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In the pandemic, we were told to keep 6 feet apart. There’s no science to support that.

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Sunday, June 2, 2024

The nation’s top mental health official had spent months asking for evidence behind the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social distancing guidelines, warning that keeping Americans physically apart during the coronavirus pandemic would harm patients, businesses, and overall health and wellness.Now, Elinore McCance-Katz, the Trump administration’s assistant secretary for mental health and substance use, was urging the CDC to justify its recommendation that Americans stay six feet apart to avoid contracting covid-19 — or get rid of it.“I very much hope that CDC will revisit this decision or at least tell us that there is more and stronger data to support this rule than what I have been able to find online,” McCance-Katz wrote in a June 2020 memo submitted to the CDC and other health agency leaders and obtained by The Washington Post. “If not, they should pull it back.”The CDC would keep its six-foot social distance recommendation in place until August 2022, with some modifications as Americans got vaccinated against the virus and officials pushed to reopen schools. Now, congressional investigators are set Monday to press Anthony S. Fauci, the infectious-disease doctor who served as a key coronavirus adviser during the Trump and Biden administrations, on why the CDC’s recommendation was allowed to shape so much of American life for so long, particularly given Fauci and other officials’ recent acknowledgments that there was little science behind the six-foot rule after all.“It sort of just appeared, that six feet is going to be the distance,” Fauci testified to Congress in a January closed-door hearing, according to a transcribed interview released Friday. Fauci characterized the recommendation as “an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data.”Francis S. Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, also privately testified to Congress in January that he was not aware of evidence behind the social distancing recommendation, according to a transcript released in May.Four years later, visible reminders of the six-foot rule remain with us, particularly in cities that rushed to adopt the CDC’s guidelines hoping to protect residents and keep businesses open. D.C. is dotted with signs in stores and schools — even on sidewalks or in government buildings — urging people to stand six feet apart.Experts agree that social distancing saved lives, particularly early in the pandemic when Americans had no protections against a novel virus sickening millions of people. One recent paper published by the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank, concludes that behavior changes to avoid developing covid-19, followed later by vaccinations, prevented about 800,000 deaths. But that achievement came at enormous cost, the authors added, with inflexible strategies that weren’t driven by evidence.“We never did the study about what works,” said Andrew Atkeson, a UCLA economist and co-author of the paper, lamenting the lack of evidence around the six-foot rule. He warned that persistent frustrations over social distancing and other measures might lead Americans to ignore public heath advice during the next crisis.The U.S. distancing measure was particularly stringent, as other countries adopted shorter distances; the World Health Organization set a distance of one meter, or slightly more than three feet, which experts concluded was roughly as effective as the six-foot mark at deterring infections, and would have allowed schools to reopen more rapidly.The six-foot rule was “probably the single most costly intervention the CDC recommended that was consistently applied throughout the pandemic,” Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, wrote in his book about the pandemic, “Uncontrolled Spread.”It’s still not clear who at the CDC settled on the six-foot distance; the agency has repeatedly declined to specify the authors of the guidance, which resembled its recommendations on how to avoid contracting the flu. A CDC spokesperson credited a team of experts, who drew from research such as a 1955 study on respiratory droplets. In his book, Gottlieb wrote that the Trump White House pushed back on the CDC’s initial recommendation of 10 feet of social distance, saying it would be too difficult to implement.Perhaps the rule’s biggest impact was on children, despite ample evidence they were at relatively low risk of covid-related complications. Many schools were unable to accommodate six feet of space between students’ desks and forced to rely on virtual education for more than a year, said Joseph Allen, a Harvard University expert in environmental health, who called in 2020 for schools to adopt three feet of social distance.“The six-foot rule was really an error that had been propagated for several decades, based on a misunderstanding of how particles traveled through indoor spaces,” Allen said, adding that health experts often wrongly focused on avoiding droplets from infected people rather than improving ventilation and filtration inside buildings.Social distancing had champions before the pandemic. Bush administration officials, working on plans to fight bioterrorism, concluded that social distancing could save lives in a health crisis and renewed their calls as the coronavirus approached. The idea also took hold when public health experts initially believed that the coronavirus was often transmitted by droplets expelled by infected people, which could land several feet away; the CDC later acknowledged the virus was airborne and people could be exposed just by sharing the same air in a room, even if they were farther than six feet apart.“There was no magic around six feet,” Robert R. Redfield, who served as CDC director during the Trump administration, told a congressional committee in March 2022. “It’s just historically that’s what was used for other respiratory pathogens. So that really became the first piece” of a strategy to protect Americans in the early days of the virus, he said.It also became the standard that states and businesses adopted, with swift pressure on holdouts. Lawmakers and workers urged meat processing plants, delivery companies and other essential businesses to adopt the CDC’s social distancing recommendations as their employees continued reporting to work during the pandemic.Some business leaders weren’t sure the measures made sense. Jeff Bezos, founder of online retail giant Amazon, petitioned the White House in March 2020 to consider revising the six-foot recommendation, said Adam Boehler, then a senior Trump administration official helping with the coronavirus response. At the time, Amazon was facing questions about a rising number of infections in its warehouses, and Democratic senators were urging the company to adopt social distancing.“Bezos called me and asked, is there any real science behind this rule?” Boehler said, adding that Bezos pushed on whether Amazon could adopt an alternative distance if workers were masked, physically separated by dividers or other precautions were taken. “He said … it’s the backbone of trying to keep America running here, and when you separate somebody five feet versus six feet, it’s a big difference,” Boehler recalled. Bezos owns The Washington Post.Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, confirmed that Bezos called Boehler but said the Amazon founder’s focus was the discrepancy between the U.S. recommendation and the WHO’s shorter distance. The company soon said it would follow the CDC’s six-foot social distancing guidelines in its warehouses and later developed technologies to try to enforce those guidelines. “We did it globally everywhere because it was the right thing to do,” Nantel said.Boehler said he spoke with Redfield and Fauci about testing alternatives to the six-foot recommendation but that he was not aware of what happened to those tests or what they found. Fauci declined to comment. Redfield did not respond to requests for comment.But challenging the six-foot recommendation, particularly in the pandemic’s early days, was seen as politically difficult. Rochelle Walensky, then chief of infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital, argued in a July 2020 email that “if people are masked it is quite safe and much more practical to be at 3 feet” in many school settings.Five months later, incoming president Joe Biden would tap Walensky as his CDC director. Walensky swiftly endorsed the six-foot distance before working to loosen it, announcing in March 2021 that elementary school students could sit three feet apart if they were masked. Walensky declined to comment.The most persistent government critic of the social distancing guidelines may have been McCance-Katz, who did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Trump’s mental health chief had spent several years clashing with other Department of Health and Human Services officials on various matters and had few internal defenders by the time the pandemic arrived, hampering her message. But while her pleas failed to move the CDC, her warnings about the risks to mental health found an audience with Trump and his allies, who blamed federal bureaucrats for the six-foot rule and other measures.“What is this nonsense that somehow it’s unsafe to return to school?” McCance-Katz said in September 2020 on an HHS podcast, lamenting the broader shutdown of American life. “I do think that Americans are smart people, and I think that they need to start asking questions about why is it this way.”

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The nation’s top mental health official had spent months asking for evidence behind the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social distancing guidelines, warning that keeping Americans physically apart during the coronavirus pandemic would harm patients, businesses, and overall health and wellness.

Now, Elinore McCance-Katz, the Trump administration’s assistant secretary for mental health and substance use, was urging the CDC to justify its recommendation that Americans stay six feet apart to avoid contracting covid-19 — or get rid of it.

“I very much hope that CDC will revisit this decision or at least tell us that there is more and stronger data to support this rule than what I have been able to find online,” McCance-Katz wrote in a June 2020 memo submitted to the CDC and other health agency leaders and obtained by The Washington Post. “If not, they should pull it back.”

The CDC would keep its six-foot social distance recommendation in place until August 2022, with some modifications as Americans got vaccinated against the virus and officials pushed to reopen schools. Now, congressional investigators are set Monday to press Anthony S. Fauci, the infectious-disease doctor who served as a key coronavirus adviser during the Trump and Biden administrations, on why the CDC’s recommendation was allowed to shape so much of American life for so long, particularly given Fauci and other officials’ recent acknowledgments that there was little science behind the six-foot rule after all.

“It sort of just appeared, that six feet is going to be the distance,” Fauci testified to Congress in a January closed-door hearing, according to a transcribed interview released Friday. Fauci characterized the recommendation as “an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data.”

Francis S. Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, also privately testified to Congress in January that he was not aware of evidence behind the social distancing recommendation, according to a transcript released in May.

Four years later, visible reminders of the six-foot rule remain with us, particularly in cities that rushed to adopt the CDC’s guidelines hoping to protect residents and keep businesses open. D.C. is dotted with signs in stores and schools — even on sidewalks or in government buildings — urging people to stand six feet apart.

Experts agree that social distancing saved lives, particularly early in the pandemic when Americans had no protections against a novel virus sickening millions of people. One recent paper published by the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank, concludes that behavior changes to avoid developing covid-19, followed later by vaccinations, prevented about 800,000 deaths. But that achievement came at enormous cost, the authors added, with inflexible strategies that weren’t driven by evidence.

“We never did the study about what works,” said Andrew Atkeson, a UCLA economist and co-author of the paper, lamenting the lack of evidence around the six-foot rule. He warned that persistent frustrations over social distancing and other measures might lead Americans to ignore public heath advice during the next crisis.

The U.S. distancing measure was particularly stringent, as other countries adopted shorter distances; the World Health Organization set a distance of one meter, or slightly more than three feet, which experts concluded was roughly as effective as the six-foot mark at deterring infections, and would have allowed schools to reopen more rapidly.

The six-foot rule was “probably the single most costly intervention the CDC recommended that was consistently applied throughout the pandemic,” Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, wrote in his book about the pandemic, “Uncontrolled Spread.”

It’s still not clear who at the CDC settled on the six-foot distance; the agency has repeatedly declined to specify the authors of the guidance, which resembled its recommendations on how to avoid contracting the flu. A CDC spokesperson credited a team of experts, who drew from research such as a 1955 study on respiratory droplets. In his book, Gottlieb wrote that the Trump White House pushed back on the CDC’s initial recommendation of 10 feet of social distance, saying it would be too difficult to implement.

Perhaps the rule’s biggest impact was on children, despite ample evidence they were at relatively low risk of covid-related complications. Many schools were unable to accommodate six feet of space between students’ desks and forced to rely on virtual education for more than a year, said Joseph Allen, a Harvard University expert in environmental health, who called in 2020 for schools to adopt three feet of social distance.

“The six-foot rule was really an error that had been propagated for several decades, based on a misunderstanding of how particles traveled through indoor spaces,” Allen said, adding that health experts often wrongly focused on avoiding droplets from infected people rather than improving ventilation and filtration inside buildings.

Social distancing had champions before the pandemic. Bush administration officials, working on plans to fight bioterrorism, concluded that social distancing could save lives in a health crisis and renewed their calls as the coronavirus approached. The idea also took hold when public health experts initially believed that the coronavirus was often transmitted by droplets expelled by infected people, which could land several feet away; the CDC later acknowledged the virus was airborne and people could be exposed just by sharing the same air in a room, even if they were farther than six feet apart.

“There was no magic around six feet,” Robert R. Redfield, who served as CDC director during the Trump administration, told a congressional committee in March 2022. “It’s just historically that’s what was used for other respiratory pathogens. So that really became the first piece” of a strategy to protect Americans in the early days of the virus, he said.

It also became the standard that states and businesses adopted, with swift pressure on holdouts. Lawmakers and workers urged meat processing plants, delivery companies and other essential businesses to adopt the CDC’s social distancing recommendations as their employees continued reporting to work during the pandemic.

Some business leaders weren’t sure the measures made sense. Jeff Bezos, founder of online retail giant Amazon, petitioned the White House in March 2020 to consider revising the six-foot recommendation, said Adam Boehler, then a senior Trump administration official helping with the coronavirus response. At the time, Amazon was facing questions about a rising number of infections in its warehouses, and Democratic senators were urging the company to adopt social distancing.

“Bezos called me and asked, is there any real science behind this rule?” Boehler said, adding that Bezos pushed on whether Amazon could adopt an alternative distance if workers were masked, physically separated by dividers or other precautions were taken. “He said … it’s the backbone of trying to keep America running here, and when you separate somebody five feet versus six feet, it’s a big difference,” Boehler recalled. Bezos owns The Washington Post.

Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, confirmed that Bezos called Boehler but said the Amazon founder’s focus was the discrepancy between the U.S. recommendation and the WHO’s shorter distance. The company soon said it would follow the CDC’s six-foot social distancing guidelines in its warehouses and later developed technologies to try to enforce those guidelines. “We did it globally everywhere because it was the right thing to do,” Nantel said.

Boehler said he spoke with Redfield and Fauci about testing alternatives to the six-foot recommendation but that he was not aware of what happened to those tests or what they found. Fauci declined to comment. Redfield did not respond to requests for comment.

But challenging the six-foot recommendation, particularly in the pandemic’s early days, was seen as politically difficult. Rochelle Walensky, then chief of infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital, argued in a July 2020 email that “if people are masked it is quite safe and much more practical to be at 3 feet” in many school settings.

Five months later, incoming president Joe Biden would tap Walensky as his CDC director. Walensky swiftly endorsed the six-foot distance before working to loosen it, announcing in March 2021 that elementary school students could sit three feet apart if they were masked. Walensky declined to comment.

The most persistent government critic of the social distancing guidelines may have been McCance-Katz, who did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Trump’s mental health chief had spent several years clashing with other Department of Health and Human Services officials on various matters and had few internal defenders by the time the pandemic arrived, hampering her message. But while her pleas failed to move the CDC, her warnings about the risks to mental health found an audience with Trump and his allies, who blamed federal bureaucrats for the six-foot rule and other measures.

“What is this nonsense that somehow it’s unsafe to return to school?” McCance-Katz said in September 2020 on an HHS podcast, lamenting the broader shutdown of American life. “I do think that Americans are smart people, and I think that they need to start asking questions about why is it this way.”

Read the full story here.
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Science Isn’t about Domination. It’s about Democracy

Science is key to diplomacy, unity and democracy. What the Trump administration is trying to do to it will weaken the U.S.

Science Isn’t about Domination. It’s about DemocracyScience is key to diplomacy, unity and democracy. What the Trump administration is trying to do to it will weaken the U.S.By Megha Satyanarayana Nestled in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the slash-and-burn playbook for the federal government that the Trump administration is following while saying it isn’t, is a call for American “science dominance.”There is no such thing. And what the project means by the term—turning the Department of Energy into a handmaiden of the coal, oil and natural gas industry—betrays not only the taxpayer but science itself.Science isn’t a winner-take-all, zero-sum game of flag football. Whether during the cold war or the era of Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, the bedrock of science has been international cooperation. People pursue scientific knowledge not solely for the sake of lording our spoils over everyone else. The monetary value of research is not the only reason why humans engage in asking why of the world around us.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Science breeds diplomacy. It counters division. It tells us what is, not what we want things to be. Science enables democracy. The way the Trump administration is approaching it, by cutting funds for projects that run afoul of conservative values, such as ones related to diversity, or calling for research into claims that have already been debunked, which is the case for the idea that vaccines are linked to autism, defies all this. If that approach succeeds, it will make us a poorer nation in every sense of the word.By halting federal funds to scientific research, canceling university grants and threatening to deport immigrant scientists, the Trump administration is restricting the flow of ideas. By trying to legitimize debunked scientific ideas and allocating taxpayer dollars to research into those debunked ideas, the administration sows discord and undermines the role of public health in preventing sickness and disease. By canceling global aid for public health projects, the administration is shunning the U.S. role in global health. And in their push for energy dominance, Trump and his allies are kicking years of negotiation over climate change to the curb.By becoming insular, by cutting out the world, we stand to lose our best and brightest minds in science and the exchange of ideas that leads to innovation. Our country is a scientific and economic powerhouse precisely because we have been so open and collaborative for so long. China’s academic scientific output, as measured by publications in Nature journals, has surpassed that of the U.S. How can cutting federal science funding help the administration’s intellectual war with China? How can the U.S. further its national interests if we shut out ideas and people? How does democracy survive if we stop research and the flow of information?In setting the stage for the role of the U.S. government in science, Vannevar Bush told President Harry Truman in 1945 that “scientific progress is one essential key to our security as a nation, to our better health, to more jobs, to a higher standard of living, and to our cultural progress.” He noted the federal government’s role in supporting agricultural research and said, “The time has come when such support should be extended to other fields.”From the 1950s on, the U.S. government has been the largest funder of scientific research in the nation, not to mention the world. Those dollars have helped develop countless drugs, and a wide assortment of military and domestic machinery, and they have paid the salaries of millions of researchers. Those dollars have saved people and helped industrialize nations the world over.American scientific research has also influenced policymaking. This is where the tie to democracy matters most: evidence-based policymaking allows the largest number of people in the country to be healthy, be safe and have a voice. This is what cutbacks to science threaten. This is how Trump administration–sponsored research into questions that have basically been answered, because officials don’t like the answer, threatens the ability of all Americans to thrive.When Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., says the nation will know by the end of the summer what environmental factors cause autism and calls for the private medical records of autistic people as part of this push, this is a fishing expedition. Kennedy doesn’t like the answers that we already have—vaccines do not cause autism, and genetics influences the development of autism—so he wastes taxpayer money.Recently, a group of scientists from all over the world earned Breakthrough Prize for the work they did at CERN, a multinational facility that tests fundamental ideas in physics. With cuts to science funding, what will happen to projects like this, plans to improve our Antarctic field stations, and efforts like the evidence-driven Paris climate agreement? Such ideas underpin our grasp of the natural world and probe the technologies the U.S. needs. Scuttling science and shutting doors on the world will leave us in the dark. Domination will doom us to failure.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

New study reveals how cleft lip and cleft palate can arise

MIT biologists have found that defects in some transfer RNA molecules can lead to the formation of these common conditions.

Cleft lip and cleft palate are among the most common birth defects, occurring in about one in 1,050 births in the United States. These defects, which appear when the tissues that form the lip or the roof of the mouth do not join completely, are believed to be caused by a mix of genetic and environmental factors.In a new study, MIT biologists have discovered how a genetic variant often found in people with these facial malformations leads to the development of cleft lip and cleft palate.Their findings suggest that the variant diminishes cells’ supply of transfer RNA, a molecule that is critical for assembling proteins. When this happens, embryonic face cells are unable to fuse to form the lip and roof of the mouth.“Until now, no one had made the connection that we made. This particular gene was known to be part of the complex involved in the splicing of transfer RNA, but it wasn’t clear that it played such a crucial role for this process and for facial development. Without the gene, known as DDX1, certain transfer RNA can no longer bring amino acids to the ribosome to make new proteins. If the cells can’t process these tRNAs properly, then the ribosomes can’t make protein anymore,” says Michaela Bartusel, an MIT research scientist and the lead author of the study.Eliezer Calo, an associate professor of biology at MIT, is the senior author of the paper, which appears today in the American Journal of Human Genetics.Genetic variantsCleft lip and cleft palate, also known as orofacial clefts, can be caused by genetic mutations, but in many cases, there is no known genetic cause.“The mechanism for the development of these orofacial clefts is unclear, mostly because they are known to be impacted by both genetic and environmental factors,” Calo says. “Trying to pinpoint what might be affected has been very challenging in this context.”To discover genetic factors that influence a particular disease, scientists often perform genome-wide association studies (GWAS), which can reveal variants that are found more often in people who have a particular disease than in people who don’t.For orofacial clefts, some of the genetic variants that have regularly turned up in GWAS appeared to be in a region of DNA that doesn’t code for proteins. In this study, the MIT team set out to figure out how variants in this region might influence the development of facial malformations.Their studies revealed that these variants are located in an enhancer region called e2p24.2. Enhancers are segments of DNA that interact with protein-coding genes, helping to activate them by binding to transcription factors that turn on gene expression.The researchers found that this region is in close proximity to three genes, suggesting that it may control the expression of those genes. One of those genes had already been ruled out as contributing to facial malformations, and another had already been shown to have a connection. In this study, the researchers focused on the third gene, which is known as DDX1.DDX1, it turned out, is necessary for splicing transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules, which play a critical role in protein synthesis. Each transfer RNA molecule transports a specific amino acid to the ribosome — a cell structure that strings amino acids together to form proteins, based on the instructions carried by messenger RNA.While there are about 400 different tRNAs found in the human genome, only a fraction of those tRNAs require splicing, and those are the tRNAs most affected by the loss of DDX1. These tRNAs transport four different amino acids, and the researchers hypothesize that these four amino acids may be particularly abundant in proteins that embryonic cells that form the face need to develop properly.When the ribosomes need one of those four amino acids, but none of them are available, the ribosome can stall, and the protein doesn’t get made.The researchers are now exploring which proteins might be most affected by the loss of those amino acids. They also plan to investigate what happens inside cells when the ribosomes stall, in hopes of identifying a stress signal that could potentially be blocked and help cells survive.Malfunctioning tRNAWhile this is the first study to link tRNA to craniofacial malformations, previous studies have shown that mutations that impair ribosome formation can also lead to similar defects. Studies have also shown that disruptions of tRNA synthesis — caused by mutations in the enzymes that attach amino acids to tRNA, or in proteins involved in an earlier step in tRNA splicing — can lead to neurodevelopmental disorders.“Defects in other components of the tRNA pathway have been shown to be associated with neurodevelopmental disease,” Calo says. “One interesting parallel between these two is that the cells that form the face are coming from the same place as the cells that form the neurons, so it seems that these particular cells are very susceptible to tRNA defects.”The researchers now hope to explore whether environmental factors linked to orofacial birth defects also influence tRNA function. Some of their preliminary work has found that oxidative stress — a buildup of harmful free radicals — can lead to fragmentation of tRNA molecules. Oxidative stress can occur in embryonic cells upon exposure to ethanol, as in fetal alcohol syndrome, or if the mother develops gestational diabetes.“I think it is worth looking for mutations that might be causing this on the genetic side of things, but then also in the future, we would expand this into which environmental factors have the same effects on tRNA function, and then see which precautions might be able to prevent any effects on tRNAs,” Bartusel says.The research was funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Program, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The Real Reason Autism Rates Are Rising

Autism rates are rising, but RFK, Jr. is wrong about the reasons. Here’s what the science says

RFK, Jr. Is Wrong about Cause of Rising Autism Rates, Scientists SayAutism rates are rising, but RFK, Jr. is wrong about the reasons. Here’s what the science saysBy Stephanie Pappas edited by Jeanna BrynerResearch suggests that autism is between 60 and 90 percent heritable. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., head of the Department of Health and Human Services, struck an alarmist tone about new findings that one in 31 eight-year-olds in the U.S. have an autism diagnosis at a press conference today.Kennedy called autism a “tragedy” that “destroys families.” And his statements also included assertations that autism experts say are out of date, such as the idea that autistic kids “regress” around their second birthday. In fact, while autism is often diagnosed at this age, researchers have found brain differences as early as six months of age among kids who were later diagnosed as autistic. Some studies have also found subtle differences in motor behavior and social behavior, such as looking less at people than typically developing kids do, in babies who were later diagnosed as autistic.But Kennedy’s greatest breach with the scientific consensus was likely his insistence that autism is an “epidemic” that must be caused by an environmental exposure that has been introduced within the past several decades. In fact, researchers say, autism is between 60 and 90 percent heritable. And in up to 40% percent of cases, doctors can find a specific set of genetic mutations to explain the condition. While there are environmental risk factors for autism, such as air pollution, rising rates are mostly attributable to broadened diagnostic categories and more comprehensive screening.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.“The problem from a science communication standpoint is that the causes are complex,” says Annette Estes, director of the University of Washington Autism Center. “It’s not like Down syndrome, where we can say, ‘There is one genetic change that leads to this syndrome, and everybody with this syndrome has these characteristics.’ Even though the amount we’ve learned is unbelievable, it’s also not a simple story.”The new finding that one in 31 kids born in 2014 are autistic comes from a newly released report from the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network (ADDM), which started tracking data in 2000. That year one in 150 eight-year-olds were diagnosed as autistic, and the number has been steadily rising since. Kennedy also cited numbers from the 1970s and 1980s that showed rates of autism that represented around one to three in 10,000 people.This period saw a number of changes in how autism was diagnosed, however. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which has lays out criteria for psychiatric diagnoses in the U.S., called autism “schizophrenic reaction, childhood type” in its first edition and subsequently referred to it as “schizophrenia, childhood type” until 1980, when the diagnosis changed to “infantile autism.” The criteria then focused on external symptoms such as delays in language development, resistance to change and attachments to objects. In 1987 the criteria widened and encompassed three categories related to social interaction, communication and restrictions in activities. In 1994 the diagnosis of Asperger’s disorder appeared, only to be subsumed into a broadened “autism spectrum disorder” in the DSM’s fifth edition (DSM-5) in 2013. That year was also the first in which autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder could be diagnosed in the same child at the same time, Estes says. Prior to that time, an ADHD diagnosis would preclude a child from getting an autism diagnosis, even though researchers currently estimate that half or more of autistic people also have ADHD.Kennedy downplayed diagnostic shift as a minor explanation for the increase in autism cases, but researchers have found that changes in diagnosis probably explain a majority of the increase. A 2015 study on children diagnosed as autistic in Denmark, for example, found that 60 percent of the rise of autism among children born between 1980 and 1991 was caused by changes in diagnostic criteria and reporting practices. Another 2015 study examined students in U.S. special education programs between 2000 and 2010. The number of autistic children who enrolled in special education tripled from 93,624 to 419,647. In the same time frame, however, the number of children labeled as having an “intellectual disability” declined from 637,270 to 457,478. The shift of children from one diagnostic category to another explained two thirds of the increase in autism in this population, researchers say.Another piece of evidence for changes in diagnosis explaining a large difference in the prevalence of autism is that autism rates vary widely from state to state in the U.S. The state with the highest prevalence of autism is California, with a rate of 53.1 per 1,000 eight-year-olds, while the one with the lowest prevalence is Texas, with a rate of 9.7 per 1,000 eight-year-olds. That’s a huge difference. But according to the CDC’s own report, it’s likely linked to California’s intense push for early screening and assessment.“Because of all the hard work that everyone has done to come up with good approaches for supporting and teaching autistic kids, there are benefits of getting an autism diagnosis,” Estes says. “So people seek it out. And that, coupled with less stigma around autism, means more people want to understand their kids in this way.”Some portion of the rise in autism rates may be unrelated to better diagnosis. The likelihood of having an autistic child increases for older parents, and there is a societal trend toward delaying childbirth across developed countries. Children who are born prematurely are also at a heightened risk of autism, and improved neonatal care means many more of these children are surviving to childhood and beyond.There are also known environmental risk factors for autism. Among pregnant people, for example, infections that are accompanied by fever in the second trimester raise the risk of autism for their eventual baby. So does exposure to fine particulate matter pollution in the third trimester of development and the first year of life, according to a 2019 study. Laura McGuinn, an epidemiologist at the University of Chicago, who led a study that made the latter finding, says that particulate matter is inflammatory, and work is ongoing to understand how it might trigger the maternal immune system and potentially affect brain development.As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy promised “some” of the answers to the causes of autism by September. But his “start from scratch” approach largely ignores research that has already been done. For example, Kennedy told reporters the initiative would look at ultrasounds during pregnancy as a possible risk factor. But a comprehensive multisite study of more than 1,500 pregnancies that found no link between autism and ultrasound use was published as recently as 2023. And scientists definitively ruled out the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine as a cause of autism a decade ago (and again in 2019). In addition, the primary study that had suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and autism was found to have falsified data. Despite this, federal officials said in March that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will conduct a study to investigate a link between vaccines and autism. The study will be led by a vaccine skeptic who was previously disciplined for practicing medicine without a license.Work on untangling the complex environmental risk factors was ongoing prior to Kennedy’s tenure, including at federal agencies such as the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which is developing a Web-based tool to help scientists make sense of the existing data on environmental studies and autism.“As scientists, I wish there was a way we could talk about this and really explain how amazing it is, how much taxpayer money has gone to creating this understanding of this complex developmental disorder and how to help kids and parents,” Estes says. “This idea that there needs to be one single cause, and it needs to be really scary—it’s just really taking us backward.”

Length of a Day on Uranus Revised, Pour Height Influences Coffee Quality, and Plastics Recycling Falls Short.

A fluid study homes in on the best method to make a cup of coffee, scientists use the Hubble Telescope to reassess the length of a day on Uranus, and we discuss more of the latest in science in this news roundup.

A Long Day on Uranus, a Better Method of Making Coffee and Disputed Dino DeclineA fluid study homes in on the best method to make a cup of coffee, scientists use the Hubble Telescope to reassess the length of a day on Uranus, and we discuss more of the latest in science in this news roundup.By Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi & Alex Sugiura Anaissa Ruiz Tejada/Scientific AmericanRachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s catch up on some of the science news you might have missed last week.We’ll ease into things with a new study on a subject that’s bound to perk you up: coffee. Up until now the best way to learn more than you ever wanted to know about pour-over coffee was to ask literally any guy at a party in Brooklyn. But a study published last week in the journal Physics of Fluids brings some actual science into debates over how to brew the perfect pot of joe.Using transparent silica gel particles in place of coffee grounds, researchers captured high-speed footage showing exactly how water flows through a pour-over setup under different conditions. They determined that the best way to brew a strong cup of coffee was to maximize the contact time between water and coffee grounds while also allowing for plenty of mixing so as much coffee as possible was extracted. The team says the key is to pour slowly—to maximize contact—and from a greater height to increase the water velocity. A slim stream of water from a gooseneck kettle can help optimize this process. As those dudes from parties in Brooklyn have probably already told you. If you get it right, the researchers say, you can actually get a stronger cup of coffee using a smaller quantity of grounds. They recommend experimenting by subtracting a small amount from your usual bean count—maybe a couple of grams per serving—and then trying cups brewed at different pour heights until you find a strength you like.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Now that we’re all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, let’s move on to another troubling story of cuts in federal funding for research. Last Tuesday the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that the Trump administration will pull around $4 million in research grants for climate change-related projects from Princeton University. According to a press release from the Department of Commerce, the projects funded by these grants “are no longer aligned with the program objectives” of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and “are no longer in keeping with the Trump Administration’s priorities.”One of the targeted projects focuses on how water supplies might fluctuate as global warming progresses. The Department of Commerce stated that “using federal funds to perpetuate these narratives does not align with the priorities of this Administration,” which is, frankly, chilling language to use when talking about climate change research. The press release also accused some of the slashed projects of increasing “climate anxiety,” which is a phrase that’s increasingly being used to cast folks’ concerns over very real evidence about the climate crisis in a hysterical light.Speaking of environmental threats: a study published last Thursday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment found that less than 10 percent of the plastic made worldwide in 2022 contained recycled materials. The world produced more than 400 million tons of plastic that year. And some estimates say that amount will more than double by 2050. The new study also found that just around 28 percent of all plastic waste made it to the sorting stage and only half of that plastic was actually recycled. While China had the highest plastic consumption overall in 2022, the U.S. had the highest amount of usage per person, according to the researchers. On average, each individual in the U.S. consumed about 476 pounds [216 kilograms] of plastic that year.Now, obviously plastic usage is a massive, complex, systemic problem that high income countries around the world need to address, so this isn’t me trying to make you feel guilty about your ever-growing pile of old takeout containers. But if you’ve been looking for something to motivate you to start making some slightly less convenient choices in the name of using less plastic—carrying reusable straws and silverware with you, finding a local bulk grocery store that lets you use your own containers—maybe these new findings can fire you up to make a change.Now let’s check in with a cosmic neighbor. The Small Magellanic Cloud is a galaxy not far from our own, and a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series suggests that things might be getting a little hectic over there. Within the SMC, researchers tracked the motion of roughly 7,000 stars, each one more than eight times the mass of our own sun. The team found that the stars were moving in different directions on the galaxy’s respective sides. The scientists think that the gravitational pull of the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud—which, to state the obvious, is the bigger of the two galaxies—might be pulling the SMC apart. The researchers say that studying how the SMC and LMC interact with both each other and with the Milky Way will help us understand how galaxies form and behave.In other space news, it turns out that a day on Uranus lasts slightly longer than we thought. A study published last Monday in Nature Astronomyused data from the Hubble Space Telescope to estimate the ice giant’s rotation rate with unprecedented accuracy. Our prior estimate of 17 hours, 14 minutes and 24 seconds came from Voyager 2’s 1986 flyby of Uranus. That figure relied on measurements of the planet’s magnetic field and radio signals emitted by its auroras. For a better estimate scientists used more than a decade’s worth of Hubble data to track the movement of Uranus’s auroras, which helped them zero in on the actual location of the planet’s magnetic poles. The researchers’ findings added a whopping 28 seconds to Uranus’s previously estimated rotational period. And hey, every second on Uranus is precious.We’ll wrap up with some new findings on the demise of the dinosaurs. Some earlier research has suggested that dinosaurs were already on the outs before that infamous asteroid struck the killing blow. But a study published last Tuesday in Current Biologyargues that the dinosaurs were doing just fine before that pesky space rock came along, thank you very much.Researchers analyzed the North American fossil record for the 18 million years preceding the mass extinction event in question—about 8,000 fossil specimens in total. That fossil record does indeed seem to show that dinosaur populations started declining millions of years before the asteroid hit. But the new study suggests it’s not the dinosaurs themselves that declined but simply their mark on the fossil record. The researchers argue that geological changes made dinosaur fossils less likely to be preserved in places where archaeologists could one day access them. It’s certainly not the end of this debate, but it’s now a little more plausible to imagine that, had things gone down a little differently, we might still have dinosaurs roaming the Earth today—other than birds, of course.That’s all for this week’s news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday to talk about a trendy disinfectant that sounds almost too good to be true: hypochlorous acid. Tune in to get the full scoop on this so-called miracle molecule.Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!

As Happened in Texas, Ignoring EPA Science Will Allow Pollution and Cancer to Fester

Trump administration plans to destroy EPA science will leave the air we breathe and the water we drink more polluted

As Happened in Texas, Ignoring EPA Science Will Allow Pollution and Cancer to FesterTrump administration plans to destroy EPA science will leave the air we breathe and the water we drink more pollutedBy Jennifer Sass Cows graze near the Oak Grove Power Plant in Robertson County, Texas, subject to EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) rules to reduce carbon emissions and mercury pollution under the Biden administration. Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesI’ve spent my scientific career asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set stronger, lawful public-health protections from toxic chemicals. I do not always agree with EPA’s final decisions, but I respect the scientific process and am always grateful for the agency’s scientists—our public brain trust.In one of the most dangerous acts against facts and science, the Trump administration announced in March that it will shutter the EPA’s independent research office. This will cut more than 1,000 scientists and technical experts who help the agency determine if, for example, a chemical poses a cancer risk, or a factory is polluting a nearby river. At the same time, Trump’s EPA has installed former oil and chemical industry lobbyists to write the rules to regulate those industries.There’s a lot of empty talk about making us healthy coming from this administration. Future generations will be even worse off.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.What is left unsaid by the Trump EPA is this: eliminating scientists from the EPA is kneecapping environmental safeguards. Every major environmental statute—the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Superfund law governing cleanup requirements—relies on EPA scientists to calculate how hazardous chemicals are, how people and wildlife may be exposed and what health and ecological harms may occur. Questions critical to environmental and community protections are researched, such as: Will exposure to this chemical in my workplace increase my risk of breast cancer? Is the air quality from power plant emissions safe for the neighboring community? What is an acceptable standard for PFAS forever chemicals in our drinking water?A drone view of the Sulphur Bank mercury mine Superfund site in Clearlake Oaks, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024.Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/East Bay Times via Getty ImagesInstead, the Trump team is yet again swinging its chainsaw, this time against independent science to favor polluting industries. Consequent to gutting scientific inquiries by the government and decimating academic scientific research, only one type of scientific research will be available for setting environmental standards: polluter research. And that’s trouble. The public is right to distrust polluter-sponsored science; see “tobacco science” and the myth of safe nuclear waste for starters.Just ask Texas. The state of Texas’s vigorous defense of ethylene oxide, a well-known carcinogen, provides an ongoing example of the perils to public health from science done by a polluting industry with a financial interest in the outcome and the support of a state government hell-bent on rewriting scientific facts about a cancer-causing chemical.In 2016, after nearly 10 years of research and analysis, the EPA determined ethylene oxide, a chemical widely used in facilities in Texas and Louisiana to sterilize medical equipment, was linked to cancer—with a 30 times greater risk than the EPA had previously found. EPA’s new risk evaluation included a study of over 300 breast cancer cases in women working with the chemical and adjusted for added risks where children may be exposed.EPA’s report was finalized after multiple internal reviews, and reviews from other government agencies, with public input including from Texas and the industry on many occasions. There were also two rounds of public review by the agency’s science advisory board.Rather than accept that finding, the chemical industry and Texas’ regulatory agency issued its own alternative report in 2020 on ethylene oxide. In stark contrast with EPA’s evaluation, the Texas assessment is a contractor product sponsored by the ethylene oxide industry with limited public review. It fails to account for the risk of breast cancer and could allow over 3,000 times more air pollution to be emitted, which would drastically increase illnesses and deaths—including from cancer—for workers and nearby communities.In an effort to compel EPA to adopt Texas’ cancer-friendly risk estimates nationally, Texas requested a review of its findings by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the nation’s top source of high-quality trusted science and health advice.In March, the National Academies issued its final report, rebuking the foundations of the Texas analysis, finding it repeatedly deviated from best scientific practices and failed to offer a “credible basis” for its findings, specifically its determination that ethylene oxide was not associated with breast cancer.Texas’ efforts to rewrite the history of cancer-causing ethylene oxide as a benign, no-big-deal chemical, is just the beginning of the toxic mayhem and misinformation we can expect from the Trump team to support the financial interests of toxic polluters.Erasing cancer evidence, fudging data, and pretending wild claims are the truth will become the norm, undermining every environmental law and regulation in the nation, and compromising our right to health.All of us will suffer for it.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

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