Tracy Mumford

Forecasters are now warning that those dangerous conditions could remain for days.

About 80 percent of Americans will see freezing temperatures in the next week, and many cities have been rushing to open warming centers for those affected by the cold.

About a decade ago, genetic researchers started recruiting kids across the U.S.

for an ambitious study to track brain development.

They did MRIs, clinical tests, and took DNA samples, telling parents that it could help lead to breakthrough discoveries.

They also told the families that all that sensitive data would be closely guarded by the National Institutes of Health.

That is not what happened.

Instead, a group of fringe researchers got around the NIH's safeguards and accessed data from over 20,000 kids.

They used it to churn out at least 16 papers, arguing things like white people are intellectually superior or ranking ethnicities by IQ scores.

Those conclusions, which mainstream scientists have rejected as biased and unscientific, have become fodder for racist posts that have gone viral on social media.

And some of the papers are being cited by AI bots like ChatGPT and Grok.

The national co-director of the original study called this use of the data evil, saying, "...it's not just that the science is faulty, but it's being used to advance an unethical agenda."

The misuse of the data has underscored broader concerns about the security of genetic information at the NIH.

The agency grants tens of thousands of requests from researchers to use its databases, but The Times has found that in dozens of cases, data was made vulnerable to theft, used for unapproved purposes, or released improperly.

For example, two years ago, an unidentified researcher in China was able to access Americans' genetic information, even though it's not supposed to be shared with people in adversarial countries that could use it for blackmail or military purposes.

In a statement, an NIH official said the agency has taken new steps to protect data, including the brain development study.

Though one geneticist who filed a complaint with the agency about the way data is handled told the Times, our scientific institutions sort of assume good faith in people.

And he added, quote, there needs to be an acknowledgement that there are bad faith researchers.

Four weekends in a row.

This is the month every year when millions of Americans rethink their relationship with alcohol.