Five leading scientists were ousted from the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) in New Orleans on Friday. Their crime: handing out copies of an editorial, published in the journal Diabetes Care on April 29, sharply criticizing the Trump administration's ongoing attacks on scientific research.

Those ousted were Steven Kahn, professor of medicine at the University of Washington and editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care, who co-authored the published editorial; former ADA president Desmond Schatz of the University of Florida, Gainesville; Aaron Kelly, pediatrics processor at the University of Minnesota; Justin Ryder of Northwestern University; and Irl Hirsch, also of the University of Washington. The five were handing out reprints of the editorial outside a room where NIH director Jay Bhattacharya had been scheduled to speak. Bhattacharya cancelled and another NIH official spoke in his stead.

"They physically grabbed us, forced us out of the conference center, and now are telling us we can no longer attend this meeting," Kelly told MedPage Today, which first reported the incident. "They're taking our lanyards. It really has come to this in America. Censorship is real. America needs to stand up. Scientists, stand up. Physicians, stand up."

The ADA confirmed to MedPage Today that five registered scientists had been removed from the meeting, claiming the scientists had violated the organization's code of conduct for conferences. "These attendees were escorted out by our onsite event security because they demonstrated behavior not consistent with this code of conduct," the ADA media team said in a statement. "They were respectfully given the opportunity to cease this behavior and chose not to which is why they were escorted out."

"All attendees will conduct themselves in a professional and respectful manner, free from any form of discrimination, harassment, or intimidation," the code of conduct states. "Inappropriate conduct, including but not limited to harassment; threatening or unwelcome physical or verbal actions; or disorderly or disruptive conduct such as protesting, will not be tolerated."

Online backlash to the ADA's actions spread rapidly on both Twitter/X and BlueSky, and sharply increased the number of page views for Kahn et al.'s April editorial. According to Kahn, the editorial was published with a disclaimer, added by ADA leadership, insisting that the ADA had nothing to do with developing or writing the article. He has written to the ADA seeking re-admittance to the conference, since he is slated to speak and chair a session.

Some questioned how handing out reprints of an editorial published in the ADA's own journal, at the ADA's own annual conference, could be construed as a violation of that code. The scientists were not disruptive or disorderly in their conduct, based on the videos posted by MedPage Today, although the fact that they were handing out reprints just before an NIH representative was scheduled to speak might be construed as a form of protest. But it could just as easily be argued that such actions fall under valid scientific dissemination and discussion, the conference's stated objective.

"It is no longer enough to stand idly by or work behind the scenes with lawmakers," the authors wrote in their editorial. "Moreover, it is no longer appropriate to fret about political backlash. Now is the time to recognize and fight to reverse the spiraling fall of the United States of America’s status as the foremost nation in health care innovation. As a nation, we must continue to believe in ensuring better health for all. A few brushes of a pen, some clearly visible through budget requests, others less so through internal machinations, are rapidly destroying what generations have built. We can no longer afford complacency and fear. We must all act now!"

DOI: Diabetes Care, 2026. 10.2337/dci26-0068  (About DOIs).

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On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced his administration's latest attempt to prop up the US coal industry during an incoherent press event that randomly oscillated between energy issues and Trump's fixation with building and renovating monuments in DC. The energy portion of the events was also frequently disconnected from reality.

"Today we're taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal," said Trump, apparently unaware that coal is one of the most expensive means of generating electricity in the US.

With wind and solar power getting cheaper, coal has become the second-most expensive way of producing electricity, trailing only the cost of building a new nuclear plant. As a result, no new coal plants have been completed in over a decade, and coal has gone from powering over half the electrical grid to producing only about 15 percent of the nation's electricity. That's before the indirect costs of coal use are considered. It produces the most greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy, releases dangerous particulates and chemicals into the atmosphere, and leaves behind ash that has high levels of toxic metals.

That's reality, but the White House is clearly not inhabiting it. "If you look at some of the real great failures, countries, they're usually wind," he proclaimed. "It keeps blowing, blowing, blowing and puts you right out of business. Very expensive. The most expensive energy there is."

He also suggested that China, which produces roughly half the wind energy in the world, isn't actually using it: "About the only time they build [wind turbines] is to sell them to stupid people in the United States."

Despite the economic issues with coal, Trump claimed that his new effort to stall its decline will save $50 billion in electricity costs. The source of that figure wasn't specified.

The $700 million would be spent under the Defense Production Act, which allows the president to protect industries deemed critical to national defense. An amendment to the act, passed in 1980, added energy to the list of industries where the president can intervene. A New York Times report indicates that much of the money for this comes from a fund Congress created to foster carbon capture development.

Much of the money will go toward updating 14 coal plants that might otherwise be shuttered. That's in addition to the plants that the government has simply ordered utilities to keep open. In addition, funds would go toward the construction of new coal plants in Alaska and West Virginia, which would be the first new plants built in the US since 2013.

The Department of Energy funding would be coupled with private investments. But these represent a significant risk. The rapid pace of renewable energy growth is likely to continue, and the price of energy from coal will likely rise as soon as the EPA returns to enforcing existing regulations, something that may happen before construction of the new plants is even complete. So to the extent that this effort succeeds, there's a reasonable chance it will produce stranded assets.

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On Monday, SpaceX amended its initial public offering to state that water conditions—including water scarcity, regulations around water, and drought—could constrain data center development.

It isn’t the only tech company trying to assess how water scarcity might impact its business. Water use is emerging as one of the most contentious data center issues. A recent Gallup poll found that seven out of 10 Americans are opposed to data center development, with water scarcity ranking as the top resource concern. Facing increasingly fierce resistance, some tech companies are scrambling to assure the public that they’re facing the issue head-on.

Data centers primarily use water to cool server racks, which throw off massive amounts of heat. One popular technique, known as evaporative cooling, uses fresh water to absorb the heat, which is then pumped to cooling towers where it evaporates outside.

Using more water can save money and reduce emissions for big tech companies by reducing the power needed for cooling that relies on energy-intensive pumps to recirculate water. But it can also come with a large water footprint: Google’s facility in Council Bluffs, Iowa, for instance, which uses evaporative cooling, consumed more than 1 billion gallons in 2024.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory predicted in a 2024 report that hyperscale data centers could consume up to 33 billion gallons of water by 2030 if they relied heavily on evaporative cooling. That’s on par or even less than other thirsty industries, like agriculture or oil and gas—a single fracked well can use 1.5 to 16 million gallons of water—but it poses a risk in regions where water is already scarce. The risk is particularly acute in summer, when data center cooling needs tend to skyrocket at the same time as municipal water use.

“Water is a highly local, highly regional issue,” says Shaolei Ren, a professor of engineering at UC Riverside. “It's a limited resource, and we have to manage it very carefully.”

Some tech giants, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Oracle, have made statements in recent months indicating that they are moving away from evaporative cooling entirely in order to save water. That includes OpenAI and Oracle’s massive Stargate expansion in a number of states, including a water-stressed region of Texas.

Google is taking a different approach. On Wednesday, the company rolled out a series of water-related commitments to communities where it has data centers, along with funding announcements for water-related projects in the US.

They include pledges to replenish more freshwater than the company consumes, via investments in local water projects; to scale up the use of reclaimed and recycled water; and to disclose annual water use in data centers. (Other tech companies, including Microsoft, have similar promises around water replenishment and local investment. Google has been working on most of these pledges for a few years.) There’s also a promise to use “a data-driven framework” to decide what data center designs would work best with local watersheds.

Ben Townsend, the global head of infrastructure and sustainability at Google, says that data center design is a lot more complicated than simply swearing off one type of cooling in all cases. The company, he says, has been doing detailed hydrologic assessments of its sites for the past four years to determine what types of cooling would work best.

“Water is scarce in some regions and plentiful in others,” he says. “A one-size-fits-all strategy just doesn't work.”

In April, Google defended evaporative cooling for areas with what it called “abundant” water in a filing to the European Union as necessary for developing truly sustainable data centers. Google’s arguments line up with new research from Ren and his team, who found that if all data centers in the US were to adopt some kind of evaporative cooling during peak demand, it could free up an additional 10 to 30 gigawatts of power. In areas where grids are stressed but water resources aren’t, using evaporative cooling could provide a meaningful headroom to utilities trying to balance load.

“If you don't use water, the challenge is that you're going to be using a lot more power in the summer, and that will push up the cost,” Ren says.

Most tech giants, including Google, have seen their carbon emissions skyrocket as a result of the AI boom. Totally avoiding evaporative cooling could increase emissions if data centers rely on dirty energy to keep facilities cool. Using less evaporative cooling could also mean more water used offsite for electric generation, depending on how data centers are getting their electricity.

Despite efforts to curb water use, tech companies are still struggling to do so—and it could eventually impact business. Even as Microsoft is moving away from evaporative cooling, The New York Times reported in February that the company’s internal records indicate that its water use is set to skyrocket. In 2024, Google halted plans for a data center outside of Santiago, Chile, after a court partially revoked its permits over water concerns. (The permits for that data center were granted in 2020; Townsend says the company adopted its water scarcity framework for new locations a few years after that.)

In 2021, Google funded a lawsuit filed by a town in Oregon fighting a local newspaper to avoid disclosing how much water the tech giant would use for an expansion of its existing data center. The company began disclosing water use from specific data centers in annual reports in 2023.

Priscilla Johnson, an independent consultant who served as Microsoft’s director of water strategy between 2017 and 2020, agrees with Ren that there’s trade-offs between water and power. However, she says, there are ways to push companies to develop better designs that use both less water and energy. Public pushback and regulation, she says, is crucial.

“The industry has to be challenged to design smarter and simplify things,” she says

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

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The recently-incarcerated former congressman George Santos allegedly placed bets on himself, then acted to ensure he won.

The Trump administration is moving to dismantle the National Science Foundation's $368 million Ocean Observatories Initiative, a network of more than 900 deep-sea instruments used to monitor ocean currents, marine ecosystems, carbon absorption, heat waves, fisheries, coastal flooding, and climate change. The NSF said it would send ships in June to begin the removal of the instruments anchored off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina, and an area between Greenland and Iceland known as the Irminger Sea. The New York Times reports: The ocean observation system began operating in 2016 and was expected to continue for 25 years. Jim Edson, a marine meteorologist who led the Ocean Observatories Initiative, called it "the world's most advanced continuously operating ocean observing systems." When it was first proposed, the science foundation said it was important to have a long-term presence at scientifically important sites in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Removing the instruments could take 15 months. Seismic instruments positioned around an active underwater volcano off Oregon will continue operating until 2028. Each observation station consists of several moorings that secure long arrays of devices connected to wires. The devices measure ocean currents as well as chemical and biological conditions from the water's surface down thousands of feet. The instruments were hardened to resist the pressure of the deep ocean, corrosive seawater as well as marine plants and animals that can foul electronics. Remotely controlled robotic vehicles and gliders around the moorings collect and transmit data to research laboratories. It cost $48 million annually to operate the network. The Trump administration repeatedly tried to shutter it, proposing to cut its funding by 80 percent in both 2025 and again in 2026. Congress pushed back, restoring the money. To try to reduce costs, managers turned off some of the instruments and collected less data, according to a December 2025 presentation about the observatories at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, a nonprofit organization of scientists. Still, the science foundation moved ahead to decommission the observatory network.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stanley Plotkin, 93, was instrumental in developing a number of vaccines over the course of his career. He recently said that he’s “beginning to regret having lived so long—because we’re going downhill.” How could we possibly have gotten here?

Maybe we’ve always been here. It turns out that the anti-vaccine arguments currently flooding the Internet have been around for as long as vaccines have. In his new book A Pox on Fools, Thomas Levenson breaks them down into three categories, as made clear in the book’s subtitle: “The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines.” The accusations these people levy against vaccines can just as easily be used to categorize the arguments themselves: They are wrong, they are bad, and they are intolerable.

Wrong

As Levenson tells it, in the early 18th century, a couple of forward-thinking Westerners learned about inoculations against smallpox from Ottoman women and an enslaved African. At that point, infectious disease was by far the leading cause of death, as it had been forever. In the 19th century, roughly 40 percent of babies died of infection before they turned 5.

(This is why the average lifespan back then was so low. It wasn’t that people didn’t live past their 30s; if they survived childhood, they largely did. It’s just that so, so many small children died that they dragged the average way down.)

When smallpox epidemics broke out in London and Boston in 1721, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Cotton Mather initiated inoculation campaigns in their respective cities. Inoculation involved taking pus from a pock of someone with a not-very-severe case of smallpox, making a cut in the arm of the person to be inoculated, and rubbing the pus into the cut.

There was an immediate backlash. It was morally wrong, some claimed, to interfere with the divine ordination of who would sicken and die and who would not. Only God had that ability, and to thwart it was to defy God’s will. It was hubris and blasphemy. Levenson highlights how the subtext of this attitude was that contracting a highly infectious disease was divine punishment for sin and that the only way to avoid disease was to live a virtuous life.

The Transcendentalists and Romantics substituted “nature” for “God” in the mid-19th century, but the argument has remained basically the same: vaccines are an affront to the “natural” world, and clean living is all you need to stay healthy. The implicit moral judgment remains, even without God: if you get sick, it must be because you ate/drank/breathed/wore something that wasn’t pure enough.

The immense strides in public hygiene and sanitation that preceded the heyday of vaccine development certainly did curb the spread of infection and increase lifespans, but clean living will not help you fight off an infection if you're exposed to a pathogen as effectively as a vaccine will.

The argument that it would ignores most of human history and what we know about microbiology and immunology. But it sounds quite compelling, especially when the modern world around us is so scary and hard to understand. And especially when almost no one alive today still remembers just how many child-sized coffins were involved in the halcyon pre-vaccine days when nature got to take its course.

Bad

Vaccines are unnecessary because our bodies can cure themselves, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his cronies claim. But they go beyond that and say they are actively harmful–and certainly more harmful than the diseases they are designed to prevent. This is an alluring argument to many, since the negative effects of vaccines are apparent (shots hurt for a moment, and you might get a sore arm or fever). In contrast, the lack of many small children dying from infectious diseases is harder to notice. Because of the spectacular success of vaccines, we take the lack of those deaths for granted.

This argument, too, has been there since the outset, when there was no data yet to refute it. And in the intervening years, there definitely were some tragic missteps during vaccine development and administration. But 300 years later, it's eminently clear that vaccines are safe. They are not completely risk-free, of course; nothing in life, certainly nothing valuable, is risk-free.

Vaccines can and have caused serious adverse effects (but not autism) in specific populations. And certain vaccines are not safe for certain subsets of people—infants, the elderly, or the immunocompromised. But this is not an argument that healthy people shouldn’t get them; rather, it's an argument precisely for why healthy people should get them. They keep circulating levels of pathogens low enough to protect those who cannot get vaccinated themselves, which brings us to the final argument.

Intolerable

This last thread has nothing to do with whether or not vaccines are effective, necessary, or safe. It is not a biological argument but a visceral, philosophical one. Because it is not anti-vaccine; it is anti-vaccine mandates. It is about the responsibilities that our governments have to us and that we have to each other, and about the inevitable clash between an individual’s needs and wants and the good of society as a whole.

The Supreme Court case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts lays out the two schools of thought. Boston and Cambridge enacted vaccine mandates during the smallpox epidemic of 1901, and Jacobson refused. He argued that “a compulsory vaccination law is… hostile to the inherent right of every freeman to care for his own body and health in such way as to him seems best.”

But the majority ruled that our liberties are not absolute. The Constitution does not allow us to do whatever we want—it is there to protect everyone’s rights and freedoms, and that entails sometimes curtailing each person’s rights and freedoms. Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan summarized: “Liberty itself, the greatest of all rights, is not unrestricted license to act according to one’s own will. It is only freedom from restraint under conditions essential to the equal enjoyment of the same right by others.”

The concept of herd immunity hadn’t been developed yet, but the court’s decision still relied on germ theory; refusing vaccination endangers those around you, and your liberty of bodily autonomy must be limited because insisting upon it infringes on everyone else’s right to health—and possibly life itself.

Facts and figures can demonstrate how many lives have been saved by vaccines. But they will never be an effective counterargument to “the government can’t tell me what to inject into my kid.” The only potential argument to sway someone who fervently believes that is appealing to their sense of solidarity—to the obligations that every member of society has to every other, to the sacrifices that everyone must make to ensure that society is safe for all. Alas, that sense of solidarity… does not seem to be at its peak in the US right now.

As Levenson makes clear, these three arguments have been plied for as long as vaccines have. But there are a couple of key differences now. The first is that 300 years ago, people who claimed that vaccines were either ineffective or harmful could be forgiven for thinking they had a point. But we now have germ theory to explain exactly how vaccines work and centuries of data showing how infection and death rates from every disease have plummeted once a vaccine was introduced to counter it. We know better.

The second is that now, arguments against vaccines tend to be touted by only one particular subgroup of people: Republicans. And that has come with predictable consequences. “In the US from 2021 onward,” Levenson writes, “being a Republican has become a measurable risk factor for illness and death.”

Levenson teaches in and has directed the Graduate Program in Science Writing at MIT, so you might expect his writing to be clear, concise, engaging, and informative, with an effective mix of statistics and anecdotes. You’d be right. And despite the incendiary nature of his topic, his tone remains measured throughout; he never descends into anger or ranting.

What does come through is his anguish that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lies and policies will cause kids to needlessly be sickened by and die from diseases we have the tools to prevent.

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