Science
Desperate parents turn to magnetic therapy to help kids with autism. They have little evidence to go on
Thomas VanCott compares his son Jake’s experience with autism to life on a tightrope. Upset the delicate balance and Jake, 18, plunges into frustration, slapping himself and twisting his neck in seemingly painful ways.
Like many families with children on the autism spectrum, Jake’s parents sought treatments beyond traditional speech and behavioral therapies.
One that seemed promising was magnetic e-resonance therapy, or MERT, a magnetic brain stimulation therapy trademarked in 2016 by a Newport Beach-based company called Wave Neuroscience.
The company licensed MERT to private clinics across the country that offered it as a therapy for conditions including depression, PTSD and autism.
Those clinics described MERT as a noninvasive innovation that could improve an autistic child’s sleep, social skills and — most attractive to the VanCott family — speech. Jake is minimally verbal.
It was expensive — $9,000 — and not covered by insurance. “It’s too much for most things,” VanCott said, “but not for the potential of my child speaking.”
“It just did nothing,” Thomas VanCott says of the $9,000 MERT sessions his son received.
(Claudia Paul / For The Times)
After raising money through GoFundMe, VanCott met with a doctor at a New Jersey clinic who described how MERT would reorganize Jake’s brain waves. VanCott does not have a scientific background, and the technical details went over his head. What he had was a severely disabled son he was desperate to help.
The doctor “seemed pretty confident. And his confidence gave me confidence,” VanCott said. “It made me think, tomorrow Jake’s gonna wake up and say a sentence.”
Autism diagnoses in children have risen steadily since 2000, in part due to increased awareness and screening. As the number of people living with autism has grown, so have alternative therapies promising to alleviate or even reverse its associated behaviors.
“There’s also a lot of pressure put on parents,” said Zoe Gross, a director at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, a nonprofit group run by and for autistic adults. “People will be saying things like, ‘Time’s ticking, your kid’s missing milestones … you have to fix it now.’”
One therapy that often surfaces in Google searches, social media groups and word-of-mouth discussions is MERT, which is based on a brain stimulation therapy approved by the Food and Drug Administration for depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Clinics offering MERT sell it as a “safe and effective treatment for autism” that yields “miraculous results” for kids on the spectrum.
Most compelling to many families is an oft-cited marketing claim that research has shown MERT to improve speech and eye contact in a majority of autistic patients, research that several clinics attributed to Wave.
The Times spoke to parents who said MERT caused positive, lasting changes in their autistic children’s sleep, communication and concentration.
Other parents told The Times they saw only minimal changes in their children’s behavior. Many, including Thomas VanCott, saw no changes at all. “It just did nothing,” VanCott said. And a few saw worrying behavioral regressions that persisted long after the therapy ended.
All remember being told by MERT providers that while results weren’t guaranteed, many patients saw positive results. When the dramatic changes they hoped for didn’t happen, these families left believing they were unlucky. Without quality data, it’s impossible to know if any of these outcomes are outliers or typical patient experiences.
Wave has not conducted any studies on whether its signature product works for autism. A Wave executive argued that the need for new autism therapies is strong enough to justify moving forward with commercial solutions before rock-solid evidence is available.
“Academics pointing towards insufficient evidence for clinical adoption may not represent a true reflection of clinical utility in a population where there are very few therapeutic options, great suffering, and a willingness of physicians and patients to seek innovative treatment choices with diligent clinical care and oversight,” said Dr. Erik Won, Wave’s chief medical officer.
For many parents, even a small possibility of a life-changing breakthrough is worth any price. Although some families have reported benefits from the treatment, no large scientific studies exist that show MERT is significantly better than a placebo, according to nine psychiatrists, psychologists and neuroscientists with expertise in brain stimulation and autism.
MERT is Wave’s trademarked version of a therapy called transcranial magnetic stimulation. The product of decades of research, TMS is approved by the FDA to treat major depression, OCD and cigarette addiction.
It is also used to treat conditions for which it is not FDA-approved, in what’s known as “off-label” prescribing. Off-label use of drugs and devices is a common practice in medicine.
Clinics offering cash-pay TMS for a variety of off-label conditions, including autism, have proliferated in recent years. MERT in particular has become especially popular among families with autistic children.
Autism spectrum disorder is a complex neurological and developmental condition that manifests differently in nearly every individual who has it. Symptoms cluster around difficulties in communication, social interaction and sensory processing.
Many autistic people need minimal support to live, work and thrive independently, while others require intense daily care and are unable to express themselves verbally. There are few evidence-based interventions to alleviate the disorder’s most profoundly disabling traits.
MERT providers first use EEG, a common brain scan, to assess patients. Wave’s proprietary technology, photographed at a Newport Beach clinic, then determines which areas of the brain to target for treatment. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
During treatment, a magnetic coil is placed against the patient’s scalp. Each session of gentle electromagnetic pulses lasts about 30 minutes.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
A MERT patient first sits for a 10-minute quantitative electroencephalogram, a noninvasive test that measures the brain’s electrical activity, and an electrocardiogram, which gauges electrical activity in the heart.
Results are then analyzed by Wave’s proprietary software. If its algorithm identifies “areas of the brain that are not functioning properly,” clinic providers will recommend a protocol of TMS-style treatments. In these sessions, the provider places a magnetic coil against the patient’s scalp that emits a gentle electromagnetic pulse. Sessions typically last about 30 minutes and are administered five days a week, for two to six weeks.
Won, Wave’s president and chief medical officer, said the goal is “to help the brain function most efficiently as an organ. And the hypothesis was, if we improve the metabolic efficiency of the brain, would we see some changes in a variety of different medical conditions?
“As we sort of tested this, there was a realization: Wow, we can do something pretty special for autism,” he said.
A six-week course of MERT — the standard protocol Wave recommends for autistic patients — typically costs $9,000 to $12,000, families and clinic owners said, and is not covered by insurance.
MERT was originally developed as a therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. Since Wave’s inception in 2019, it has described military veterans as its primary patient demographic.
Wave is in Phase II of a clinical trial to test MERT for PTSD, Won said. The company has not conducted any clinical trials on autism.
“The strategic decision to focus on PTSD was largely dictated by market factors,” Won said. He added that his company is dedicated to helping those with autism and is working to obtain funding “for further studies and ultimately an FDA indication.”
Dr. Andrew Leuchter is the director of UCLA’s TMS Clinical and Research Service, which has provided FDA-approved and off-label treatments to more than 1,000 patients.
Given its solid safety profile and effectiveness at treating other complex brain-based disorders, Leuchter said that he and many other TMS clinicians believe the therapy could have benefits for conditions other than the few for which it is FDA-approved.
When a patient approaches the clinic seeking treatment for an off-label condition Leuchter believes could be helped by TMS, the psychiatrist reviews the case with his colleagues. If they decide to proceed, he explains to the patient that the efficacy of TMS for their condition isn’t proven, though there is reason to believe it is safe and effective.
But when parents call asking whether he can treat autistic characteristics such as sensory challenges, minimal speech or lack of eye contact, Leuchter says no.
“Off-label treatment can be just fine so long as there’s data to support this and the risks are low,” he said. For autism, he said, “the evidence base is not very strong. … And I don’t think that there is sufficient evidence to recommend the use of TMS for the treatment specifically of autism.”
Multiple researchers are currently examining whether TMS could improve certain symptoms of autism. But eight researchers interviewed for this article said there isn’t yet enough evidence to recommend TMS as an autism therapy, or to say with confidence that it works for that condition.
Lindsay Oberman, director of the Neurostimulation Research Program at the National Institute of Mental Health, published a paper last year summarizing the current state of research on TMS and autistic children. Nearly all published studies on the treatment to date have been very small, open-label (meaning both patients and providers knew which treatment they were receiving) or focused on a very specific subgroup, she and her co-authors wrote.
Without large, randomized controlled trials — the gold standard in medicine — “broad off-label use of these techniques in this population is not supported by currently available evidence,” the paper concluded.
Won acknowledged that the company has so far not pursued such research on MERT and autism.
“We owe the community some academically rigorous science,” he said. “This is not going to be a panacea. I don’t want to misrepresent anything to the parents who are making these difficult decisions. But for a subgroup, this is clearly something that’s leading to a response.”
Medical research moves far more slowly than most patients and their families would like, and many are willing to try experimental therapies long before researchers and regulators are ready to sign off on them.
“When you’re a parent of a child and you think that this can help, it’s like, FDA be damned, right?” VanCott said. “If I think it’s gonna help my kid, I want to do it.”
Wave’s provider directory now lists more than 60 U.S. licensees and an additional 18 internationally. More than 400,000 MERT sessions have been administered to more than 20,000 people, according to the company.
Won said Wave does not maintain comprehensive data on patients treated at licensee clinics. In an interview, he estimated that about half of these patients were seeking treatment for autism. He later said that 20% to 30% was a better estimate.
Although some clinic owners said they treat few autistic children, staffers at multiple facilities told The Times that most or all of their patients were autistic.
To pay for the procedure, families have used savings or turned to crowdfunding. Others placed the treatment on credit cards. Their experiences vary widely.
Though initially skeptical, Joo Flood booked a six-week course of treatment at a Dallas clinic in 2022 for her minimally verbal son Max, then almost 5. They returned for another round in May 2023.
Max now responds far more often to his name, makes regular eye contact and has an easier time following directions, his mother said.
“If I didn’t do the MERT, I’m not sure Max can be at this level,” she said.
Yestel Concepcion and her husband sought MERT for her stepson after hearing about it on a talk show.
The New Jersey couple scraped together savings and gratefully accepted donations from friends and family for the $10,000 cost. They spent nearly $5,000 more relocating the family to Maryland during the monthlong treatment.
Apart from an increase in the boy’s hyperactivity, the couple saw “no result whatsoever,” Concepcion said. The clinic suggested more sessions, at an additional cost. But their money and trust had run out.
Most parents who spoke to The Times about their children’s MERT treatments said the possibility of speech for their nonverbal or minimally verbal children was the primary reason they pursued it, even if it meant taking on debt.
Until recently, more than a dozen MERT clinics around the country, under the headline “Results that ‘Speak,’” cited an “internal double-blind randomized control trial” that had produced striking results: Two out of three patients who had difficulties with verbal and nonverbal communications “experienced improvement” after MERT. In the same trial, the ad copy read, 70% of patients who had trouble maintaining eye contact saw “improved eye contact behavior.”
Four clinics attributed those statistics to Wave.
According to Wave, the source of that claim is a small study of 28 patients that was conducted around 2017 by the Newport Brain Research Laboratory. It has not been published nor vetted by independent scientists. The study was among assets of the now-defunct laboratory that Wave purchased in 2019.
The only part of this work available to the public is an undated poster presentation that roughly outlines the study.
Wave declined to release details of the study or name its authors, but Won described the results. He said 71% of subjects in the group of 14 patients that received MERT instead of a placebo had positive changes in their visual response afterward, and 67% of subjects had positive changes in their verbal communication, according to their parents’ responses on the Childhood Autism Rating Scale, known as CARS.
“I never put much weight into the findings I see in a poster or talk, especially if it isn’t followed by a later peer-reviewed publication,” said Christine Conelea, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School who runs the university’s Non-Invasive Neuromodulation Laboratories.
“Small samples like this aren’t good for establishing the benefits of a treatment, conclusively showing safety or demonstrating that an investigational treatment is better than placebo,” Conelea said.
Statistics taken from the unpublished study have featured prominently on the websites of at least 17 MERT clinics, as well as the primary website for the Brain Treatment Center, a trademark owned by Wave under which many MERT clinics do business.
Won said he was not aware that so many clinics were using the study’s conclusions as a marketing tool. Shortly after The Times asked Wave about the statistics, almost all of those clinics took them down.
“I don’t feel good about it,” he said. “A lot of families benefited from it [MERT], and their children are doing better, and that’s wonderful. But I don’t want to misrepresent or overrepresent things. … I would always want there to be published, peer-reviewed, academically rigorous science to back up a claim.”
Following The Times’ questions, Won said that Wave contacted the study authors and requested that they expedite the preparation and submission of a research paper containing the study results to a peer-reviewed journal. The company has also asked the authors to release the manuscript on a preprint server, a website where scientists can post preliminary findings.
“We need to get that publication out so that people can make informed decisions,” he said. “It would be easier if it’s in the public domain, and other people can critique it and break it down and take it for what it’s worth.”
Manuel Casanova, a retired University of South Carolina professor who spent years studying TMS as a potential autism therapy, questioned why MERT providers had so little empirical data to share after administering the treatment to thousands of autistic patients — a gap, he said, that “raises a red flag as to the therapeutic benefits of the technique.”
MERT providers operate in an “ethical gray area,” said Anna Wexler, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the ethics of emerging technologies.
Doctors can use approved therapies to treat any condition they deem appropriate, Wexler said. But if the condition being treated isn’t the same one for which the therapy has been cleared, providers must be “as transparent as possible” about the evidence they’re relying on, she said. If there is little or no evidence to support MERT’s efficacy for a given condition, she said, “it is unethical for providers to advertise that it is effective.”
“If someone opts for an experimental therapy, that in itself is not problematic,” Wexler said. “What is problematic is if they are making that decision based on erroneous or incorrect beliefs about efficacy.”
Won did not respond to a question about Wexler’s critique.
Nine psychiatrists, psychologists and neurologists with expertise in transcranial magnetic stimulation say there is to date no evidence to suggest this kind of therapy can reliably prompt a nonverbal autistic child to develop speech, or to significantly alter an autistic child’s sensory and communication abilities.
“The plain English is that it’s not there yet, and I have not seen it working convincingly outside of a strong placebo effect,” said Dr. Alexander Rotenberg, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of Boston Children’s Hospital’s Neuromodulation Program.
Peter Enticott, a psychologist at Australia’s Deakin University, is leading a multisite trial of TMS for autism funded by the Australian government. Enticott has spoken with families whose children received MERT from Wave licensees in Australia and were thrilled with the outcomes. But for a scientist, uplifting anecdotes are not a substitute for data.
“It’s too early,” he said. “And I think it’s particularly problematic given that they are charging large amounts of money for an unverified therapy.”
Criticisms of the treatment’s pricing were “not a reflection of Wave Neuroscience,” Won said. “The comments seem to be objecting to the realities of the healthcare market.”
Scientists consulted by The Times said they would encourage families interested in TMS and autism to look for a clinical trial that would provide the treatment free of charge in exchange for using the patient’s data in a study.
“I would consider this something that should be researched, but nobody should be paying $5,000 to $10,000 out of pocket for this,” said Alycia Halladay, chief science officer at the Autism Science Foundation, one of five autism advocacy groups The Times consulted that said there is not enough evidence for them to recommend MERT.
Despite his disappointment, VanCott does not regret his decision. Had he not pursued the treatment, he would always have wondered whether he had turned down something that could have helped his son — no matter how high the cost, no matter how slim the chance.
“I mean, being able to sleep at night?” he said. “What’s that worth?”
Thomas VanCott said he signed up son Jake for MERT sessions because he did not want to be wondering whether he turned down something that could have helped his child.
(Claudia Paul / For The Times)
Stargazing, it turns out, doesn’t have to be a stationary activity.
On railway lines around the world, from the Arctic Circle to New Zealand, a select set of evening train excursions take riders deep into dark-sky territory — some en route to remote station stops decked out with telescopes, others featuring onboard astronomers.
These five rail journeys (all of which are accessible) range from two- to three-hour desert outings to a hunt for the northern lights. One route even has a planetarium on rails. All promise a renewed appreciation of train travel — and of our pale blue dot’s improbable place in the cosmos.
Nevada
The Great Basin Star Train
Any stargazing train worth its salt requires one thing: a dark sky. The Star Train resoundingly checks that box, traveling through a part of eastern Nevada that is one of the least-populated places in the lower 48.
Run by the Nevada Northern Railway in partnership with nearby Great Basin National Park, the train departs the historic East Ely Depot, in Ely, Nev., early enough in the evening to catch the sunset over the Steptoe Valley, and then cruises through darkening skies to its destination: a remote corner of the desert appropriately called Star Flat, where a stargazing platform outfitted with telescopes awaits. There, riders disembark (equipped with red-light necklaces to help preserve their night vision) and take turns viewing the cosmos, guided by professional astronomers. (Last year’s onboard stargazing guides came from Caltech; in previous seasons, the National Park Service’s Dark Rangers, who specialize in night-sky activities, accompanied trips.)
The Star Train makes its two-and-a-half-hour round-trip journey most Friday evenings between mid-May and mid-September, and tickets ($65 for adults) can sell out almost a year in advance — though members of the Nevada Northern Railway Museum get early access. Alternatively, the railroad’s more frequent Sunset, Stars and Champagne excursions trade telescopes for desert sundowners but feature the same expert stargazers and the same Nevada night sky, which is often dark enough to see the Milky Way with the naked eye.
New Mexico
The Stargazer
While plenty of heritage railroads across the United States offer twilight rides and nighttime excursions, at the moment there’s only one other dedicated, regularly scheduled stargazing train in North America besides the Star Train: the Stargazer, operated by Sky Railway, in Santa Fe, N.M.
Much like its Nevada counterpart, the Stargazer makes a two-and-a-half-hour round trip through dark-sky country, though in this case, the journey really is the destination, because it doesn’t make any stops. More of a rolling night-sky revue, the Stargazer features live music and professional astronomers who share their celestial knowledge and stories as the train rumbles into the vast Galisteo Basin south of Santa Fe. Sky Railway’s colorfully painted trains feature heated, enclosed passenger cars to stave off the evening chill and flatbed cars open to the night sky.
Departing from the Santa Fe Depot downtown, the train normally runs once a month (adult tickets from $139, including a champagne welcome toast). Sky Railway also occasionally schedules excursions for special celestial events.
New Zealand
Matariki Rail Experience
With its alpine landscapes and rugged coastline, New Zealand’s South Island is practically tailor-made for scenic daytime train journeys. But when night falls, the sparsely populated island — home to the Southern Hemisphere’s largest International Dark Sky Reserve — is heaven for stargazers, too.
This year, Great Journeys New Zealand, which operates the country’s tourist-centric long-distance trains, is offering a special nighttime run of the Coastal Pacific, whose route skirts the South Island’s northeastern coast. Timed to Matariki, the Maori new year, which is heralded by the first rising of the Pleiades star cluster, the eight-hour round trip from Christchurch is a cultural and astronomical celebration.
After the first half of a four-course onboard dinner, the train arrives in Kaikoura, in dark-sky country, for a guided stargazing stop with a range of telescopes — and fire pits and a night market. (The rain plan involves a virtual stargazing session at the local museum using virtual reality headsets.) Dinner resumes back on the train as it returns to Christchurch. This is a strictly limited engagement, on the rails for one night only: July 11, for 499 New Zealand dollars, about $295, per person.
In the far northern reaches of Norway, inside the Arctic Circle, you can ride a train that chases another wonder of the night sky: the aurora borealis. Twice a week from October to March, the Northern Lights Train takes its riders into the dark polar night in pursuit of the aurora’s celestial light show.
From the remote town of Narvik, the train travels along the Ofoten Railway, the northernmost passenger rail line in Western Europe. The destination on this three-hour round-trip excursion (1,495 kroner, or about $160) is Katterat, a mountain village accessible only by rail and free of light pollution, making it an ideal place to spot the aurora. At the Katterat station, local guides and a campfire cookout await, as does a lavvu, the traditional tent used by the Sami people of northern Scandinavia, offering a respite from the cold (as well as hot drinks and an open fire for roasting sausages).
And aboard the train, the lights stay off, which means that on a clear night, you might even catch the northern lights on the way there and back.
Leave it to Japan to take the stargazing train to another level.
The High Rail 1375 train — so named because it runs along Japan’s highest-elevation railway line (the high point is 1,375 meters, or roughly 4,500 feet, above sea level) — is one of JR East’s deliberately unhurried Joyful Trains, which the railway company describes as “not only a means of transportation, but also a package of various pleasures.” This astronomy-themed train certainly packs plenty of joy into its two cars, with seat upholstery inspired by constellations, a snack bar, a souvenir shop and a planetarium car with a library of astronomy books and images of the night sky projected onto its domed ceiling.
The train makes two daytime runs along the mountainous Koumi Line, taking a little over two hours to travel between Kobuchizawa (accessible by express train from Tokyo) and Komoro. But the main event is the High Rail Hoshizora (“Starry Sky”) evening trip, which includes an extended stop at Nobeyama Station (the highest in the country) for a guided stargazing session. A one-way ride on High Rail 1375, which runs on weekends and occasional weekdays, requires a seat reservation if you’re traveling on a Japan Rail pass, or a stand-alone ticket plus seat reservation (2,440 yen, or about $15). And remember to preorder a special “Starry Sky” bento box.
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Much of the praise for Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s debut book in 2021, “The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred,” lauded the way she used personal experiences in physics to discuss the social and political inequities that exist alongside scientific breakthroughs.
“It contains the narrative of dreams deferred,” Dr. Prescod-Weinstein, a physicist at the University of New Hampshire, explained in April at a bookstore in Chicago. But its very existence, she said, also “represented a dream deferred, because that was not the dream of what my first book was going to be.”
Her second book reclaims that dream. Released on April 7, “The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie” is less pain and more play, a homage to the big questions that made Dr. Prescod-Weinstein want to become a physicist in the first place. She begins the book by asserting that it is humanity’s duty to uncover and share the story of our universe. Her latest offering toward that duty is a journey through physics that is tightly bound to her own cultural roots.
In the midst of a multicity book tour, Dr. Prescod-Weinstein spoke with The New York Times about guiding readers through the cosmos from her own point of view and about some of the art, poetry and literature she drew on to shape that journey. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Why include so many references to poetry in a book about physics?
I knew poetry before I knew physics. It was part of my upbringing. I loved A.A. Milne’s “Now We Are Six” and Edward Lear’s “Nonsense Limericks.” Both of my books draw their subtitles from Langston Hughes’s “Montage of a Dream Deferred.”
Adrienne Rich’s poem “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children” became a guiding light for how my work would move in the world. It also opened up for me that I need language. That’s true among physicists. Even an equation is a sentence; even an equation is telling a story.
As physicists, we’re always working in language to connect what we learn with what we know. Poetry is one of the first places that my brain goes to draw those links. Language, as it moves in my brain, is often in Hughes and Rich and Shakespeare. Those are the lines that flicker up for me.
What if we got away from the argument that doing cosmology and particle physics is practical or materially valuable? Then we have to accept that we’re like the poets. What we do is important culturally in the same way poetry is. A piece of this book is me saying there is value in banding with the poets, and fighting for the value of being curious and trying to articulate the world with whatever tools are available to us. Not for the purposes of selling something, but for the purpose of fulfilling our humanity.
Another theme throughout the book is the story of Lewis Carroll’s Alice and her adventures in Wonderland.
Being a science adviser on future installments in The Legendborn Cycle, a fantasy series written by Tracy Deonn, is one reason Alice is in my book. It has allowed me to be open to the playful side that physics, as a Black queer person, can take from you. I wanted the book to be whimsical, because that’s who I was when I first arrived in physics, and that’s who I want to be when I die.
Part of the call of quantum physics is to change what our sense and sensibility are. When you look at the world through this framework — like the idea that particles have spin but don’t really spin — it sounds like nonsense. Except that’s literally how the universe works. Physics is our “through the looking glass.” It’s real.
Your first chapter invites readers to reflect on the metaphors used to describe the universe, like the “fabric” of space-time or electromagnetic “fields.” Why open in this way?
A lot of books about quantum physics start with its history. I wanted as much as possible not to just do that. I had actually planned to start it with the Stern-Gerlach experiment of 1922. But then I read an essay by the poet Natasha Trethewey about abiding metaphors and started to ask myself what the abiding metaphors of my physics training were.
We don’t ever take time in our classes to ask, “What do we mean when we say ‘space’? What do we mean when we say ‘space-time’?” There are these metaphysical questions that I often told myself were for the philosophers. This book was me letting myself think of them as physics.
One metaphor you invoke is the “edge” — not only the edge of the universe and of scientists’ understanding, but also existing at the edge of certain identities.
In “Disordered Cosmos,” I talked a lot about being at the margin and looking toward the center. With “The Edge of Space-Time,” I’m choosing to make the margin the center of the story. Part of that was me fully embracing what makes me the physicist I am. I’m an L.A. Dodgers fan. I love “Alice in Wonderland.” I love “Star Trek.” There’s lots of all of that in the book.
Picking a metaphor is a culturally situated decision. I wrote a line that says black holes are the best laid edges in the universe. I did, at some point, think that only some people were going to get this. But for people who don’t understand the reference to Black hairstyles, the sentence is still legible. And for those who do, it will feel like we just had an in-group moment. Anyone who thinks about laying their edges deserves to have an in-group moment in a physics book. Because we are physics, too.
Black students are often told that if you want to be a physicist, then you will make yourself as close to such-and-such mold as possible. At a young age, we have this understanding that whiteness and science are associated with each other, but we are also witnessing in ourselves that this can’t be entirely correct. There’s this narration of, “Well, sure, you can be Black in physics, but that means you have to acclimate to the ‘in physics’ part, and never that physics has to acclimate to the Black part.”
I use the example of rapper Big K.R.I.T.’s song “My Sub Pt. 3 (Big Bang),” in which someone tries to wire up subwoofers in his car but fries the wires because he doesn’t ground them properly. I don’t know if Big K.R.I.T. would think of this as a science story, but I think we should learn to read it as one. Not to contain it in science, but to say it overlaps there. This can be a rap song. It can be about the cultural significance of subwoofers and the Big Bang as a metaphor for the beat. And it can also be about cosmology and about how everybody who wires up cars or does this kind of work is a scientist, too.
How do you want readers to approach this book?
There is this feeling that you’re supposed to read a book like this and walk away an expert. That’s actually not the point of this book at all. The point is to wander through physics. Even if math terrifies you, you are entitled to spend some time with it.
And so here, I have made you a book with a bunch of tidbits on the oddities of the universe. The universe is stranger and more queer and more wonderful and more full of possibility than whatever limitations you might be experiencing right now. Physics challenges what we are told are social norms. For example, non-trinary neutrinos are fundamental to our standard model of physics.
“Non-trinary,” as in they shift between three different forms.
Non-trinary is natural. It’s such a challenge to the current anti-trans rhetoric that says people can only ever be one thing.
I don’t need my book to be the most important thing that someone reads. But I want it to be a source of hope. If it reminds you that, as my mom says, the universe is bigger than the bad things that are happening to us, then that’s all you need to remember. I’m good with that.
In late February, animal rights activists flew a drone over a calf ranch in the Central Valley and watched as workers kicked and punched the animals.
For the record:
7:15 p.m. May 12, 2026This article has been updated to reflect that no calves from Agresti Calf Ranch have ever gone on to be used for Clover Sonoma milk supplies, and the calf ranch opened only in 2025. In additional comments, Clover Sonoma also said in the future, no animals from Agresti Calf Ranch will be part of its supply.
Footage reviewed by The Times shows a worker pulling a calf by the nose with pliers.
It shows two workers removing the budding horns of a calf with a hot iron. While one held the frightened animal’s head, the other — wearing a sweatshirt with an image of the Virgin Mary — applied the iron to a horn. After a puff of smoke, the calf fell to its side, appearing motionless.
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Both male and female calves produce horns. To prevent injury to the animals and their handlers, these are commonly removed. Humane guidelines require anesthesia.
The footage was collected by the group Direct Action Everywhere, known for tactics including releasing beagles from medical breeding facilities and abused calves from farms. It was shot at the Agresti Calf Ranch in Ceres, near Modesto, which is certified by the American Humane Society for its ethical treatment of animals. The workers could not be reached for comment. One was subsequently terminated, the Humane Society said.
The Agresti Calf Ranch opened in 2025 and is operated by the owners of Double D Dairy, just up the road. Double D Dairy owns more than 10,000 cows across several operations.
The owner of Double D, Dominic Assali, declined to answer questions in person. A phone number for the dairy online is disconnected. In response to an email to his personal account, Assali said, “Animal welfare and safety are incredibly important to us, and we have a zero-tolerance policy for any mistreatment.
“We’ll always take immediate, thorough action to address any operational issues, as we have in this instance,” the email said.
The American Humane Society is a 150-year-old nonprofit focused on animal welfare. Among other things, it certifies animal safety on farms as well as on movie sets. In a statement, it said only 10% of animals raised on farms in the U.S. are certified as humanely treated.
Assali is the grandson of the farm’s founders, Harold and Marlene Agresti. He is a board member of Western United Dairies, the largest dairy trade group in California.
The mistreatment captured on video has also created a headache for a prominent California sustainable milk brand, Clover Sonoma, based in Sonoma County.
It gets 10% to 15% of its milk from Double D, and Assali and his family are featured on Clover Sonoma’s website. No calves from Agresti Calf Ranch have ever gone on to be used in Clover Sonoma milk supplies, the company said in a statement. It’s unclear whether the abused calves were being raised for beef or dairy.
A Clover Sonoma sign hung outside the main dairy complex on a recent visit.
Clover Sonoma markets its milk, yogurt and cheese products as humanely sourced and environmentally sound. It was the first dairy company to receive a cruelty-free certification from the American Humane Society in 2000. The website also features a “Our Promise” page, which states the company demands “the humane treatment of animals.”
“We were deeply concerned by the reported mistreatment of some cows captured on video at Agresti Calf Ranch during a separate cow operation,” the company said in an email.
“The rough handling shown at Agresti Calf Ranch is contrary and inconsistent with the humane practices we have fostered for decades and which we demand of all our suppliers.”
Clover Sonoma said it suspended business with Double D as soon as it became aware of the incidents and began “a rigorous audit,” which just ended.
“Clover and the American Humane Society have concluded that the mistreatment was an isolated issue, not systemic or reflective of Agresti Calf Ranch’s personnel. Corrections have been made, including the termination of the employee in the video. As such, we are comfortable reinstating the milk from Double D Dairy.”
After this story published, Clover went further and said a condition of Double D’s reinstatement will be that no animals from Agresti Calf Ranch will be part of Clover’s dairy supply.
A statement from the Humane Society said Clover Sonoma is working with Double D to strengthen its whistleblower policy and training, and has “reiterated its commitment to ongoing independent, third-party audits,” with both announced and unannounced visits.
Clover Sonoma mainly buys and processes milk from dairies in verdant Sonoma County, as the company’s marketing suggests. Double D Dairy is one of its few suppliers in the Central Valley, which is associated more with industrial-scale agriculture.
On a recent weekday, the calf ranch and dairy farm were visible from a public road. Holstein calves, a popular dairy breed, could be seen in cages through small trees in front of the enclosures. The sound of mooing and a pressure washer could be heard. The smell of manure and dirt wafted in the humid air.
Most dairy companies remove calves from their mothers after birth, raising them separately so they don’t take the mother’s commercially valuable milk. Some dairy farms send calves out to third-party calf ranches for rearing. Others raise them on-site. Female calves are typically raised to become milk cows. Male calves are sent away to become beef or other meat-based products, such as pet food.
A 2025 State Water Board document shows the farm houses an average of 700 calves at any one time, with a maximum 1,400.
The Direct Action Everywhere activists were recently on a public road near Double D’s main farm, flying a drone over the property. Within 30 minutes of their arrival, seven Stanislaus County sheriff’s vehicles arrived and surrounded the activists.
A heavily armed officer asked to see the drone pilot’s Federal Aviation Administration license, which he provided. After confirming it was valid, a sheriff’s deputy — one of nine at the scene — told the activists they could remain on the road but could not trespass.
Asked about the heavy response, a deputy said there had been several recent violent incidents from animal rights groups at the site, and mentioned the groups had sent in “busloads” of activists.
The Times reached out to the Sheriff’s Office to get more details about those events but did not get a response.
Temple Grandin, author and professor of livestock medicine at Colorado State University, said that punching and kicking livestock is considered abusive.
An expert in livestock welfare, she said that handlers can tap, push and nudge animals. But if the level of force goes beyond what could bend the side of a cardboard box, “it’s abuse. Period.”
She said the calves’ reaction to the hot iron indicates that pain medication, such as lidocaine, was not applied before the procedure. Double D did not respond to a question about whether medication was given before the procedure.
A pickup truck rolls by the barns at Agresti Calf Ranch at sunrise in Ceres.
(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)
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