Politics and AI challenge following science

Public health, explained: Sign up to receive Dr. Jay K. Varma’s reports in your inbox a day early.Hello and welcome to Healthbeat’s weekly report on stories shaping public health in the United States.I am Dr. Jay K. Varma, a physician, epidemiologist, and public health expert currently serving as chief medical officer at Fedcap, a global nonprofit focused on economic mobility and well-being for vulnerable communities. Views expressed here are my own.During the peak of the Covid pandemic, the phrase “follow the science” became a popular refrain, used first by those advocating stronger infection control policies and later by those opposed to them. Today I am discussing how, in the past few weeks, scientific evidence has been selectively chosen to meet a specific political or economic end, and how artificial intelligence is making it harder than ever to know which scientific studies we can trust.Politics of Covid vaccines and origins continue to cause troubleThe Washington Post broke a st