Politics and conspiracy theories: A way for losers to channel their anger, close ranks and regroup
Conspiracy theories seem to meet psychological needs and can be almost impossible to eradicate. One remedy: Keep them from taking root in the first place. The United States of America was founded on a conspiracy theory. In the lead-up to the War of Independence, revolutionaries argued that a tax on...
Africa and poorest countries to wait until 2023 to get Covid vaccines – experts
Amid a Covid surge in Africa, vaccine promises from richer nations are not enough to bring an early end to the pandemic, experts say. They warn that most people in the poorest countries will need to wait another two years before they are vaccinated against Covid-19. Around 11 billion doses...
Horrors: African asylum seekers in Libyan detention camps ‘lucky to survive from Zintan’
The EU-backed Libyan Coast Guard has intercepted more than 13,000 asylum seekers and migrants at sea this year, preventing them from reaching Europe – already a greater number than in all of 2020. Those intercepted are returned to Libya and sent to detention centres where a well-documented cycle of extortion,...
Mental health: Doctorate students fear visiting counselling centres shared with undergraduates
Although some researchers have supportive mentors and colleagues with whom they can share their struggles, others experience further mental-health challenges owing to hostile work environments. In the 2019 Nature survey of PhD researchers worldwide, 21 per cent of respondents said they had experienced harassment or discrimination in their programmes. Female...
Star-crossed and lovesick Princess Diana had a habit of picking wrong men
Days after the unveiling of Princess Diana Statue in Kensington, London, on what would have been her 60th birthday, the media delved, once again, into her private life and reminded the world of her rarely talked about relationship with Hasnat Khan, a Pakistani surgeon. According to OK, an entertainment magazine,...
Report details how mental health of graduate students is sorely overlooked
Graduate students around the world need more support to manage the mental-health issues, such as depression and anxiety, that they are experiencing at worrying rates, according to a report from two US non-profit organizations. The study was co-produced by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) in Washington DC and the...
Trump Org: Case against developer alleges $1.76m in unreported compensation
Prosecutors this week charged the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer with systematically and illegally evading taxes for years, largely by failing to report compensation. The former president’s development firm and CFO Allen Weisselberg used a variety of schemes to cheat the government, according to an indictment that Manhattan...
‘Psychedelic drugs and the hallucinations they induce can reveal how brains work’
“Everything became imbued with a sense of vitality and life and vividness. If I picked up a pebble from the beach, it would move. It would glisten and gleam and sparkle and be absolutely captivating,” says neuroscientist Anil Seth. “Somebody looking at me would see me staring at a stone...
‘Every time one of us is rejected, dismissed or murdered, I question why I’m still in academia’
As marchers in the United States and around the world filled the streets this past week to protest against police brutality and racial injustice, Black scientists grieved openly on social media, calling for action on racism in society and in science. Many stated ways in which institutions and colleagues, from...
Journalist’s notebook: I saw a woman gang-raped, uterus burned with hot metal rod, so no Tigrayan womb can give birth
Lucy Kassa is an Ethiopian journalist whose reporting on the war in Tigray has exposed massacres, sexual violence, man-made starvation, and other grave human rights abuses. She has been attacked and threatened for her work, but has refused to stay silent. Here, she reflects on the emotional toll of covering...
