Patrick Fullick

A tragedy too for democracy, which requires science as a bastion for truth-seeking about the observable world.

A great, evidence-based 🧵.

I carry this paper around on my phone to show people who are vaccine-hesitant.

Two graphs. First from UK Met Office shows global temperature rises from pre-industrial era (1850-1900). Second from UK Health Security Agency shows measles cases in Uk to date in 2025.

Global temperatures and sea-levels are rising, extreme weather is increasing globally.
And vaccines are proven to be highly effective in preventing fatal and life-changing diseases.
Government policy must always be based on following the 🧪. Even though speed of science is often < speed of politics.

Not just a right, but essential in order for democracy to flourish. ✊

Burnt into my mind! 😂

Never saw this graphic before ... it's ... graphic! 🤢

InSECT Project logo - investigating science education, citizenship and truth. Image shows Atlas supporting the world on his shoulders, standing on an elephant, the elephant standing on a turtle which stands on a stack of turtles of decreasing size. Atlas supports the world which scientists aspire to describe. Atlas’s elephant stands on a turtle and then it’s turtles all the way down. The bottom turtle is truth and just above it is science. Science is imperfect but more obsessed with the truth about the observable world than any other institution. So, science is the way to bet.

The InSECT Project is developing a new teaching program to bolster democracy and counter the erosion of truth, with science being considered as a form of knowledge alongside arts and humanities knowledge.
Read our credo here: insect-project.org

Slide from Tracy Beth Hoeg showing that hepB, RSV, rotavirus, Covid, flu, chickenpox, hepa and meningitis vaccines are at risk of being removed from the childhood vaccine schedule.

Any vaccine on this slide for the U.S. but not for Denmark is what Trump wants to get rid of, thanks to FDA employee Tracy Beth Hoeg, who has zero understanding of the U.S. public health system.

HepB, RSV, rotavirus, Covid19, flu, chickenpox, HepA and meningitis.

Trofim Lysenko in 1938.

Don't give them ideas - US agriculture policy will be next! Vernalization, anyone?
("Lysenko played an active role in the famines that killed millions of Soviet people and his practices prolonged and exacerbated the food shortages." [Wikipedia])

I have been watching the CDC panel meeting in the US, where the ban on childhood Hep B #vaccine for newborns was brought in yesterday, with the (false) argument that "immigrants cause Hep B infections". This is the kind of thing they will try in the UK if they get hold of the levers of power.

Just followed you - your profile still says 1.9K followers, so guess you just need 1 more!

These people don't care. They've decided that they alone have access to the truth, without a moral commitment of any kind to tell the truth/act on behalf of professionals or those who rely on professional advice. The distinction between true and false does not exist except in their own imaginations.

The fight back is real and important. More important than ever that teaching about science in schools has to move from a purely technical matter to become an example of knowledge-making that is a vital contributor to democracy.

When H5N! is spreading globally and European health agencies on high alert, this is yet another reason why international trust in the US is at an all-time low.

We in Europe are watching with horror too as we face the prospect of H5N1 spreading around the world. Viruses don't know about borders.

Confirmation bias, much?

US relationship with Europe is permanently damaged - it will take years and several presidential terms to begin to undo this. We are choosing not to visit or do business with the US for now at least. Sorry to the many of you who are fundamentally decent people - this is hurting us too.

Not based on facts or science for the simple reason that they themselves have decided that they alone have access to the truth, without a moral commitment of any kind to tell the truth. For them the distinction between true and false does not exist except in their own imaginations.

View from across the pond: this is not just anti-intellectualism. This is a direct attack on science, one of the monumental achievements of the enlightenment. A retreat to the demand that people defer to the dictates of those who define what truth is, with no commitment themselves to moral truth.

🧪 “A 2024 meta-analysis examining some 2,300 offset projects — amounting to around one-fifth of all issued credits — found that less than 16% achieved the emissions reductions claimed by developers.”

Ditch the fossil fuels.

Sadly this madness affects us all.

A great example of accessible, well thought out information to counter vaccine hesitancy.

Fortunately in the UK our adolescents receive Gardasil 9 as part of their teen vaccination schedule. Administered in schools, free of charge. 💉

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (ie the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (ie the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

Hannah Arendt

🧪 The tactic of dictators past and present is to erode truth because it constrains their interpretations of the national will; dictators seek to destroy truth in order to re-define it as whatever they want and so redefine ‘the will of the people’ as whatever they want.

A reminder, as if we needed it, that attacks on the academy come from within as well as without.

Top UK scientist says research visa restrictions endanger economy Prof Sir Paul Nurse says the UK is

🧪 UK economy and science base at risk through anti-immigration zealotry. "Why do we put hurdles in the way of the people that are actually going to drive our economy? It makes zero sense."
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Grey fluffy cat with mouth open as if speaking. Text: I can haz cheezburger?

Catching up with the news from the US that's happened overnight here in the UK. More on this later. But just to kick things off, I've been back here for 48 hours. The first cat pictures have just found their way into my feed. The inevitability of the internet!

Coffee (black) and red wine - two of life’s essential liquids. ☕️ 🍷