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Scientists Discover a Hidden Oxygen Source Deep Inside Earth That Could Rewrite Our Planet’s History
Ancient eruptions may have helped shape the air we breathe, with laboratory experiments revealing magma’s unexpected ability to store extra oxygen. Molten rock deep inside Earth can take up an extra supply of oxygen under pressure, according to a new study. That finding raises the possibility that rising magma could release oxygen on its way
A train was delayed by a solar storm. But something didn't add up.
Scientists have cracked a 178-year-old mystery surrounding a train delayed by a solar storm, revealing that the famous incident happened in 1848 rather than 1841. The discovery rewrites the early history of space weather and highlights a threat that still endangers modern power grids, satellites, and communication systems.
How Light Rewrites Skin Biology: New Research Moves Beyond Sunburn Science
A new editorial in Frontiers in Photobiology argues that skin's response to light extends far beyond sunburn and DNA damage, encompassing inflammasome-driven inflammation, visible-light pigmentation, and photochemical therapies.
Netflix Scrambles to Rewrite Its Narrative With Layoffs and a Sudden Firing
Despite strong revenues and profits, the streaming service cut 1,000 jobs and jettisoned its chief content officer. Drops in the stock price and viewer engagement are to blame.
Florida science standards debate heads to Orange County listening session
Florida Education Commissioner Henry Mack defended a proposed rewrite of public school science standards, saying it still includes evolution and climate science. An October 27 listening session in Orange County will give Apopka families and educators an opportunity to discuss the changes before a planned December vote.
St. Louis wants to rewrite the rules that kept politics out of City Hall hiring. Mayor speaks out.
Study Rewrites Cattle Pregnancy Science
A new LMU study found cattle embryos can establish pregnancy without interferon tau, opening new research paths to improve livestock fertility.
Hard Pressed: Alaska Journalists Rewrite the Rules of Survival
The revival of the Anchorage Press as a weekly newspaper defies an industry-wide tide of media outlets going online or out of business.
Rosalind Franklin had seen the helix: A forgotten photograph rewrites the history of DNA’s structure
Notes by the scientist pointing to a helical structure once again challenge the distorted account of her role in the discovery
Tuchel's England 2.0: what has changed?
Since the World Cup Thomas Tuchel has made deliberate changes in both tactics and personnel. So what has he tweaked as he looks to refine his England blueprint rather than rewrite it from scratch?
Trump wants to rewrite the midterm lexicon
Changing the words may not change the politics.
New Journal Section Puts Epigenetics on Trial: Ethics, Society and Science Collide
Epigenetics has spent the past two decades promising to rewrite the rules of biology. The idea that chemical tags sitting on top of DNA can switch genes on and off, that these tags can be shaped by diet, stress, pollution and poverty, and that some of them might even be passed
Sea Monkeys Show Scientists How To Rewrite a Rule of Turbulence
Scientists assumed that energy flows in only one direction in a turbulent system. What they didn’t know, until they looked closely at brine shrimp, was that a simple factor can reverse the flow.
How the Yankees helped rewrite Baseball economics
Explore how the New York Yankees leveraged free agency to transform baseball and the lessons this offers for global markets.
Florida’s proposed science standards sideline evolution and climate change
The Florida Department of Education released its first comprehensive rewrite of science learning standards in nearly two decades, with the last one adopted in 2008.
Boxed into a corner?
The Premier League has opened a Pandora's box of problems which cannot be closed. This looks like a gigantic mess, but could also become a bit of a joke, especially if they attempt to rewrite history, and change the winners' names on the Premier League and cup trophies over these past 15 years.
Proud Boys Convicted Over Jan. 6 Go From Prosecutions to Pardons to Premiere
The gala screening of the documentary “American Martyrs” was the latest effort by Trump supporters to rewrite the history of the Capitol attack.
‘Dare I say TikTok is saving jazz’: Black Nile rewrites the L.A. jazz story for a new generation
Inglewood brothers Aaron and Lawrence Shaw, the jazz duo Black Nile, step into their biggest hometown spotlight yet, joining Erykah Badu and the Charles Gaines Collective at the Hollywood Bowl on Sept. 29.
Health Department withdraws proposed regulations for rewrite
The Pennsylvania Department of Health has pulled its 502-page update of regulations, citing a “historically high volume of feedback” during the comment period that ended last week.
74-84: Chart
Astros 5, Mariners 6 Mariners Win: Julio Rodríguez, +0.46 WPARewrite: George Kirby, -0.18 WPA Game Thread Comment of the Day
Earth's first bats didn't come from where we thought, landmark genetic study reveals
In the largest study of its kind to date, researchers compiled data from 103 bat genomes and 44 fossils to rewrite the bat family tree and determine where these animals first evolved.
How “Primetime” director convinced Robert Pattinson to play Chris Hansen: Four Lokos, gummies, and a late rewrite
Director Lance Oppenheim reveals the moment the actor decided to star in the film after initially boarding only as a producer.
UCF’s Guidance Earned Daunte Culpepper’s Commitment in 1995
While elite programs vanished as his grades plummeted, a lone coach’s academic roadmap inspired the future NFL star to choose loyalty over prestige and rewrite record books.
Which Came First, The Chicken Or The Egg? Scientists Finally Have The Answer
Philosophers have wrestled with this riddle for centuries, but evolutionary biology has quietly been building a case that rewrites the entire question. The answer turns out to hinge on a single, stran...
Scientists Rewrite the Atomic Structure of Glass While It Melts
Researchers can now rewrite glass chemistry while it is still molten, unlocking properties that extreme heat once made impossible.
In January 2026, researchers completed a drilling project beneath 1,716 feet of ice in West Antarctica, recovering evidence of an ocean that once lay open to sunlight
The discovery rewrites Antarctica's climate history—and raises urgent questions about how quickly ice sheets can collapse.
‘COVID 2.0’: Lawmakers push back on sweeping health 'police power' in key battleground state
Pennsylvania lawmakers told Fox News Digital the state's 502-page health code rewrite amounts to government overreach worse than COVID-era lockdowns.
Scientists Found Cave Art That Could Rewrite What We Know About Human History
Scientists say 15,000-year-old engravings prove humans reached the Emerald Isle far earlier than thought via a lost land bridge.
Lane Kiffin can't have it both ways: Either own the ugly Ole Miss exit, or stop trying to rewrite history
A 300,000-year-old jawbone from China refuses to fit neatly into the human family tree — and a reconstructed million-year-old skull is now suggesting our major ancestral branches split hundreds of thousands of years earlier than we thought
The fossil record is forcing scientists to rewrite when and where human ancestry split into separate branches, upending decades of assumptions about our evolutionary path.
Can William Lawrence, a Progressive, Flip a Key Michigan House Seat?
William Lawrence, a progressive challenging a first-term Republican, is trying to rewrite the playbook for Democrats running in swing districts.
Can Penn State rewrite recent history vs. Temple?
Penn State has a 40-4-1 all-time record against Temple, but recent games have been too close for comfort. Will they change their fortunes this week?
Scientists found an estimated 5.5 million wild bees living beneath a New York cemetery — millions of solitary insects packed into underground burrows across just 1.5 acres, creating one of the largest nesting aggregations ever recorded at a site where the species has quietly survived for generations
A shortcut through a graveyard revealed millions of bees living invisibly beneath New York soil—a discovery that rewrites what scientists thought possible about solitary insect colonies.
Scientists uncovered a bizarre crocodile cousin from 215 million years ago that started life walking on all fours, then changed its entire stance as it grew — by adulthood it was standing upright and striding around on two legs
A crocodile relative in ancient Arizona underwent a radical transformation during its lifetime, shifting from four-legged crawler to upright biped—a developmental puzzle that rewrites what scientists thought possible for reptiles.
Budget deal puts political control of grants on hold until December
Congress pauses the OMB's attempt to rewrite how research is funded.
Political adversaries join forces, urge Michiganders to vote "no" on state constitutional convention
The current state constitution requires asking Michiganders every 16 years to decide if they want to totally rewrite the constitution.
One question about the Constitution puts liberals’ appetite for sweeping change to the test
March on Washington activists called to abolish the Senate and rewrite the Constitution while pushing Zohran Mamdani-style socialist policies.
Angel Reese Fires Back At Reporter With Bold Claim After Historic WNBA Rebounding Night
Angel Reese continues to rewrite the WNBA record books. Just two days after posting a career-high 31 points in a road win at Phoenix, the Atlanta Dream forward delivered another statement performance against the Los Angeles Sparks on Monday night. This time, her big night on the glass was not the only story out of Los [...]
Scientists say the human family tree may need a major rewrite
The human family tree may be due for a major rewrite. Researchers argue that Australopithecus and Paranthropus should be folded into the genus Homo because new fossils have blurred many of the traits once used to separate them. The proposed shake-up could provide a simpler, more accurate picture of our surprisingly complicated evolutionary past.
A cosmic rule just broke—could this discovery rewrite how we count stars? - Futura-Sciences
Mechanics of the initial mass function Stars form when giant clouds of interstellar gas and dust collapse under their own gravity. To calculate the total mass of distant galaxies, scientists use the Initial Mass Function (IMF). Developed in part by astrophysicist Edwin Salpeter, this mathematical tool describes the initial distribution...
A therapy that “rewrites” childhood memories can ease fear of failure
Childhood criticism can leave people carrying a fear of failure long into adulthood, but new research suggests those emotional patterns may be surprisingly flexible. Young adults who revisited painful memories through imagery-based therapy showed lasting reductions in fear, guilt, sadness, and stress.
Physicists discover a hidden gluon structure inside protons that could rewrite textbooks
Physicists may have uncovered a hidden feature inside protons that helps preserve one of matter’s most fundamental properties. RHIC collision data suggest baryon number is carried not simply by three quarks, but by a Y-shaped junction of the gluons connecting them. The finding challenges a decades-old textbook picture and could deepen our understanding of why protons—and ultimately matter itself—remain stable.
Florida AG Uthmeier rewrites property tax amendment language after ruling
Sixty percent of voters have to vote in favor of the amendment for it to pass.
A ‘Jumping Gene’ Was Caught Leaping Between Species—and It Could Rewrite the Rules of Evolution
Genes are known to move within an organism, but between organisms—that’s another story.
567-million-year-old fossils rewrite the dawn of animal life
A spectacular fossil site in Canada contains 567-million-year-old creatures that may represent some of the earliest animals to move, reproduce sexually, and develop recognizable body plans. The discovery pushes key evolutionary milestones back by up to 10 million years and suggests complex animal life may have first flourished in the deep ocean.
'More akin to a political slogan': Judge orders rewrite of property tax amendment's ballot language
The amendment stays on the ballot, but Attorney General has 10 days to rewrite the sales pitch as a description.
Low bid count on zoning rewrite sparks debate on city's business climate
Morton City Hall at 909 Davis St. Last month, the city revealed that, despite six weeks of advertising, its request for proposals seeking a consulting
Trump Rewrites Corporate Norms With Arctic Mining Deal
The federal government granted a permit to build a road through Alaskan wilderness. In exchange, it gets part of a mining company.
DJI Osmo Pocket 4P Beats the ARRI ALEXA 35 in Our Lab, While the Insta360 Luna Ultra Fails – Focus Check ep127
Every once in a while a lab test comes along that forces us to rewrite our own charts. This is one of those weeks.
Trump wants the Supreme Court to give him the unilateral power to rewrite election law
Trump threatened to arrest state election officials who distribute mailed ballots. Then, the courts got involved.
California’s Business Tax Credit Cap Needs More Targeted Changes
California’s scramble to rework its business tax credit cap shows that the state is directionally correct to resist subsidy bidding wars but wrong to rewrite the economics of credits already issued after companies have already relied on them, writes Andrew Leahey.
Health Brief: The grants showdown
The administration loses a key grants case, even as it presses ahead with a broader rewrite of federal funding rules.
Shaky political "science": breakdown of the peer review process
[This article is the latest in our “Shaky Political Science” series. In our 38 page report, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting,” released in December 2025, we examined over 40 studies focused on ranked choice voting (RCV). Many of these studies suffered from puzzling research methodologies, poorly constructed surveys, unrealistic simulated elections, cherry picked data and faulty analyses that often were contradicted by results from real-world elections (a link to our full paper is here). Here are links to the first four articles in our series: the first one summarizing the overall results of our report; the second one analyzed a study co-authored by University of Minnesota academic Larry Jacobs, which was one of the most error-prone of all the research we reviewed in our report; a third article showing an admirable example of two political scientists holding two other political scientists accountable for their flawed, sloppy research; and a fourth article that analyzed seven studies sponsored by New America’s political reform program that deployed flawed methodology based on “simulated” elections instead of real-world elections, which when combined with some basic misunderstandings of RCV, produced odd and misleading results]. In this fifth article in our “Shaky Political Science” series, we examine two flawed studies on the impact of RCV on voter turnout authored by San Francisco State University professor Jason McDaniel. McDaniel’s research in these two papers stands out for its puzzling methodology, inadequate and cherry-picked data, and faulty analyses that not only misunderstands ranked choice voting but reflects a basic misunderstanding of politics in general. The first of the McDaniel studies actually passed through a peer review process and then was subsequently published by the Journal of Urban Affairs, despite its obvious errors. It is perplexing that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the errors and send it back to McDaniel for a rewrite or outright rejection. This calls into question the credibility of the peer review process itself. The peer review process is supposed to represent the intellectual pinnacle of the profession – a way for academics to certify the quality of each other’s work, and to act as a check against sloppy research. In the case of the McDaniel study, the peer review process failed. Yet his flawed study has been cited dozens of times by other political scientists in their own flawed works — an unvirtuous circle of academic research. Here is the first Jason McDaniel study that we analyzed: “Writing the Rules to Rank the Candidates: Examining the Impact of Instant-Runoff Voting on Racial Group Turnout in San Francisco Mayoral Elections,” by Jason McDaniel, 2016, Journal of Urban Affairs. This study covered San Francisco’s use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in mayoral elections, purporting to show that RCV reduces voter turnout overall, increases voter errors, and has a negative impact on “marginal populations,” i.e. racial minorities, mainly as the result of the alleged complexity of RCV asking voters to rank candidates and having to be familiar with multiple candidates and related dynamics. McDaniel reached these conclusions by examining five San Francisco mayoral elections taking place in odd years (i.e. where there are no federal or state races on the ballot) from 1995 to 2011, comparing three earlier non-RCV races (in 1995, 1999 and 2003) with the later two RCV races (in 2007 and 2011). Only two RCV races were studied, and as McDaniel acknowledged, only the contest in 2011 was “competitive” (that contest in 2007 was the first mayoral election using RCV, and incumbent mayor Gavin Newsom won easily in the first round of counting, earning 74% of first choices and far ahead of the second place candidate who had just 6.3% of first choices). Yet even the allegedly competitive contest in 2011was won by an incumbent with a landslide margin of nearly 20 points. No other elections were studied by McDaniel, even though San Francisco elects 17 other offices besides mayor with RCV, including the 11 seats on the Board of Supervisors (the name for the city council) in even years, and six other citywide offices in odd years. Previous academic research has found that competitive elections can stimulate greater voter involvement and higher turnout. For unexplained reasons, this study ignored at least 34 other RCV races between the years 2004 to 2011, many of which were very competitive and had high voter turnout. Instead, McDaniel’s analysis based its conclusions on data from only a single, marginally-competitive mayor’s race using RCV. These 2007 and 2011 mayoral elections were the only two RCV elections that McDaniel used as the sole basis for his small data set to determine the impact of RCV on voter turnout. Despite having no meaningful data to inform his study, McDaniel nonetheless concluded that RCV lowered turnout when compared to the previous three mayoral non-RCV elections using two-round runoffs. Then, using the same inadequate database of San Francisco elections, McDaniel also found that “Instant-runoff voting is associated with a significant decline in Black voter turnout and White voter turnout…On average, Black voter turnout decreases by 18 points and White voter turnout decreases by 16 points …” But how could he credibly arrive at that conclusion when his study was based on voter turnout in two RCV contests that were not even remotely competitive? Beyond that, McDaniel tacitly admits that the key determining factor driving Black voter turnout was not RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable Black candidate. McDaniel wrote, “Black voter turnout was about 17 percentage points higher for the two elections that featured an African American candidate compared to the three elections that did not” — but one of those three elections did not use RCV. The same dynamic was present for White voter turnout, in which higher turnout was not correlated with RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable White candidate. Beyond that, McDaniel’s voter turnout results, whether correlated with the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections, showed no clear patterns. In his Figure 1, he shows low Asian voter turnout in the non-RCV elections in 1999 and 2003 when there was no viable Asian candidate running, but in the 2007 mayoral election using RCV, there is still no viable Asian candidate, yet Asian turnout increases dramatically. For Latinos, voter turnout is virtually the same in 1999 (no viable Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2003 (leading Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2007 (no viable Latino candidate, RCV elections) and 2011 (leading Latino candidate, RCV elections). Meanwhile White voter turnout increased dramatically from a low in the 2007 mayoral election, in which the leading candidate was a white incumbent, to the 2011 election in which there were no leading white candidates that finished any higher than sixth place with 5.6% of the vote. Clearly other factors were determining voter turnout than either the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections. Despite these inconsistent findings, McDaniel boldly marches forth to render conclusions about the impact of RCV on different groups of racial voters, even though his conclusions are not remotely supported by his data. This looks like the worst kind of “data cherry picking” to cover up a puzzling conclusion based on a poor data set involving only two RCV elections, neither of which were remotely competitive. McDaniel’s cherry picking didn’t stop there. In calculating voter turnout for the three non-RCV mayoral elections in 1995, 1999 and 2003, he failed to mention that in each of these years there was a two-round runoff election, with a first round election in November in which no candidate garnered a winning majority of the vote, followed by the decisive runoff in December. So there were two non-RCV elections in each election year. But McDaniel only decided to include one of the two elections in his data set, apparently the December runoff in each year (which had higher turnout in two out of the three mayor’s races, and lower turnout in the third). So he ignored the November 1995 election, the November 1999 election when turnout was only 45 percent, and the November 2003 election when turnout was only 45.7 percent. This is flawed methodology based on blatant cherry picking, since McDaniel simply omitted three elections worth of data that did not fit within his frame. His study should never have made it through a peer review process, and it is an embarrassment to political science that not only was it approved for publication, but it has been uncritically cited by dozens of other political scientists. Share A “study” without wider context or credible data Lacking a data set that included even a single competitive RCV mayoral race, McDaniel declared that RCV lowered voter turnout in 2011, when turnout was 42.5 percent. But he also ignored -- or did not realize -- that voter turnout in mayoral elections during 2011 had sharply declined in all big cities, including far more steeply in nearby Los Angeles and other cities. In fact, San Francisco’s election in 2011 had the second highest turnout of any mayoral election in the nation’s 22 largest cities from 2008-2011. Was 2011 just a particularly low turnout year all across the country, perhaps because the country was still reeling from the aftermath of the housing market collapse in 2008-2010? McDaniel ignored this factor and did not search for alternative explanations beyond his flawed thesis. Furthermore, while McDaniel suggested that RCV leads to more “overvotes” – which is an invalidated ballot in which a voter, in either a non-RCV or RCV race, makes a mistake and selects two candidates for a single choice – he failed to address that in the June 2012 US Senate primary contest, which used the typical “one-choice” plurality method and did not use RCV, there was more than five times as many overvotes in San Francisco and Oakland than in the RCV mayoral elections in those cities. Additionally, turnout had been significantly higher and more representative in RCV elections for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors races -- that McDaniel didn’t even bother to study -- as compared to previous “delayed two-round runoffs” for those offices, often higher by as much as 40% in the RCV races. Perhaps the most surprising irony was that an earlier study co-authored by McDaniel (Overvoting and the Equality of Voice under Instant-Runoff Voting in San Francisco by Francis Neely and Jason McDaniel, 2015, California Journal of Politics and Policy) found that overvotes are often more common in lower-income precincts, but that the pattern of overvoting is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. Wrote Neely and McDaniel: “[Overvote] errors appear to be a function of complexity in general and not IRV per se…. the pattern of overvoting is similar in both IRV and non-IRV contests…Even among votes cast in a top-of-the-ticket race like U.S. Senate, overvoting occurs in an uneven fashion” (IRV, or ‘instant runoff voting,’ is another name for ranked choice voting in single-winner contests). So McDaniel not only contradicted his own conclusion in his earlier study with Neely, but the earlier study had been an important corrective for one of the most frequently made mistakes made by anti-RCV political scientists – a continual failure to provide crucial context by pairing a comparative analysis of real world RCV elections with an analysis of real world plurality or other electoral methods. Unfortunately McDaniel’s earlier study does not get cited much by other researchers, and McDaniel did not even cite it in his own flawed study analyzed above. Incredibly, McDaniel cherrypicked McDaniel, even as his flawed study has been cited dozens of times. Despite being a textbook example of poor political “science,” featuring both inadequate as well as cherrypicked data, the shelf life of McDaniel’s study has been extended endlessly by other political scientists and media outlets who have cited it uncritically. Equally troubling, the Journal of Urban Affairs put this paper through its peer review process and published it despite its numerous flaws. McDaniel gets it wrong, Part II Not content with producing one shoddy, confused paper, McDaniel produced another one a few years later, here is the link: Electoral Rules and Voter Turnout in Mayoral Elections: An Analysis of Ranked-Choice Voting by Jason McDaniel. San Francisco State Univ. (McDaniel, 2019). In this paper, McDaniel extended his previous flawed research focused on San Francisco, about voter turnout and voter impact, to multiple RCV cities through the 2018 elections. In his data set he included San Francisco, Minneapolis, St Paul, Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro and Santa Fe. He then compared their turnout in mayoral elections to non-RCV cities, and to mayoral elections in those cities held before first RCV usage, and concluded “a significant decrease in voter turnout of approximately 3–5 percentage points in RCV cities after the implementation of RCV.” But he replicated many of the same mistakes as his first study presented above. While in this study McDaniel attempted to distinguish between various factors, such as odd year vs. even year elections, competitive races vs. noncompetitive, contests with open seats and other factors, the analysis is superficial and inadequate. He attempts to incorporate so many often-conflicting variables that his conclusions are once again unsupported by the actual data, and ultimately unconvincing (this second study never underwent a peer review process). For example, McDaniel declared that for RCV cities “in elections that are more competitive than average (margin of victory less than 20%), there is no significant RCV effect on voter turnout.” Yet McDaniel is a professor in a city, San Francisco, in which the 2018 special election using RCV to fill a mayoral vacancy was exceedingly close, decided by a margin of only one percentage point, and resulted in the second highest turnout in San Francisco history for a mayoral election. Illustrating the complexity involved in assessing the critical factors in turnout, that special election was held on the same election day as federal and state offices, which tends to boost turnout. Yet more voters participated in that RCV mayoral election than voted on the same day in the non-RCV primary for governor in which former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom was running. Even more puzzling, in this study McDaniel inaccurately cited his own previous study from 2015 with Neely. McDaniel wrote, “Neely and McDaniel (2015) examine individual ballot image files within a natural experiment, and find higher rates of ballot errors in RCV elections compared to non-RCV elections” (emphasis added). However, we quoted from that 2015 study several paragraphs above, and in actual fact Neely and McDaniel actually concluded the opposite -- that the pattern of overvoting – which is the most common form of ballot error – is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. McDaniel also ignored the fact that in Bay Area RCV elections held in even years – at the same time as federal and state elections, when turnout is highest -- the “undervote” (that is, the dropoff in ballots cast for governor or mayor) has declined, which contradicts his thesis that the act of ranking ballots in RCV elections is too complex and presents a barrier for certain demographics of voters. To his credit, McDaniel actually acknowledged another contradiction in his own paper, which found a negative RCV turnout effect in some odd-year elections but not others, admitting that “may present a challenge to the theory that increased complexity [from RCV] will have a marginal negative effect on voter turnout.” But he tried to wallpaper over that contradiction by blaming it on an unlikely source -- bad election administration. McDaniels wrote, “This would suggest that the negative impact of RCV on voter participation may be alleviated by high quality election administration,” without presenting any data or even anecdotes to support such an unfounded theory. While competent election administration of any election, whether RCV or non-RCV, is crucially important, there is no credible research that supports the far-fetched notion that the quality of election administration has much of an impact on voter turnout in US elections, whether using RCV or otherwise. Upgrade to a $5 subscription The unvirtuous circle of academic research It is puzzling how McDaniel’s first study could have survived the peer review process for the Journal of Urban Affairs. The mistakes in McDaniel’s first study above should have been obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of ranked choice voting as well as elections in general, and elections in San Francisco specifically. It undermines faith in the credibility of the peer review process to think that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the egregious errors and reject McDaniel’s sloppy research and paper. And it remains a black mark on political science that this thoroughly discredited study has been cited dozens of times by other researchers. Indeed, in our research paper it became apparent that many political scientists cite each other’s flawed research to pad their list of citations and to legitimize their own flawed research, creating an unvirtuous circle of political science. More broadly, McDaniel’s voter turnout studies, like other studies evaluating RCV’s impact on turnout, lacked a recognition that no credible opinion or research can claim that RCV increases voter turnout merely because so many voters are excited to vote for their favorite candidates instead of “lesser evil” candidates without worrying about spoilers. Instead, with respect to turnout, the advantage of RCV has always been that, in most places where it has been used, it has eliminated a pre-November primary or post-November runoff, which usually saw about half the turnout of the November general election. This is especially true during even years when there are state and federal elections on the ballot which substantially drive turnout more than local contests. Any study that does not adequately account for this non-November primary/runoff vs November general election dynamic, or odd year vs even year election factors, is simply not credible. Both of McDaniel’s studies largely failed on those grounds. Steven Hill and Paul Haughey Share Upgrade to a $5 subscription Thanks for reading DemocracySOS…your digital portal for the pro-democracy movement. Subscribe for only $5 per month to receive full benefits and to support our work. Subscribe
Scientists have found an ancient sea worm with jaws made from a mysterious 'bio-metal' never encountered before, a discovery that could rewrite what we know about nature
Imagine you’re playing “20 Questions” and you start with the classic opener: “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?” Most of the time, a sea worm would be an easy answer: animal. But one particular marine species, the ancient and still-living bristle worm Perinereis cultrifera, complicates that simple choice.
Congress looks to rewrite college sports bill in high-stakes push to win SEC, Big Ten support before time runs out
World's Oldest Amber Comes From a World 150 Million Years Before Dinosaurs
This rewrites the history of plant evolution.
Deep-sea life has a secret food source scientists never expected
Scientists discovered that extreme deep-sea pressure squeezes valuable nutrients out of sinking organic particles, providing an unexpected food source for ocean microbes. The finding could rewrite our understanding of both deep-ocean ecosystems and how carbon is stored on Earth.
AI is already reshaping US politics at every level
Artificial intelligence is barging into the workplace and transforming the battlefield. Now, it’s coming to the ballot box, promising to rewrite the DNA of politics. Driven by a flood of Silicon Valley money, AI has emerged as one of the biggest financial forces in this year’s U.S. elections, fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars […]
Star Trek Murder Mystery Drove The Science Advisor Crazy
A holodeck mystery forced a rare scientific rewrite, inspiring clever new sci-fi tech and solving an impossible storytelling problem.
IFT: Proposed US federal grant rules threaten nutrition science funding & competitiveness
The US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently proposed rules to rewrite the Uniform Guidance — the rulebook for all federal grants. Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) chief science and technology officer tells Nutrition Insight that these rules are set to undermine the nation’s scientific research for food and nutrition and hinder global competitiveness.
Fossil teeth smaller than a nail may rewrite human origin stories - Futura-Sciences
A shrew sized primate ancestor Purgatorius first appears in the fossil record around 65.9 million years ago. This timeline places the animal just after the Cretaceous-Paleogene asteroid impact that eliminated non-avian dinosaurs. The creature was a small, tree-dwelling mammal about the size of a modern shrew. Scientists classify it as...
5,000-year-old wolves found on remote island rewrite what we know about domestication
Scientists discovered ancient wolves on a tiny Baltic island where they could only have been brought by humans, suggesting an unexpectedly close relationship between people and wolves thousands of years ago. Evidence indicates the wolves were fed, possibly cared for, and may even have been managed or selectively bred long before modern ideas of domestication.
Community-first tourism, country before politics, pursuit of happiness undermined
As Charleston rewrites its tourism management plan for the first time in years, city leaders have emphasized a commitment to residents and local businesses. That's encouraging, but the details matter.
AI is already reshaping US politics at every level
Artificial intelligence is barging into the workplace and transforming the battlefield. Now, it’s coming to the ballot box, promising to rewrite the DNA of politics. Driven by a flood of
Scientists Found Ancient Human DNA on Cave Walls for the First Time and It Could Rewrite the Story of Prehistoric Art
The find could transform how researchers study prehistoric cave art.
Giant viruses discovered on Greenland ice sheet may slow glacial melting - Futura-Sciences
Giant viruses defy microbiological norms Lead author Laura Perini and her team at the Department of Environmental Science at Aarhus University identified the microorganisms during a field survey of Arctic ice. Measuring up to 2.5 micrometers in length, these viral specimens are roughly 125 times larger than conventional viral strains....
Wyndham Clark rewrites US Open record book at Shinnecock Hills
Wyndham Clark achieved history with his first two rounds of golf during the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills.
What scientists just uncovered about Neanderthals rewrites everything we thought we knew - Futura-Sciences
How did Neanderthals appear—and disappear? “How did Neanderthals appear? And how did they disappear?” To this day, these remain two of the big, unanswered mysteries in human evolution. For both questions, scientists have long suspected that a drop in genetic diversity may have played a role. Thanks to the study...
Huawei, scientists build 2D parallel computing chip that rewrites Moore’s Law
Marking a global first for 2D semiconductors, the new microprocessor overcomes silicon size limits to boost density and slash data delays.
Large Hadron Collider detects strange particle behavior that could rewrite physics
Scientists working at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider may be seeing the strongest hints yet of physics beyond the Standard Model — the decades-old theory that explains the fundamental particles and forces of the universe. By studying incredibly rare particle transformations called “penguin decays,” researchers found behavior that doesn’t fully match theoretical predictions, raising the possibility that unknown particles or forces are influencing the results.
Forget the 11-year solar cycle, a single space storm can send a shockwave through your local forecast
The regular solar cycle is a mere climate murmur, but sudden geomagnetic jolts are a different story. These high-altitude outbursts appear to be hijacking the polar vortex to rewrite weather on the ground.
Local View: What flies in pro wrestling too often flies in politics
From the column: "Pro wrestling only rewrites its storylines, not everyone else’s history."
EA SPORTS™ F1® 25: 2026 Season Pack Brings the 2026 Season to the Grid
Rewrite the Grid in EA SPORTS™ F1® 25: 2026 Season Pack and EA SPORTS™ F1® 25: 2026 Season Edition
Rewrite the Grid: EA SPORTS™ Reveals F1® 25: 2026 Season Pack
The story continues with the 2026 Season Pack* for EA SPORTS’™ F1® 25, Featuring New Teams, Drivers Rosters, Rules Regulations, and MADRING Track Watch the Reveal Trailer Here Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) invites players to rewrite the grid in the all-new 2026 Season Pack* for EA SPORTS’™ F1 ® 25 , the official video game of the 2026 FIA Formula One World Championship™, coming to PlayStation®5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on June 3, 2026. The 2026 Season Pack welcomes in a groundbreaking new era of F1®, featuring the updated rules and regulations for the 2026 F1® season, the introduction of two teams: Audi Cadillac, and their driver rosters to the grid, new action-packed gameplay features, and the highly anticipated MADRING circuit; the first new F1® circuit since 2023. The F1® 25: 2026 Season Pack continues to innovate the iconic racing experience. Implementing real-world regulation changes, the 2026 Season Pack showcases lighter, smaller cars† with active
Stunning 150-million-year-old stegosaur skull rewrites dinosaur evolution
A spectacular dinosaur discovery in Spain is giving scientists a rare new look inside the world of stegosaurs. Paleontologists uncovered the best-preserved stegosaur skull ever found in Europe, belonging to the iconic plated dinosaur Dacentrurus armatus, which roamed Earth around 150 million years ago. Because stegosaur skulls are extremely fragile and almost never survive intact, the fossil is helping researchers uncover previously unknown details about how these armored giants evolved.
Stunning fossil discovery in Ethiopia rewrites human origins
A stunning fossil discovery in Ethiopia shows that early Homo and a previously unknown Australopithecus species lived together around 2.6 to 2.8 million years ago. The find overturns the classic “ape-to-human” progression and paints human evolution as a crowded, branching tree with multiple species coexisting. Scientists dated the fossils using volcanic ash deposits and are now investigating what these ancient relatives ate and whether they competed for resources.
Who are the Japanese? Huge DNA discovery rewrites history
Scientists analyzing the genomes of thousands of people across Japan discovered evidence for a previously overlooked third ancestral group, challenging the long-accepted “dual origins” theory. The newly identified ancestry appears linked to the ancient Emishi people of northeastern Japan. Researchers also uncovered inherited Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA connected to conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
New obesity discovery rewrites decades of fat science
Scientists have uncovered a surprising secret hidden inside fat cells that could reshape how we think about obesity and metabolic disease. A protein called HSL, long believed to simply release stored fat when the body needs energy, turns out to have a second job deep inside the nucleus of fat cells—helping keep those cells healthy and balanced. Even more surprising, people and mice missing this protein don’t become obese as expected; instead, they lose fat tissue in a dangerous condition called lipodystrophy.
Scientists accidentally discover DNA that breaks the rules of life
A routine experiment with a new single-cell DNA sequencing method turned into a surprising scientific twist when researchers stumbled upon a bizarre genetic code in a microscopic pond organism. Instead of following the near-universal “rules” of life, this newly identified protist rewrites how genes signal their end. This unexpected discovery challenges long-held assumptions about how genetic translation works and hints that nature may be far more flexible—and mysterious—than scientists realized.
Colorado lawmakers advance rewrite of 2024 law to regulate artificial intelligence
With just nine days left in the 2026 legislative session, a revised proposal to amend the 2024 artificial‑intelligence law is finally advancing — even though it’s not the bill Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez had hoped for. Senate Bill 189, which largely mirrors a draft bill written by a governor-appointed task force, was introduced in […]
Argentine star confirms he's ready to join Liverpool
An Argentine star has confirmed he's ready to join Liverpool. Can you rewrite this? Jeremy Jacquet looks set to be the first of several new arrivals at Anfield this summer in the centre-back departmen...
Superconductors by design: Argonne scientists rewrite the rules of discovery
Scientists at Argonne and Northwestern developed a new method to design and predict entire families of materials with the same chemical formula but different structures, enabling more efficient, targeted materials innovation and research.
Insight: Warned off vaccine actions, Kennedy seeks quick health wins ahead of midterms
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is aiming for quick wins on new health initiatives to help Republicans in November’s midterm elections, after the White House asked him to pivot from a widely criticized campaign to rewrite U.S. vaccine policy, senior administration officials told Reuters.
Synthetic biology promised to rewrite life – with the death of its pioneer, J. Craig Venter, how close are scientists?
Advances in genetic engineering have enabled researchers to seek ways to program new life. But has synthetic biology actually changed medicine and the environment, nearly two decades on?
Surprising obesity discovery rewrites decades of fat metabolism science
A key protein involved in fat metabolism has been found to do more than scientists once thought. Instead of just releasing fat, it helps maintain healthy fat tissue and balance in the body. When it’s missing or disrupted, the results can be surprisingly harmful. This finding reshapes how researchers think about obesity and metabolic disease.
Scientists Discovered 700 Fossils That Rewrite What We Know About Life on Earth
The Jiangchuan Biota indicates that we may have misjudged the Cambrian “explosion” of complex life.
110,000-year-old discovery rewrites human history: Neanderthals and Homo sapiens worked together
The first-ever published research on Tinshemet Cave reveals that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in the mid-Middle Paleolithic Levant not only coexisted but actively interacted, sharing technology, lifestyles, and burial customs. These interactions fostered cultural exchange, social complexity, and behavioral innovations, such as formal burial practices and the symbolic use of ochre for decoration. The findings suggest that human connections, rather than isolation, were key drivers of technological and cultural advancements, highlighting the Levant as a crucial crossroads in early human history.
RFK Jr.’s HHS rewrites rules governing key CDC vaccine committee
US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has approved changes to rules that govern an expert group that advises the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its vaccine recommendations.
Texas Hemp Businesses Sue State Over Rules That ‘Rewrite Law’
The Texas Hemp Businesses Council and other industry stakeholders are hoping to block the state from enforcing new rules that prohibit popular products.
RFK Jr. rewrites rules on CDC panel after judge blocks vaccine changes
After a federal judge said members of the influential vaccine committee were "distinctly unqualified," an updated charter broadens the list of expertise for membership.
The world’s “oldest octopus” was never an octopus
A famous “oldest octopus” fossil has been exposed as a case of mistaken identity. Advanced imaging revealed hidden teeth showing it was actually related to a nautilus, not an octopus. The confusion came from decay that altered its shape before fossilization. This discovery rewrites part of evolutionary history, pushing the true origin of octopuses much later in time.
“Why water is special” mystery finally solved.
POSTECH and Stockholm University observe water’s liquid-liquid critical point, published in Science, following the team’s 2017 and 2020 papers in the same journal. Ten years of persistent research leads to a discovery that could rewrite textbooks
FCC eyes changes to live sports broadcast rules amid fan frustration
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is opening the door to a rewrite of its rules for local blackout restrictions on live sports, a move that could be the first step in a potential shakeup …
Mass Effect TV show ordered to rewrite scripts and make them "more appealing to non-gamers"
Amazon has allegedly asked for the TV adaptation of Mass Effect to be rewritten to make it "more appealing to non-gamer…
High Seas Treaty must stop the lobbyists and bring the science
Campaigners warn fishing industry lobbyists are attempting to rewrite the High Seas Treaty in their favour — with days left of UN ocean talks.
Scientists May Have Uncovered The World's Oldest Dice
The 12,000-year-old artifacts could rewrite history.
Supreme Court fight over birthright citizenship threatens ‘chaos’ in proving newborns’ status
Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a fired-up prosecutor last year as he shot off a withering series of nuts-and-bolts questions about how President Donald Trump would carry out his plan to rewrite of the way birthright citizenship has been understood in the United States for more than a century.
Scientists Discover New “Magic Mushroom” Species That Rewrites Evolutionary History
A familiar “magic mushroom” may not be what it seems.