GoKawiilThe strength of an upcoming El Niño weather pattern is still up in the air — for now. Plus, almost half of lab-mouse strains aren’t what scientists think they are and the hunt for new antibiotics in a graveyard.
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Wildfires ravaged forests in Brazil in 2024, in the wake of the last El Niño, when the country experienced a record drought.Credit: Sergio Lima/AFP via Getty
The strongest El Niño weather patterns in recent decades are forecasted later this year, which could bring floods, droughts and high temperatures. But it’s still uncertain whether winds and other weather factors will either ratchet up ocean heat or temper it — and therefore weaken the possibility of a strong El Niño. Forecasters should know more in the coming weeks, once they get past the notorious ‘spring predictability barrier’.
Nature | 7 min read
A genetic analysis has found inconsistencies between the reported names and the actual genetic make up of 47% of lab-mouse strains distributed globally. The mismatches have the potential to compromise the integrity of mouse studies and undermine their conclusions, say scientists. “This study is another wake-up call for biomedical research. If we don’t fully understand the genetics of the mice we’re using, we risk misinterpreting how diseases actually work,” says immunologist Daniel Rawle.
Nature | 5 min read
Reference: Science paper
146,932 The number of bogus, AI-hallucinated citations found in an audit of 2.5 million papers and preprints published in 2025 — with the highest proportion in social-science preprints. (Nature | 7 min read) Reference: arXiv preprint (not peer reviewed)
A review by Cochrane, an influential group renowned for its gold-standard medical reviews, suggests that testing for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) “likely reduces the risk of dying” from prostate cancer. The number of lives saved is small, the group found, but the latest finding still marks a reversal of Cochrane reviews published in 2006 and 2013. The most recent findings were driven in part by data from two new trials, encompassing 250,000 people, and extra years of data from four older trials.
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