Category archives: Humanities & Social Sciences

How did the maker of stone tool over 1 million years old get to Sulawesi without a boat?

How did the maker of stone tool over 1 million years old get to Sulawesi without a boat?

AnthropologyArchaeology

By Invited Researcher

Authors: Adam Brumm, Professor of Archaeology, Griffith University; Basran Burhan, PhD Candidate, Archaeology, Griffith University; Gerrit (Gert) van den Bergh, Researcher in Palaeontology, University of Wollongong; Maxime Aubert, Professor of Archaeological Science, Griffith University, and Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Professor in Geochronology and Geochemistry, Southern Cross University Stone tools dating to at least 1.04 million years ago […]

Organized scientific fraud is on the rise

Organized scientific fraud is on the rise

EthicsSociology

By Mapping Ignorance

From fabricated research to paid authorships and citations, organized scientific fraud is on the rise. By combining large-scale data analysis of scientific literature with case studies, researchers led a deep investigation into scientific fraud. Although concerns around scientific misconduct typically focus on lone individuals, the Northwestern study instead uncovered sophisticated global networks of individuals and […]

Wittgensteining the continuum (& 2):  Is the continuum petrified?

Wittgensteining the continuum (& 2): Is the continuum petrified?

MathematicsPhilosophy of science

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

I finished my last entry expressing my perplexity by the ‘solution’ mathematicians offered six decades ago to the problem of the continuum : Cohen’s theorem according to which both the assumption that there is some set (say, C) larger than the set of natural numbers but smaller than the set of real numbers, and the […]

Could the euro replace the dollar as global reserve currency? It’s not getting any less likely

Could the euro replace the dollar as global reserve currency? It’s not getting any less likely

Economics

By Invited Researcher

Author: Sergi Basco, Adjunct Professor of Economics, Universitat de Barcelona A global reserve currency is one that is extensively held by foreign Central Banks. Since the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement this position has been occupied by the US dollar and it still holds true – according to IMF data from late 2024, the dollar represented […]

Changing the Eurocentric narrative about the history of science

Changing the Eurocentric narrative about the history of science

HistoryPhilosophy of science

By Invited Researcher

Author: Karen K. Christensen-Dalsgaard, Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, MacEwan University In the 11th century in Cairo, the foundations for modern science were laid through the detention of an innocent man. The mathematician Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham had been tasked with regulating the flow of the Nile, but when he saw the river […]

150 years ago, the Metre Convention determined how we measure the world

150 years ago, the Metre Convention determined how we measure the world

History

By Invited Researcher

Author: Jonathan Simone, Adjunct Professor of Biological Sciences, Brock University On May 20, 1875, delegates from a group of 17 countries gathered in Paris to sign what may be the most overlooked yet globally influential treaty in history: the Metre Convention. At a time when different countries (and even different cities defined weights and lengths […]

The paradox of democracy’s success

The paradox of democracy’s success

PsychologySociology

By Invited Researcher

Authors: Ralph Hertwig, Director, Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair of Cognitive Psychology, University of Bristol The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 paved the way for the democratisation of many eastern European countries and triumphantly ushered in the era of global liberal democracy that some […]