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Scientific fieldwork can involve travel to countries where disclosing LGBTQ+ identity is unsafe. This is a significant challenge faced by LGBTQ+ scientists, writes Christina Atchison, and should be part of risk assessments and fieldwork support.
Subjective experience of the topic of study can bring passion and creativity to cognitive research. Micah Allen describes this as a double-edged sword, as he recalls witnessing how subjective feeling overrode hard data. But there are ways in which researchers can benefit from subjectively informed research, while guarding against its pitfalls.
In fast-paced crises like COVID-19, making use of scientific discovery in policymaking is challenging. We should learn the lessons of the current pandemic to make science a better partner to decision-makers in future crises, Sandro Galea writes.
Discovering an error that leads to retraction is a harrowing experience, especially for early-career researchers. Joana Grave shares the story of the retraction of her first published paper and how community support helped her through this challenge.
The COVID-19 pandemic presents opportunities for transformative actions towards improving children’s and young people’s mental health, argues Archana Basu.
The rich diversity of India offers challenges and opportunities. Researchers can navigate by adapting practices and communication to the local context and including indigenous meaning systems in the vocabulary of the discipline, writes Purnima Singh.
Requiring undergraduate students to perform what is termed original research for their thesis, an investigation that cannot constitute a replication of an existing study, is a failed opportunity for science and education, argues Daniel Quintana.
The world’s population does not split neatly into two groups, WEIRD and non-WEIRD people, argues Sakshi Ghai. Because the non-WEIRD brush does not do justice to the complexity of human lives, she calls upon behavioural science to ensure that samples represent human diversity.
Fieldwork-based research by non-local scholars is valued in social science, but the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the exclusionary mechanisms and power differentials that sustain such research. This must change, writes Adriana Rudling.
At the time that COVID-19 began to take hold in India, a group of Indian scientists came together to combat what Reeteka Sud describes as one of the most potent threats: the spread of misinformation fueling the pandemic.
Jens Foell recently changed careers and began working fulltime for maiLab, Germany’s biggest science communication YouTube channel. In this World View, he shares his experiences as a science communicator and discusses the advantages and challenges.
The current surge of COVID-19 cases and deaths are a result of ineffective policy responses, an anti-scientific attitude, and a fragile underfunded health care system, argues Vipin Bahadur Singh.
Emma Lee, a trawlwulwuy woman from tebrakunna country, Tasmania, discusses the inclusion of Indigenous peoples in conservation and the value of placing cultural significance, respect, and connection at the heart of protected area management.
Oliver Rollins is a sociologist interested in how neuroscience research deals with and is informed by racialisation, racism, and other social processes of inequality. Here, he discusses how (neuro)scientists can engage in antiracist research practices and contribute to an antiracist science.
Maxine Davis’ experience as a Black academic in an overwhelmingly white department took a heavy toll on her mental health. Here she argues for an active examination of anti-Black practices in organizations to promote the health and well-being of all academics.
The pandemic is causing prolonged stress to our social connections, with major adverse consequences to individual and societal health. As a group-living, cooperative species, we need policies of communal care for a more equitable, resilient future, argues Robin Nelson.
