Branding With Bonobos? A Conservation Fee Might Help Save Them.
A concept long floated in the scientific literature suggests a royalty fee on using images of iconic species could help protect them. Indeed, even small contributions from the private sector, some...
View ArticleIn Alaska, A Mystery Over Disappearing Whales
With climate change and other human activities reshaping the world at an alarming rate, belugas will have to rely on innovative cultural practices to adapt. But among the whales — and the Indigenous...
View ArticleThrough an Artist’s Eye, Scientific Tools Help Tell Vital Stories
Using tools originally intended for scientific and military purposes, photographer Richard Mosse captures the systematic destruction of the delicate ecosystems. His work demonstrates how such...
View ArticleBook Review: An Unflinching Critique of the Eugenics Movement
In “Control,” geneticist Adam Rutherford grapples with the millennia-long history of engineered attempts to perfect humanity — and how that checkered past ought to shape current science. “Eugenics is a...
View ArticleWith Stool Testing, Fewer Americans May Delay Colon Screening
Although colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death for both men and women in the U.S., many Americans do not get timely colon cancer screening. Some researchers are starting to ask...
View ArticleIn the West, Will Pink Snow Make Droughts Worse?
This summer, researchers from around the country crisscrossed the mountains of Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, Utah, and Montana, looking for pink-stained snow, the hallmark of an algal bloom. These...
View ArticleAn Autopsy After Stillbirth Can Provide Crucial Answers
After a stillbirth, some doctors do not offer patients postmortem exams, and some patients decide against them without fully understanding the potential benefits. Now, researchers and national...
View ArticleWhat the World Can Learn from Brazil’s Shifting Stance on Science
When I visited the country as a Ph.D. student years ago, I was struck by the enthusiasm of the Brazilian researchers I met. But when I returned last year, the optimism I initially saw was largely gone....
View ArticleBook Review: Exploring the Ocean to Find Queer Survival and Joy
In the linked essays in “How Far the Light Reaches,” science writer Sabrina Imbler investigates the fascinating and mysterious lives of marine creatures, from yeti crabs to whales. At turns poignant...
View ArticleA Field at a Crossroads: Genetics and Racial Mythmaking
Many geneticists are currently weighing the societal risks of their work and confronting an unsettling possibility: that some of their field’s most common practices and conventions may serve to...
View ArticleLong Division: The Persistence of Race Science
Enlightenment-era thinkers endorsed crude notions of racial categorization, giving them the sheen of scientific authority. Although modern science proves these concepts facile, the idea of continental...
View ArticleGhosts of Science Past Still Haunt Us. We Can Put Them to Rest.
Conversations about famed scientists who held troubling views on race often devolve into acrimonious circuses of accusation and defense. Then the issue vanishes and we move on, no one any smarter, no...
View ArticleWhat’s in a Genome? The Quest to Decipher Human Difference
The socially constructed racial categories we’ve inherited are only crude and highly imperfect maps of biological variation, with borders shifting, and even evaporating, depending on how geneticists...
View ArticleBorn of Eugenics, Can Standardized Testing Escape Its Past?
Critics say standardized tests cannot escape their roots in eugenics and segregation. Supporters argue it’s not the tests that are biased — at least not today — but rather America’s education system....
View ArticleQ&A: Jonathan Kahn on New Frontiers in Racial Profiling
First used in Europe in the Netherlands in 1999 to determine the biogeographic ancestry of a rape and murder suspect, DNA phenotyping companies now provide police departments with “snapshots” of...
View ArticleA Crude Tool: How Race Has Influenced Breast Cancer Research
Researchers and clinicians still rely on race as a vague stand-in for intertwined strands of social influence and genetic ancestry. But as they learn more about how social stress and ancestral genetics...
View ArticleRace Is a Biological Fiction, and Potent Social Reality
By now, the science is clear: there’s no biological basis for race. But race as a social, cultural, and political construct remains a very real and an animating force. As such, the very disciplines...
View ArticleThe Philanthropic Wellspring of Modern Race Science
Wickliffe Draper invested his inheritance to defend what he saw as one of the most important causes of his time: segregation. In doing this, he helped to skew the science of human difference for...
View ArticleIn the Horn of Africa, a Climate-Fueled Food Catastrophe Looms
In the Horn of Africa, nearly 26 million people are facing extreme hunger due to climate change-induced drought and severe weather, while worldwide nearly 345 million face acute levels of hunger. The...
View ArticleFor Those With Sickle Cell Disease, Inequities in Fertility Care
Sickle cell disease, a disorder that causes blood cells to become misshapen, can lead to strokes, organ damage, and pain. The disease and its treatments can also impact fertility, yet advocates say...
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