Feature

Research collaborations are the lifeblood of science. But it is often challenging to build an inclusive partnership that stays firm in the face of conflict. Once collaborators lose trust in or respect for one another, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to salvage the team, says sociologist Martin Gargiulo,...

Anthropologists used to assume that fatherly behaviour could evolve only in monogamous animals, Stacy Rosenbaum, co-author of Annual Review of Anthropology, says. Species like the mountain gorillas undermine that assumption. They also show that, despite what scientists have long thought, male animals don’t have to choose between spending their energy...

Lee Gettler is hard to get on the phone, for the very ordinary reason that he’s busy caring for his two young children. Among mammals, though, that makes him extraordinary. “Human fathers engage in really costly forms of care,” says Gettler, an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame. In...

There was a reason I asked Julio, my guide, about “hidden” sources of water, such as vines, that Tsimane’ consumed. Dino Nate, my local research assistant and my colleague Kelly Rosinger and I were being taken around the Bolivian Amazon by Julio, one of my Tsimane’ friends. This was after...

We trekked through the Bolivian Amazon, drenched in sweat. Draped head to toe in bug repellent gear, we stayed just ahead of the clouds of mosquitoes as we sidestepped roots, vines and giant ants. My local research assistant Dino Nate, my partner Kelly Rosinger and I were following Julio, one...

The term identity politics was born in 1977, when a group of Black lesbian feminists called the Combahee River Collective released a statement defining their work as self-liberation from the racism and sexism of “white male rule”: “The major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates...

Team science suffers when junior researchers see their career-defining contributions to a paper downplayed. Here’s how to tackle disputes that have the potential to frustrate the best efforts in innovation. “It felt like a slap in the face. It was as though the credit for half of my PhD was...

Technology also offers huge opportunity for broadening the scope and possibilities of education. EdX, one of the largest platforms for massive open online courses (MOOCs), started 2020 with 80 million enrolments. That went up to 100 million by May. Online courses are often based around pre-recorded video lectures with text-based...

The increased number of prisoners of conscience in the world has been linked to proliferation of surveillance technology. Aware of the dangers posed to the right to privacy and association, human rights lawyer and freedom of expression crusader Eitay Mack is pushing for transparency in the Israeli war industry. In...

The Forum on Information and Democracy published yesterday its report titled A New Deal for Journalism. The report presents, among other things, a plan to guarantee up to 0.1 per cent of GDP per year to journalism “in order to preserve its social function for the future”. The document, however,...