Over the past decade, furtive commercial entities around the world have industrialized the production, sale and dissemination of bogus scholarly research. These paper mills are profiting by undermining the literature that everyone from doctors to engineers rely on to make decisions about human lives. It is exceedingly difficult to get a handle on exactly how big the […] … learn more→

In 2008, Melissa Lucio was sentenced to death for the murder of her two-year-old daughter in Texas. The sentence was postponed until 2022. Forensic linguist Robert Leonard, after analyzing the interrogation of Ms. Lucio and her partner, Mr. Alvarez, determined that techniques were used to induce false confessions. This and other evidence served to stop Lucio’s execution […] … learn more→

As 2SLGBTQIA+ people are increasingly under threat in Canada, and facing escalating dangers from the Donald Trump administration in the United States, more research is urgently needed to understand how to address issues of gender and sexual diversity moving forward. Unfortunately, researchers who aim to explore emerging issues impacting 2SLGBTQIA+ communities and develop interventions to support them are […] … learn more→

I recently came across a researcher who was giving up. No more academia. There were other, better things to do. She had been working as a contract researcher for a long time. It is not uncommon for contract researchers to spend a long time going from contract to contract. However, the researcher who was giving up […] … learn more→

Author order is a pretty self-evident term. It simply describes the order in which authors appear on a publication. Who goes first, second and who is et al. Now author order might also seem like a pretty trivial topic. However, it sadly isn’t. And it might appear to be a straightforward process, but tussling over […] … learn more→

News stories about the likely existence of extraterrestrial life, and our chances of detecting it, tend to be positive. We are often told that we might discover it any time now. Finding life beyond Earth is “only a matter of time”, we were told in September 2023. “We are close” was a headline from September 2024. […] … learn more→

When she passed her PhD viva, literature researcher Ally Louks posted a picture of herself and her thesis on X (formerly Twitter) in November 2024 (see post here). The photo shared her thesis title: “Olfactory Ethics: The politics of smell in modern and contemporary prose”. The post garnered over 11,000 responses, some deeply negative. Louks […] … learn more→

Most of us have heard the phrase “correlation does not equal causation”. But understanding how scientists move beyond identifying correlations to establish causation remains a mystery to many. Finding out what causes a particular outcome is often the primary goal of scientific research, especially in studies relating to our health. We want to know if […] … learn more→

Last week, Ally Louks (now Dr. Louks), an academic at the University of Cambridge, posted a picture of herself on the social media site X with her fresh PhD thesis titled “Olfactory Ethics: The politics of smell in modern and contemporary prose”. The post received a surprising amount of attention – it has been viewed more than […] … learn more→

It is not easy for the culture of patronage from the Anglo-Saxon world to be transferred directly to the Latin world. To begin with, because, from the point of view of the citizen, there is little custom and limited knowledge on the subject. In fact, the initial opinion is usually contrary, based on the fact […] … learn more→