In 2012 we had an uneventful election which was so easy to predict absolutely no one neutral got it wrong. But it was heralded as a victory for scientific polling and a new era for predictive analysis.

After California realized that their coastal counties not only led the country in vaccine denial for personal preference, they actually had more than the rest of the U.S. combined, the legislature passed a law eliminating exemptions for all but medical reasons. Sure enough, those same counties where rich white people believed vaccines cause autism suddenly had a surge in medical exemptions. Wealthy people found doctors willing to agree that their child needed a medical exemption even if they were not immune compromised.

With two recent mass homicides, one by someone who endorsed "white supremacist" views and one that supported "Antifa" violence, the search is on for commonality between two people in opposition to each other in many ways. One commonality is skin color but there is no biological hypothesis for how melanin might increase violence. There certainly are not a lot of women doing these shootings so the chromosome correlation is one of the questions that needs to be asked.

However, a history of mental illness is common in almost all cases of mass violence. 

In developed countries, air quality is now great. So great that true smog (PM₁₀ - particulate matter 10 microns in diameter) is basically going extinct in countries like America so epidemiologists and demographers have taken to promoting concern about particles so small they can only be detected with an electron microscope (such as PM_2.5). 

While claims of increased mortality due to PM_2.5 have fallen flat, asthma still exists and it is well-known that asthmatics have shorter lifespans.(1) A new paper speculates that as many as 170 cases of asthma per 100,000 kids each year could be caused by traffic pollution, and specifically Nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), which is really common at trace levels everywhere.

In 2016, Americans seemed to have waning trust in science. Back then, only 21 percent had "a great deal of confidence" in science(1) even though American adult science literacy leads the world.

Science has been doing something right in the last few years. That number is up over half, to 35 percent.(2)

People are rushing to buy supplements because of (correct) claims that the microbiome is important. While the science on helpful microbes is correct it does not mean yogurt or any other food - even organic, try as their trade groups try to claim that - is helping any more than that redox science in mitochondria means you should spend your money on antioxidant supplements.

There is no compelling evidence any of that has an impact and if it did, that it would be beneficial.