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Trump makes rare presidential visit to tribal land for rally
President Donald Trump's campaign rally on the Choctaw Nation puts him in rare company. He's among a handful of presidents who have visited Native American reservations while in office. Trump's
Connecting Medical Training to the Future of Care
Physician training doesn’t stop at the bedside. Residents also grow by teaching, leading and mentoring others. Sutter Health brought that approach to this year’s Latino Medical Student Association National Conference, where it served as a diamond-level sponsor. The event brought together medical students, pre-med students, residents and health care leaders from across the country. Now […]
Paul Reubens' Big Auction to feature more than 400 items
Pee-wee Herman's iconic suit and bow tie, quirky furniture, annotated scripts and signed memorabilia will be among the 400-plus items sold at Paul Reubens' Big Auction.
Fairburn Road bridge replacement project impacts South Fulton businesses
A major road closure along Fairburn Road is sparking concern among South Fulton business owners who say the city failed to give advance notice about the project.
Food safety finds a place among ‘kitchen-table’ political issues
The summer was marred by a foodborne outbreak that sickened scores of people, turning the safety of the U.S. food supply into a topic of national conversation and a political cause.
European Leaders Mostly Optimistic About Paramount-WB's Future
European industry leaders are cautiously optimistic now that Paramount is about to complete its takeover of Warner Bros., but there are many unknowns.
Scientists Thought Mars’s North Polar Ice Was 25% Dust. They Were Way Off
Previous research pointed to copious amounts of dust atop the arctic Martian wasteland, but a clearer picture is coming into focus.
Buncombe sheriff hopefuls spar over jail staffing, mental health
ASHEVILLE - Buncombe County Sheriff Quentin Miller and his political opponent, Gary Parris, butted heads over a range of issues at a candidate forum hosted Oct. 2 by the Council of Independent Business Owners. Among issues on which they clashed were mental health, staffing issues and jail overcrowding.
Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery will be called Skydance
David Ellison, CEO of Paramount Skydance, speaks during CinemaCon 2026 on April 16, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (David Becker/Getty Images for CinemaCon)
Studying Science in an Anti-Scientific Time
This Chronicle Review Deep Cut was first published in 2025. By Julianne Werlin Thanks for reading The Chronicle Review! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe The last two decades have not been kind to science studies. Already bruised and battered by the “science wars” of the 1990s, by the 2000s sociologists of science — who had long argued that science had to be understood in its human context — were encountering the funhouse-mirror version of their own views in right-wing critiques of climate scientists. It was enough to give some prominent scholars pause. “Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies?” asked Bruno Latour, the most famous sociologist of science in the world, in 2003. “Should we apologize for having been wrong all along? Or should we rather bring the sword of criticism to criticism itself and do a bit of soul-searching here: What were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of scientific facts?” In response, Latour proposed a change of method and attitude. Science studies, now chastened and contrite, would no longer seek to strip facts of their authority, but to enrich and enhance them. What this meant in practice was never fully clear. But his diagnosis of problems resonated, even if his solutions did not. Latour’s exercise in public hand-wringing signaled a shift in mood. By 2016, with the first election of Donald Trump, the idea that skepticism of science was a right-wing position, not a left-wing one, had become a commonplace, discussed eagerly in The New York Times. For liberals, vaccine denial during the Covid era and Trump’s second-term attacks on the funding of scientific research, covered extensively in these pages, added a new urgency to the defense of science on both practical and principled grounds. There was little appetite for a sociology or philosophy of science that emphasized the messiness and missteps of the scientific process rather than its integrity and triumphs. The distinguished historian of science Peter Dear’s new book, The World as We Know It: From Natural Philosophy to Modern Science (Princeton University Press, 2025), which seeks to tell the story of 18th- and 19th-century science for a general public, may seem comfortably remote from these bitter contests. In its 16 short chapters, Dear draws swift, sure sketches of major discoveries from Newton to Einstein, ably guiding the reader through debates on stellar nebulae, animal taxonomy, atomic chemistry, evolution, and other flashpoints in the history of science. But though a work of history, Dear’s book must still negotiate our polarized present. In a blurb on its back cover, the historian of biology Lynn K. Nyhart alludes to the “present moment, when scientific knowledge is being swamped by misinformation and its institutions are under siege.” Dear himself, in his conclusion, refers to the “yard signs” and “bumper stickers” that proclaim “Science Is Real.” One antidote to both anti-science propaganda and to reductive slogans in science’s defense is a robust history and philosophy of science: exactly what Dear’s scholarship has long offered. But his new book illustrates how difficult such work has become. Dear, an emeritus professor of history at Cornell University, is best known as a creative and philosophically minded historian of the Scientific Revolution. His edited volume The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument (1991) analyzed the rhetoric of Galileo’s thought experiments to brilliant effect. Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (1995) was a major contribution to the analysis of scientific experiments in early modern Europe and beyond, while Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge in Transition, 1500-1700 (2001), now in its third edition, remains one of the best overviews of the profound epistemological upheavals of 16th- and 17th-century science. But Dear has also ventured into later periods. Nearly two decades ago, in The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World (2006), he turned to the 18th and 19th centuries to sketch a history and theory of scientific knowledge. Aimed at a generalist audience, Dear’s simple prose belied serious philosophical ambitions. Science, Dear argued, has two aspects: “natural philosophy,” the quest to understand the true nature of the universe, and “instrumentality,” the applied skills and technologies that allow us to manipulate the world for human advantage. Both strands are ancient, but the innovation of the phenomenon we call “science” was to yoke them together. As Francis Bacon wrote, “Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known, the effect cannot be produced,” an insight typically abridged to “knowledge is power.” Or, in Bertrand Russell’s characteristically blunt phrase, science has two functions, “1. to enable us to know things, and 2., to enable us to do things.” So far, so conventional. But Dear took issue with this familiar story in one respect. Bacon’s formula implied that theory and practice could be fused in a single method. In fact, Dear argued, the quest to understand nature and the desire to manipulate it were coupled only loosely. They could come together, but they could also pull apart. Focusing on natural philosophy, the “knowing” half of the scientific circle, he used a series of case studies from cosmology, taxonomy, chemistry, electromagnetism, and quantum theory to show how theories changed over time, in dialogue with practice, but never reducible to it. Take the case of matter, the basic substrate of the physical world. In the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists not only disagreed about what it was, but also about how well it could be known. In 1789, the chemist Antoine Lavoisier dismissed speculation about the atomic composition of chemicals as “discussions entirely of a metaphysical nature,” as he sought to orient chemistry away from philosophical abstraction and toward laboratory results. But in the 19th century, atoms returned with a vengeance in the atomic chemistry of John Dalton, who wanted to explain the underlying structure of nature. It was not just that Dalton and Lavoisier had a different set of experimental results, or even a different theory, Dear showed. What counted as an explanation had changed. In arguing that scientific theories depended on their intelligibility to human beings with complex arrays of beliefs and commitments, Dear was in sympathy with science studies. Key figures such as the sociologist Steven Shapin emphasized the importance of psychological mechanisms like trust in the formation and acceptance of scientific ideas. But in focusing on the scientific pursuit of knowledge, not its politics or economics, Dear resisted the more cynical perspective of some of his colleagues. The Intelligibility of Nature strikes a very different note than Shapin’s collection of a few years later, Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as If It Was Produced by People With Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority (2010), to name just one example. Walking a very fine line, Dear depicted science as driven at once by complex social dynamics and by the intellectual power of real discoveries. It was a testament not only to his own acumen but also to the vitality of the field that he was able to do so. Nearly two decades later, The World as We Know It returns to the questions broached in The Intelligibility of Nature. Like Dear’s earlier study, it begins with the Newtonian cosmos and ends with debates between Einstein and Bohr on quantum physics. Beyond its terminal figures, many of the same characters appear in both studies, including the naturalists John Ray and the Comte de Buffon; the chemists Étienne François Geoffroy, Antoine Lavoisier, and John Dalton; as well as Charles Darwin and Michael Faraday, among others. Its subject is nearly identical: As in The Intelligibility of Nature, The World as We Know It considers natural philosophy as opposed to instrumentality, here defined as the “desire to create a picture of what the world is really like — the world as God knows it — rather than simply having instrumental or operational control over it.” The two books also overlap in insights — and sometimes even in language. The reader who has learned in The Intelligibility of Nature that Buffon’s method of classifying animals “reflected his belief in the importance of the senses and empiricism in learning about nature (a doctrine associated with Newton and the philosopher John Locke)” will experience a sense of déjà vu on reading, in The World as We Know It, that the classification “reflects Buffon’s commitment to the epistemological stance of Newton and his philosophical underlaborer John Locke, who stressed the role of the senses in creating natural knowledge.” Later in the passage, we read that, “because of its stress on understanding the ways of life of animals in their environments, Buffon’s approach could almost be labeled (anachronistically) as ‘ecological.’” And again, “an anachronistic way of putting it would be to say that Buffon recommends an ecological mode of understanding.” Likewise, in The Intelligibility of Nature we read of Dalton that he was initially drawn to meteorology, and that: He did a bit of experimental work on these things, especially having to do with the water-holding capacity of gases, but his real interest lay in understanding what, at an underlying natural-philosophical level, was really going on physically.” Whereas, in The World as We Know It: He did experimental work on these things, especially concerning the water-holding capacity of gases — although not at a very refined level quantitatively — but he was continually trying to develop a theoretical conception of what was happening physically. The final full chapter of each book closes on the same resigned note. Intelligibility: These days, most serious work on the natural philosophical underpinnings and implications of quantum mechanics is performed not by physicists but by philosophers of science. Among scientific practitioners themselves, Bohr’s attempt to use instrumentality as sufficient grounds for a respectable science has met with a high degree of success. And again, in The World as We Know It: Bohr’s and Einstein’s concerns are now questions that are mostly discussed by philosophers of science rather than by physicists themselves. The marginalization of these sorts of questions amounts to the demise of natural philosophy, at least in physics, in the 20th century. Quantum mechanics “works,” and that’s good enough for most scientists who encounter it. Examples could be multiplied. When handling the same subject matter, some echoes are inevitable. Scholars should not feel that because they have written “Isaac Newton died in 1727” in one book, in the next they must describe him as perishing, expiring, or meeting his maker. But the repetitions of language and arguments (not to mention six reproduced images) threaded throughout The World as We Know It are more extensive than that. They should have been caught by Princeton University Press or its reviewers, and revised. Because the two books have so much in common, it is easy to see where they diverge. The World as We Know It is a less theoretical work than its predecessor. The sociology of knowledge that organized The Intelligibility of Nature has been reduced in scale and folded into readings and examples. The taut interplay between history and theory, which gave the earlier study so much interest, is there, but it is subtle. In the earlier book, the case studies demonstrated theoretical claims about the character and development of science. In the later work, each narrative of discovery is an end in itself. Insights emerge from the history, but they do not control the organization of the study. With the theory muted, it can be hard to understand the logic uniting Dear’s sprawling history of more than two centuries of scientific knowledge. The 16 brisk chapters cover an enormous amount of material. But the closer the volume edges to comprehensiveness, the more obvious the missing elements become. A chapter on “Institutions and Pedagogy,” describing the birth of the research university, illustrates the problem. Inserted roughly halfway through the book, the unnumbered chapter is designed as an “entr’acte,” in acknowledgement that it does not fit the study’s organization around scientific discoveries. Yet as Dear is well aware, no general history of the development of modern science can bracket its 19th-century institutionalization and professionalization. It was the 19th-century university, after all, that gave us the “scientist,” a term coined by the Cambridge philosopher William Whewell. Dear’s history of scientific discoveries implies a wider social and institutional history, but it remains largely subterranean, only occasionally extruded under the pressure of the narrative. It must be said that the balance is not all on the side of the earlier study. There are some advantages to the more historical, less theoretical organization of The World as We Know It. Dear’s accounts of paradigm shifts are remarkably lucid, no small accomplishment given that they span fields and centuries. He makes excellent use of the wealth of new scholarship on Darwin and his influences, to which he has himself contributed. It is satisfying to see puzzle pieces from Buffon’s natural history, Georges Cuvier’s animal taxonomy, Thomas Robert Malthus’s demography, and Charles Lyell’s geology recombined seamlessly in the Darwinian jigsaw. Likewise, Dear’s discussion of stellar nebulae, divided between chapters two and 15, shows vividly how Newton, Kant, Herschel, and Hubble reimagined insights and observations as they sought to discover whether the diffuse light that filtered through early telescopes was a glowing, gaseous substance or discrete but distant stars. Yet despite such pleasures, the book remains a more modest work than The Intelligibility of Nature. Dear has clearly not changed his views about the history of science. But in the two decades that have elapsed, the discipline and the world around it have changed, making it harder to write a sociologically and philosophically ambitious history of science for the general reader. That is a shame, because in the age of Silicon Valley and biotechnology, both the reciprocity and the tensions Dear identified between the epistemological and instrumental ambitions of science are more evident than ever. In recent years, some of the most exciting new books on the history of science in early modernity have focused precisely on this pressure point. Important studies such as Pamela H. Smith’s From Lived Experience to the Written Word (2022), James Poskett’s Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science (2022), and Vera Keller’s The Interlopers: Early Stuart Projects and the Undisciplining of Knowledge (2023) all shed new light on how early modern science negotiated the relationship between its instrumental and epistemological ambitions, or in Russell’s phrase, knowing and doing. There is every opportunity for a philosophically informed approach to draw new insights from this wealth of material. Dear, unfortunately, has not done so in The World as We Know It. But for future scholars of the history of science, his body of work over nearly four decades may provide just the model. Julianne Werlin is an associate professor of English at Duke University. Thanks for reading The Chronicle Review! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe
Tarik Skubal Gets Dodgers NLDS Game 1 Start Over Yoshinobu Yamamoto
The Los Angeles Dodgers pulled a fast one and are rolling out Tarik Skubal as the Game 1 starter for the NLDS.
Paramount, Warner Bros. will be named Skydance after merger
David Ellison said the merged Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will be called Skydance — the moniker he picked nearly two decades ago when the tech scion began building his
Bishop’s computer science chair says AI is eliminating ‘grunt work’ and reshaping digital jobs
Dr. Russell Butler, chair of Bishop’s University’s Department of Computer Science, says artificial intelligence is increasingly taking over routine digital “grunt work,” changing the skills students and workers may need in the years ahead. Photo courtesy of Bishop’s University. Click here to read our platform! Get local news like this every morning. Subscribe free below. Subscribe Pulse Newsroom Artificial intelligence is already taking over some of the routine digital work once performed by entry-level employees, according to Bishop’s University Computer Science chair Dr. Russell Butler — a shift he believes will make expertise, judgement and the ability to evaluate AI-generated work increasingly important. Butler described the change as automation reaching what he calls the “bottom of the cognitive pyramid” during an interview with The Pulse about AI, university education and the future of digital work. His argument is not that humans are disappearing from the workplace. Instead, he sees their role changing as AI becomes capable of handling more of the repetitive tasks involved in computer-based work. “Everything’s converging on just AI basically doing all the grunt work,” Butler said. The bottom of the cognitive pyramid Butler is from Lennoxville, completed his undergraduate studies at Bishop’s and later earned his PhD at the Université de Sherbrooke. He joined Bishop’s in 2019 and now chairs its Department of Computer Science. He uses AI in research, teaching and other creative work, and said the technology is increasingly capable of handling routine digital tasks that once required substantial human time. “You’ve got the grunt work, like moving things around in Excel, doing basic programming tasks,” Butler said. “That’s like the bottom grunt work that the entry-level worker would have done two or three years ago.” Butler went further, saying in his view that much of this type of work has already been absorbed by AI tools. He connected that change to a shift he sees taking place in computer science, where entry-level roles have declined while experienced workers can use AI to increase what they can produce. “A senior developer now has access to essentially an unlimited amount of junior developers on demand,” Butler said. He was describing AI systems metaphorically, not literal employees. His point was that one experienced developer can now ask AI tools to produce code or other technical work that might previously have been assigned to more junior workers. That raises a broader question for universities and employers. If some of the simpler work traditionally given to newcomers can now be done by machines, how do people gain the experience needed to become senior workers themselves? Students doing work that once required years of programming Butler said he is already seeing the change inside his classroom. He created a Bishop’s course called CS208, Coding in Plain English, to show students — including those without traditional programming backgrounds — what they can accomplish using AI. Some come from disciplines such as psychology or neuroscience with no previous programming experience. “What I’m finding is that students who have zero programming experience, they come in from another discipline like psychology or neuroscience or something, they are now able to get up and running with real data sets,” Butler said. Butler’s own doctoral work involved neuroimaging, and he said he has assigned students work he considers comparable to the kinds of analysis he performed during his PhD. He described giving students a real dataset, an expected result and instructions to use AI to complete the analysis. Butler said those students have been able to carry out work at a level he associates with tasks he once performed after years of programming experience. That does not mean a student using AI instantly acquires the same knowledge as an experienced computer scientist. But Butler sees it as evidence that AI can dramatically lower the technical barrier between having a problem to solve and producing a working result. The role of the person using the system then changes. They need to know what to ask for, understand enough about the subject to judge the answer and take responsibility for what is ultimately produced. What about AI hallucinations? One persistent concern surrounding generative AI is hallucination — when a system produces information that sounds convincing but is false or unsupported. Butler said that problem has improved substantially in newer systems and is not as severe as it was with earlier models. He pointed in particular to newer AI systems’ ability to search the web, consult scientific databases and return source links rather than simply generating a citation from their internal model. Butler nevertheless said users should verify what AI produces. “You should verify,” he said while discussing citations generated with AI. His position is that hallucinations have become less common in the systems he uses, not that incorrect AI output is impossible. Human checking remains part of the process. Hours of work compressed Butler offered another example from his administrative work at Bishop’s. The university has been comparing CEGEP courses with first-year Bishop’s courses to determine where students may qualify for advanced standing. Traditionally, Butler said, that means reviewing two sets of course descriptions and manually matching one institution’s courses with another’s. As department chair, that could require hours of reading and comparison. He said AI can now be given both sets of material and asked to generate an initial mapping automatically. “It saves me hours and hours of work,” Butler said. Butler said the AI-generated mapping can also produce a better result than he would produce himself. He sees similar opportunities in businesses. A company may receive specifications, drawings, emails or other digital material from customers and then have employees convert that information into an internal format before anything can be manufactured or delivered. AI can increasingly perform parts of that intermediate processing. In Butler’s view, the employee does not necessarily disappear. Instead, the job becomes more about checking the result. “The human is still there,” he said. Judgement could become more valuable That change is central to Butler’s view of where digital work may be headed. If AI can produce a first draft, write basic code, compare documents or process large amounts of information, he argues that knowledge and judgement become increasingly important. “The real scarce resource going forward is going to be domain knowledge, expertise, and… credentials, authority, the ability to work with other people,” Butler said. He is therefore encouraging students not only to learn AI tools but also to broaden their education. He mentioned acting, fine art and photography as examples of courses that can help develop what he described as taste and intuition — the ability to recognize what is good, what is not and what should be changed. “And that’s the skill that they need now because the grunt work has been automated and now it’s about evaluating what the AI produces and telling it how to improve or expand the output,” Butler said. That does not remove the need for technical knowledge. Butler’s argument is that the emphasis may shift away from manually completing every step of a task and toward directing, checking and improving work produced with AI assistance. He also stressed that humans remain responsible for final decisions. “At the end of the day, the human has to make the final call,” Butler said, pointing to the question of accountability. Physical work may be different Butler draws a distinction between digital work and jobs requiring people to manipulate the physical world. He expects AI to continue advancing quickly in tasks performed almost entirely on computers. He is more cautious about claims that humanoid robots will soon be able to replace workers such as plumbers or electricians. Butler said those trades would not be replaced “anytime soon” in his view and described some current robotics demonstrations as overhyped. He described the situation as counterintuitive. “It’s almost like we solved the highest level first,” he said, contrasting advances in digital AI with the harder problem of building robots capable of operating reliably in the physical world. Butler’s argument is that some digital occupations could face automation sooner than trades requiring complex physical work. The wider AI shift in the Townships Butler’s comments come as local institutions are increasingly grappling with how AI should be used. The federal government recently announced up to $162 million over five years for 10,000 AI-related placements through Mitacs. The Université de Sherbrooke told The Pulse that the number of its collaborative research and innovation projects supported through Mitacs has approximately doubled since 2018-19, while the number of placements has approximately tripled. UdeS also said it already has projects involving both AI adoption and the application of AI to other fields. At Bishop’s, Butler said part of his role involves building the Computer Science department’s local presence, connecting students with regional partners and strengthening relationships with the Sherbrooke technology ecosystem. Those developments put universities in a difficult position. They have to prepare students to use the tools employers increasingly have available while also making sure graduates understand enough to recognize when those tools are wrong, incomplete or being applied to the wrong problem. The risk of losing human skills Butler does not see AI as risk-free. Later in the interview, he raised a separate concern: as AI becomes better at reading, writing, programming and other cognitive tasks, people could lose some of the underlying skills that historically helped produce new ideas. “The other danger is that we’re going to lose the human skills,” Butler said. He specifically mentioned reading and writing and argued that people could lose some of the lower-level understanding that contributes to breakthroughs. Butler said AI systems are based on existing human knowledge and argued that they become much more powerful when paired with a capable person. That tension runs through his view of the technology. AI can remove hours of routine work. It can allow beginners to perform tasks that once required substantial technical training. It can give experienced workers significant leverage. But the more capable the technology becomes, the more important it may be for people to develop the judgement needed to decide what should be done in the first place. For Butler, that is where education may have to change. Students still need to understand their field. They still need to know when something is wrong. And they still need to be able to make the final decision. But if AI increasingly handles the bottom of the cognitive pyramid, the value of a worker may depend less on how quickly they can perform the grunt work and more on whether they understand what the work is supposed to accomplish. Don’t miss the next story that affects your community. Join thousands of readers getting The Pulse every morning—plus breaking news alerts when it matters most. If you value this kind of local journalism, consider supporting it. Subscribe, share and like! Subscribe Share
Skydance Is New Name for Paramount-Warner Bros. Company
Paramount and Warner Bros. will operate under the Skydance corporate name as the companies prepare to complete their $111 billion merger.
Why Control Resonant Had to Take Our New Hero Outside
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Jennifer Lopez and golden glamour dazzle at Paris Fashion Week
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Everything Paramount will own as Skydance
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Paris fashion defies a bruised luxury industry with J.Lo, golden glamour and skimpy outfits
Saint Laurent dazzles with a river of gold at Paris Fashion Week, featuring a glossy black runway and a shimmering Eiffel Tower in the background | KCBS All News 106.9FM and 740AM
Europe agrees to release stocked diesel oil, Trump says
Europe has agreed to release a massive amount of diesel oil stocks, announced by US President Donald Trump, to address rising fuel prices ahead of US elections.
New name of Paramount-Warner Bros. revealed
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Paramount’s Warner Bros. megamerger will just be called Skydance
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UFC 332 preview, predictions: Worst main event in history?
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Paramount, Warner Bros. combine as new entity Skydance, David Ellison announces
He announced the updated on X
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New Paramount Warner Bros. Name is Skydance, David Ellison Says
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Ivey touts Alabama's ranking among top 10 states for doing business
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In brief: 'Reacher' spinoff gets a second season and more
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Wisconsin governor candidates offer opposing plans to address rising healthcare costs
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Men are hiding potentially deadly disorder amid pressure to build the 'perfect' body
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What is Torey Lovullo's message to Diamondbacks fans?
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Why did the Diamondbacks bring back manager Torey Lovullo?
The Diamondbacks decided even before the season ended that Torey Lovullo was the right person to continue leading the clubhouse.
Bickley: Torey Lovullo deserved his new contract
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Chicago aldermen seek probe into mayor's World Business Chicago ads
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World Business Chicago skips City Council ethics hearing about videos featuring Mayor Brandon Johnson
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More than just a boost: Caffeine’s effects on teens
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WATCH: NASA launches Crew-13 to International Space Station
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Alabama once again among top 10 states in business ranking
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Campaign-style Trump ads use money meant for border security, memorials
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What to stream in October 2026: ‘East of Eden,’ ‘VisionQuest,’ ‘Carrie’
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City of Alamo Announces Appointment of New City Manager
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Diamondbacks Extend Torey Lovullo
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Diamondbacks will retain manager Torey Lovullo
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Twenty-five years after 9/11, researchers are still discovering health effects among first responders
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Sinclair, Zagunis headline Oregon Sports Hall of Fame class
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Donation pledges to Kennedy Center fell by more than 100% in months after Trump’s name added, internal documents show
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Richard Lamondin releases snappy second TV ad touting business background, Tallahassee plan
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Where UW Offensive Line Has Fallen Short
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Monthly Strum Club & Potluck Returns To York House Oct. 6
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Accreditation puts Cougar Health Services among ‘elite’ group nationally
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NFL Week 4 Survivor/Eliminator Picks
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On the frontlines of student mental health
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Good science requires much more than evidence
Empiricists believe that scientific theories are true only if they make correct empirical predictions: if we can't verify these predictions, then there is no reason to expect that they tell us anything about reality. However, Professor of Philosophy at King's College David Kyle Johnson argues that this is mistaken. In response to Bas van Fraassen, who has written on this subject for the IAI, he argues that we have many reasons for believing a theory to be true, such as it being parsimonious and having large scope — qualities which have been used throughout the history of science as criteria for judging theories. In 2024, Princeton philosopher Bas van Fraassen wrote a short article for IAI News entitled “Science Does not Describe Reality: The Limits and Benefits of Explanation.” At the time, I was working on two projects (a science book and a Great Course) that, when completed, would (among other things) defend science’s ability to describe reality. I wanted to write a response to van Fraassen, but the projects demanded too much of my attention. But now that those projects are complete, I am in a position to explain the objections to van Fraassen’s thesis. Summarizing van Fraassen’s argumentIn a nutshell, his argument is this: What scientists do is make predictions based on theories and then invite others to test to see whether those predictions are borne out. “If theory T is right, result R should happen in experimental condition C.” Many think that running an experiment that shows that R happens in condition C is proof that theory T is true (and should be believed). But, van Fraassen argues, that R happened in condition C is only a reason to think that R happens in condition C. That’s the only observable, or empirical, result we can actually see, so that is all that we are really justified in believing. (The underlying theory that made that prediction still may or may not be true.) That is why he calls those who accept his position “empiricists.”Before I explain what is wrong with this position, let me explain what it gets right. What van Fraassen Gets RightFirst, a theory correctly predicting the results of an experiment is not, strictly speaking, “proof” that the theory is correct. The basic line of reasoning is this:If the theory T is true, result R should happen. Result R did happen. Thus, theory T is true.In other words:“If T then R. R. Thus, T.”This is a deductively invalid, fallacious mode of reasoning, called “affirming the consequent.” Those premises do not guarantee that the conclusion follows. “If I am in Pennsylvania, then I am in the USA. I am in the USA. Thus, I am in Pennsylvania.” Clearly that argument doesn’t guarantee its conclusion; neither does the above argument.However, science is not a deductive method of reasoning; it is an inductive one. And inductive arguments merely try to raise the probability of their conclusion, not “prove” them for certain. Thus, the fact that an experimental result doesn’t prove a theory is true is irrelevant; it’s not supposed to. That is not what scientific reasoning is about.___If the hypothesis that something exists clearly provides the best explanation for what we can observe, then the belief that it exists is what is rational.___Second, it’s also true that a single experimental result doesn’t provide enough justification to believe that a theory is true. Scientists do not come to a consensus about whether a theory is true by looking at a single experiment; they look at all the evidence to determine where the preponderance of evidence points. The mere fact that I am in the USA raises the probability that I am in Pennsylvania, but not nearly enough to conclude that I am in Pennsylvania. However, if I am also regularly encountering people wearing Eagles and Phillies hats and seeing advertisements for Founding Father tours, I probably am. In the same way, a theory successfully predicting the outcome of one experiment is not enough to conclude that it is true; but if a theory makes a wide variety of predictions that are all vindicated by multiple experiments, performed by many different groups and people, all actively trying to prove the theory false (which is what good scientific experiments are designed to do)—that is a good reason to conclude that the theory is true. In other words, if you repeatedly try to prove something false but can’t, that is a very good indication that it isn’t. The problem of underdeterminationIn reply, those whom van Fraassen calls “empiricists” often point to the “problem of underdetermination.” For any given theory that makes successful predictions about what happens in experimental conditions, there are countless other possible theories that make exactly the same predictions—and since they do, the experimental evidence in question is just as much reason to accept any of those theories as it is to accept our original one. Thus, the argument goes, we have no way of knowing whether our original theory is true, or one of the other “predictively equivalent” theories is true. SUGGESTED VIEWING How Occam's Razor changed the world With Johnjoe McFadden As an example of underdetermination, philosophers often offer this example. The evidence of fossils seems to provide reason to conclude that the universe is quite old; ancient fossils are what the “ancient universe” hypothesis predicts. But it’s also possible that God created an ancient-looking universe 200 years ago, complete with a “fake” fossil record for us to find, to make it look old. The existence of fossils is what that theory predicts too. So, the argument goes, the fossil record can’t be used as evidence that the universe is ancient; the fossil record supports the “200-year-old ancient-looking universe” theory just as much. The problem of underdetermination points out that, for any theory with supporting evidence, we could invent another completely different theory that predicts exactly the same evidence, and thus undermine that evidence’s ability to support the original theory.But this “argument from underdetermination” betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what scientific reasoning is and how it works. To explain, let me use another rather strange (but very real and commonly discussed) philosophical thought experiment called “The Grue Problem.” The “Grue” ProblemSuppose I want to know what color emeralds are, so I observe a few, see that they all appear green, and form the theory that “all emeralds are green.” I thus predict that the next 100 emeralds I find will also appear to be green. And let’s say that happens, and so I thus conclude that my theory that all emeralds are green is true. Now, one might rightly point out that I don’t know for sure that all emeralds are green—I have not seen them all. Maybe some I haven’t found yet are blue. Fair enough. After all, we used to think that all swans were white, until we found some black ones. But let’s say that I go on a quest and collect every emerald in the universe—and, for the sake of the argument, let’s say I can do this, and can even know that I have every one of them. So, I collect them all, look at them all, and verify that they all appear green. Can’t I now rightly conclude that all emeralds are green?Inspired by the problem of underdetermination, a friend might argue that I cannot.Sure, they all appear green now—but there could be another kind of color called “grue.” Something is grue if it is green up to a certain point in time, but then spontaneously turns blue. And there could be an infinite number of “shades” of grue. Something that is one shade of grue will turn blue at noon today, but something that is another shade of grue will turn blue at noon tomorrow, etc. So yes, the emeralds appear green now; and since they haven’t turned blue yet, they are not some “past” shade of grue. But they might be some “future” shade of grue (e.g., they may turn blue at noon tomorrow). And since all future shades of grue are consistent with “being green up to this point in time,” the evidence you have is completely consistent with the notion that all emeralds are some future shade of grue, rather than green. Indeed, that they would appear green until now is what the “some future shade of grue” hypothesis predicts. So, we have just as much reason to conclude that all emeralds are some shade of grue as we do to conclude that they are green.You’re probably thinking “It’s not equally possible that the emeralds are grue; they are obviously green.” You are right! But explaining why your instinctive reaction to my friend’s argument is correct will help inform why van Fraassen’s “empiricist” is wrong and science actually does describe reality.The main mistake my friend makes is in thinking that the “empirical evidence” (of all the emeralds appearing green) is (or even should be) all I am using to draw the conclusion that all emeralds are green. It is not. I am also considering known facts about how colors typically work; things don’t usually change color, and when they do, they don’t do so suddenly, without cause, and all at once. So, even though the simple evidence of the emeralds all appearing green up to this point is consistent with them being some future shade of grue—that is even what the grue hypothesis “predicts”—it is still exceedingly unlikely that they are. The hypothesis that they are green is much more likely. Understanding science refutes the problem of underdetermination The misunderstanding about science that the “empiricist” pointing to “the problem of underdetermination” makes is similar to the one that my friend made. Science is not just about considering experimental evidence; in fact, it’s not even just about considering empirical evidence. As Ernan McMullin and many other philosophers of science have pointed out, the inference that makes science is “inference to the best explanation” (sometimes called “abduction” or “retroduction” by McMullin). While, depending on the circumstances, scientists use many different kinds of reasoning, science as a whole is, simply put, the process of considering multiple competing explanations and comparing them to certain criteria—explanatory criteria (the kinds of things explanations must be and do, by definition, to be a good explanation)—to see which explanation is the best.And these criteria do not deal only with empirical results. Yes, successful predictions raise the probability of a hypothesis, but it’s also the case that the more new assumptions a theory makes, the less likely it is to be true; every new assumption presents an opportunity for the theory to be false. (The fewer assumptions a theory makes, the simpler or “more parsimonious” it is said to be.) Likewise, the more existing evidence a theory contradicts, the less likely it is, because in order for a theory to be true, every piece of evidence it contradicts has to be somehow faulty. (The fewer established theories a new theory contradicts, the more “conservative” it is said to be.) And, obviously, the more something explains, the better explanation it is. (This is called having “scope.”) If a theory raises unanswerable questions, it’s not expanding our understanding, and thus is not wide-scoping. Scientists consider all these things when deciding which theory to accept, because the theory that adheres best to these explanatory criteria is most likely to be true.___the mere fact that a theory’s predictive success is why it “sticks around” or “becomes accepted” in the scientific community is not a reason to be skeptical about its truth.___The reason the grue hypothesis is no good is because it invents an entirely new kind of color—not just a new shade, but an entirely different category of color (a different way colors work)—and thus is not parsimonious. It raises unanswerable questions about how and why emeralds would just spontaneously change from green to blue (and thus does not have wide scope). And it contradicts what is already well established about how color works (and thus is unconservative).The theories that the problem of underdetermination points to do the same thing. Yes, the theory that God created an “ancient-looking universe” (complete with an ancient-looking fossil record) two hundred years ago is also consistent with the empirical evidence (of a fossil record) that presently exists; but that theory is monumentally unparsimonious (it requires many extra assumptions about infinite entities) and not wide-scoping (it raises unanswerable questions about why God would do such a thing). So, I can rationally conclude that it is false.Indeed, the history of science includes many examples of theories that were rejected because they lacked parsimony and/or scope, even before their falsity (and the truth of their competing theory) was confirmed by observation. As I point out in my book, geocentrism was rejected by the scientific community because it lacked parsimony, almost 200 years before the observation of parallax confirmed that the Earth moves around the sun. And the continuum theory of matter was completely rejected by 1860, because it couldn’t explain chemical reactions or organize matter into a periodic table, even though the experiments that eventually confirmed atomic theory weren’t even proposed until the 1870s. Solving the best of a bad lot problemIn response, the “empiricists” are likely to object, this time pointing to the “best of a bad lot” problem. “We have no reason to conclude that an explanation that has been shown to be better than others is true because we have no guarantee that the true theory was among those that we were considering.” If you have a “lot” (a collection) of poor explanations, even the best one is not true.The responses to this problem, however, are numerous. Peter Lipton argues that the set of hypotheses that scientists consider are not just randomly selected and thus unlikely to contain a theory that is true; they use existing knowledge to home in on what is most likely to be true. A doctor trying to explain abdominal pain is not going to bother wondering whether demons are causing it; they are going to stick with things like appendicitis and kidney stones, because they are most likely. Further, despite its name, inference to the best explanation is not just the process of comparing hypotheses and accepting the best one; we also want one that is a good explanation in its own right. If it’s not, we are going to keep looking until we find an explanation that is. And while that process does not guarantee that we will come across the exact truth, it’s very likely that the theory that emerges as the best will be at least approximately true, and thus we will be justified in believing it. And lastly, as I point out in my book, although many theories not based in scientific evidence (like geocentrism and continuum theory) have been completely overturned, science almost always progresses by the refinement of scientifically established theories—not their replacement. (Although our sun is not the center of the universe, heliocentrism was our first step in understanding the Earth’s true place in the universe.) So even if a theory we accept today may not be completely right, accepting it is a step on the journey toward the complete truth. The example of atomic theoryNow, it’s worth pointing out that most empiricists are not skeptical of all scientific theories; they are only skeptical of the ones that hypothesize the existence of “unobservables.” It’s not like they think that round Earth, heliocentrism, and germ theory are just useful (but untrue) “instruments” for making predictions about how to most efficiently navigate the seas, predict planetary motion, and treat diseases. They admit that the Earth actually is round, that the planets revolve around the sun, and that germs exist and cause disease. These facts and entities can be observed; the theories that suggest they exist are true. It’s only when theories start hypothesizing the existence of unobservables—like electrons, or quantum fields—that can’t be observed directly, that we should start doubting the theories’ truth. And to be fair to van Fraassen, in this published work, he doesn’t really say that we should doubt the truth of such theories. Only that scientific reasoning does not rationally force us to accept them as true. Skepticism, or agnosticism, he argues, is warranted. SUGGESTED READING Science is based in metaphor By Andrew Reynolds But the history of atomic theory throws a monkey wrench into that argument. Atoms used to be unobservable; again, scientists first accepted the theory that they exist because it had such grandiose explanatory power. But then atoms were seen with electron microscopes. They thus moved into the category of the observable. But this didn’t substantially change anything about what scientists were justified in believing; it certainly didn’t change any “atomic skeptics’” minds. It just confirmed what everyone already knew! If the hypothesis that something exists clearly provides the best explanation for what we can observe, then the belief that it exists is what is rational. The fact that the thing itself is not technically observable does not make doubting its existence rational.What’s more, the atoms were seen with an electron microscope. But electrons are themselves unobservable. How can an electron microscope reveal an atom if electrons are not real? This leads us to what is famously known as Hilary Putnam’s “miracle argument.” It’s (not) a miraclePhilosopher Hilary Putnam’s miracle argument is somewhat famous. Basically, he argued that a scientific theory being able to repeatedly make successful predictions—even about unobservables—without being at least approximately true would require a “miracle.” In other words, it would be such an improbable occurrence that it could not rationally be believed—the better explanation for why scientific theories about unobservables make the right predictions is because the unobservable entities and structures they hypothesize exist.Van Fraassen has addressed this argument. Indeed, in his original article, where he references Alison Gopnik’s point about orgasms not being “necessary for procreation” even though the desire for orgasm “drives the creation of progeny,” he is pointing to his own argument about how organisms are not naturally selected by evolution to get true beliefs; to the extent that belief-forming processes are selected for, the ones that are selected are the ones that are useful for survival—not the ones that produce true beliefs. In the same way, van Fraassen argues, scientific theories are accepted, not because they are true, but because they aren’t falsified; they make successful predictions; that’s what makes them “stick around.” So, the fact that they make successful predictions (and thus became accepted) is not a reason to think they are true.This argument is similar to C. S. Lewis’s “argument from reason,” which he used to argue against evolution: “The truth of evolution undercuts our ability to know that it is true.” Lewis’ argument famously failed; Elizabeth Anscombe, by Lewis’s own admission, demolished Lewis in a debate on the topic, and I have explained elsewhere why modified versions of the argument fail as well. In short, it’s because it fails to recognize that a belief-forming process can make an organism more likely to survive because it reliably produces true beliefs. It is therefore not the case that beliefs generated by naturally selected belief-forming processes are automatically false or unjustified.In the same way, the reason a theory “sticks around” could be because it’s not falsified, because it “makes correct predictions.” But the reason it makes correct predictions is most likely because it is true. (In pointing this out, I am echoing the arguments of Musgrave, Lipton, Psillos, and Kitcher, who refuted van Fraassen’s argument and analogy long before his 2024 article.) It would be a huge coincidence that it could do so without being true. And that is the point of Putnam’s miracle argument. Thus, contrary to van Fraassen’s suggestion, the mere fact that a theory’s predictive success is why it “sticks around” or “becomes accepted” in the scientific community is not a reason to be skeptical about its truth. ConclusionLet me close by saying something about the fact that empiricists don’t doubt the truth of all scientific theories, just the ones that hypothesize unobservables. In today’s society, this theory is dangerous to espouse publicly. The nuance between being skeptical about all of science, and just the highly technical theories about unobservables, is guaranteed to be lost to the average reader. And there is so much unjustified skepticism and doubt about the findings of science and experts that a headline like “Science Does Not Describe Reality” could easily fuel the anti-science movement, worsen climate change denial and cause the next pandemic.This is why I believe it was important to still respond to van Fraassen’s article, a full two years after he wrote it. Not only, as I have argued, does it represent a philosophically inaccurate view of how scientific reasoning works and what scientific reasoning can do, but it is a dangerous view to boot. It should thus be rejected.
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Global Health & WASH: October 2026 Funding Opportunities (26 new opportunities)
41 opportunities on the Global Health & WASH page this cycle, 26 of them new. The health money on this page is mostly research money, and much of it is aimed at people early in their careers. Funder after funder, from the TANGO2 Research Foundation’s Research Pathways grants to the South African Medical Research Council’s Early Investigators Programme to the National Ataxia Foundation and Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, is funding early-career investigators and the institutions that host them, with a clear tilt toward researchers based in or from the Global South, from AMBSO in Uganda to Kenya’s CONNECT-VAX network to Ersilia’s AI Incubator for African drug discovery. The money is organized by disease as much as by need: narrow foundations, the Parkinson’s Foundation, NTAP for neurofibromatosis, the RUNX1 Research Program for an inherited blood disorder, each run their own grant, so the question for an applicant is less which health problem you work on than which foundation owns your disease. The largest European cheques go to consortia only, with the European Innovation Council putting up to EUR €4 million behind a single healthy-ageing project and UNITE up to EUR €1 million behind each cross-border digital health team. Water sits apart, almost entirely in applied utility research: the Water Research Foundation’s cluster of USD $250,000 to $500,000 projects, each built around a utility problem from sewer laterals to reuse treatment. And the biggest single pot is public: HRSA is renewing community health center service areas with awards of up to USD $10 million each. This post is for paid subscribers. This helps support the time and effort it takes to curate and organize these opportunities. Subscribe To keep this accessible to everyone who needs it, we’re happy to offer pay what you can rates. You can find more details here. Open Opportunities 2027 Building the Field of Health Advocacy Grant, Georgia Health Initiative. *New!* *Closing soon!* Georgia Health Initiative, a nonprofit private foundation focused on health equity, is opening its 2027 Building the Field of Health Advocacy Grant to strengthen the organizations that push for healthier systems across the state. The Initiative treats advocacy as infrastructure, backing one-year projects that range from urgent responses to shifting federal policy to longer arc campaigns on housing, behavioral health, care access, and food security. It wants coalitions that elevate community voice, apply an equity lens, and arrive ready to deploy concrete strategies, and it deliberately seeks variety in issues, communities, and organizational size. The optional webinar and required lobbying training signal a funder investing in a durable field, not one grant cycle. The strongest fits are Georgia nonprofits and public agencies ready to turn advocacy readiness into systems change. Geographies: United States. Who can apply: Tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charities, state or local government agencies, or coalitions/collaboratives using a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, that work in Georgia on behalf of Georgians and align with the mission, vision, and values of Georgia Health Initiative. Only one application per organization, though an organization may be listed as a partner or subcontractor on multiple applications. Funding amount: Organizations can apply for up to USD $80,000 per project; the Initiative anticipates investing a total of USD $1.36 million. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Governance, Policy & Advocacy · SDG3; SDG10. Deadline: October 2, 2026. Learn more and apply here. TDD Research Pathways Grant, TANGO2 Research Foundation. *New!* *Closing soon!* The TANGO2 Research Foundation, working with a founding gift from Tango2UK, is opening its TDD Research Pathways Grant to fund early-career investigators anywhere in the world who study TANGO2 Deficiency Disorder. The foundation is using this money to seed pilot work and to build a research community around a rare disorder that few labs currently study. It wants to back emerging scientists, clinicians, and trainees who will stay with this field, not one-off projects, which is why it requires a committed mentor and real institutional support and asks each applicant for a plan for future contributions. The design rewards promise and persistence over track record. The strongest fits are students, residents, postdoctoral fellows, and new investigators ready to commit to TANGO2 research. Geographies: Global. Who can apply: Early-career investigators worldwide, including undergraduate, graduate, and medical trainees, postdoctoral fellows, residents, and clinical or research fellows. Early-career investigators must hold a PhD, MD, or equivalent doctoral degree and be within 10 years of that degree or within 5 years of initiating rare disease research, engaged in postdoctoral research at an academic institution, teaching hospital, or nonprofit research institute. Currently enrolled trainees and transitional PhD candidates beginning a postdoctoral appointment at a nonprofit institution by July 1, 2026 are also eligible. All applicants must identify a qualified mentor with relevant TDD or rare disease research experience and demonstrate institutional support. Funding amount: Up to USD $15,000. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Innovation, Science & Technology. Deadline: October 2, 2026. Learn more and apply here. Call for Expression of Interest (EOI): AMBSO Impact Research Initiative, Africa Medical and Behavioral Sciences Organization (AMBSO). *Closing soon!* The Africa Medical and Behavioral Sciences Organization is inviting expressions of interest for its Impact Research Initiative, which funds early-stage pilot studies and proof of concept work on priority health challenges. AMBSO is a Ugandan research organization backing bold ideas that can grow into larger studies, and its tracks span antimicrobial resistance, epidemic preparedness, artificial intelligence for diagnostics, HIV prevention, climate and health, cancer, maternal and child health, and non-communicable diseases. The small award size and direct-cost-only rule point to a funder that wants evidence rather than overhead, and that favors projects able to attract follow-on money or use AMBSO’s own research infrastructure. Eligibility runs worldwide, welcoming researchers and institutions inside and outside Africa. The strongest fits are researchers with a feasible pilot that generates policy-ready evidence. Geographies: Global. Who can apply: Open worldwide to researchers, academic institutions, and research organizations whose work aligns with generating high-impact health evidence. Independent researchers are eligible if affiliated with an academic or research institution. Doctoral students are encouraged to apply as part of a research team led by a faculty Principal Investigator. Community-based organizations and other eligible entities may apply. Projects may be implemented inside or outside Uganda. Funding amount: Up to USD $10,000 per project, with no minimum funding threshold. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: SDG3. Deadline: October 2, 2026. Learn more and apply here. Entrepreneurs for Resilience 2027 (E4R27), Swiss Re Foundation. *Closing soon!* Swiss Re Foundation is opening the tenth edition of Entrepreneurs for Resilience, which backs healthcare social enterprises expanding affordable, quality primary care for low-income communities across low- and middle-income countries. The Foundation is using catalytic, blended funding plus multi-year advisory to take risk out of scaling, helping proven models reach more people sustainably rather than stay stuck at pilot size. It looks to back brick-and-click enterprises that pair physical care with digital tools and build affordability through savings, payments, or microinsurance, ideally integrated with public health systems. Requiring earned revenue, real customer scale, and gender-inclusive teams signals that this is growth capital for commercially serious ventures, not seed money. The strongest fits are established, revenue-generating healthcare enterprises ready to scale access for underserved populations. Geographies: Global. Who can apply: For-profit and hybrid healthcare social enterprises serving low-income and underserved populations in low- and middle-income countries, using combined physical and digital (brick-and-click) healthcare delivery models. Applicants must demonstrate measurable social impact, generate at least 50% of income through earned revenue, have been established no later than December 2023, already serve at least 50,000 people with potential to scale, and have at least 30% low-income customers. Preference for gender-inclusive enterprises with at least one female founder or at least 30% women in management. Funding amount: Pilot funding of up to USD $45,000 for the 6-8 shortlisted social enterprises; up to USD $1 million in blended funding (up to USD $600,000 unconditional plus up to USD $400,000 conditional) shared among 3-4 finalists over a two-year implementation period; total programme funding approximately USD $1.3 million. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Innovation, Science & Technology · SDG3; SDG5. Deadline: October 4, 2026. Learn more and apply here. Horizon HealthTech 2026, IIITD Innovation & Incubation Center. *Closing soon!* IIITD Innovation and Incubation Center is opening Horizon HealthTech 2026, a nine-month MedTech incubation cohort run under the aegis of BIRAC EDGE for founders building medical devices, diagnostics, surgical and interventional tools, or remote monitoring. The center is backing teams that already hold a validated proof of concept and want to reach a tested prototype, pairing each founder with a named expert and clinical validation through a hospital partner. What they seek to back is Indian health technology that can survive real clinical scrutiny and regulatory review, not slideware. The structure, with lab access, CDSCO guidance, IP support, and investor connects, signals a program built to make startups ready for follow-on capital. The strongest fits are early-stage MedTech teams with defensible IP and a working path from bench to bedside. Geographies: India. Who can apply: Early-stage teams/startups with a validated idea/proof of concept (TRL 3 onwards) working on medical devices, diagnostics, surgical/interventional technologies, or remote monitoring, holding IP or with potential to generate IP. Funding amount: No cash award amount is stated on the official program page. Benefits are in-kind: prototyping lab and equipment access, clinical/hospital validation (Max Healthcare), expert mentorship, CDSCO regulatory guidance, IP filing support, workspace, cloud credits and tools, and investor connects. Run under the aegis of BIRAC EDGE and builds a path to follow-on Government/VC/Angel funding. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Innovation, Science & Technology · SDG3; SDG9. Deadline: October 5, 2026. Learn more and apply here. OpenAI AI and Teen Development Research Grant Program, OpenAI. *New!* *Closing soon!* OpenAI is opening its AI and Teen Development Research Grant Program to fund independent studies of how generative AI shapes the lives of young people ages 13 to 17. OpenAI wants a stronger evidence base on how teens actually use these tools and what that use does to their social and emotional development, so that product teams, policymakers, and regulators can act on findings rather than assumptions. It seeks work on emotion regulation, relationships, belonging, and the safeguards that keep teens safer, welcoming interdisciplinary teams and any methodology. That it will fund research whose conclusions may not favor AI providers, and prioritizes studies touching ChatGPT, signals a genuine appetite for credible outside scrutiny. The strongest fits are research groups grounded in adolescent development, well-being, and AI safety. Geographies: Global. Who can apply: Researchers aged 18 or older who are affiliated with a research institution or organization, and/or have significant experience relevant to child or adolescent development, well-being, human-computer interaction, AI impacts, or a closely related field. Multiple institutions may collaborate. OpenAI is seeking to fund research rather than for-profit initiatives and will not prioritize for-profit organizations. Funding amount: Individual research grants up to USD $1 million, totaling up to USD $5 million; maximum 10% of each grant for overhead or indirect costs. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Social Inclusion & Community Wellbeing; Innovation, Science & Technology. Deadline: October 6, 2026. Learn more and apply here.
Patrick Radden Keefe's 'London Falling' is a finalist for the nonfiction Baillie Gifford prize
Patrick Radden Keefe's “London Falling” is among six finalists for Britain's leading nonfiction book prize | KCBS All News 106.9FM and 740AM
What's new to streaming this week? (Oct. 2, 2026)
What’s new on Netflix, Prime Video, Paramount+, and more? We've got you covered.
Entertainment
Playhouse at McConnellstown has launched its “Raise the Roof” Capital Campaign to raise $30,000 for repairs to the theater’s roof and gutter system. Donations of any amount are being accepted
Personnel note: Florida Airports Council names Brayden Harrell legislative affairs director
'Brayden has built an impressive amount of experience across Florida’s legislative and political process early in his career.'
In 2021, Australian scientists sprayed wheat scent across farm plots to confuse hungry mice; the treatment reduced seed loss by up to 74% in a field experiment without poisoning the rodents
Australian scientists have tested a non-toxic way to protect wheat seeds from hungry mice by making it harder for the rodents to locate them. In an experiment carried out in 2021, instead of poisoning the mice or using bait, the researchers sprayed diluted wheat germ oil across farm plots to camouflage the smell of wheat seeds.
Mark Ruffalo blasts Paramount–Warner Bros. merger after judge approves settlement
Mark Ruffalo decries the recently approved Paramount–Warner Bros. mega-merger as an ‘incredibly disappointing outcome’ that will ‘weaken free speech, and cost people their jobs.’
Local sports recap for Sept. 30, 2026
PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD/WYZZ) — Defending state champ Nolan Eccles appears ready for another run to state. The Dunlap senior fired a 3-under 69 to lead the Eagles to a class 3A regional championship at Ironwood Golf Course Wednesday. Eccles collected seven birdies on the way to earning medalist honors. Washington, Metamora, and Morton advanced from […]
vivo X Fold6 finally goes global
Most of its specs are intact too, and the battery capacity is cut by only a tiny amount, believe it or not. Exactly three months after being released in...
Florida State football releases initial injury report vs. UVA
Desperate for a win, Florida State football (2-2, 0-1) welcomes Virginia (3-1, 1-0) to Tallahassee on Saturday afternoon at 3:30. On Wednesday, Florida State released its initial injury report against the ‘Hoos. Among notable names that did not see the field last week against Central Arkansas, Darryl Desir was listed as out, with Quindarrius Jones […]
UN Decade of Healthy Ageing midpoint report finds progress, calls for greater investment
New evidence in the Secretary-General's report to the 81st UN General Assembly, prepared by the World Health Organization (WHO) in coordination with the UN system, finds more countries acting on healthy ageing than ever before – but longer lives will not become healthy, dignified ones without faster, more sustained investment at country level.(NEW YORK, 28 September 2026) The Secretary-General transmitted to the 81st session of the UN General Assembly the mid-term progress report on the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030), marking the midpoint of the ten-year global effort to improve the lives of older people. The report was prepared by the World Health Organization (WHO) in coordination with the UN Inter-Agency Group on Ageing and with inputs from thirteen UN entities, the World Bank Group and civil society partners. It finds real progress in countries – and persistent gaps that must close before 2030.The number of people aged 60 and over passed 1 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach 2.1 billion by 2050, with the fastest growth in low- and middle-income countries. Longer lives are not automatically healthy ones: globally, the gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy at age 60 widened between 2000 and 2023, and an estimated 71% of excess deaths from COVID-19 between 2020 and 2023 were among people aged 60 and over. “Longer lives are one of humanity’s great achievements, but we cannot congratulate ourselves while leaving millions without health and support,” said Dr Pascale Allotey, Director, Department of Sexual, Reproductive, Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing, WHO. “The first half of the Decade has shown what is possible. The second half must be about scaling and financing the progress to meet the needs and rights of older persons.”Real progress, unevenly sharedThe report finds that more countries than ever now have legislation against age-based discrimination – up from 44.5% in 2018 to 57.7% today – and over half now have national long-term care policies, up from 49% in 2023 to 56.7%, dedicated programmes to build age-friendly environments (54.6%), and comprehensive health and social assessments of older people (54.6%). New WHO guidance on services for long-term care and for Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE) delivered in communities is enabling systemic change as an increasing number of countries incorporate these services within national universal health care benefit packages. A host of UN agencies and other partners support training, increasing health workforce competencies and use of digital health tools.“This report shows the Decade of Healthy Ageing is working,” said Dr Ritu Sadana, Head of the WHO Secretariat for the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing. “More countries are legislating against ageism, providing integrated care, strengthening long-term care systems, and creating age-friendly environments than ever before, in all regions and income levels. But progress is uneven and in one area, regressive: fewer countries report active multi-stakeholder forums on ageing, down from 53.1% in 2020 to 43.3% today. The second half of this Decade must turn commitments into results, in every country.”The financing gap: this Decade's binding constraintFinancing remains the binding constraint: more than a third of reporting countries (33.8%) have very little or no dedicated resources to develop long-term care, with similar shortfalls across the Decade’s other priority areas. Less than half of countries (45.4%) have legislation providing access to assistive devices (including hearing aids, spectacles or rollators), which are key to enabling older people to maintain productive, independent and dignified lives. Only 22.7% of countries can track older people’s health over time – the largest gap across the Decade’s core progress indicators. Nationally representative information is needed in each country, as policies and interventions cannot be designed as if all older adults of a given age share similar needs and capacities. The report calls for sustained investment through national budgets, country-owned plans, development cooperation and innovative financing mechanisms to fully close these gaps by 2030.“The Decade was designed as a whole-of-UN effort, and this report shows it in action,” said Amal Abou Rafeh, Chief of the Programme on Ageing Section at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), and Permanent Co-Chair of the UN Inter-Agency Group on Ageing. “Thirteen UN entities, the World Bank group and civil society organizations contributed to this report, with WHO as the lead technical and implementing agency. That is the model of coordination the second half of the Decade will need to scale, with countries leading legislation, funding and implementation, engaging older people.”“Investing in healthy ageing is not simply a cost; it is one of the highest-return investments a government can make,” said Fiona Stewart, Global Lead for Ageing and Pensions at the World Bank Group. “Countries that invest early in integrated and long-term care see savings that outweigh the upfront cost many times over. The evidence in this report makes the economic case; what is now needed is predictable financing at country level to act on it, along with efforts to support older entrepreneurs and the silver economy.”Older people's own voicesThe report also draws on the direct experience of older people themselves, including a multilingual global survey conducted by the International Federation on Ageing that reached more than 1000 older people across 58 countries. WHO and UN partners called on Member States to use the second half of the Decade to accelerate implementation, strengthen data systems, and secure the financing needed so that the gains of longer lives reach older people everywhere. About the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030)Proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in December 2020, the Decade is a global collaboration bringing together governments, UN agencies, civil society, the private sector, academia and older people themselves to improve the lives of older people, their families and communities. It is coordinated by the World Health Organization together with the UN Inter-Agency Group on Ageing. The Decade's mid-term progress report was transmitted to the General Assembly by the Secretary-General, prepared by WHO, and is available in 6 languages.Full Report available: A/81/366 Implementation of the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030): Note by Secretary-General [ العربية | 中文 | English | Français | Pусский | Español
What Does Your Office Say About Your Business? by Jennifer Kraner
What does your space say about you and your business? More importantly, does it give you the best possible first impression? The minute a client, customer or patient walks through your door, they’re forming an opinion about your business – sometimes consciously, sometimes without even realizing it. Your space is communicating something about you, whether you intend it to or not. At Big Sky Design, we work with all kinds of commercial businesses, including many medical practices, law firms and other corporate offices, and I’ve seen first hand how much thoughtful design can influence that first impression. For businesses in medical, legal, and financial fields, three things are particularly important: trust, privacy and professionalism. Your space should communicate all three while also reflecting who you are as a business. That can be challenging, especially in a new construction project. Often, so much of the budget goes toward the actual construction that things like lighting, comfortable seating, artwork and finishing touches get pushed to the side. But those are often the elements that make a space feel complete – and memorable. Think about your waiting room. Is it comfortable? Is the lighting welcoming? Does the layout make sense? When someone walks through the door, do they immediately know where to go and whom to speak with? In a medical office, there’s another important consideration: privacy. Reception areas can become surprisingly noisy places, with phone calls, conversations between staff and patients, and people discussing personal information. Hard surfaces throughout a space allow sound to bounce around, making it difficult to maintain privacy. We recently worked with an eye doctor's office that had exactly this problem. The reception desk had a large opening, and staff were making and taking phone calls right next to patients who were waiting. We designed an acoustic treatment that acted as a divider between the staff and waiting areas. It absorbed sound, but it also became a branded design element. It was a visual reminder to everyone in the space to be mindful of their voices and what others might be able to hear. Those kinds of thoughtful details can make a tremendous difference. And good commercial design doesn't have to mean making your space flashy. Sometimes it’s as simple as a calming color palette, beautiful artwork, plants, carefully selected lighting or comfortable upholstered furniture. In a medical setting, those touches can help soften what might otherwise feel clinical and reduce anxiety for patients who are already nervous about an appointment. I’ve been in waiting rooms where everyone feels packed together, and you can hear every conversation – even what’s happening in the restroom next door. That’s not the experience you want to create. Your office should also feel like your business. Are you telling people that you’re clean and modern? Sophisticated and unique? Warm and welcoming? Or, unintentionally, are you telling them that your business is outdated? You don’t necessarily need a complete renovation to change that message. Fresh paint, updated lighting, new artwork, better seating or a few branded design elements can make a space feel current and intentional. At Big Sky Design, we’ve worked with radiology, dermatology, and dental practices, among many others. Every practice is different, but the goal is always the same: creating a space that reflects the business behind it and gives every person who walks through the door a positive first impression. Because your office is part of your brand. Make sure it’s telling the story you want people to hear. Read more at bigskydesignonline.com.
Pete Davidson reveals what he admires most about ex Kim Kardashian
Pete Davidson is fond of his famous exes, from Ariana Grande to Kim Kardashian.
North Dakota to use ‘anchor partners’ to manage Rural Health grants
North Dakota’s Health and Human Services Department is turning to outside “anchor partners” to manage a federal grant program for millions of dollars meant to boost rural health care initiatives.
Looking at the Ugly Side of the Paramount-Skydance Merger...And How I’d Fix It
A Message from Our Sponsor Certified Fresh with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, FX’s Adults is an ensemble comedy series about a group of twenty-somethings in New York leaning on each other to navigate love, work, friendship and family. Don’t sleep on “The Sitcom of the Moment” - Awards Buzz All Episodes now streaming on Hulu on Disney+. Watch The Teaser Trailer... (Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industr(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.) Before we dive in, I wanted to congratulate Broadcast Now for being the first to report that Netflix’s How to Get to Heaven from Belfast has been cancelled. (I saw this in a write-up by Kasey Moore of Whats-On-Netflix.) More importantly, I wanted to note that, as of yesterday, none of the other trades had reported the news yet. I have half a guess that eventually one of them will report this. Anyways, it’s time to take a break from my deluge of streaming ratings reports to continue my analysis of the Paramount Skydance Warner Bros. Discovery (PSWbD) saga. As I noted last week, a lot of times when folks use the (sometimes cliched) “the good, the bad and the ugly” framing for an article, “the ugly” section is just more bad. Or very, very bad. In this case, yeah, I do think it’s ugly. In more than one way. Unfortunately, we’re only going to have time to tackle one of those ways today: the ugly pile of debt to finance this deal. (In a future article, I may cover the entire process for how it went down, which was very, very ugly.) Last issue, I explained why I liked this deal in a vacuum. Unfortunately, “vacuums” don’t exist outside of space. Let’s dive in. Subscribe Most Important Story of the Week - The Ugliness of the Paramount/Warner Bros. Merger More than one person sent me a note speculating that the big problem with Paramount Skydance buying Warner Bros. Discovery is the “Warner Bros.” portion of the deal. In fact, that’s a take I read a lot about Warner Bros., ever since they caught Netflix’s, and then Paramount-Skydance’s, eye. In short, multiple companies (Time, AOL, AT&T, Discovery) have bought and then regretted buying Warner Bros. Since it’s nearing Halloween, you could almost say it’s like the folks think WB is cursed! It’s a haunted studio—like the town of Derry in movie studio form—and whoever takes possession of it will fall into misery! Yet...I just don’t like that story, because it doesn’t explain the “why” behind why those deals fell through. Especially when Warner Bros. has continued to succeed as a TV and film studio in the intervening two decades. Lord of the Rings? Harry Potter? Game of Thrones? Everything HBO? Considering it never fully owned a broadcast TV channel, this media company has done pretty well. So what went wrong? Well, in recent years, companies bought Warner Bros. instead of the other, smarter option. Explaining POCD (And Applying It to Mergers & Acquisitions) As I explained last issue, one of my favorite frameworks is the POCD tool for evaluating venture capital investments: People Opportunity Context Deal The bar to invest as a VC is high. (Or I might say “was” since cheap interest rates made life easier last decade.) You review a thousand prospectuses, get pitched by a hundred, and invest in the ten best, with the hopes that one of those ten would pay for the rest. That means every element of a deal needed to pay off: you needed the right people running the companies, who could capitalize on the right opportunity, in the context of an industry that was ripe for disruption. If you could then not overpay, you could make some money in a smart deal. The analogy isn’t perfect here, but close enough. For a merger or acquisition to work, you need the combined company (which is the opportunity) to make more than the price you need to pay (which is the deal). Note: the people and context still matter, but with M&A, it’s a little more straightforward: does the opportunity exceed the cost? And usually with Warner Bros., it hasn’t. If you want to find out the single biggest mistake made by the Warner Bros. suitors over the last few years (and my simple fix) become a paid subscriber. I’ll also touch on who I think Paramount-Skydance could (shockingly) consider buying next, TBD, and more. Sign up here.
3 Towson University students among 17 facing firearms charges after shooting
BALTIMORE — Three of the 17 people facing firearms charges following a weekend shooting near Towson University are enrolled there as students, the university said Wednesday. A Towson University spokesperson
13 scarily fun Denton Halloween events to check out this October
Halloween is here yet again, and with it an overwhelming amount of events and fun activities all month long. The sheer number of events this month makes it just about
Trump says ‘only Hispanic’ could survive fall at ballroom site
Trump invited attendees of a Hispanic Heritage Month to be among the first to walk on his ballroom floor.
Federal judge allows Paramount-Warner merger to move forward
A federal judge in Oakland has approved a settlement that allows Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison to finalize his $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Ellison is aiming
More Than a Game: How Baseball Became a Classroom
Since 2012, Resolution Copper and the Arizona Diamondbacks have worked together to create opportunities for Arizona youth, educators and communities. What started with Science of Baseball has grown into teacher workshops, hands-on STEM experiences, youth baseball clinics, Tribal youth programming and community recreation.
Study connects food insecurity to mental health in young mothers
A new review of research from across sub-Saharan Africa found that inadequate access to food is linked to depression, suicide attempts, HIV vulnerabilities, and poorer sexual and reproductive health outcomes among adolescent mothers.
Alabama Ranked Among Nation's Top 10 States for Doing Business
Alabama has been ranked among the nation’s top 10 states for doing business, according to Area Development magazine’s 2026 Top States for Doing Business report.
Governor Ivey Announces Alabama Again Named Among Nation’s Top 10 States for Doing Business -
MONTGOMERY – Governor Kay Ivey on Wednesday announced Alabama has again been named among the nation’s top 10 states for doing business by Area Development magazine, continuing a streak of high rankings in the national publication’s annual analysis. In the publication’s 2026 Top States … Continued
Sandhills Community College Small Business Center expands to Moore and Hoke Counties
Small Business Center Director, Laura Kinsman. Photo provided by: SCCSandhills Community College (SCC) is launching a redesigned Small Business Center model that expands no-cost entrepreneurial support across Moore and Hoke Counties. Rooted in the College’s commitment to strengthening small businesses and entrepreneurship as drivers of economic growth, the enhanced model is led by recently appointed Small Business Center Director, Laura Kinsman. The model also includes two new Senior Business Advisors who will provide trusted expertise, stronger community connections, and individualized guidance to entrepreneurs and business owners throughout the region.Kinsman brings a unique perspective to the director’s role as both a local business owner, operating in downtown Southern Pines, and a former Moore County educator. “Her combination of education, business ownership, leadership, and community involvement make her a great fit for the Small Business Center and the work we are continuing to build across Moore and Hoke counties,” said Taylor L. McCaskill, senior director of Workforce Development & Corporate Partnerships in a press release.Kinsman is an active member of the Southern Pines Business Association and has been connected to the Sandhills Small Business Center since the beginning of her entrepreneurial journey. She looks forward to building on that experience by strengthening the Center’s partnerships and expanding its connections throughout the community.She will lead the Center's efforts to support entrepreneurs and business owners throughout Moore and Hoke County and be the connector to the North Carolina Community College System Small Business Center Network operations. The Center offers no-cost, confidential one-on-one counseling, practical workshops, and connections to the resources and partners that help local businesses start, grow, and create jobs.A key part of this new approach, only offered at SCC, is a network of Senior Business Advisors, experienced professionals who will provide individualized guidance in areas such as business planning, finance, marketing, operations, growth strategy, and problem-solving. These advisors will serve as trusted partners to entrepreneurs and business owners, helping them turn ideas into action, overcome barriers, strengthen existing businesses, and pursue new opportunities. This one-on-one counseling is available at no cost, ensuring that high-quality business support is accessible to entrepreneurs at every stage.Senior Business Advisor for Hoke County, Kenna Parks. Photo provided by: SCCKenna Parks has been named the senior business advisor for Hoke County. She is a business professional, entrepreneur, and educator who brings a unique combination of academic training and real-world business experience. She earned her Master of Business Administration (MBA) in 2017 and has built her career around entrepreneurship, marketing, business development, and helping others turn ideas into sustainable opportunities.Senior Business Advisor for Moore County, Katrin Henderson. Photo provided by: SCCAs a military spouse, she has successfully launched and operated businesses across five states, giving her firsthand experience in adapting to diverse markets, building new customer bases and understanding the importance of global reach in today’s business environment. Over the last decade, her areas of focus include business planning, marketing strategy, branding, customer development, financial preparedness, operational planning and connecting entrepreneurs with educational programs and community resources.Parks brings an especially valuable perspective to business advising because she is an entrepreneur herself. She is the owner of Glamo Society Bridal & Formal Wear in Raeford, N.C., giving her firsthand experience with the realities of launching, operating, marketing and growing a small business. She understands that entrepreneurship extends far beyond developing a great idea; it requires strategy, financial awareness, adaptability, strong customer relationships, and consistent execution.Katrin Henderson will serve as the senior business advisor for Moore County. Thriving in hospitality and retail, Henderson has enjoyed positions in Food & Beverage Management and Retail Management in various fine dining and retail establishments in the area, before opening her own children's shop in 2015, in the Village of Pinehurst. She is a native of Moore County.Quickly immersing herself in this new world of small business ownership, Henderson joined various boards and committees, including President Elect of Pinehurst Business Partners and Event Chair for the Holly Arts & Crafts Festival. She also partnered with local organizations such as Moore County Economic Development and Moore County Chamber of Commerce and Sandhills Community College Small Business Center in events and educational opportunities. In 2026, Henderson sold her shop and now offers full-time support to both new and seasoned entrepreneurs through freelance consulting mentorship and the SCC Small Business Center program.The Small Business Center team is passionate about making business resources more accessible, and ensuring entrepreneurs know they do not have to navigate business ownership alone. Through their work with SCC, they are committed to building meaningful relationships with local businesses, community organizations, and industry partners while helping entrepreneurs move from idea to strategy, strategy to action, and action to sustainable growth.“Sandhills Community College believes deeply in the power of small business and entrepreneurship because strong local businesses create jobs, spark innovation, generate investment, and strengthen the communities we serve,” said McCaskill in press release. “Through this new Small Business Center model, Sandhills is building a stronger ecosystem where entrepreneurs can connect, grow, and thrive, while helping drive long-term economic vitality throughout our region.”To learn more about the Center's services or to schedule a consultation, please contact Kinsman directly at kinsmanl@sandhills.edu or 910-695-3938.
Microsoft Pushes AI Deeper Into Scientific Discovery With Quine
AI can already help scientists make sense of large amounts of data. Microsoft Research is now testing whether it can play a bigger role in deciding what scientists should investigate next. Its new experimental system, Quine, brings together biological data, computational models and research tools to make predictions that researchers can put to the test […]
Ohio wins more praise from site-selection experts — but data center backlash looms
Site selectors say data centers are dominating their agendas, while access to reliable power has become a top concern among clients.
Louisiana adds more public money to host rodeos, college sports events
Louisiana lawmakers increased the amount of public money the state will spend on college sports championships, rodeos and other entertainment events in this fiscal year to at least $12.1 million in direct support. State budget documents show it was previously slated to spend $10.4 million in the current fiscal year.