Bob Park’s What’s New: October 17, 2025
No, Bob Park — the physicist who wrote the What’s New newsletter for years — did not write this. Instead, I am imagining what Park would have said were he alive today. The opinions are mine and not necessarily those of Bob Park (but they should be).
What’s New, by Bob Park
Friday, October 17, 2025
1. CHAOS AT THE CDC
Last Friday, the Trump administration fired about 1300 employees of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Then, a day later, 700 were rehired. In her newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist, Katelyn Jetelina writes “It’s hard to know precisely who remains fired, but it seems to include staff from ethics, congressional outreach, health statistics, nutrition surveys, and all of human resources. Oh, also, the scientists who work on biodefense, such as weaponized pathogens, remain fired.” I don’t know more than that, but I can tell you two things for sure: 1) The fine scientists and medical doctors at the CDC are American heroes and didn’t deserve to be treated so poorly, and 2) these firings will make America more vulnerable to future pandemics.
2. CLARKE, DEVORET, AND MARTINIS WIN PHYSICS NOBEL PRIZE
If it’s October, it’s Nobel Prize season. This year the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.” This work led to superconducting quantum interference device magnetometers capable of measuring very week magnetic fields. SQUIDs are now used to measure the magnetocardiogram (MCG, magnetic field produced by the heart) and the magnetoencephalogram (MEG, magnetic field produced by the brain). They are a great example of how physics can be applied to medicine and biology.
3. SCIENCE IS UNDER SIEGE AND IT’S UP TO US TO SAVE IT
Last week I mentioned that I was reading Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World, by Michael Mann (a climate scientist) and Peter Hotez (a vaccine developer). Well, I finished it, and give it five thumbs up. Mann and Hotez write “We find ourselves facing not just a one-two punch of pandemics and the climate crisis, but a one-two-three punch, with that third punch, antiscience, obstructing the needed response from governments and civil society. The future of humankind and the health of our planet now depend on surmounting the dark forces of antiscience.” Week after week, What’s New fights against climate denial, vaccine hesitancy, and antiscience. These sinister powers are widespread and well-funded; we must do all we can to oppose them. Science Under Siege has three suggestions how to do that: Communicate constructively, defeat disinformation, and support scientists. That sounds like the goal of What’s New! I highly recommend Science Under Siege. If you don’t have time to read the entire book, watch this video in which Mann and Hotez discuss their views.