Let's face it, as a species we're obsessed with ourselves. The vast majority of us spend our days at work or school where a considerable amount of time is taken up not discussing the important issues of the day, but rather the juicy details of one another's personal lives. Then...

"Food is always more or less in demand," wrote Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. While the founder of modern capitalism pointed out that the wealthy consume no more food than their poor neighbors, because the "desire of food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of...

Caesar and his fellow simians in the blockbuster film may have had a few canines to grind, but new research reveals that chimpanzees are more interested in sharing a meal than starting a revolution. A paper released this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Victoria...

Chicago's nineteenth ward reeked of overripe fruit and kerosene the day Mary Stastch killed her baby. According to the Chicago Tribune on July 29, 1911 the unemployed single mother and recent immigrant from Austria left Cook County Hospital earlier that week and "wandered about Chicago for two days with...

Cross-posted at Scientific American.

Warning: content may be triggering for survivors of sexual assault/abuse.

Elizabeth Wilde's mouth was stuffed with cloth and her hands were tied behind her back. Hogs rummaged in the yard outside as her master, John Lumbrozo, forced himself on her repeatedly and threatened her...

"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? This is the question that has driven Frans de Waal for the past 30 years. From his pioneering research on alliance formation in Chimpanzee Politics, to reconciliation behavior in Peacemaking Among Primates...

The release of 91,000 classified military documents relating to Afghanistan by the organization known as WikiLeaks offers the opportunity for a controlled experiment in an analysis of media bias. This was a suggestion by the Nieman Journalism Lab immediately following the documents release. Three mainstream...

77 years ago (on July 14, 1933) a sterilization law was passed in Nazi Germany, known as Gesetz zur Verhutung erbkranken Nachwuchses (Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring). Any German was a target if they were found to be suffering from a range of perceived hereditary ailments, such...

Fairness is the basis of the social contract. As citizens we expect that when we contribute our fair share we should receive our just reward. When social benefits are handed out unequally or when prior agreements are not honored it represents a breach of trust. Based on this, Americans were...

It is my view that religion and science are incompatible in a very specific and important way. I say this as someone who previously drank the Kool-Aid and spent countless hours studying what was described to me as the Holy Spirit. I have been confirmed in the Lutheran tradition and...

(updated below)

The Coca-Cola Company has long marketed itself as being synonymous with American values. However, after a recent complaint filed in the New York Supreme Court alleging they had knowledge of and sought to cover up acts of murder, rape, and attempted murder at a Guatemalan subsidiary, "America's Real...

(updated below)

On February 16, 2010 UCLA Neuroscientist Dario Ringach participated in a panel discussion on the role of primate experimentation in animal-based research. Ringach stopped doing his invasive research on primates in 2006 after some activists made death threats and targeted his family as part...

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

This morning, as political and financial leaders from around the world convene at the World Economic Forum, one of the central issues under discussion will be a strategy for Haiti's recovery. Bill Clinton and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary...