Newsletter GLP Human
Pet love: Humans nurture their animals as they parent their children. Here’s the evolutionary reason why
Have you noticed more cats riding in strollers lately? Or bumper stickers that read, “I love my granddogs”? You’re not ...
GLP Podcast: Trauma changes your DNA? Lifelike sex robots; Have we cured leukemia?
Can traumatic life experiences leave an imprint on our DNA that we pass down to our children? Get ready, because ...
Some endangered species can no longer survive in the wild. So should we alter their genes to protect them?
Around the world, populations of many beloved species are declining at increasing rates. According to one grim projection, as many as ...
What science says about the future of COVID-19
With pandemic fatigue becoming more intense, there is increasing speculation about when the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, might become ...
Understanding the ‘runner’s high’: How exercising creates a natural marijuana-like euphoria
Many people have experienced reductions in stress, pain and anxiety and sometimes even euphoria after exercise. What’s behind this so-called ...
Question the ‘lab leak’ theory but don’t call it a conspiracy
A warning: This article will not tell you whether SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab and set off the Covid-19 pandemic, ...
GLP Podcast: Don’t ‘cancel’ Joe Rogan?; Psychopaths among us; Green Revolution saved $83 trillion
The recent campaign to "cancel" comedian Joe Rogan for promoting COVID misinformation highlights a troubling trend in science communication. High-functioning ...
Viewpoint: Anti-GMO groups ‘using the COVID lab-leak theory to spur opposition to a wide swath of important, even life-saving, biotechnologies’
Hoping to keep their cause alive in the wake of the pandemic, the anti-GMO movement has glommed on to a ...
Sandy From the Mountains dies from COVID-19, leaving a message to the unvaxxed
Sandy and her husband lived in a cabin nestled into a mountainside in a small town in the Rockies, next ...
Viewpoint: ‘Sovietizing’ Western science? Conflating STEM research with fashionable ideologies raises Orwellian concerns
Earlier this year, I (Anna) did something that my friends feared I would come to regret: I publicly spoke out ...
COVID immunity: Is it stronger from infection or vaccination?
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, a University of California-Irvine psychiatry professor, felt he didn’t need to be vaccinated against covid because he’d ...
GLP Podcast: Genetics of sugar cravings; Male birth control; CRISPR-edited apples coming soon?
We all crave sugar on occasion, and geneticists say they've found some of the genes that may have driven this ...
‘Byzantine regulations’: Here are the human health and environmental reasons why we need to aggressively embrace GMOs and gene editing
Organisms developed with so-called new breeding techniques (NBTs) like CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing have earned widespread support from farmers and scientists ...
Let food be thy medicine: How GMO tomatoes could help Parkinson’s patients
An apple a day might keep the doctor away, but soon the garden’s preventative prescription for 60 thousand Americans might ...
Are geniuses more likely to commit crimes than people of average intelligence?
“Our society tends to regard as a sickness any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system ...
Will glow-in-the-dark materials someday light our cities?
Around the year 1603, Italian shoemaker and amateur alchemist Vincenzo Casciarolo tried smelting some especially dense stone he had found ...
GLP Podcast: Academic freedom has limits? UK backtracks on neonic ban; ‘Non-GMO’ tearless onions
Does academic freedom protect professors who spread scientific nonsense online? The UK appears to be backtracking on a pesticide ban ...
Infographic: How is surrogacy regulated around the world?
Surrogacy regulation can differ wildly from state to state and country to country. Take a look at these infographics to ...
Dangerous environmental neurotoxins are on the rise and climate change could make it worse. Can anything be done?
In the summer of 2021, a toxic, smoky haze stemming from Western wildfires wafted across large parts of the United States, ...
Determining when life biologically begins is too fuzzy to give clarity to the abortion debate
I’m a biologist. A neuroscientist, actually. Since I received my PhD in Biological Psychology from the University of Chicago, I’ve ...
GLP Podcast: 10 ‘stupid’ food memes; COVID drugs are here; What makes someone a narcissist?
People believe a lot of nonsense about food and farming; let's debunk the top-10 worst of these "truisms." The FDA ...
Ongoing dispute over the origins of COVID-19 raises a prickly question: Should consensus play a role in science?
After having been told for over a year that there was a scientific consensus that Covid had a natural origin ...
5 human species that played a role in our evolutionary history
We’re so used to the idea of being the only people around that it seems outlandish to think that not ...
YouTube’s anti-vax ban: Necessary public health measure or unjustified censorship?
YouTube triggered an uproar [recently], announcing that it would take “down several video channels associated with high-profile anti-vaccine activists including ...
How did this acupuncture study get published in Nature?
Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, an unfortunately all-too-common topic for me was the proliferation of dubious acupuncture ...
Molnupiravir vs paxlovid: What’s the difference between the two approved COVID antivirals?
Following the FDA's granting of Emergency Use Authorization to Merck's molnupiravir and Pfizer's Paxlovid, the only two approved direct-acting antiviral ...
What makes narcissists tick?
Chances are you’ve met a narcissist. Someone who thinks they’re better than everyone else, dominates the conversation and loves the ...
