Research Briefing |
Featured
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Comment |
How a tree-hugging protest transformed Indian environmentalism
Fifty years ago, a group of women from the villages of the Western Himalayas sparked Chipko, a green movement that remains relevant in the age of climate change.
- Seema Mundoli
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News Feature |
Scientists under arrest: the researchers taking action over climate change
Fed up with a lack of political progress in solving the climate problem, some researchers are becoming activists to slow global warming.
- Daniel Grossman
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News & Views |
Gender bias is more exaggerated in online images than in text
A big-data analysis shows that men are starkly over-represented in online images, and that gender bias is stronger in images compared with text. Such images could influence enduring gender biases in our offline lives.
- Bas Hofstra
- & Anne Maaike Mulders
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Article
| Open Access
Online images amplify gender bias
We find that gender bias is more prevalent in images than text, that the underrepresentation of women online is substantially worse in images and that googling for images amplifies gender bias in a person’s beliefs.
- Douglas Guilbeault
- , Solène Delecourt
- & Ethan Nadler
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News |
Deepfakes, trolls and cybertroopers: how social media could sway elections in 2024
Faced with data restrictions and harassment, researchers are mapping out fresh approaches to studying social media’s political reach.
- Heidi Ledford
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Book Review |
How we remember the dead by their digital afterlives
A broad-ranging analysis asks whether we can achieve a kind of immortality by documenting our lives and deaths online.
- Margaret Gibson
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News |
Citations show gender bias — and the reasons are surprising
Gender bias in paper citations is less common among younger scientists, but it still plays a part in making women’s research less visible.
- Anil Oza
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News Q&A |
Why hidden xenophobia is surging into the open
Sociologist Mathew Creighton discusses how events in Europe in the past month are fed by people’s covert prejudices.
- Emma Marris
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Obituary |
Evelyn Fox Keller (1936–2023), philosopher who questioned gender roles in science
Mathematical biologist, philosopher and historian of science who challenged the vision of science as a masculine activity.
- Marga Vicedo
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Research Briefing |
The myth of cosmopolitan cities: why large urban areas are more segregated
There is a long-standing assumption that large, densely populated cities inherently foster interactions between a diverse range of people. Analysis of 1.6 billion person-to-person encounters in the United States reveals that big cities are actually pockets of extreme segregation, highlighting a need for strategic urban design that fosters more integrated environments.
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News |
‘Disruptive’ science: in-person teams make more breakthroughs than remote groups
Analysis of millions of papers shows that farflung collaborators produce fewer foundational discoveries than groups working together in person.
- David Adam
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Comment |
How effective are climate protests at swaying policy — and what could make a difference?
Why people take to the streets to march against global heating is relatively well documented. But it’s unclear why certain tactics work better than others in reaching the public and policymakers.
- Dana R. Fisher
- , Oscar Berglund
- & Colin J. Davis
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Book Review |
Migration isn’t increasing, border restrictions don’t reduce crossings — and other home truths
Prejudice, rather than facts, colours our views about human mobility, argues a new book. But the global shock of the COVID-19 pandemic means that the world is changing in front of our eyes.
- Alan Gamlen
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Correspondence |
Sustainability: draw on decades of social-science research
- Paul C. Stern
- , Thomas Dietz
- & Kimberly S. Wolske
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Comment |
Replication games: how to make reproducibility research more systematic
In some areas of social science, around half of studies can’t be replicated. A new test-fast, fail-fast initiative aims to show what research is hot — and what’s not.
- Abel Brodeur
- , Anna Dreber
- & Edward Miguel
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Correspondence |
Factor in gender to beat the heat in impoverished settlements
- Ronita Bardhan
- , Ramit Debnath
- & Bhramar Mukherjee
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Article
| Open Access
Europeans’ support for refugees of varying background is stable over time
Surveys conducted in 15 European countries in 2016 and 2022 show stable attitudes towards asylum seekers and refugees with different attributes over this period with a slight increase in support for asylum seekers in general.
- Kirk Bansak
- , Jens Hainmueller
- & Dominik Hangartner
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Editorial |
How to educate the world: prioritize funding and data
Data gaps are hindering progress on the Sustainable Development Goal for education and lifelong learning. Modest funding will help to fill them.
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News Explainer |
Disinformation researchers under investigation: what’s happening and why
US researchers have spent years studying how conspiracy theories spread. Now they are accused of helping to suppress conservative opinions.
- Jeff Tollefson
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News & Views |
Violence towards women in environmental protests
An analysis unpicks the various forms of violence that women face when they stand up to polluters and natural-resource extractors.
- Abigail Klopper
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Nature Podcast |
Audio long read: Can giant surveys of scientists fight misinformation on COVID, climate change and more?
Hoping to improve public debate and policymaking, multiple efforts have been launched to gather researchers' consensus views.
- David Adam
- & Benjamin Thompson
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Career Feature |
Why scientists should be part of conversations about decolonizing humanities
Sociologist Meghan Tinsley calls for a two-way dialogue about making university curricula more inclusive.
- Audrey Thompson
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Career Feature |
Decolonizing the humanities: striving to make the arts and media more diverse
For many students from under-represented backgrounds, the career pipeline into creative industries is blocked. Karen Patel leads an initiative to help fix it.
- Audrey Thompson
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News & Views |
People, not search-engine algorithms, choose unreliable or partisan news
Analysis of people’s web searches and visited websites suggests that it is more likely that they are choosing to engage with partisan or unreliable news than that they are being unduly exposed to it by search-engine algorithms.
- Eni Mustafaraj
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News Feature |
Can giant surveys of scientists fight misinformation on COVID, climate change and more?
Shocked by the COVID-19 infodemic, several efforts have launched to gather researchers’ consensus views, with the hope of improving public debate and policymaking.
- David Adam
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News & Views |
COVID pandemic increased racial disparities in US prison populations
A public data set on the size and racial composition of US prison populations has been generated. Its analysis indicates how biases in sentencing lengths shape prisons’ racial make-up in the United States.
- Jessica M. Eaglin
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News |
‘Oumuamua enigma explained — and more of this week’s best science graphics
Three charts from the world of research, selected by Nature editors.
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News & Views |
Political endorsements can affect scientific credibility
In 2020, Nature endorsed Joe Biden in the US presidential election. A survey finds that viewing the endorsement did not change people’s views of the candidates, but caused some to lose confidence in Nature and in US scientists generally.
- Arthur Lupia
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News |
Researchers scramble as Twitter plans to end free data access
A controversial policy change threatens to upend large social-media studies.
- Heidi Ledford
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News & Views |
Self-publishing is common among academic-journal editors
An analysis of the publication records of academic editors shows that one-quarter of them publish 10% of their own papers in the journals they edit and reveals that fewer than 10% of editors-in-chief are women.
- Molly M. King
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Article |
Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time
A decline in disruptive science and technology over time is reported, representing a substantive shift in science and technology, which is attributed in part to the reliance on a narrower set of existing knowledge.
- Michael Park
- , Erin Leahey
- & Russell J. Funk
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Correspondence |
Democratize social-media research — with access and funding
- Jon Roozenbeek
- & Fabiana Zollo
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News |
How Musk’s takeover might change Twitter: what researchers think
Extremists could flock back to the platform under the guise of ‘free speech’ — and researchers are gearing up to study their impact.
- Heidi Ledford
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Outlook |
Mastering the art of persuasion during a pandemic
Health policymakers need to cultivate social trust and plan effective communication strategies well before the next infectious disease goes global.
- Elizabeth Svoboda
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News & Views |
Narrow hiring practices at US universities revealed
An analysis of faculty members employed at academic institutions in the United States reveals that most employees were trained at just a few universities. The finding provides insights into how hiring perpetuates inequalities.
- Cassidy R. Sugimoto
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Comment |
How to stop cities and companies causing planetary harm
Researchers must help to define science-based targets for water, nutrients, carbon emissions and more to avoid cascading effects and stave off tipping points in Earth’s systems.
- Xuemei Bai
- , Anders Bjørn
- & Johan Rockström
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News & Views |
The social connections that shape economic prospects
Data on 21 billion Facebook connections reveal that a new measure of social capital — childhood friendships between people of high and low socio-economic status — is linked to economic mobility later in life.
- Noam Angrist
- & Bruce Sacerdote
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Article
| Open Access
Social capital I: measurement and associations with economic mobility
Analyses of data on 21 billion friendships from Facebook in the United States reveal associations between social capital and economic mobility.
- Raj Chetty
- , Matthew O. Jackson
- & Nils Wernerfelt
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Article
| Open Access
Social capital II: determinants of economic connectedness
Social disconnection across socioeconomic lines is explained by both differences in exposure to people with high socioeconomic status and friending bias—the tendency for people to befriend peers with similar socioeconomic status even conditional on exposure.
- Raj Chetty
- , Matthew O. Jackson
- & Nils Wernerfelt
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News |
How police reforms improved the way officers treat women in India
Largest-ever trial of police responses finds stations with women’s help desks record more intimate-partner crimes.
- Gayathri Vaidyanathan
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News |
Russia’s war in Ukraine is disrupting studies of ancient life
Russia has been at the centre of major palaeontological finds including the Denisovans, but its brutal war is threatening the research that uncovers the past.
- Freda Kreier
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Book Review |
Tackling inequality takes social reform
In separate books, leading economists explore the wide-ranging changes needed to produce a more just society.
- Richard Wilkinson
- & Kate Pickett
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Career Feature |
The rise of inequality research: can spanning disciplines help tackle injustice?
Wide-ranging expertise and direct involvement of those affected will help to make inequality research more meaningful.
- Virginia Gewin
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Article
| Open Access
Women are credited less in science than men
The difference between the number of men and women listed as authors on scientific papers and inventors on patents is at least partly attributable to unacknowledged contributions by women scientists.
- Matthew B. Ross
- , Britta M. Glennon
- & Julia I. Lane
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News |
Racism drives environmental inequality — but most Americans don’t realize
Survey finds that most people think poverty is why pollution disproportionately affects Black people, despite evidence that racism is the major cause.
- Brittney J. Miller
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Correspondence |
Sustainability for Chile’s mountains — a united approach
- José Tomás Ibarra
- , Julián Caviedes
- & Carla Marchant
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World View |
Study conspiracy theories with compassion
The societal forces that drive people to join a belief system matter more than the specifics of what they believe.
- Elżbieta Drążkiewicz
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Editorial |
Afghanistan’s girls’ schools can — and must — stay open. There is no alternative
The Taliban have broken a promise and betrayed a generation.
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News & Views |
Letters and cards telling people about local police reduce crime
A combination of Internet-based and field experiments suggests that being given personal information about a stranger leads people to believe that they themselves are known to that person — and to change their behaviour accordingly.
- Elicia John
- & Shawn D. Bushway
Long online discussions are consistently the most toxic