An anti-vaccination protester in New York City. Researchers are aiming to improve public trust in science by discussing uncertainty in their communications.Credit: Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket/Getty “Twenty seconds, professor, and no long words.” This is what a BBC producer once told Ian Fells, a chemical engineer at Newcastle University, UK, shortly before Fells was due to […]
Halloween, celebrated on 31 October, originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, during which people lit bonfires and wore costumes to ward off spirits. Today, it’s a holiday synonymous with not just witches and ghouls, but also crows, bats, owls, snakes and other ‘spooky’ creatures. Nature asked nine scientists what inspired them to study […]
Early voting is already taking place in the 2024 US presidential election. Here, voters mark their ballots at a location in Virginia.Credit: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty The US presidential election has divided a nation, but scientists seem to be on the same page. Researchers inside and outside the United States overwhelmingly favour the Democratic candidate […]
Wildfires have existed for as long as plants have been on land. These fires are not inherently bad, but in many regions they are becoming larger, more intense and faster-moving. In the western United States, extensive fires are now commonplace. For example, in July, the Park wildfire in northern California spread to more than 50,000 […]
By analysing citations and authors’ publication records, Argos identifies ‘high risk’ papers that warrant further investigation.Credit: bernie_photo/Getty Which scientific publishers and journals are worst affected by fraudulent or dubious research papers — and which have done least to clean up their portfolio? A technology start-up founded to help publishers spot potentially problematic papers says that […]
Computer scientists have embraced the use of artificial-intelligence tools. Credit: James MacDonald/Bloomberg/Getty Papers with titles or abstracts that mention certain artificial intelligence (AI) methods are more likely to be among the top 5% most-cited works in their field for a given year than are those that don’t reference those techniques, an analysis has found. These […]
Institutions and individuals must treat Black women with respect.Credit: Julian Guadalupe/Alamy Black women have long flagged an insidious issue they have to contend with: misogynoir, a combination of sexism and anti-Black racism that often manifests as a lack of respect and impedes their prospects. The data are clear, the problem is pervasive, including in academia. […]
A retracted paper’s backstory illustrates the challenges of the technique called preregistration.Credit: Getty The retraction of a high-profile paper1 that tested ways to improve the soundness of scientific studies has highlighted the challenges of such ‘reproducibility’ research. The retracted paper’s authors include some of the titans in the field. In the study, published in Nature […]
Credit: Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Colombian neurologist Francisco Lopera, who has died aged 73, changed the course of research on Alzheimer’s disease — both with insights into its mechanism and with his personal, family-centred, long-term approach. He met with thousands of people in a single family, parsing their stories to track hereditary dementia. This […]
Members of the Swedish royal family join laureates on stage at the 2023 Nobel awards ceremony.Credit: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Nobel prize season is always a time of excitement and speculation about potential winners, but it also brings criticism about the constraints imposed by the rules for the world’s most prestigious scientific prizes. Is it, […]
