Ethics News

June 26, 2025

Top Headlines

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 ...

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, researchers from Waseda University have devised a ...

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 without pre-market authorization in organic as ...

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 imposing guardrails, policymakers should demand ...

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

May 30, 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, European governments risk losing public support at a ...

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 and a belief in technology's social ...

Latest Headlines

updated 2:45pm EDT

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 ...

Managing Surrogate Species, Providing a Conservation Umbrella for More Species

May 26, 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 26, 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 26, 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 ...

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

May 24, 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 ...

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 ...

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), however, is ...

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 15, 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 in ...

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 ...

Study Shows How Millions of Bird Sightings Unlock Precision Conservation

May 1, 2025 — A groundbreaking study reveals that North American bird populations are declining most severely in areas where they should be thriving. Researchers analyzed 36 million bird observations shared by ...

Exposure to Extreme Heat and Cold Temperature Is Leading to Additional Preventable Deaths, New 19-Year Study Suggests

May 1, 2025 — Urgent action must be taken to reduce the ever-rising number of people killed by extreme temperatures in India, say the authors of a new 19-year study which found that 20,000 people died from ...

Good Karma for Me, Bad Karma for You

May 1, 2025 — Many people around the world believe in karma -- that idea that divine justice will punish people who do bad deeds and reward those who good. But that belief plays out differently for oneself versus ...

Missed School Is an Overlooked Consequence of Tropical Cyclones, Warming Planet

Apr. 29, 2025 — New research finds that tropical cyclones reduce years of schooling for children in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in areas unaccustomed to frequent storms. Girls are ...

Advancing AI for Diverse Applications in Manufacturing, Business and Education

Apr. 28, 2025 — Large language models (LLMs) are at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) and have been widely used for conversational interactions. However, assessing the personality of a given LLM remains ...

Personality Traits Shape Our Prosocial Behavior

Apr. 28, 2025 — Why do some people do more for the community than others? A new study now shows that personality traits such as extraversion and agreeableness correlate with volunteering and charitable ...

Finding 'Win-Win-Wins' for Climate, Economics and Justice

Apr. 24, 2025 — In examining how different countries have rolled out climate change mitigation strategies, research has found reasons to be optimistic about preserving our environment while promoting prosperity and ...

Skeletal Evidence of Roman Gladiator Bitten by Lion in Combat

Apr. 23, 2025 — Bite marks found on a skeleton discovered in a Roman cemetery in York have revealed the first archaeological evidence of gladiatorial combat between a human and a ...

Paying Fishers to Release Endangered Catches Can Aid Conservation, but Only If Done Right

Apr. 23, 2025 — A new study has revealed that an incentive program increased live releases of endangered species caught as bycatch. However, unexpectedly, the overall positive impact was reduced by some vessels ...

Current AI Risks More Alarming Than Apocalyptic Future Scenarios

Apr. 23, 2025 — Most people generally are more concerned about the immediate risks of artificial intelligence than they are about a theoretical future in which AI threatens humanity. A new study reveals that ...

Family Dynamics Shape Body Image Differently Across Cultures

Apr. 23, 2025 — Body appreciation differs between Middle-Eastern and Western societies, a new international study can reveal, highlighting how cultural and family influences shape body image and eating behaviors in ...

How Safe Is the Air to Breathe? 50 Million People in the US Do Not Know

Apr. 21, 2025 — Across the United States, 58% of counties have no active air-quality monitoring sites, according to a new study. Rural counties, especially those in the Midwest and South, are less likely to have ...

Should Farm Fields Be Used for Crops or Solar? Or Both

Apr. 21, 2025 — As farmers debate whether fields should be used for agriculture or solar panels, new research says the answer could be both. Scientists analyzed remote sensing and aerial imagery to study how fields ...

Researchers Introduce a Brand-New Method to Detect Gunshot Residue at the Crime Scene

Apr. 16, 2025 — Crime scene investigation may soon become significantly more accurate and efficient thanks to a new method for detecting gunshot residues. Researchers have developed the technique that converts lead ...