Part the First: Jessica Wildfire on Apathetic Americans. As a paid-up member of the Professional Managerial Class who came from a thoroughly working-class background, I tend to hear and see things differently from most of my colleagues. An enduring theme among them is “They just don’t seem to care…” Not exactly. From Heads Above Water: Why It Looks Like Americans Don’t Care:
The dad works from morning until night. The mom works from night until morning. The mom grabs as much sleep as possible, then she picks her kid up from school. She runs what errands she can with the energy she has. She picks the dad up from work. They share one late dinner, then she goes back to her job.
Two jobs, one car.
Imagine telling that family it’s their moral duty to resist fascism. Imagine lecturing them on their carbon footprint. Imagine telling them to start a garden or collect rain. Imagine telling them there’s going to be a famine and they’re going to starve in eight weeks. Imagine telling them they’re complicit in genocide. Imagine giving them an extra list of things to do to save the future.
If you spent your day getting yelled at by entitled customers and bossed around by entitled managers, then standing in line for groceries, dealing with toddler tantrums, and you knew you’d have to do it all over again tomorrow, how would you want to spend the one or two hours you had free? Would you want to spend that time reading about how screwed you were, and how it was all your fault, or would you want to watch husky videos? I know what I would want.
When you make your living from a laptop or a garden, it’s easy to forget how life actually works for a majority of Americans.
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So if you’re wondering why Americans aren’t doing more, that’s why. They work all the time just to stay alive a little longer. They don’t have time for gardens and book clubs. We could spend all day arguing about how we got here, but we’re here. Not everyone willfully signed up for it.
They were just born into it.
Heads above water.
No one could have said it better. When the inevitable consequences of the inevitable car breakdown keep you up at night, life has a different focus. Meanwhile the child of the PMC still lacks all imagination.
Part the Second: Science on the Rocks. A regular stop for me is SBM, which covers the goings on in American biomedical science very well. We begin the second part with another gloss on Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis of Stanford (naturally). Dr. Ioannidis is largely responsible for the “replication crisis” in science, which really isn’t. We have covered this before. His argument is primary statistical, and although Benjamin Disraeli probably didn’t say it, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” This is not to deny the utility of statistics, but they are a double-edged sword, sharp coming and going. The only point Ioannidis made is that you can cut yourself badly when misusing statistics. Oh, and his paper on the replication crisis was corrected more than fifteen years after it was published. How many people really read it?
Dr. Jonathan Howard takes up the argument once again in “Dr. John Ioannidis Says Obsessive, Self-Anointed “Science-Based” Blamers are a Total Embarrassment for Science:
While his COVID output and enabling of MAHA doctors should be remembered, it’s not clear why anyone should pay attention to anything Dr. John Ioannidis says moving forward. However, he recently penned an article that provides a good opportunity to discuss a manipulative rhetorical technique known as DARVO. Though it was originally conceived to describe abusive relationships, DARVO has become a common tactic in supposed scientific debate and is worth discussing for that reason.
DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. That about sums up Dr. Ioannidis, who is nevertheless one of our more “productive” scientists (~1400 publications since 1994; >40 per year). Dr. Ioannidis’s criticisms are reasonable at first reading, but the deeper you dig into his body of work, especially since the beginning of the ongoing pandemic, the more projection you see. Absolutely no one believes that a “scientist” should be believed because of his or her credentials, except those scientists who really aren’t and their patrons and protectors:
Though he obviously has no obligation to do so, Dr. Ioannidis hasn’t responded to any of our good faith criticisms in a good faith manner. While he parades his hurt feelings, wags his finger, and sanctimoniously scolds us for our “obsession,” not once has he raised any meritorious objections to our work, and SBM is not unique in this regard.
Despite his lofty words, praising “rigorous organized scepticism and evidence-based questioning”, Dr. Ioannidis rarely, if ever, engages with his critics in a serious, sober way. Instead, he acts as if he’s our “opponent” in some game and absurdly implies that we’ve written dozens of lengthy articles that do nothing but call him a “quack. To Dr. Ioannidis, accurately quoting him and disagreeing in any way constitutes an “attack”. Imagine his outrage if we called him a “fucking moron”, “fucking liar” or “piece of shit,” like Dr. Vinay Prasad (of UCSF, naturally, and twice the head of the Federal Drug Administration during the current administration). Dr. Ioannidis apparently has no problem with this however. He referenced their prior work on the value of civil discourse in his latest article.
If Dr. Ioannidis quotes our work and explains exactly where he thinks we erred, it will be the first time. Of course, I’ll keep an open mind to any substantive criticism. Until then, we can recognize he is just obsessively blaming legitimate scientists with whom he disagrees, even without clear evidentiary basis for such accusations.
True. But, it is clear that institutional science has lost the plot in more ways than one. Compared to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, our scientific institutions did not cover themselves in glory beginning in late-2019 when a novel coronavirus got loose in the world. The explanation for this is still in progress, but it is one of the major reasons why trust in science is languishing, if not lying completely in the gutter. A recent article in Nature discusses this: Have people stopped trusting science? The data tell a surprising story. “Surprising” is in the eye of the beholder, but facts are facts in this case:
Concerns about trust in science have simmered for years, but they exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, when misinformation flourished and vocal groups questioned recommendations — such as vaccination and face masks — that research suggested could save lives.
In June 2022, as the pandemic waned, researchers Niels Mede and Viktoria Cologna put a call out on Twitter (now known as X) for people interested in surveying trust in science. Their tweets blew up — and before long they had a team of about 240 people, an international project called TISP (Trust in Science and Science-Related Populism) and the 68-country survey. “It got quite some attention,” says Mede, who is now at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands and co-led the study with Cologna, now at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology in Dübendorf.
The online survey asked 12 questions about scientists’ competence, integrity, openness and benevolence, which are different dimensions of trust. This aimed to address criticism that surveys about trust in science in general are simplistic, because ‘trust’ and ‘science’ are broad terms. The team combined the results into a scale of trustworthiness, from 1 (very low) to 5 (very high). The 3.6 global average largely fits with earlier global surveys suggesting that trust in science is high (see ‘Solid support for science’).
According to my arithmetic, 3.6/5 is 72%, or a C-minus, to be perhaps too literal minded about the result. That does not seem strong to me. The bigger problem is polarization between the groups who trust science and those who do not. This is undoubtedly bound up in a crisis of legitimacy that has suffused all of politics and culture in this modern world. There are no simple answers here. But as we have discussed before here and here, for example, the key to good science is that it be done by scientists disinterested in the outcome. As such, always remember that the first thing to read in a scientific paper is the Acknowledgments instead of the Abstract/Summary. Who paid for the work has become just as important as the published results of the research. On second thought, the source of the money is always more important than the published results. If Big Pharma or Big Oil paid, caveat emptor.
Part the Third: Science is Still Pretty Cool in Three Parts. Three short articles in Archaeology magazine show us why. The first presents evidence that Bronze Age Scandinavians sailed to Iberia:
A new study compared prehistoric boat carvings, known as petroglyphs, from 12 sites in northwest Iberia with thousands of similar carvings from southern Scandinavia. The team found strong similarities in the shape and details of the boats. The findings appear in the journal PLOS One.
The research team used high-resolution 3D scanning, digital models, Reflectance Transformation Imaging, and Geographic Information Systems to study the Iberian carvings. These methods revealed details that earlier surveys had missed and allowed direct comparisons with Scandinavian rock art.
Many of the carvings show the same boat features. The vessels have curved hulls, crews, oars, masts, rigging, and shapes linked with sails. Decorative details, including bird figures and S-shaped designs at the ends of the boats, appear in both regions. The close match points to shared shipbuilding knowledge and common artistic traditions across distant coastal communities.
The underlying paper has a great title. Boats on the rocks: Late prehistoric nautical iconography and landscape, from Northwest Iberia to Scandinavia (open access). The pictures are worth several thousand words, and they were made possible by scientific tools that earlier archaeologists could not imagine:
This paper offers a comparative analysis of prehistoric rock art boat depictions found across northwest Iberia and southern Scandinavia. We apply advanced digital documentation techniques, including high-resolution 3D recording and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based landscape analysis, to study the Iberian petroglyphs’ iconography and geographic placement in detail. The study identifies significant typological and iconographic parallels between Northwest Iberia and Nordic images, which provides a comparative basis to propose a Late Bronze Age chronology (c. 1300–800 BCE) for the Iberian examples. This shared iconography supports existing hypotheses concerning extensive long-distance connectivity and maritime trade networks across Atlantic Europe, particularly regarding the movement of metals like copper and tin. Furthermore, the GIS analysis confirms that nearly all Iberian sites, whether coastal or far inland, maintain a crucial visual or physical relationship with navigable waters, such as the ocean or major river systems. Ultimately, the authors propose that this rock art reflects both advancements in boat technology and the ritual and cosmological beliefs of maritime communities engaged in transregional exchange.
What this tells me is that our European forebears were hardy, truly ingenious, and courageous beyond words, attributes that are moribund if not outright dead these days.
In Ancient Herculaneum scroll read for the first time after nearly 2,000 years, researchers have:
read an ancient scroll without physically opening it. Using advanced X-ray scans and artificial intelligence, they recovered the full surviving text from a sealed papyrus for the first time. The work gives scholars access to writing hidden since CE 79.
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The scroll, known as PHerc. 1667 or Scroll 4, survived the volcanic eruption because intense heat turned the papyrus into a fragile block of carbon. Any attempt to unroll such scrolls by hand risks destroying them. Earlier efforts during the 1800s and again in the late 1900s damaged the outer layers, leaving only the tightly packed inner core.
Instead of opening the scroll, the team scanned it with high-resolution X-rays at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France. They rebuilt the rolled pages in three dimensions, flattened them into digital sheets, and trained AI models to spot ink almost invisible against the burned papyrus. Papyrologists then checked every reading and produced the Greek text.
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The text appears to be a work on Stoic ethics. It discusses human nature, self-control, learning, and moral growth. One passage says people lose their way when they drift from their own nature. Another speaks about gaining wisdom through study and careful thought.
The final preserved column names Aristocreon, the nephew and student of the Greek Stoic philosopher Chrysippus. The language and handwriting point to the second century BCE, making the scroll one of the oldest in the Herculaneum library. Since very little written by Chrysippus survives today, scholars think the scroll belongs to his school of thought and could even preserve a work linked to him.
Papyrologists still exist! And as science marches on and its results have much to teach us.
And in news of other scrolls we have Where the Dead Sea Scrolls come from: AI and chemical analysis trace origins:
The project, called Tracing Scribes and Scrolls, is led by Professor Mladen Popović at the University of Groningen. The Dead Sea Scrolls rank among the most important archaeological finds of the 20th century. Preserved by the Israel Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem, the collection includes the oldest known copies of many books of the Hebrew Bible along with a large group of Jewish texts from the late Second Temple period. Even after decades of study, scholars still do not know where many of the scrolls were made.
Researchers hope the new project will answer long-standing questions. Some scholars believe many scrolls were copied by a Jewish community living at Qumran. Others suggest they came from different writing centers, including Jerusalem, before people hid them in nearby caves during times of danger. Another idea is that the caves served as a library or a storage place for worn religious texts.
To investigate these questions, the team plans to examine about 250 samples from the Dead Sea Scroll collection. The samples include parchment, papyrus, and ink. Scientists will compare the chemical makeup of papyri from Egypt with material from Qumran and other Judean Desert sites. The comparison is expected to reveal unique material fingerprints, helping researchers identify where raw materials came from and how different scrolls were produced.
This study shows that AI (however defined) can be useful. Getting back to the issue of trust in science, I can hear the “tough-minded businessman” who sits in the locker room at the golf course and pontificates on everything asking, “Why is any of this important?” Due to his native philistinism (with apology to Philistines) he will never understand it. But that does not matter.
Part the Fourth Remembering the Fourth of July. While in this current world these words have become increasingly meaningless, but maybe not forever, Thomas Jefferson and his interlocutors got it right 250 years ago:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
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And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
They did punctuation and capitalization better in the late-18th century than that exhibited on a certain (anti)social medium. And when using “Fortunes,” while these men were rich by the standards of the day, they were thinking of Fortuna, not a meme coin. For our American friends, remember that Independence Day is independent of any particular politician or creed. This was true in 1776 and it remains true in 2026. And to our friends in other nations, this too shall pass, one way or another.
Thanks for reading! I will re-read the Declaration tomorrow and celebrate my grandson’s third birthday. Wear a wide-brimmed hat and avoid the heat. Remember, life is a marathon, not a sprint. See you next week.
