Follow announcements and commentary on the evolving ethics of science and technology, from AI safety and privacy to governance in psychology and neuroscience.
A new study in the Journal of the European Economic Association presents stark evidence that rising ocean acidity - driven by global carbon emissions - may already be harming the youngest and most vulnerable. Analyzing coastal regions across 36 low- and middle-income countries from 1972 to 2018, researchers show that prenatal exposure to more acidic ocean waters significantly increases neonatal mortality and disrupts early childhood development. The findings reveal a largely overlooked climate impact, linking ecological change to maternal nutrition and the survival of newborns.
A new Open Access study in Sociology of Religion examines two decades of European Social Survey data to understand how social conformism - the value placed on fitting in - shapes religious behavior and the rise of secular identities. The findings show that conformists tend to be more religious in religious societies, yet in increasingly secular countries this link weakens across younger generations. The results illuminate how social norms, rather than belief alone, guide Europe's evolving relationship with religion, identity, and cultural change.
A new open-access article in The Philosophical Quarterly revisits a longstanding question in moral philosophy: whether the developmental potential of a human infant carries moral significance. While critics argue that potential leads to inconsistencies and counterintuitive implications, the study shows that many of those same objections also apply to more widely accepted moral views based on immediately exercisable capacities, such as the capacity for consciousness. By mapping these parallels, the author argues that dismissing potential may be intellectually inconsistent unless similar criticisms are applied across the board.
A new open-access article in The Journal of Law and the Biosciences examines how the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) are regulating artificial intelligence in drug development. Written by Gabriela Lenarczyk, Timo Minssen, Nicholson Price, and Arti Rai, the study compares the FDA's flexible, dialogue-based oversight with the EMA's structured, risk-tiered model under the EU's new AI Act. The analysis highlights growing divergence across the Atlantic and its implications for innovation, safety, and global harmonization.
A large preregistered study published in Clinical Psychological Science examined whether psychological distress causes or results from belief in conspiracy theories. Researchers followed nearly 1,000 adults from the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand across seven months, measuring stress, depression, anxiety, and belief in various conspiracy narratives. Contrary to long-standing assumptions, the study found almost no evidence that distress predicts conspiracy beliefs - or that such beliefs increase distress. The paper is open access.
Culture is often seen as the soul of an organization - the invisible glue that holds people together. But beneath that shared purpose lies a system of subtle controls: rewards, disapproval, and silent expectations that shape how members think, feel, and act. A new open-access study by economist Mark Gradstein in The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization offers a formal model of how culture and control intertwine, showing that management doesn't just guide performance - it engineers belief itself.
Before Daniel Ellsberg became known for leaking the Pentagon Papers, he was a thinker wrestling with a different secret - the nature of uncertainty itself. A recent analysis by economist Carlo Zappia (Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2025) uncovers how Ellsberg's early research at the RAND Corporation went beyond his famous "paradox." Behind the urns and probabilities lay a more radical message: the real world cannot be reduced to a list of known possibilities. True uncertainty, Ellsberg argued, is ontological - it exists in the very structure of reality, where surprise is inevitable and complete prediction impossible.
In the digital age, influence is less about algorithms and more about connection. A groundbreaking study in Human Communication Research reveals that social media influencers can inspire real political participation - not by persuasion alone, but through the emotional closeness their followers feel toward them. When influencers speak about issues like climate change using collective language ("Together, we can make a difference"), they activate a shared sense of purpose that transforms audiences into communities of action.
Can kindness be engineered? A groundbreaking 2025 PNAS Nexus study has mapped the inner moral design of people who give most radically - from effective altruists who calculate how to save the greatest number of lives, to extraordinary altruists who donate organs to complete strangers. Their results reveal that altruism is not a single virtue but a structured field of values - where impartial logic and boundless compassion intersect, and even loyalty, once seen as a limit, becomes a bridge toward universal care.
