Today's Takeaways: A Thanksgiving Day Special
Happy Thanksgiving from The Takeaway! Whether you're travelling, prepping a meal, or spending the day with family and friends, we're here to say thank you and wish you a great holiday. Today's special...
View ArticleThe Science of Decision-Making
The New Year can feel like the perfect opportunity to reinvent yourself—many people decide to go to the gym more often or to eat healthier foods. However, even with the greatest of intentions, New...
View ArticleResearch Lab Lets Animals Suffer for Profits
The United States Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Nebraska has managed to dodge unwanted scrutiny for the several decades. It even slipped in a loophole into the Animal Welfare Act, a 1966...
View ArticleThink Our Voting System is Color Blind? Think Again.
When Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, non-white voters in the South and urban areas across the country had been facing racial discrimination at the polls.“Nearly 50 years later, things have...
View ArticleSugar Lobby Scores Sweet Deals by Souring Government Research
An archive of documents that date back to the 1950s reveals the sugar industry's powerful influence over the U.S. government's research on dental care.A team of researchers at the University of...
View ArticleScience May Speak, But Money Talks
Today in the latest installment of our series, "Political Science: Where Evidence and Ideology Collide," we examine a hot topic from 10 years ago: Stem cell research.In 2001, President George W. Bush...
View ArticleHow the NRA Twisted Gun Science and Silenced Researchers
Back in the early '90s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control provided funding for studies on gun violence—something the...
View ArticleScientists Close In on Alzheimer's Cure
Of the top 10 causes of death in the United States, Alzheimer's disease is the only one that cannot be prevented, cured, or slowed.However, researchers at Duke University might be one step closer to...
View ArticleFracking Chemicals Found in Pennsylvania Drinking Water
In Bradford County, Pennsylvania, new research has found that a chemical used in fracking operations has made its way into drinking water that was sampled from three homes in the region.The paper,...
View ArticleNew Panel for Trial Drugs Raises Hopes for the Terminally Ill
This week, pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson announced that it will assemble an independent group of doctors, ethicists, and patient advocates to evaluate trial drugs for terminally ill...
View ArticleRepublicans Block CDC Research on Gun Violence
In the immediate aftermath of the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, the House Appropriations Committee quietly rejected an amendment that would've allowed the Centers for Disease Control and...
View ArticleWhy Isn't the Most Effective Ovarian Cancer Treatment Used More Often?
Click on the audio player above to hear this story.For patients with ovarian cancer, the statistics are scary.This year, more than 21,000 new patients will be diagnosed with the disease and more than...
View ArticleCongress Has a Chance to Lift the CDC Ban on Studying Guns. Will They?
Click on the audio player above to hear this segment.More than 33,000 Americans died from gunshot wounds in 2013, and more than were 88,000 injured. Despite those figures, many lawmakers in Washington...
View ArticleUsing Your Cells Without Consent
Click on the audio player above to hear this interview.If you've ever had a medical procedure where tissue is removed, like a biopsy or a blood test, have you ever wondered what doctors do with the...
View ArticleScientific Research and Industry Money Create a Toxic Mix
Click on the audio player above to hear this interview.Back in the 1970s, a group of workers at a Texas chemical plant were diagnosed with fatal brain cancer.All of the workers had been exposed to...
View ArticleA Dreary Mythbuster
We often hear that mass shootings are not on the rise, despite our gut feelings to the contrary. But new research finds that public shootings like Newtown and Aurora are, in fact, happening more often....
View ArticleDecisions are More Emotional Than You Think
If you’re sad, you should wait on making any high-stakes financial decisions, argues Jennifer Lerner, co-founder of the Harvard Decision Science Lab. Research shows that even when you don’t think...
View ArticleDecisions are More Emotional Than You Think
If you’re sad, you should wait on making any high-stakes financial decisions, argues Jennifer Lerner, co-founder of the Harvard Decision Science Lab. Research shows that even when you don’t think...
View ArticleKids Say the Smartest Things
Parents usually think their kid is brilliant -- and the latest research may be proving them right. UC Berkeley professor Alison Gopnik explains why children can be much better problem solvers than...
View ArticleKids Say the Smartest Things
Parents usually think their kid is brilliant -- and the latest research may be proving them right. UC Berkeley professor Alison Gopnik explains why children can be much better problem solvers than...
View ArticleWhat Causes Breast Cancer? These Mothers and Daughters May Hold a Clue
Many things raise the risk for cancer, including exposure to various toxins and radiation. But our knowledge about the range of chemicals and compounds that can trigger cancer is limited.
View ArticleTell Us Something About An Obscure President
Presidents Day is usually about the best-known US leaders: Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, Kennedy. Today we're changing focus with a little research project. Go learn something about the nation's more...
View ArticleThe War On Cancer Hasn't Been Won
Medical researchers have made only modest progress treating the most common cancers since the war on cancer was declared in 1971. The disease has proved far more complicated than doctors had hoped.
View ArticleSurgeons Perform Better with Music, Study Finds
When surgeons listen to music in the operating room, they're more efficient at closing incisions, and their technique improves, a small study has found.Researchers asked 15 plastic surgery residents at...
View ArticleTo Your Health!
A special hour on the dodgy world of health news, from scary studies and so-called “medical breakthroughs” to celebrity-endorsed miracle cures and people who fake illness online.
View ArticleWhy the CDC Can't Research Gun Violence
Hours before last month's mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, a group of physicians petitioned Congress to end the so-called Dickey Amendment, a nearly twenty-year-old ban that effectively...
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Does science advance one funeral at a time, researchers ask
When a star scientist dies, outsiders often tackle mainstream questions in the field by leveraging new ideas that arise in other domains, a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic...
View ArticleUnderstanding Gender Bias in Autism Research
One in every 68 children born in the United States is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ADS). Boys are supposedly four times more likely to have the condition, but clinicians often miss or...
View ArticleTuesday's Turnout, Trump & The Truth, Understanding Autism
Coming up on today's show:It’s voting day in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. In this primary season, voter turnout has been particularly high for the Republican Party. Kristal...
View ArticleWhat If All Research Papers Were Free?
A graduate student from Kazakhstan is being compared to Edward Snowden.It's true, they have a few things in common: both have leaked a large number of documents to the public, and it's rumored that...
View ArticleBrian Lehrer Weekend: Iranian Nobel Prize-Winner Shirin Ebadi, Paying for...
A few of our favorite segments from the week, in case you missed them.Iranian Nobel Prize-Winner Shirin Ebadi (First) | Paying for Academic Journals (Starts at 15:57) | A Former CIA/NSA Head (Starts at...
View ArticleGaming App Helps Researchers Fight Dementia
Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview. Dementia affects more than 57 million people worldwide, and a new case develops every three seconds. The societal and economic cost of this...
View ArticleWhile Congress Debates Zika, Citizen Scientists Fight Mosquitoes
Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment.After months of delay, the House and the Senate moved this week to provide the federal government with funding for Zika virus research and...
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How a research campus in North Carolina deals with ethical questions on...
Watch Video | Listen to the AudioBy Hannah Yi and Mori RothmanIt was more than 20 years ago, but Gilbert Cantrell remembers the day when he realized his vision was going bad. He was working in a...
View ArticleFor the Train... For Love... For Hamilton Tickets: Waiting Then and Now
Waiting is something New Yorkers do constantly: for a train, that cup of coffee or those hard-to-get tickets. But we also wait for love, for justice or for the other shoe to drop.All summer, WNYC plans...
View ArticleYour Brain On Sound (Rebroadcast)
This week we're revisiting an episode from our series on hearing, listening and sound.When Rose* was growing up, she knew something wasn’t quite right about how she heard the world. She says it felt...
View ArticleMen's Aging and Evolution
Richard Bribiescas, professor of anthropology and ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University, deputy provost for faculty development and diversity and the author of How Men Age: What Evolution...
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Aboard a boat that ferries scientists to Alaskan wildlife
Watch Video | Listen to the AudioHARI SREENIVASAN: Next: a “NewsHour” shares.Each summer, the federal research vessel Tiglax travels the length of the Aleutian chain in Alaska, ferrying scientists to...
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How the sugar industry paid experts to downplay health risks
Watch Video | Listen to the AudioGWEN IFILL: Now: how the sugar industry paid experts to downplay health risks.Researchers have discovered documents showing the industry tried to influence scientific...
View ArticleDebunking the AIDS "Patient Zero" Myth
One of the most enduring myths of HIV/AIDS history has finally been laid to rest. The so-called "patient zero," a Canadian flight attendant named Gaétan Dugas, was once blamed for igniting the entire...
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Is alluring but elusive fusion energy possible in our lifetime?
Watch VideoThe post Is alluring but elusive fusion energy possible in our lifetime? appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
View ArticleDebunking Science, Actor Giovanni Ribisi on "Sneaky Pete," Overcoming the...
Journalist Andy Kroll joins us to discuss his story in The California Sunday Magazine, “The Great Exception: California vs. Trump,” the first part in a series about the relationship between California...
View ArticleA Battle to Debunk Science
Journalist Sam Apple joins us to discuss his recent article for Wired, “The Young Billionaire Behind the War on Science,” a profile of billionaire John Arnold who’s pledged half his fortune to...
View ArticleTrump Lost in Translation; Post-Election Stress Continues; Historical Fiction...
On today's show you'll hear:Pierre-Yves Dugua, senior U.S. Business correspondent for Le Figaro and Radio France, discusses the difference approaches to reporting on President Trump for an...
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Should taxpayers cover the light bills at university labs? Trump kicks off a...
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of many universities warning that big cuts in federal funding could imperil their biomedical research. Photo by Kayana Szymczak for STATMedical research...
View ArticleThe Mistaken Science of Women
Angela Saini, science journalist and the author of Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong-and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story (Beacon Press, 2017), looks at the ways science missed the boat...
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Column: Chinese courts call for death penalty for researchers who commit fraud
Photo via Getty ImagesAn eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth — a life for a lab book?In the past few months, China has announced two new crackdowns on research misconduct — one of which could lead to...
View ArticleDoubt It
There’s new research about how people process information, errors, and corrections. A look at what those findings tell us about the efficacy of journalism. Plus, how unethical research practices and...
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danah boyd — The Internet of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Steeped in cutting edge research around the social lives of networked teens, danah boyd demystifies technology while being wise about the changes it’s making to life and relationship. She has...
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