Ethics News

August 26, 2025

Top Headlines

Why Listening May Be the Most Powerful Medicine

Aug. 20, 2025 — In a health system where speed often replaces empathy, researchers highlight the life-changing power of listening. Beyond simple questions, values-driven listening—marked by presence, curiosity, and compassion—can transform both patients and ...

Scientists Reveal How Just Two Human Decisions Rewired the Great Salt Lake Forever

Aug. 19, 2025 — Scientists found that Great Salt Lake’s chemistry and water balance were stable for thousands of years, until human settlement. Irrigation and farming in the 1800s and a railroad causeway in 1959 ...

Scientists Discover the Pancake Secret That Makes Vegan Eggs Irresistible

Aug. 12, 2025 — A study finds that people are more open to plant-based eggs when they’re part of familiar foods, like pancakes, rather than served plain. While taste and appearance still favor regular eggs, vegan eggs score higher on environmental and ethical ...

Why AI Emails Can Quietly Destroy Trust at Work

Aug. 12, 2025 — AI is now a routine part of workplace communication, with most professionals using tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. A study of over 1,000 professionals shows that while AI makes managers’ messages more polished, heavy reliance can damage trust. ...

Your Nature Photo Might Be a Scientific Breakthrough in Disguise

Aug. 3, 2025 — Every time someone snaps a wildlife photo with iNaturalist, they might be fueling breakthrough science. From rediscovering lost species to helping conservation agencies track biodiversity and invasive threats, citizen observations have become vital ...

Three-person DNA IVF Stops Inherited Disease—eight Healthy Babies Born in UK First

July 18, 2025 — In a groundbreaking UK first, eight healthy babies have been born using an IVF technique that includes DNA from three people—two parents and a female donor. The process, known as pronuclear ...

Why Trump’s Leg Swelling Could Be a Warning Sign for Millions

July 18, 2025 — President Trump s diagnosis of Chronic Venous Insufficiency (CVI) has brought renewed attention to a frequently overlooked yet dangerous condition. CVI affects the ability of veins especially in the legs to return blood to the heart, often leading ...

Feeling Mental Exhaustion? These Two Areas of the Brain May Control Whether People Give Up or Persevere

July 7, 2025 — When you're mentally exhausted, your brain might be doing more behind the scenes than you think. In a new study using functional MRI, researchers uncovered two key brain regions that activate when ...

Acid-busting Diet Triggers 13-pound Weight Loss in Just 16 Weeks

June 26, 2025 — Swap steaks for spinach and you might watch the scale plummet. In a 16-week crossover study, overweight adults who ditched animal products for a low-fat vegan menu saw their bodies become less acidic and dropped an average of 13 pounds—while the ...

Cluck Once, and the River Shakes: Inside the Amazon’s Giant Snake Saga

June 16, 2025 — A lifelong fascination with nature and fieldwork led this researcher to the world of ethnobiology a field where ecology, culture, and community come together. Investigating how local people relate to species like the anaconda, their work blends ...

Africa's Pangolin Crisis: The Delicacy That's Driving a Species to the Brink

June 14, 2025 — Study suggests that appetite for bushmeat -- rather than black market for scales to use in traditional Chinese medicine -- is driving West Africa's illegal hunting of one of the world's most ...

Collaboration Can Unlock Australia's Energy Transition Without Sacrificing Natural Capital

June 3, 2025 — Australia can reach net-zero emissions and still protect its natural treasures but only if everyone works together. New research from Princeton and The University of Queensland shows that the country ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:28pm EDT

Global Study Reveals the Surprising Habit Behind Tough Decisions

Aug. 13, 2025 — A sweeping international study has revealed that when faced with complex decisions, people across cultures—from bustling megacities to remote Amazon communities—tend to rely on their own judgment ...

Google's Deepfake Hunter Sees What You Can’t—even in Videos Without Faces

July 25, 2025 — AI-generated videos are becoming dangerously convincing and UC Riverside researchers have teamed up with Google to fight back. Their new system, ...

11,000-Year-Old Feast Uncovered: Why Hunters Hauled Wild Boars Across Mountains

July 19, 2025 — Ancient Iranians hosted epic feasts with wild boars that had been hunted and transported from distant regions. These animals weren’t just ...

Why Monkeys—and Humans—can’t Look Away from Social Conflict

July 9, 2025 — Long-tailed macaques given short videos were glued to scenes of fighting—especially when the combatants were monkeys they knew—mirroring the human draw to drama and familiar faces. Low-ranking ...

Are Lefties Really More Creative? 100 Years of Data Say No

July 1, 2025 — A sweeping review of more than a century’s research upends the popular notion that left-handers are naturally more creative. Cornell psychologist Daniel Casasanto’s team sifted nearly a thousand ...

Buried for 23,000 Years: These Footprints Are Rewriting American History

June 29, 2025 — Footprints found in the ancient lakebeds of White Sands may prove that humans lived in North America 23,000 years ago — much earlier than previously believed. A new study using radiocarbon-dated ...

New Test Unmasks Illegal Elephant Ivory Disguised as Mammoth

June 26, 2025 — Poachers are using a sneaky loophole to bypass the international ivory trade ban—by passing off illegal elephant ivory as legal mammoth ivory. Since the two types look deceptively similar, law ...

Attachment Theory: A New Lens for Understanding Human-AI Relationships

June 2, 2025 — Human-AI interactions are well understood in terms of trust and companionship. However, the role of attachment and experiences in such relationships is not entirely clear. In a new breakthrough, ...

The EU Should Allow Gene Editing to Make Organic Farming More Sustainable, Researchers Say

May 30, 2025 — To achieve the European Green Deal's goal of 25% organic agriculture by 2030, researchers argue that new genomic techniques (NGTs) should be allowed ...

The Future of AI Regulation: Why Leashes Are Better Than Guardrails

May 30, 2025 — Many policy discussions on AI safety regulation have focused on the need to establish regulatory 'guardrails' to protect the public from the risks of AI technology. Experts now argue that, instead of ...

Amphibian Road Mortality Drops by Over 80% With Wildlife Underpasses, Study Shows

May 29, 2025 — A new study shows that wildlife underpass tunnels dramatically reduce deaths of frog, salamanders, and other amphibians migrating across ...

A Cheap and Easy Potential Solution for Lowering Carbon Emissions in Maritime Shipping

May 29, 2025 — Reducing travel speeds and using an intelligent queuing system at busy ports can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from oceangoing container vessels by 16-24%, according to researchers. Not only ...

Nearly Five Million Seized Seahorses Just 'Tip of the Iceberg' in Global Wildlife Smuggling

May 28, 2025 — Close to five million smuggled seahorses worth an estimated CAD$29 million were seized by authorities over a 10-year span, according to a new study that warns the scale of the trade is far larger ...

Without Public Trust, Effective Climate Policy Is Impossible

May 27, 2025 — When formulating climate policy, too little attention is paid to social factors and too much to technological breakthroughs and economic reasons. Because citizens are hardly heard in this process, ...

Emotional Responses Crucial to Attitudes About Self-Driving Cars

May 27, 2025 — When it comes to public attitudes toward using self-driving cars, understanding how the vehicles work is important -- but so are less obvious characteristics like feelings of excitement or pleasure ...

Managing Surrogate Species, Providing a Conservation Umbrella for More Species

May 23, 2025 — A new study shows that monitoring and managing select bird species can provide benefits for other species within specific ...

AI Is Here to Stay, Let Students Embrace the Technology, Experts Urge

May 22, 2025 — A new study says students appear to be using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) responsibly, and as a way to speed up tasks, not just boost their ...

Why We Trust People Who Grew Up With Less

May 22, 2025 — When deciding whom to trust, people are more likely to choose individuals who grew up with less money over those who went to private schools or vacationed in Europe, according to new ...

Landmark Report Reveals Key Challenges Facing Adolescents

May 20, 2025 — Poor mental health, rising obesity rates, exposure to violence and climate change are among the key challenges facing our adolescents today, according to a global ...

Coastal Squeeze Is Bad for Biodiversity, and for Us, Experts Say

May 20, 2025 — Worldwide, coastal areas are squeezed between a rising sea level on one end and human structures on the other. The distance between a sandy coastline and the first human structures averages less than ...

Household Action Can Play Major Role in Climate Change Fight

May 20, 2025 — Encouraging people in North America and Sub-Saharan Africa to adopt a low-carbon lifestyle could help to cut global household emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide by up to two-fifths, a new ...

Agrivoltaics Enjoys Comparatively High Acceptance

May 20, 2025 — Photovoltaic systems are increasingly being installed not only on roofs but also on open land. This does not always meet with citizens' approval. What is known as agrivoltaics (Agri-PV), ...

Language a Barrier in Biodiversity Work

May 16, 2025 — A study has shown scientific knowledge on the conservation of endangered species is often overlooked when not presented in ...

Should We Protect Non-Native Species? A New Study Says Maybe

May 14, 2025 — A new study found that over a quarter of the world's naturalized plant species are threatened in parts of their native range -- raising questions about the role non-native populations may play ...

How We Think About Protecting Data

May 14, 2025 — A new game-based experiment sheds light on the tradeoffs people are willing to make about data ...

Why People Reject New Rules -- But Only Until They Take Effect

May 8, 2025 — From seatbelt laws to new speed limits -- many people soon stop resisting policy changes that restrict their personal freedom once the new rules come into force. Researchers also identified the ...

Is AI Truly Creative? Turns out Creativity Is in the Eye of the Beholder

May 8, 2025 — What makes people think an AI system is creative? New research shows that it depends on how much they see of the creative act. The findings have implications for how we research and design creative ...

The World's Wealthiest 10% Caused Two Thirds of Global Warming Since 1990

May 7, 2025 — Wealthy individuals have a higher carbon footprint. A new study quantifies the climate outcomes of these inequalities. It finds that the world's wealthiest 10% are responsible for two thirds of ...

Climate Change: Future of Today's Young People

May 7, 2025 — Climate scientists reveal that millions of today's young people will live through unprecedented lifetime exposure to heatwaves, crop failures, river floods, droughts, wildfires and tropical ...

Spanking and Other Physical Discipline Lead to Exclusively Negative Outcomes for Children in Low And Middle-Income Countries

May 5, 2025 — Physically punishing children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has exclusively negative outcomes -- including poor health, lower academic performance, and impaired social-emotional ...