Scholars and skeptics warned about Facebook long before its founder was even born. Technology companies keep asking for more and more data and proving they can't be trusted.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
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Analysis and Comment
A fresh look at museum artifacts fills in a gap in the Asian archaeological record and refutes the idea that an advanced technique was imported from the West by early modern humans.
Any amateur politician can engage in lying. President Donald Trump is going further than that. He's engaging in 'post-truth.'
If you're flying during the holidays, you may encounter some emotional support animals. The practice has ticked off many people, especially the airlines. A veterinarian looks at the issues.
Billboards spreading misinformation on the risks of vaccination have popped up around American cities. A bioethicist explains why decisions not to vaccinate children are indefensible.
Researchers have analyzed data from the last 50 years of medals to learn what presidents consider important and what legacy they hope to leave behind.
The Pilgrims repeatedly thanked God for their good fortune. But without two earlier developments, the entire undertaking at New Plymouth would have likely failed.
A behavioral scientist explains why people become vegans, why some meat-eaters find them so irksome and how scientists may be nudging us all toward a more plant-centric existence.
Sharing seeds was common practice among farmers throughout history until the rise of agribusiness. Now seeds are trademarked and regulated, but there's a new place to get them for free: the library.
By the time a building is abandoned and falls into disrepair, its community is already suffering. Michigan scholars suggest it's time to plan for structures' end of life before they even go up.
A new statistical test lets researchers search for similarities between groups. Could this help keep new important findings out of the file drawer?
Health care relies on increasingly sophisticated devices for implanting into the body or monitoring it. Yet most med school graduates are not versed in engineering. That needs to change.
Throughout the movement's history, African Americans and whites lived, worked and protested side-by-side. It was one of the few long-term experiments in American interracial communalism.
Two trucks carrying migrants have gone missing in Veracruz, Mexico. A witness says that '65 children and seven women were sold' to a band of armed men. Other caravan members have reached the border.
The dry, hot, downslope Santa Ana winds of Southern California fan late fall wildfires that have largely traveled through – and are fueled by – homes and other structures.
The California fires are just the most recent in a series of major wildfires. Together, they suggest we need to look at alternative ways of living with fire.
Ninety percent of psychology studies come from countries representing less than 15 percent of the world's population. Researchers are realizing that universalizing those findings might not make sense.
Before augmented reality products and apps take over the world, they'll have to get out of their own way.
While US companies have made significant strides in creating workplaces that are more inclusive of transexual individuals, discrimination and employment penalties remain.
Some say the more than 230 cities that lost their bids for Amazon's second headquarters were dupes in the retailer's game. In fact, they were willing participants with their own aims.
While a record number of women are headed to Congress, a number of conservative measures passed across states. What explains this?
Researchers have tried unsuccessfully for decades to develop a malaria vaccine. Now a new approach, showing promise in mice, suggests it is possible to block mosquitoes from spreading the disease.
White men hold more racial bias toward blacks than white women do, and this harms blacks' health in significant ways. It not only can lead to some diseases but also impedes treatment.
Reporters who cover environment and natural resource issues are commonly threatened and harassed around the world. Some have been killed for coverage that threatens powerful interests.
The system allows voters to pick their first, second- and third-choice candidates – and could encourage more civil campaigns.
As fictional inventors make terrible choices on the big screen, real-world tech innovators can learn from their example how not to make the same kinds of ethical mistakes.
The demographics of name change petitioners today – and the reasons that they give – tell a complicated story of race, class and culture.
About two-thirds of Americans now live in states where marijuana is legal for medicinal or recreational purposes, leading some to worry corporate and Wall Street interests will take over the industry.
In 18 states, parents can choose to exempt their children from vaccines for nonmedical 'philosophical' or 'personal belief' reasons.
The internet makes it easier for discarded stuff to land in someone else's home instead of the dump.
The Voting Rights Act offers language assistance for voters with limited English proficiency. What can we learn from an Idaho county's experience offering foreign-language ballots?
It has taken hundreds, if not thousands, of years to create the juicy, shiny produce that you take for granted at the supermarket. But now there is a faster way to domesticate wild fruits and veggies.
Research and News
Without their devices, regular GPS users take longer to negotiate a route, travel more slowly and make larger navigational errors.
The head of the World Health Organization calls air pollution 'the new tobacco' because it causes millions of preventable deaths yearly. Fine particle pollution is especially deadly.
With California suffering another devastating wildfire year, more people are wondering about whether and how global warming is contributing. A climate scientist explains.
Drastic oxygen losses in the world's oceans millions of years ago coincided with mass extinctions. Scientists see this as a warning about how climate change could affect oceans today.
Climate change is shrinking Arctic sea ice and opening the region to ship traffic. Whales, seals and other marine mammals could be at risk unless nations adopt rules to protect them.
Midterms
Research shows that women work more collaboratively than men in groups and create more inclusive solutions to thorny problems. More women in Washington could bridge America's yawning partisan divide.
Domestic terror
The attack at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and the sending of pipe bombs to critics of the current administration are examples of the increase in the violence on the margins of the right.
Media literacy
The Iffy Quotient measured misinformation on social media in the run-up to the recent elections. Facebook has gotten better at combating untrustworthy links, but Twitter still struggles.
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Research and Expert Database
Analysis from academics around the world
Editors’ Picks
Daaim Shabazz, an international business professor and chess journalist, explains what's at stake as American grandmaster Fabiano Caruana fights for the World Chess Championship in London this month.
Quickly stopping the bleeding caused by wounds from assault weapons is critical. While 'Stop the Bleed' training has worked, a trauma surgeon asks: Wouldn't it be better to stop the need for it?
The de Young Museum of San Francisco recently opened an exhibit devoted to the Islamic fashion scene. Here's how Muslim women's fashions challenge popular stereotypes.
The walkout by thousands of Google employees around the world was historic, both because of who was protesting and what their demands were. It may even mark the start of something new.
The very first cyberattack clogged up the nascent internet, halting digital communications. Now much bigger, the internet is still largely open to – and suffering regularly from – similar attacks.
When immigrants come to the US, it isn't just the people who assimilate. The microbes in their gut also become Westernized after living here. This may predispose them to diseases like obesity.
Fifty years ago, Sly and the Family Stone sang 'We got to live together, I am no better and neither are you.' The words ring just as true today.
Born Farrokh Bulsara, Mercury came from a Parsi family that practiced Zoroastrianism, a religion that influenced Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Space researchers have had a careful approach to robotic exploration of Mars and been hands-off toward Europa and Enceladus. Why is human exploration – and inevitable contamination – of Mars different?
In 1968, Lyndon Johnson's ridicule of presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey as weak and feminine tells us something about how a party of progressives still struggles with the idea of masculinity.
A former middle school teacher offers a series of tips on how educators can teach young people to engage in more civil discourse.
The odds of foreclosure double for families who send their kids off to college, according to two researchers who say their findings show a need for new ways for Americans pay for higher education.
Bolsonaro promised angry Brazilians he would transform their crisis-stricken country. But he didn't say how. Five Brazil experts examine his policies on crime, the economy, women, the Amazon and more.
Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing congressman and former army captain, is Brazil's next president, with 56 percent of votes. Critics see a threat to democracy in his scathing attacks on Brazilian society.
Voters listed health care as one of their biggest concerns in the midterm elections. Were their concerns addressed? The results are mixed.
Most Read past week
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- Which country is best to live in? Our calculations say it’s not Norway
- The counties where the anti-vaccine movement thrives in the US
- Dozens of migrants disappear in Mexico as Central American caravan pushes northward
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