By Sheeva Azma
The “Science in the Epstein files” series persists thanks to a community of concerned people who, like me, care about who is rewarded in science — and why.
Neither journalism nor science are individual endeavors — they are a team effort. While one person often gets the credit, the truth is that there are many others behind the scenes helping make everything possible. In fact, so much great stuff happens behind the scenes, rather than with one’s name attached, that I have come to enjoy the ghostwriter’s life.
In this project, which I have dubbed “Science in the Epstein files,” I get to be lucky enough to take credit for my work. However, it’s not all me — it’s thanks to a community of concerned people who care as much about this topic as I do to help me research and come up with story ideas to post across our various channels — currently, Substack, Instagram, and our blog.
As I have discussed at least a couple times, and often in our Instagram reels, exposing the role of scientists in the Epstein files has been a community effort. People have reached out to me in Instagram DMs and comments, via email, and even in professional settings about things they are piecing together about science in the Epstein files.
In this blog, I share some of the Instagram reels in our shortform video series, #ScienceInTheEpsteinFiles, were conceptualized thanks to community feedback and concerns. While I didn’t realize it at the time, the “Science in the Epstein files” series started when I found my professor in the Epstein files.
In case you’re wondering what happened to that professor, he was teaching at UCLA when I made that discovery. A bunch of people from the local community showed up to his office to protest around that same time, some after seeing my reel, and all the public pressure led him to resign from UCLA. So, yes, collective action from the public works. These scientists apply for taxpayer-funded grants and they do research to help us — so we have an obligation to call out scientists’ unsavory behavior when it conflicts with the goal of such mission- and curiosity-driven science: to help humanity.
On our Instagram, we started this short-form video content endeavor with something like 600 followers, and now, we are at just over 2000, as of writing this post in mid-May 2026. We’ve built a community of people who care about this issue as much of us, and honestly, I’m living for the speaking of truth to power made possible by the power of the people.
In case you were wondering, I have no plans to “go big or go home” and rocket up to thousands and thousands more followers — talking to a small, passionate group of people who care about the issues of power and prestige in science, and who are asking great questions about why all of this happened, is all part of me living my dream life of speaking truth to power as an investigative journalist.
Here are some reels that I developed after feedback from this wonderful community of viewers (of our video content) and readers (of our written content):
- Epstein’s deep ties to the famous Interlochen, a summer arts camp in Michigan. After I posted this reel, a commenter alerted me that he is known to have groomed at least one student from there.
- The role of Linda Stone in the Epstein files. She connected Epstein with Joi Ito, the now disgraced head of the MIT Media Lab who accepted millions of dollars from Epstein and even described the two of them as being “of the same mind.”
- The idea for the reel, “This scientist thanked Epstein in her PhD thesis,” came from a series of direct messages or DMs from an anonymous source who was concerned about Corina Tarnita’s emails in the Epstein files and sent an annotated list of Epstein files to me to review and talk about.
- Many people have written me about Epstein’s interest in genetic engineering for potentially nefarious purposes, which formed the basis of this reel, “Epstein and ‘designer babies’.”
- After someone mentioned to me that they wanted to know more about Epstein’s academic background, I published this reel, “Jeffrey Epstein’s educational background and STEM teaching career.”
- Several in my DMs have mentioned that they are concerned about Epstein’s affiliation with BitCoin, so I published this reel, “Epstein helped develop BitCoin.”
- Epstein’s Zorro Ranch was a topic that came up numerous times in various conversations, which led me to a several-hour investigation of two scientists that reportedly traveled to the ranch together to meet up with what Epstein called “a lot” of scientists: “Scientist Meetup at Epstein Ranch“
- Someone asked me about it, so I made a reel about “What it’s like to take a class with an Epstein-affilated prof.”
- When I initially posted about Epstein’s deception research, someone commented and wanted to know more about some of the deception research papers Epstein and friends were emailing around, so I did a reel on that, too.
- A woman reached out to me to tell me about Epstein’s ideas about eugenics and race, particularly for what she called “marginalized communities,” and urged me to look up the “n-word” in the Epstein files. I did a reel on that.
- A commenter reached out to me to ask me to talk about Epstein’s interest in telepathy research, so I did.
- I got a request to talk about Robert Trivers, who died right after that, before I could get to it, so I did a posthumous reel about him talking about how the New York Times covered his Epstein ties in his obituary.
- Someone reached out to me to talk about Epstein’s ties to “savant syndrome,” so I did.
- I had some interesting discussions in the DMs about the reach of Epstein’s power in government which led me to produce reels on Epstein friends’ White House, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, and even ARPA-H, which is a sort of “health DARPA.”
- Lastly, I put together this reel together about Jeffrey Epstein’s lost cell samples after I saw a post about the topic that only had 27 views on LinkedIn. The person who posted the original post said I could repost the story, and provided his comments.
The story of science in the Epstein files continues, unfortunately
For more, check out our Substack, Instagram, and blog. Contact me if you have any tips or suggestions for the “Science in the Epstein files” series.
Fancy Comma, LLC 