We Can’t Just Lie About Sex Differences

In this conversation with Timur Sevincer and Nikil Mukerji, Steve Stewart-Williams, author of the new book A Billion Years of Sex Differences, discusses what evolutionary psychology actually claims, h

realclearscience.com

What Happens to Your Brain When You Stop Drinking Alcohol

Alcohol is one of the most popular drugs in the world, with millions enjoying the buzz produced by a cocktail of pharmacology and social ingredients. The 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health

realclearscience.com

How Scientists Are Perfecting Chocolate

In 1847, the British company J.S. Fry & Sons unveiled a new product: a solid block of cocoa powder, sugar and cocoa butter. While people had sipped on chocolate beverages for thousands of years, c

realclearscience.com

Rubin Observatory Wows With Its First Science Image

A breathtaking new view of the cosmos featuring more than half a million galaxies has been released by the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, revealing its first LSST Camera image for scientific

realclearscience.com

5 Things You Might Not Know About the Brown Recluse

They are quarter-sized, like to hide, and feared by many: brown recluse spiders. Also known as

realclearscience.com

Liquid Fluoride Can Stop Cavities Without Drilling

Dentists might soon have an easier option on hand to treat the dreaded cavity. Researchers at the University of Michigan conducted a large-scale Phase III trial testing out a liquid form of fluoride o

realclearscience.com

Kids Who Start Social Media Earlier Do Worse Academically

Children who open social media accounts at the start of secondary school appear to perform worse in tests than those who delay, with researchers suspecting that the constant checking for updates is a

realclearscience.com

Why the Legendary Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI

On May 20, 2026, OpenAI made an announcement that shook the mathematical world. An internal AI model — one not available to the public — had come up with a counterexample to the “uni

realclearscience.com

Scientists Identify Bacteria That May Prevent Allergies

For decades, scientists have theorized that kids actually need to get a bit dirty for their immune systems to develop fully. It's known as the 'hygiene hypothesis'. And, as childhood rates of allergie

realclearscience.com

Fixing One of Climate's Worst Plots

The plot covers the continental U.S., and it dramatically shows that temperatures in the 1930s were more extreme than those of the present period. The metric plotted, the heat wave index, is construct

realclearscience.com

Why Are Heterosexual Women Attracted to Each Other?

A common plot device of all those obnoxiously entertaining teen movies from the 2000s actually has some scientific validity. A fifth to a third of straight college women have kissed another woman, oft

realclearscience.com

We Have No Clue What GLP-1s Are Doing to Brains

The Caribbean island of St Kitts has a drinking problem. But it’s not the people who like to overindulge – it’s the island’s vervet monkeys, who’ve become notorious for s

realclearscience.com

Amulet May Change the History of Christianity

An 1,800-year-old silver amulet discovered buried in a Frankfurt, Germany grave, still next to the chin of the man who wore it, has 18 lines of text written in Latin on just 1.37 inches of silver foil

realclearscience.com

Artificial Sweeteners Worse for Brain Than Sugar?

Artificial sweeteners are in the news almost constantly. If you believe the headlines, they are terrible blights on our health that are far worse than the sugar they replace. This isn't always support

realclearscience.com

Archaeologists Find Hundreds of Ancient Glyphs in the Amazon

Flying over the southwestern Amazon, archaeologists have discovered hundreds of ancient, monumental designs carved in the earth that hint at complex societies in the rainforest a millennium before Spa

realclearscience.com

For Sleep Improvement, Melatonin May Not Be the Answer

Melatonin has become a go-to for both children and adults who have trouble sleeping. According to the Sleep Foundation, nearly half of all adults have used the sleep aid to fall asleep, and 39 percent

realclearscience.com

The One Marine Creature That Seems to Scare Orcas

In recent years, our perception of the ocean's pecking order has been turned on its head. Ever since Jaws, great white sharks have loomed large in the popular imagination as the undisputed rulers of t

realclearscience.com

What Does Florida Have So Much Leprosy?

Florida seems to have a leprosy problem, and armadillos might be playing a role. The state has seen dozens of reported cases in recent years, many of which were likely acquired locally. Though the inf

realclearscience.com

Despite Being Abandoned, the Static Universe Still Merits Study

The notion of a static universe wasn't always fringe. Albert Einstein himself first applied general relativity to a static model, introducing his cosmological constant to hold it there. It didn't wor

realclearscience.com

SpaceX Rocket to Slam Into Moon at 5,400mph

A drifting SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the moon after launching a pair of lunar landers more than a year ago. The rocket’s upper stage will unintentionally slam into the moon on

realclearscience.com

What Happens When We Don't Know Anything

We live in the most information-saturated era in human history, and yet a growing number of people feel like the answers to their questions have never been farther away. We are drowning in content but

realclearscience.com

Monkeys Sometimes Have 'Pets' Like Humans

We humans love our pets, but we aren’t the only great apes who buddy up with other species. Researchers have documented multiple instances of primates forming bonds with different animals, but a

realclearscience.com

Bacteria and Cancer: The Latest Word

There have been a great number of reports over the years of associations between various bacterial species and human tumor tissue, but the problem is that no one has been sure how many of these associ

realclearscience.com

How Polygamy Shaped Humanity

First, let’s get one thing straight. My wife and I have been married for over 21 years, and I love her deeply. This post is not about me! There, I’ve said it — for the record. That s

realclearscience.com

Johannes Kepler Is Science's Best Role Model

For a great many people in the world, the hardest words to say are simply these three: “I was wrong.” It’s as though simply admitting you were mistaken about something — even t

realclearscience.com

The Pompeii Residents Who Made It Out Alive

About 2,000 years ago, a woman named Julia Felix decided to rent out sections of her large estate. Historians know about these seemingly mundane business dealings because her property happened to be l

realclearscience.com

Bizarre Material Found in Hiroshima Bombing Debris

When an atomic bomb detonates, it produces a unique chemical environment that's nearly impossible to mimic in a lab—and amid its destruction, the explosion can create something completely new. O

realclearscience.com

With Big Quantum Mystery Solved, Old Results Don’t Add Up

For 25 years, physicists have been puzzled by an apparent one-part-in-a-million problem. Their expectations of the way that certain particles should wobble in a magnetic field were clashing with what

realclearscience.com

How to Use Olive Oil Correctly

Extra virgin olive oil is often promoted as the very best oil to use for cooking. 'If you want quality, never buy anything other than extra virgin olive oil,' says one retailer. 'Extra virgin olive oi

realclearscience.com

Could a Startup's Radical Plane Design Upend Flight?

The U.S. government is swinging behind a fledgling startup’s moonshot bid to dislodge Boeing BA -3.41%decrease; down pointing triangle as America’s only major maker of commercial airliners

realclearscience.com