Science

Jared Isaacman’s bid to restore Pluto’s planetary status looks less like science and more like populism in space

Decisions taken by the department he led to reduce aid to Africa have made the current Ebola outbreak worse. The total effect of what he did will be catastrophic

The curious history of language purists hating ‘mongrel’ words

The Conservative peer has assured Spectator readers that artificial intelligence is nothing to worry about - just like climate change

But just because the Facebook founder got it all wrong, that doesn’t mean others won’t be able to construct successful digital worlds. And if you want to see what that might look like, check out what the kids are up to

Self-driving taxis are already on the streets and close to going into service. But are they simply an expensive gimmick?

Scientific breakthroughs often emerge from experiments that go wrong – but modern research culture rewards only success

Whenever something bad happens, it always has to happen to us. Haven’t we been picked on enough already?

A fatal outbreak has occurred on a cruise ship after it docked in South America. There will be no new pandemic, but it’s a reminder of the lesson of Covid: that wild animal populations are awash with diseases we do not understand

Already rooted in conspiracy theory, the Trump presidency is now obsessing over aliens – another sign of US political culture gone insane

The warming climate is pushing disease-carrying insects as far north as the Arctic – with unsettling implications for Europe

The promise that everyone can benefit from science rings hollow in a world of inequality and exclusion

It’s clear what the Trump administration wanted – but what did anyone else get out of it?

The notion that innovation is value-free conceals the political and ideological agendas behind it

An outbreak of the disease in Kent highlights the importance of challenging the misleading stories that are beginning to emerge about Covid

A woman in a US hospital had a sample taken of her cancer cells that went on to become the most important biopsy in all medicine. Is her family due compensation?

New research suggests that mysterious symbols carved by early humans may have functioned like a primitive writing system

In a terrible irony, the green technologies we need to move away from fossil fuels rely on minerals that can only be extracted with terrible environmental consequences

The idea emerged at a time very different to our own, and now the Silicon Valley tech bros have revealed what was true all along – that the notion of ‘progress’ is riddled with contradictions

The Wellcome Sanger – half academic research institute, half industrial laboratory – is perfectly positioned to produce socially useful applications for discoveries

The former president made some comments about extraterrestrial life on a podcast and a lot of people got very excited for all the wrong reasons

The disgraced sex offender was able to gather a group of scientists and thinkers around him who shared his anti-woke, anti-women and Silicon Valley techno-fascist views. But it doesn’t end with Epstein

Trump’s public health appointees are spreading such dangerous disinformation that it’s killing Americans. The world of science has to take a stand

Digging into the detail and data to separate the noise from the news

A seven-million-year-old fossil continues to complicate the story of when, and how, humans first walked on two legs

The CEO of Nvidia has announced a breakthrough in AI systems for self-driving vehicles. Is this a cause for excitement or should we regard it as a warning?

An unusually early flu season was mistaken for an unusually severe one – raising questions about how risk is communicated and how unprepared the NHS remains

Lab-grown gametes could transform fertility treatment – but biology is proving far harder to hack than technology

It predicts the universe with eerie precision, yet not even Nobel laureates can agree on how to interpret it

In the coming 12 months, one thing is for certain – the American war on science will only get worse

A Scottish geologist made a discovery that altered the way we see ourselves, and our planet. And yet his name is widely forgotten

Maybe we have decided to restore it to being a mere useful tool for data analysis, and not to let it run and ruin our lives