NICHOLAS WADE: The New Lysenkoism. Scientific American’s broadside against E. O. Wilson fits a fashionable, science-denying trend. It’s the same woke trend that led to terrible coverage of science during the pandemic by SciAm and other once-reputable publications. 

A NEW YEAR’S TOAST TO THE ELIXIR THAT MADE US WHAT WE ARE: How Alcohol Saved Civilization.  Why are humans the only species that deliberately, systematically, and regularly gets drunk? Edward Slingerland offers a witty, erudite and novel explanation to this old evolutionary puzzle: Because alcohol has always been an essential lubricant, trust-builder and stimulant enabling large-scale societies to flourish. I review (and highly recommend) his book: Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization.

IT WAS NEVER ABOUT SCIENCE: Covid’s Three Blind Mice. Scott Atlas’s memoir of his time at the White House offers appalling revelations about the bureaucrats who hijacked the nation’s governance during the pandemic. The troika of Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx and Robert Redfield had scant interest in scientific research or debate — and zero concern for the calamitous effects of their edicts.

THE FAKE FACT-CHECKERS AT FACEBOOK AND TWITTER: Fact-BLOCKERS. John Stossel shows how social-media platforms, with the aid of the supposedly non-partisan media watchdogs at the Poynter Institute, are censoring inconvenient — but accurate — scientific information about climate change and Covid. He interviews Michael Shellenberger, Bjorn Lomborg and me. (For those who don’t want to watch on Facebook, here’s a link to it at YouTube.)

HMM: Negative Vaccine Efficacy Isn’t A New Phenomenon. Mike Hearn at the Daily Skeptic takes a deep dive into vaccine history to make sense of a puzzling recent trend in the U.K. showing that vaccinated are more likely to be infected with Covid than the unvaccinated.

STEVEN MALANGA: Free-Speech Entrepreneurs. Growing tech censorship continues to spark rapid gains at alternative platforms.

RULES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: JP Morgan Executive Avoids Hong Kong Quarantine Rules Because He Runs “a Very Huge Bank.” 

WELCOME TO THE GOP: When Demography Isn’t Destiny. There’s nothing inevitable about immigrants joining the progressive coalition. Many have already started voting Republican. And the latest election results in Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey show that Democrats have lost the blue-collar workers that were once their base.

THE CHILD ABUSE WILL CONTINUE UNTIL ADULT MORALE IMPROVES: The Covid Children’s Crusade. Against ethics and evidence, public officials push vaccine mandates for kids. As I write in City Journal, we’ve reached a new  low when Sesame Street’s Big Bird is hawking the the unnecessary vaccine and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is bribing children with candy.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: The FDA Warns That Hand Sanitizer ‘Can Cause Serious Injury’ If You Put It in Your Eyes. Lenore Skenazy reveals why it took so long for the FDA to approve Covid tests: they were busy with more pressing issues. After reviewing more than two years’ worth of records, the agency discovered that in a country of 330 million people, there were precisely “3,642 cases of side effects resulting from eye exposure” to hand sanitizers.

How many of those folks went blind? Zero.

How many of them required eye surgery?

Zero.

So what were the horrific “side effects” discovered by the FDA? Eye irritation and “red eye.”

But that’s not quite the whole story, the agency hastened to add. Among those 3,000+ cases of eye irritation, 58 were categorized as “more serious.” These were treated via a radical intervention known as “rinsing the eye.” Twenty-six of those folks also received antibiotics. In the end, 51 of the 58 were treated and released, but I don’t think you have to worry that the other seven eventually turned up at guide dog orientation. Their particular cases “were either not followed or were minor.”

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

HEATHER MAC DONALD: Unscientific Method. An astronomer’s peer-reviewed work is withdraw for failing the “equity” test. Relying on data might lead to hiring astronomers of the wrong color.

NOT FOR THE PUBLIC: For Whom Do the Covid “Fact-Checkers” Really Work? The CDC’s director gets a pass on her blatant falsehood about mask efficacy, but eminent scientists get blocked for challenging Covid orthodoxy.

COMFORTING THE COMFORTABLE: Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy. A new book from a left-of-center author explains how the status revolution in journalism, plus the new incentives in the digital marketplace, have shifted media coverage from working-class issues to the fetishes of the highly educated. Batya Ungar-Sargon says the moral panic around race does nothing but consolidate the power of left-wing elites and protect their own economic interests. She has even tried explaining it to Brian Stelter. 

DEFUND THE CAMPUS: Goodbye, MIT. Two alums explain why they’re no longer donating to MIT — and what the school needs to do to restore its integrity.

LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE: Instagram Alarm. Contrary to the claims of the Facebook “whistleblower,” the company’s internal research doesn’t prove that Instagram is toxic to teens. She has been lionized by mainstream journalists and politicians eager for an excuse to further censor online discourse — and determined to ignore the rigorous scientific evidence contradicting her claims, as I explain at City Journal. The current furor is the latest example of the Fredric Wertham effect, named after the instigator of the great comic-book scare in the 1950s.

FIRE’S GIFT TO THE DIVERSITY POLICE: Since they love pre-written apology notes, Yale administrators should sign ours.

NO: Does Covid Cause Significant Brain Harm? Maxim Lott takes a deep dive into research on “long Covid.” He concludes that it’s real but has been, as usual, badly exaggerated by the media, and notes that the long-term effects may not be much worse than the long-term effects from the ordinary flu.

STEVEN PINKER: Rationality Saves Lives. Reason’s Nick Gillespie interviews the unwoke Harvard professor.

VENICE-ZUELA: Squalor By the Seaside. Homelessness and RV fires have overrun Venice Beach, California.

UPDATE (From Ed): Link was incorrect; now fixed.

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY: Ciao, Alitalia. The previously untold (and hilarious) 500-year history of the “pope’s airline,” starting with Leonard da Vinci’s prototype of the Airbus A321. (Unfortunately for Pope Julius II — and for Alitalia’s on-time performance record — it was built of marble.)

THE LEFT’S WAR ON SCIENCE: Covid, lockdown and the retreat of scientific debate. Unable to defend the results of their disastrous policies, lockdown proponents resort to their familiar tactic of trying to smear the Great Barrington scientists who got it right. And the British Medical Journal disgraces itself by publishing the leftist hacks’ substance-free, error-filled attack.

EVERYTHING IN THE STATE: Whose Children Are These? From vaccine mandates to enabling life-altering surgery for children, California’s public officials are usurping the role of parents.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Mom Sues Cops Who Arrested Her for Leaving 14-Year-Old Daughter Home Alone.  The police in Texas also searched the family’s home without a warrant, and terrified the teenager by taking her into custody and refusing to let her call her parents for hours. A jury took five minutes to acquit the mother (who lost a year’s pay because she was suspended from her job awaiting the trial). Now Lenore Skenazy, the president of the Let Grow project promoting independence for children, tells how the family is fighting back.

LIONEL SHRIVER: The Most Frightened Nation. The United Kingdom will never be the same now that Covid hysteria has transformed the land of “keep calm and carry on” into a society of bedwetters eager to forsake their liberties.

THE ROAD FROM SERFDOM: Hayek Book Prize. Nominations are now open for the Manhattan Institute’s annual Hayek Book Prize. Each year, the Hayek Prize honors a non-fiction book published within the past two years (2020-2021) that best reflects Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek’s political philosophy—that economic freedom leads to broader prosperity—and that advances the ideals of classical liberalism in its economic, political, or moral dimensions. The author is awarded a $50,000 prize and invited to give the Hayek lecture at the annual award ceremony. Last year’s winner was Thomas Sowell’s Charter Schools and Their Enemies.