Science & Society

  1. Science & Society

    These are Science News’ favorite books of 2021

    Our favorite books covered the Big Bang theory, human evolution, gene editing, how to define life, pseudoscience and more.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    A massive 8-year effort finds that much cancer research can’t be replicated

    A project aiming to reproduce nearly 200 top cancer experiments found only a quarter could be replicated.

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  3. Climate

    Climate change could make Virginia’s Tangier Island uninhabitable by 2051

    Tangier Island could be lost to rising seas sooner than previously realized. Whether to save the island or move its residents remains undecided.

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  4. Science & Society

    How missing data makes it harder to measure racial bias in policing

    Police officers rarely record nonevents, such as drawing a gun without firing. Failing to account for that missing information can obscure racial bias.

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  5. Life

    ‘Life as We Made It’ charts the past and future of genetic tinkering

    A new book shatters illusions that human meddling with nature has only just begun.

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  6. Health & Medicine

    No, COVID-19 vaccines won’t make you infertile

    Contrary to misinformation spread by Aaron Rodgers and Nicki Minaj, neither the Pfizer, Moderna nor J&J vaccines cause infertility, data show.

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  7. Anthropology

    ‘The Dawn of Everything’ rewrites 40,000 years of human history

    A new book recasts human social evolution as multiple experiments with freedom and domination that started in the Stone Age.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    How to choose a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot

    To help you choose between the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 boosters, one reporter looked to the evidence and consulted experts.

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  9. Psychology

    Scientists should report results with intellectual humility. Here’s how

    Foregrounding a study’s uncertainties and limitations could help restore faith in the social sciences.

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  10. Health & Medicine

    Epidemics have happened before and they’ll happen again. What will we remember?

    A century’s worth of science has helped us fend off infectious pathogens. But we have a lot to learn from the people who lived and died during epidemics.

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  11. Psychology

    Nostalgia may have bona fide benefits in hard times, like the pandemic

    Once described as a disease, nostalgia’s reputation is much improved. Researchers hope to develop mental health therapies that trigger these memories.

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  12. Science & Society

    Methods of getting results from real-world experiments win 2021 economics Nobel

    David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens share the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for developing a science of naturally occurring social studies.

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