“Scientific research is in crisis,” with 5,000 papers retracted a year — and that’s “a tiny fraction of how many should be,” laments Matt Ridley at The Spectator. “High-profile papers on stem cells, superconductivity, psychological priming, drug efficacy, and ocean-heat content have been retracted.”

The “real scandal,” though, “is not the criminal frauds,” the “data dredging and fire-hose publishing, but the gate-keeping, groupthink, and bias that politicizes some fields of science, turning it into the dogma known as ‘the science.’ The pandemic provided a glimpse of just how far senior scientists will go to bend conclusions to a preferred narrative and suppress debate.”

The “scientific establishment” muzzled “alternative views” on masks’ efficacy, lockdowns’ effectiveness, whether “vaccines prevented transmission” and more.

Scientists think peer review “renders a profane paper scientifically sacred.

In practice, peer review has become less a means of challenging papers than a way of keeping out heretics while waving through true believers.”

“China’s flagging economic performance is a crucial issue for Beijing and for the wider world,” warns The Financial Times editorial board — “sputtering Chinese growth” is set “to have an outsized international impact.”

So the Middle Kingdom must “stop tinkering and adopt a bolder programme of reform and stimulus” by calling “upon state-owned financial institutions to restructure large tranches of local government debt” and finding “ways to at least stabilize the property market,” thus alleviating “the psychological malaise that besets many Chinese households.”

“Cutting mortgage interest rates, downpayment ratios and various other restrictions would be a good start.”

A “recovery in sentiment could then help to spark a more convincing consumer rally, creating a potentially virtuous circle.”

“The federal budget deficit,” observes Stephen Miran at City Journal, “in the first ten months of fiscal year 2023, clocking in at $1.6 trillion, was more than twice the shortfall during the same period in 2022” despite President Biden’s “massive pro-cyclical fiscal stimulus packages.”

Utterly “irresponsible”: The Federal Reserve’s “record-smashing monetary-tightening cycle is bound to hit the economy sooner or later.”

So “we will be meeting any future economic downturn with our hands partially tied behind our backs, unable to use our strongest fiscal and monetary policies to ameliorate job losses.”

“Good times are for prudent policy and saving up bullets for when things get dangerous. As it turns out, we might not have any bullets left when we need them.”

Since the Abraham Accords were signed three years ago, Saudi Arabia has tied normalizing relations with Israel to concern over “Iranian aggression and the kingdom’s ability to defend itself against this threat,” notes Eli Cohen, Israel’s foreign minister, at The Wall Street Journal.

An Israeli-Saudi alliance “would form the foundation upon which true regional harmony can be built” — and a nuclear arms race avoided.

Just as America’s “defense commitment acts as South Korea’s deterrent against Northern aggression,” a similar pledge “could reassure Middle Eastern nations” and “be an effective check on Iran’s growing ambitions.”

Preventing Iran from attaining nuclear arms requires “international economic and diplomatic pressure and a credible military threat that will force the Iranian regime to recalculate its path and stop the race for a nuclear weapon.”

The Republican National Committee is requiring presidential candidates to “sign a pledge to support whoever becomes” the nominee, reports the Washington Examiner’s Byron York, but President Donald Trump is making waves by saying he’d refuse. 

As the race’s leader, ahead of second-place Gov. Ron DeSantis “by an incredible 38 points,” Trump is creating a significant problem for the party.

If he doesn’t sign, the RNC can either ban “its leading candidate” or relent and “forfeit any authority it has over the process.”

The choice is terrible — but the RNC might not have to make it: Trump is considering skipping the first debate. 

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board