Daniel Engber

People normally think that certain things should not be for sale (e.g., organs)

But what happens when people consider the principled arguments economists have given for the view that these things *should* be for sale?

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Inside the Collapse of the F.D.A.

" Watchdogs and institutionalists alike seethed with frustration. Did the health secretary want more regulation or less? What was his overarching philosophy? How could any agency possibly accommodate so many paradoxes? ... "

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/m...

Holy cow

💡!

‘I’m Not Quite Sure How to Respond to This Presentation’ The discomfiting spectacle of RFK Jr.’s new vaccine-advisory committee

So far this article by @engber.bsky.social best captures the overall ACIP meeting vibes

The World’s Hardest Bluffing Game Why are some Iraqis so good at figuring out when a person is lying?

Fascinating story on a little-known but unbelievably impressive mental sport :

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

That's not my drawing -- you'd have to reach out to Popular Science for information on who owns it...

The critique of science reform was "stifled"? All other points aside, this is simply not how I remember seeing the past dozen years unfold.

Somehow everyone feels stifled in the social-media age. It's the foundational emotion of the 2020s.

“C” is for Censorship: PBS Cuts ‘Art Spiegelman’ Doc and Other Dubious Acts at Embattled Broadcaster Twelve days before Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse (2024) was set to broadcast on April 15 across PBS stations nationwide as part of its strand American Masters, the filmmakers were told that a 90...

Here's the original story: www.documentary.org/online-featu...

Now PBS Is Censoring a Film About Free Speech A worrying pattern has taken hold in public television.

PBS is really going for it.

(gift link)
www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

h/t @antkaufman.bsky.social for breaking this story and reporting out the details

Trump Thinks He Knows What Started the Pandemic The lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origins has became a principle of MAGA governance.

On COVID origins, we're now living in the mirror-image world of 2020: Now the lab-leak theory is assumed to be the truth.

www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

Terrific reporting here on the extent of PBS self-censorship under Trump

Academic Culture and Fraud With the latest fraudulent AI-econ paper, a number of colleagues from MIT, Brown, Princeton, Univ.

New post!
goodscience.substack.com/p/academic-c...

Did you feel it coming in the air?

More details here:

bsky.app/profile/joha...

Screenshot of editor's note

This is such an odd use of scare quotes, in the editor's note for a challenged paper:

... We are committed to "the truth" ...

?

The Most Persuasive ‘People’ on Reddit Were a Front for AI It’s one thing to be fooled by a human with dubious morals, and another entirely to have your mind changed by something that doesn’t have one.

Is it really "another thing entirely" to have your mind changed by a bot?

www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

My response to the @docnycfest.bsky.social Monday Memo "correction"

PBS also pulled the website for the film from PBS.org, at least until shortly after I'd reached out for comment and the film promptly reappeared on the schedule.

Just to clarify, does this sequence of events also happen to at least one film in every season for a variety of reasons?

4/4

The film's director, @janemwagner.bsky.social, told me that POV's executive producers were explicit about the fact that her film had lost its premiere date for political reasons-- a fact they subsequently confirmed by email.

3/

PBS Pulled a Film for Political Reasons, Then Changed Its Mind A window into how the network is handling the new Trump era

AmDocs, which refused to comment for my story in The Atlantic, now suggests this was just a normal bit of rescheduling-- of the sort that happens to "at least one film every season for a variety of reasons."

2/

www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

So @amdocdocumentary.bsky.social has asked DOCNYC to provide "broader context" for its newsletter item about PBS's decision to pull the trans-themed film BREAK THE GAME from its scheduled slot on Apr. 7.

1/

PBS censored my movie...

PBS Pulled a Film for Political Reasons, Then Changed Its Mind A window into how the network is handling the new Trump era

Is public media already giving up?

www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

What RFK Jr. Told Grieving Texas Families About the Measles Vaccine The nation’s top public-health official has been promoting suspicions of the shot even as he offers comfort.

Here's what RFK is saying in private to the family of a girl who died last week from a vaccine-preventable disease

www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

The End of College Life If they persist, Donald Trump’s attacks on universities will destroy a cornerstone of American life.

The American college experience—earning a degree to join the middle class while coming of age on a pastoral campus with sororities and sports—may be over.

Trump's attacks on higher ed impact much more than just Columbia or scientific research. They put the whole idea of college at risk.

My story:

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Yes, slightly! A "hired gun" (using the phrase from the paper's abstract) seems a little more like, well, a "gun" -- i.e. first a tool, second a moral actor.

I think I'd assign Person B blame in increasing order like this:

hired gun --> obedient functionary --> conniving friend

What about you?

"Ordering" or "instructing" someone to commit violence seems it might be different, morally speaking, from hiring them to do so...

The Texas Girl Who Died From Measles Her father tells her story.

God created measles, her father said. God allowed the disease to take her life.

At the visitation for the unvaccinated child who died in West Texas:

www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...