by Hannah Maslen and Rebecca Roache In the past five years or so, a new phenomenon has emerged on the internet. ASMR videos allow you to spend around 40 minutes watching someone carefully unpack and repack a box, or listen to a detailed dem…

The UK government has announced plans to review the possibility of stripping drug addicts, alcoholics and obese individuals of benefits if they refuse treatment for their conditions. In support of the review, a consultation paper claims tha…

1. The fact that you disagree with the author’s conclusion is not a reason for advising against publication. Quite the contrary, in fact. You have been selected as a peer reviewer because of your eminence, which means (let’s face it), your …

By Kei Hiruta ‘STOP ORIENTALISM’. So says the banner of the protest group, ‘Stand Against Yellow Face’ (SAYF), campaigning against a weekly event at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston. The event, called ‘Kimono Wednesdays’, originally …

Many people are suspicious about being manipulated in their emotions, thoughts or behaviour by external influences, may those be drugs or advertising. However, it seems that – unbeknown to most of us – within our own bodies exist a co…

Driverless or autonomous cars will almost certainly be commonplace quite soon. Imagine you are sitting in such a car, approaching a tunnel on a single-lane mountain road. A child wanders into the middle of the road, blocking the entrance to…

By Dominic Wilkinson @Neonatalethics   At the bedside of a critically ill infant at 5am this morning I was tempted to tweet the latest meme, adding my voice to a chorus of NHS clinicians over the weekend. Last week, in a speech to the …

@JimACEverett  www.jimaceverett.com As many readers of this blog may know, in the last few years a “replication crisis” has caused intense soul searching in psychology – and particularly in social psychology. This crisis was sparked when se…

Catia Faria, PhD Candidate Department of Law, Universitat Pompeu Fabra In 2004, the Hunting Act banned fox hunting with dogs from England and Wales. More than ten years later, 80% of Britons still believe that it should remain illegal. Stri…

by Anders Sandberg and Ben Levinstein Over the past week we have been subsumed by the intense, final work phase just before the deadline of a big, complex report. The profanity-density has been high, mostly aimed at Google, Microsoft and Ap…