The dizzying pendulum of conflicting information experts have offered during the coronavirus pandemic has revealed the perils of relying too much on computer models for scientific studies.

More than 20 scientists and experts wrote an editorial in the June 24 issue of Nature saying the politicization of COVID-19 research shows the need for change in conducting and reporting computer modeling studies. They also criticized how politicians use the results.

Creation continues to provide models for scientific progress—this time in the behavior of ants. Researchers at the University of Bristol in England investigated how rock ants, living within a vast social complex, forage for food, water, nesting sites, and other needs so efficiently. As they explored the cracks and crevices of rocks, the ants seemed to somehow communicate with one another to indicate which trails were dead ends. The scientists thought the principles underlying the ants’ secret could help with computer sampling techniques.

In the race to produce a coronavirus vaccine, some companies are experimenting with a novel approach using gene therapy. The faster, cheaper method could trigger people’s bodies to produce their own antibodies against the virus more quickly than a traditional vaccine would.

The protests and riots that erupted across the United States following the death of George Floyd started a new chapter in the long history of racial discrimination and reconciliation. One chapter often goes unnoticed in that history: the racism of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Race-based discrimination has multiple sources, many of which preceded Darwin, but evolutionary theory gave “a powerful push to a scientific version of racism that still impacts us today,” said John West, vice president and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.

Riding the ups and downs of conflicting scientific studies and expert advice about the coronavirus pandemic can leave anyone with a bad case of motion sickness. Within the past week, contradictory information surfaced about the treatment and the transmission of COVID-19.

Scientists believe that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 originated in bats, just like the other coronaviruses that cause Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). But no one knew how bats can carry these diseases without becoming sick.

Jayden Hardowar, a normally healthy, energetic, 8-year-old boy spiked a 103-degree fever on April 23. Per his doctor’s recommendation, his parents cared for him at their home in Queens, N.Y. But on April 28, he suddenly went into cardiac arrest, Hardowar’s father told WNBC-TV in New York.