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Science

Essays and videos exploring physics, evolution, cosmology and other frontiers in science

Astronomy Biology Biotechnology Chemistry Complexity Computing and artificial intelligence Cosmology Deep time Earth science and climate Ecology and environmental sciences Engineering Evolution Genetics History of science Human evolution Human reproduction Illness and disease Mathematics Medicine Oceans and water Palaeontology Physics Quantum theory Space exploration

Dried ground leaves being poured from a scoop into a container indoors.

essay

Addiction

The kratom question

Millions are turning to an unregulated herbal extract to curb their opioid addiction. But do the risks outweigh the benefits?

Xi Chen

Photo of two surgeons in blue scrubs and masks focused on a procedure, with one surgeon’s glasses reflecting the surgery.

essay

Medicine

When I lost my intuition

For years, I practised medicine with cool certainty, comfortable with life-and-death decisions. Then, one day, I couldn’t

Ronald W Dworkin

Aerial photo of a winding river through lush green rainforest with dramatic cloud formations in the sky above.

essay

Public health

Hearts and brains

Humans always end up with clogged arteries, right? That’s not what the lives of the Tsimane in the Amazon basin tell us

Ben Daitz

A masked nurse in scrubs sitting in a hospital waiting area.

essay

Bioethics

Moral resilience

Nurses experience deep suffering when they can’t act according to their moral compass. Our research shows a way forward

Cynda Hylton Rushton

Vintage advertising poster for ‘Cocaine Toothache Drops’ featuring two children playing happily, building a house from sticks, in front of a house with a wooden fence.

essay

Subcultures

An undulating thrill

Once lauded as a wonder of the age, cocaine soon became the object of profound anxieties. What happened?

Douglas Small

Silhouette of a man, a child, and a cow with large horns sitting on the ground at sunset.

essay

Progress and modernity

In praise of magical thinking

Once we all had knowledge of how to heal ourselves using plants and animals. The future would be sweeter for renewing it

Anna Badkhen

Image of a human colon highlighted in blue, with a contrasting yellow-orange background, taken using a medical imaging technique to show the internal structure.

essay

Illness and disease

Getting past ‘it’s IBS’

While science illuminates the gut-brain relationship, doctors remain ignorant and dismissive of patients with gut problems

Xi Chen

A team of surgeons in blue scrubs and surgical caps operate under bright surgical lights in an operating theatre. Medical instruments and equipment are arranged on tables around them, while one team member adjusts another’s mask. Shelves in the background hold medical supplies.

essay

Medicine

Last hours of an organ donor

In the liminal time when the brain is dead but organs are kept alive, there is an urgent tenderness to medical care

Ronald W Dworkin

A patient plays the violin while undergoing brain surgery, surrounded by surgeons and medical staff wearing scrubs and masks in an operating theatre.

essay

Neuroscience

Rethinking the homunculus

When we discovered that the brain contained a map of the body it revolutionised neuroscience. But it’s time for an update

Moheb Costandi

Cartoon man with white hair and moustache smiling while holding pliers and a bloody tooth inside a candlelit building, against a snowy village background.

video

Medicine

Why surgery and barbering were one occupation in the Middle Ages

6 minutes

A black and white photo of a man in doctor’s clothing posed next to a lab bench with a microscope looking directly at the camera

essay

Medicine

Physician, invade thyself

Eager for medical breakthroughs, some doctors take enormous risks experimenting on themselves. Should we celebrate them?

Tom Doyle

Art deco-style illustration of a person holding a flaming torch and a sword, with text “DON’T FIGHT CANCER ALONE” above on a blue and white background.

essay

Illness and disease

The war on cancer

Is it time to abandon the century-old idea that cancer is best met with a ‘fight’ from patients and their doctors alike?

Elaine Schattner

Paramedic loading a stretcher into an ambulance at night with lighted buildings in the background.

video

Medicine

What is it like to be a paramedic, navigating human emergency?

17 minutes

Silhouette of a person peering through blinds in a dimly lit room, with a pet carrier on the bed below.

essay

Illness and disease

Are they the canaries?

People with multiple chemical sensitivity seem to be allergic to the world. What, if anything, can medicine do for them?

Xi Chen

Hospital bed with colourful curtain background, white pillow, overhead patient lift, and hand control.

essay

Medicine

The body is not a machine

Modern biomedicine sees the body as a closed mechanistic system. But illness shows us to be permeable, ecological beings

Nitin K Ahuja

Black-and-white photo of a person lying on a bed, restrained by two others while having electroshock therapy.

essay

History of science

Shocked

With evidence for efficacy so thin, and the stakes so high, why is ‘electroshock’ therapy still a mainstay of psychiatry?

John Read

A white root vegetable with multiple long tendrils lies on a cobblestone surface.

essay

Illness and disease

Natural and unnatural

‘Natural’ remedies are metaphysically inconsistent and unscientific. Yet they offer something that modern medicine cannot

Alan Jay Levinovitz

A green cactus with twisted stems and spines in a gravelly garden, with blurry plants and trees in the background.

essay

Illness and disease

Beautiful monsters

Cancer is part of multicellular life. Now the riotous growth of crested cacti show how humans might adapt to live with it

Athena Aktipis

Black and-white-photo of a nurse operating a 1940s respirator machine while a young boy lies in bed wearing a chest respirator.

essay

Medicine

Life and breath

There’s a strange, and deeply human, story behind how we taught machines to breathe for critically ill patients

Sarah Ruth Bates

Vintage photo of a night scene with a large vehicle in the foreground and a group of people gathered on a pavement in front of a building.

essay

Illness and disease

Stealth infections

From the Black Death to polio, the most dangerous pathogens have moved silently, transmitted by apparently healthy people

Wendy Orent

Organised shelves filled with various medication boxes in a pharmacy.

essay

Medicine

The medicalised life

Why do so many see vaccines and other medical interventions as tools of social control rather than boons to health?

Bernice L Hausman

A person in a lab coat holding multiple vials and labelled containers with blue gloved hands in a laboratory setting.

idea

Medicine

Gentle medicine could radically transform medical practice

Jacob Stegenga

German Shepherd dog sniffing a metal container in a laboratory facility.

video

Biotechnology

How harnessing the power of dogs could help scientists sniff out cancer early

7 minutes

An elderly man wearing a face mask walking down a cobbled street with a hanging wicker basket for donations in the foreground.

essay

Public health

It didn’t have to be this way

A bioethicist at the heart of the Italian coronavirus crisis asks: why won’t we talk about the tradeoffs of the lockdown?

Silvia Camporesi