In the months after the Jan. 6 riot in Washington, D.C. in 2021, several defendants claimed that their crimes weren’t their fault. According to their defense teams: The crowd made them do it. At least for some of them, the defensive strategy failed to deliver, and they were found guilty on multiple charges. That said, it all begs the question: Can crowds really make people behave in ways that are deeply at odds with their values? If so, are any of us immune to collective behavior? Contagion Th ...read more

It’s a dirty little habit that many participate in, and few would admit to. As many as 91 percent of the population picks their noses from time to time. Many people do it to remove the dry nasal mucus, namely boogers, that can build up and irritate the nose. If you have allergies that clog your nasal passages, there’s even more of a temptation to clear them up. And in some cases, nose-picking can become a compulsive habit, like biting your nails. Nose Pickers Researchers have found that no ...read more

Following its arrival in Coventry, U.K., Dippy the Dinosaur drew over 10,000 visitors in its first week on display. The opening marked the beginning of Dippy’s three-year stay at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. Dippy is a Diplodocus, or more specifically, a Diplodocus fossil. Diplodocuses were gigantic dinosaurs that lived in the Late Jurassic Period, about 161 to 145 million years ago. The behemoth fossil itself is over 85 feet long and likely weighed between 22,000 to 30,000 pounds when ...read more

You might be the laziest person on the planet, but your brain never rests. So what does it get up to when you’re more or less checked out? In the 1930s, Hans Berger, a German psychiatrist who had recently invented the electroencephalogram (EEG), suggested that our brains are always active, even when we don’t seem to be doing much with them. Few people took the idea seriously at the time (maybe because Berger had spent much of his career trying to prove telepathy, or perhaps because he wa ...read more

The use of melatonin supplements has spiked significantly in the U.S. in recent years, prompting calls for more research into the effects of long-term melatonin supplementation in humans. That’s because relatively little research has been done concerning how taking melatonin pills on a regular basis affects overall health. Particularly in aging populations with Alzheimer's or dementia. Melatonin support has also been recommended for those who are blind and struggle with a regular sleep schedul ...read more

In the spring of 1993, a 30-minute program called Bill Nye the Science Guy aired for the first time on KCTS-TV, a Seattle-based PBS affiliate. Within months, the show was being syndicated nationally, and what followed was life-changing for the show’s titular host: six seasons, 100 episodes and substantial underwriting from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. Bill Nye was suddenly famous — broadcast into the homes and schools of millions of children, to explain ...read more

Several years back, a woman checked herself into a hospital psychiatric unit. She needed help, she told her doctors, because she was terrified of… zombies. Her doctors did what good doctors do: They used cognitive behavior therapy to help the woman question her thoughts and fears. Within days, the woman was laughing at her folly, and she was discharged. It’s possible that zombies do lurch about our world — just not in the ways depicted in popular movies or television shows. Real Life Zombi ...read more

Psychedelic drugs have become all the rage among scientists. But not for the reasons you might think. From early, rudimentary research of psychedelics in the 1950s and '60s to today’s sophisticated technology, there is a deep interest in understanding how psychedelics affect the brain. Scientists have been digging for meaningful answers, whether to learn the psychedelic effects on human consciousness or their potential as therapeutics. But what exactly are psychedelics? What are Psychedelics? ...read more

As a founding father in the fields of physics and astronomy, Galileo Galilei is known for countless contributions to science. The Italian thinker stressed a methodical, mathematical approach to studying the universe, and inspired the modern scientific method that remains a bedrock of scientific inquiry — even 380 years after his death. His innovations in the realm of motion and gravity are equally exceptional and have laid the foundations for today’s physics and made him one of the greatest ...read more

Though known for the sound of their hissing and slithering, snakes themselves were long believed to be deaf. Now we know that couldn’t be farther from the truth, according to a growing body of research by scientists who are working to show that snakes use sound to interact with their environment. How exactly these slithering reptiles understand noise still has the scientific jury puzzled, however. One school of thought argues that snakes sense vibrations in the ground — but new research doub ...read more