Biologists’ sex puzzle: You have to find a mate and it takes resources to get one
Many organisms dedicate their entire adult lives to finding a mate and producing offspring. The rhythms of sex govern the actions and choices of so many animals that it seems to be a rule of biology: Sex is important. But life’s multifariousness yields some exceptions. A small percentage of animals...
New report accuses Tanzania police, courts of complicity in wildlife crimes
In late November 2020, a judgment was made in an appeal case in the High Court of Tanzania at Mtwara, a small port city near the Mozambique border. The appeal was filed by Tanzania’s Director of Public Prosecutions against Mateso Kasian (also known as ‘Chupi’ which means ‘underwear’ in Kiswahili),...
Work in progress: Psychologists grapple with how to detect a ‘true lie’
Police thought that 17-year-old Marty Tankleff seemed too calm after finding his mother stabbed to death and his father mortally bludgeoned in the family’s sprawling Long Island home. Authorities didn’t believe his claims of innocence and he spent 17 years in prison for the murders. Yet in another case, detectives...
How major wildlife crimes in Tanzania are covered up and convictions quashed
When a Tanzanian court overturned the conviction of a notorious wildlife poacher and ivory trafficker Boniface Matthew Malyango mid-last year, conservationists held their breath. Years of tracking down and assembling the evidence and the resources that were committed to the protection of wildlife and the environment had been dealt a...
‘Fake news is the currency with which opinion shapers peddle their influence’
The growth of fact checking in Africa has established one cardinal fact: sources and spreaders of fake news are routinely opinion shapers. At government level, they are in the executive, the judiciary, the legislature or security formations. Beyond the government, the business community, keen to have advantage over rivals, spreads...
Journals forced to change editorial review processes to combat organised fraud
Journal editors know that if they reject manuscripts they suspect to be fabricated, that might not kill the paper forever. Fraudulent manuscripts can be submitted to multiple journals at the same time: so even if an editor rejects it during peer review, they might see it published elsewhere. This has...
Volume of ‘junk science’ wreaking havoc on credibility of Chinese research – editors
In 2013, Science reported on a market for authorships on research papers in China. In 2017, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology said it would crack down on misconduct after a scandal in which 107 papers were retracted at the journal Tumor Biology. The peer reviews of the papers had...
Research-integrity sleuths warn Chinese scientists buy papers to boost careers
When Laura Fisher noticed striking similarities between research papers submitted to RSC Advances, she grew suspicious. None of the papers had authors or institutions in common, but their charts and titles looked alarmingly similar, says Fisher, the executive editor at the journal. “I was determined to try to get to...
Scientists awed after bonobos in Congo Forest adopt infants outside their group
Attentive parenting appears across the animal world, but adoption is rarer, especially when youngsters taken in are not kin. Now researchers have witnessed bonobos adopting infants from outside of their own communities. Two females, each from a different bonobo group, in the Luo Scientific Reserve in Congo took charge of...
How to understand and manage emotions, build flourishing connections
The cognitive-intelligence quotient, known as IQ, is an important factor in determining your reasoning ability, but a high IQ score is not the whole story when it comes to thriving professionally and personally. Another dimension of human intelligence, known as the emotional intelligence quotient, or EQ, has also been linked...
