Humans

By Gege Li
Visit
Paradise Lost brings artist Jan Hendrix to London’s Kew Gardens from 3 October with an exhibition mourning Kamay Botany Bay in Australia. Kew founder Joseph Banks collected plants from it in 1770, when it was pristine.

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The Story of Evolution in 25 Discoveries is palaeontologist and geologist Donald Prothero’s entertaining guide to the past, present and future of living things – with nature’s more bizarre aspects to the fore.

The Trustees Of The British Museum

Listen/watch
Objects of Crisis is a hybrid series of Zoom podcasts in which British Museum director Hartwig Fischer reveals objects – … More

Nicolle R. Fuller/Science Photo Library

THE theory of evolution is one of the greatest accomplishments of the human intellect. Some might argue that it is the greatest, although quantum theory or relativity would have their supporters too. But in the biological sciences, it stands unrivalled. It is no less than the grand unified theory of life.
It is also a theory in the truest sense of the word: an interlocking and consistent system of empirical observations and testable hypotheses that has never failed scrutiny. Nothing has even been discovered that falsifies any part of it, despite strenuous efforts by detractors. … More

Netflix’s Hope Frozen documentary follows a family in Thailand that cryogenically freezes their 2-year-old daughter’s brain after she dies, creating a controversy-fuelled media storm

Humans 23 September 2020
By Simon Ings
Einz’s mother remembering her 2-year-old daughter
Netfilx

Hope Frozen: A quest to live twice
Pailin Wedel
Netflix
THE world – including this magazine – hasn’t shied away from expressing opinions about the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the US non-profit founded by Fred and Linda Chamberlain in 1972 to freeze corpses and body parts in the hope of one day resurrecting the dead.
Most observers are content with interrogating Alcor’s bizarre mission by asking if technologies for resurrection will ever be viable. This, of course, is a non-question: who knows what is around the corner? The successful freezing and thawing of a … More

By Donna Lu
A news stand in the New York subway in Manhattan
MB Photo/Alamy

News coverage in the US of scientific work is biased against researchers whose names aren’t of British origin.
Hao Peng at the University of Michigan and his colleagues analysed more than 230,000 news stories from 288 US outlets, which reported on around 100,000 different research papers across all scientific fields.
The team looked at whether the first authors of papers were mentioned in news coverage. Very often, these are junior researchers who have contributed most significantly to the work. Peng and his colleagues found that first authors who … More

By Michael Le Page
The human population of Santiago Island is evolving rapidly
Peter Adams/Getty Images

Yes, we are still evolving. And one of the strongest examples of recent evolution in people has been found on the Cape Verde islands in the Atlantic, where a gene variant conferring a form of malaria resistance has become more common.
Portuguese voyagers settled the uninhabited islands in 1462, bringing slaves from Africa with them. Most of the archipelago’s half a million inhabitants are descended from these peoples.
Most people of West African origin have a variant in a gene called DARC that protects against … More

By Douglas Heingartner
Emergency sirens and wolf howls are acoustically alike
Glenn Nagel / Alamy

There is an uncanny similarity between wolf howls and emergency sirens. The sound of a siren might be effective because we evolved to be alerted by howls, suggest researchers.
Hynek Burda at the Czech University of Life Sciences and his colleagues compared several dozen recordings of wolf howls with the sounds made by various emergency sirens, such as those on ambulances and in tornado-warning systems. Their analysis looked at the most important acoustic components of these sounds – for example their initial and closing frequencies or how … More

Mick Sinclair/Alamy
Watch
How to Make the World Add Up has economist and broadcaster Tim Harford delve into the misuse of numbers in politics, journalism and PR in a live-streamed talk from the Royal Institution. Tune in at 7pm BST on 22 September.

Read
The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy sees University of Cambridge scientist Arik Kershenbaum explore how we can learn more about the possibilities for life and culture in unexpected corners of the universe by observing animals closer to home.

Björn Forenius/Alamy

Learn
mckinsey-live Sustainable Fashion is one of a series of webinars organised by consulting … More

A harmful political conspiracy theory is now embracing science denial. Combating it is important, but it won’t be easy, writes Graham Lawton

Humans | Comment 16 September 2020
By Graham Lawton

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

AS THE weeks and months of covid-19 drag on, I have found myself dragged into an increasingly bewildering and frightening conspiracy theory. I am no conspiracy theorist myself, unless you count the belief that much of the world is currently run by buffoons. When I first heard of QAnon, I filed it alongside “flat Earth” as an infuriating but essentially harmless fringe belief. But the more I learn about it, the more worried I become that it could kill off any chance we have of emerging from the pandemic into a greener, more enlightened world. … More