goal of fending off the damage of aging.On Feb. 16, customs officials detained her at Logan International Airport in Boston for failing to declare samples of frog embryos she had carried from France at the request of her boss at Harvard. Such an infraction is normally considered minor, punishable with a fine of up to $500. Instead, the customs official canceled Ms. Petrova’s visa on the spot and began deportation proceedings. Then Ms. Petrova told her that she had fled Russia for political reasons and faced arrest if she returned there.This is how she wound up at the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, La., waiting for the U.S. government to decide what to do with her.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Experts Doubt Kennedy’s Timetable for Finding the Cause of Autism

      by

      The nation’s health secretary announced that he planned to invite scientists to provide answers by September, but specialists consider that target date unrealistic.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, pledged on Thursday to seek out experts globally to discover the reasons for the increasing rates of autism in the United States.“We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world,” Mr. Kennedy announced at a cabinet meeting held by President Trump. “By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.”“There will be no bigger news conference than that,” Mr. Trump replied.But scientists who have worked for decades to find a cause greeted Mr. Kennedy’s predicted timeline with skepticism.They said that a single answer would be hard to identify in a field of possible contributors including pesticides, air pollution and maternal diabetes.Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and expert on environmental toxins, pointed to the current mass layoffs and cutbacks for research at Mr. Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services as one reason for doubting such quick progress.“Given that a great deal of research on autism and other pediatric diseases in hospitals and medical schools is currently coming to a halt because of federal funding cuts from H.H.S.,” he said, “it is very difficult for me to imagine what profound scientific breakthrough could be achieved between now and September.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More