Scientific American
Scientists taking partisan stands on the coronavirus: Here comes the political backlash
Today, although most Americans trust information from physicians and medical scientists, public trust in the scientific community has become increasingly partisan, and conservatives and ...
Matrix redux: It’s actually possible that we are virtual beings living in an AI computer simulation
Some have tried to identify ways in which we can discern if we are simulated beings. Others have attempted to ...
Do psychiatric drugs do more harm than good to treat mental illness?
In the book [Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America], which ...
Understanding COVID vaccine skepticism: It’s not all anti-science
Even though vaccines have virtually eliminated the risk of many preventable diseases, there has been an increase in refusal and ...
Can psychedelic drugs change your religious or political beliefs?
Psychotherapy assisted by psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in “magic mushrooms,” seems to be remarkably effective in treating a wide range ...
How much will vaccines help knowing COVID reinfection is possible?
[V]accines mimic a natural immune response, to the effect of developing long-term and in some cases lifelong immunity to reinfection ...
Our dreams reveal the escalating, suppressed anxiety spawned by COVID
We live day and night inside the same walls. We fear touching groceries that arrive at our doorstep. If we ...
Viewpoint: Trump’s inflammatory appeals triggered support for him in 2016. Here’s why scientists think it won’t happen again
In the 2016 election, undecided voters were influenced by the brain’s fear-driven impulses—more simply, gut instinct—once they arrived inside the ...
CBD is hyped as a ‘miracle cure’ for just about everything. Here is the reality
So, is CBD a miracle cure? Despite its promise, if you’re someone who hopes to read that science proves CBD ...
Dyslexia shows the inborn nature of visual imagining and cognition
Reading is a learned skill; no one is born reading. But learning to read relies on inborn human capacities for ...
Video: Antarctica research shows how isolation changes the brain
As humans grapple with pandemic-induced isolation, science is starting to offer insight into what may be happening in our brains when ...
Only 67% of schools teach evolution is ‘settled science’ although teaching creationism in schools is on the wane
American teachers have not always been afforded the luxury of teaching evolution forthrightly. John Thomas Scopes, for example, was famously ...
Can you really exercise your brain?
Who wouldn’t want a better memory? After all, our recollections are fragile and can be impaired by diseases, injuries, mental ...
Why we lie and the challenge of being honest
We lie when we think we can get away with it. We lie more in groups, especially if we see other ...
‘Complicated, messy and random’: Synthesizing old and new perspectives on human evolution
Darwin made astute observations about our kind and predictions about our ancient past based on the information that was available ...
IF – intermittent fasting: How and why it works
IF comes in three main flavors: alternate-day fasting, when people alternate between feast days (eating normally or a little extra) and ...
Horse antibody therapies to contain COVID under development in Latin America
Borrowing from decades of experience in producing snake antivenoms, scientists, veterinarians and technicians at a scientific and technical institute in ...
COVID spurs fears of surge in suicides
The rate of suicide—the second leading cause of death in the U.S. among people ages 10 to 34 and the ...
Health monitors you can draw on your skin with electronic pen and ink
Wearable sensor technology, which helps doctors check a variety of health indicators, has in recent years advanced from bulky devices ...
COVID stay-at-home orders have ramped up anorexia, bulimia and binge-eating
Recent research indicates that pandemic-related stay-at-home orders have ramped up anorexia, bulimia and binge-eating disorder symptoms. A study published last ...
9 COVID conspiracy theories and myths debunked
Even with widely available evidence to the contrary, beliefs are hard to change. Here are some of the most insidious ...
Cancer testing breakthrough: Experimental blood test can detect disease up to four years before symptoms appear
By using a blood test, [an] international team was able to diagnose cancer long before symptoms appeared in nearly all the ...
Fewer infants test positive for the coronavirus. Understanding why could help all of us
The initial data suggest that infants make up a small fraction of people who have tested positive for COVID-19. A ...
Back to normal by Christmas? By spring? COVID-19 eludes timelines
Many prominent business and political leaders downplayed the pandemic in its early stages. As a result, most business owners and ordinary citizens initially perceived ...
World War II Jewish Warsaw ghetto in provides blueprint for how US might contain coronavirus
A paper published on [July 24] in Science Advances reports on a sophisticated mathematical analysis that shows how personal hygiene, quarantines, social distancing and ...
Pangalactic intelligence: Here’s a guess about how many aliens in the universe
[I]n excess of four billion years ago, practically as soon as our planet had sufficiently cooled from its fiery formation, ...
Infographic: Power of evolution? How oak trees came to dominate North American forests
Over the course of some 56 million years, oaks, which all belong to the genus Quercus, evolved from a single undifferentiated ...
What brain wiring has to do with cognitive differences in humans and other animals
A persistent question about [brain] connectomes has to do with what, if anything, distinctive wiring patterns have to do with ...
