Ethics News

May 9, 2024

Top Headlines

'Digital Afterlife': Call for Safeguards to Prevent Unwanted 'Hauntings' by AI Chatbots of Dead Loved Ones

May 8, 2024 — Researchers lay out the need for design safety protocols that prevent the emerging 'digital afterlife industry' causing social and psychological ...

Liberals and Conservatives Differ on Climate Change Beliefs--but Are Relatively United in Taking Action

May 9, 2024 — The division between liberals and conservatives on both climate-change beliefs and related policy support is long-standing. However, the results of a newly released global experiment show that ...

Childhood Maltreatment Responsible for Up to 40 Percent of Mental Health Conditions

May 8, 2024 — A study has found the widespread impact of child abuse and neglect, with analysis suggesting they cause nearly half of common mental conditions. Researchers say childhood maltreatment should be ...

Acceptance of Animals in Urban Environments

May 8, 2024 — How do city residents feel about animals in their immediate surroundings? A recent study shows how different the acceptance of various wild animals in urban areas is. Important factors are the places where the animals are found and their level of ...

Latest Headlines

updated 7:30pm EDT

Contract Treatment Reduces Recidivism and Substance-Related Adverse Health Events

May 6, 2024 — Substance use disorder treatment in the community is a superior alternative to incarceration for offenders with a substance misuse background, ...

Companies May Buy Consumer Genetic Information Despite Its Modest Predictive Power

May 2, 2024 — Genetics can be associated with one's behavior and health -- from the willingness to take risks, and how long one stays in school, to chances of ...

Economist: Tens of Billions of Dollars in Forest Products Are Being Overlooked

Apr. 11, 2024 — Are we missing the forest for the trees? More than timber grows in forests -- including products worth many tens of billions of dollars. Because ...

Hybrid Intelligence Can Reconcile Biodiversity and Agriculture

Apr. 11, 2024 — So far, biodiversity and agricultural productivity could not be reconciled because the socio-ecological system of agriculture is highly complex, and the interactions between humans and the ...

Are Lab-Grown Brain Tissues Ethical? There Is No No-Brainer Answer

Apr. 8, 2024 — Researchers offer insights into the ethical dilemmas and legal complexities surrounding brain organoids, especially those derived from human fetal tissue. Their findings advocate for thorough ...

Life Expectancy Increased as World Addressed Major Killers Including Diarrhea, Lower Respiratory Infections, and Stroke

Apr. 3, 2024 — Global life expectancy increased by 6.2 years since 1990, according to a new study. Over the past three decades, reductions in death from leading ...

Gloom and Doom Warnings About Climate Change Do Not Work

Apr. 2, 2024 — How do you spread a message about climate change? According to an international study involving 59,000 participants, some tactics may actually reduce ...

Troubling Trends in Midlife Mortality in the US and UK

Mar. 21, 2024 — A new study reveals that US working-age adults are dying at higher rates than their peers in high-income countries; the UK is also falling ...

Low Social Status Increases Risk of Health Problems from Alcohol Problems

Mar. 20, 2024 — Men and women with lower income or education levels are more likely to develop medical conditions related to alcohol abuse compared to similar individuals with a higher socioeconomic status, ...

Good News: The US Maternal Death Rate Is Stable, Not Sky Rocketing, as Reported

Mar. 13, 2024 — A new study challenges the prevailing view on the maternal death rate in the United States. The findings show that the rates of maternal death were ...

Social Programs Save Millions of Lives, Especially in Times of Crisis

Apr. 22, 2024 — Primary health care, conditional cash transfers and social pensions have prevented 1.4 million deaths of all ages in Brazil over the past two decades, according to a new study. If expanded, these ...

School Suspensions and Exclusions Put Vulnerable Children at Risk

Apr. 15, 2024 — Managing problematic student behavior is one of the most persistent, challenging, and controversial issues facing schools today. Yet despite best intentions to build a more inclusive and ...

Talking Politics With Strangers Isn't as Awful as You'd Expect, Research Suggests

Apr. 3, 2024 — Individuals underestimate the social connection they can make with a stranger who disagrees with them on contentious issues, a new research paper ...

AI Ethics Are Ignoring Children, Say Researchers

Mar. 21, 2024 — Researchers have called for a more considered approach when embedding ethical principles in the development and governance of AI for ...

New Study Reveals Unintended Ethical Faultline in Team-Based Reward Systems

Mar. 14, 2024 — Employers who have introduced team-based rewards systems to foster creativity, collaboration, productivity and sales may want to look again at a system that new research shows can create an ...

New Study Shows How AI Can Help Us Better Understand Global Threats to Wildlife

Mar. 13, 2024 — Researchers used AI to scour information from websites and social media to map bat hunting and trade. Research found evidence of bat exploitation in 22 countries that had not previously been ...

The Health Impacts of Migrating by Sea

Mar. 7, 2024 — A new study of migrant drowning deaths in the Pacific Ocean lays the groundwork for future ...

Although Trust in Science Remains High, Public Questions Scientists' Adherence to Science's Norms

Mar. 4, 2024 — In a new article, members of the Strategic Council of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine examine what has happened to public confidence in science, why it has happened, and ...

Advances in Forensic Science Improve Accuracy of 'Time of Death' Estimates

Mar. 4, 2024 — Accurate 'time of death' estimates are a mainstay of murder mysteries and forensic programs, but such calculations in the real world are often complex and imprecise. In a first-of-its-kind ...

A New, Comprehensive Roadmap for the Future of Biomedical Engineering

Feb. 26, 2024 — Experts published a detailed position paper on the field of biomedical engineering which lays the foundation for a concerted worldwide effort to achieve technological and medical ...

What Math Tells Us About Social Dilemmas

Feb. 26, 2024 — Human coexistence depends on cooperation. Individuals have different motivations and reasons to collaborate, resulting in social dilemmas, such as the well-known prisoner's dilemma. Scientists ...

Researchers Overestimate Their Own Honesty

Feb. 26, 2024 — The average researcher thinks they are better than their colleagues at following good research practice. They also think that their own research field is better than other research fields at ...

Citizen Science to Mitigate the Environmental Crisis in the Marine Environment

Feb. 21, 2024 — Citizen science can help to improve conservation and management strategies for Mediterranean marine ecosystems, and to mitigate the impact of the environmental ...

Study of Usefulness of Lockdowns During Epidemics Identifies Alternate Solution

Feb. 21, 2024 — The COVID-19 pandemic raised questions about when and to what extent costly nonpharmaceutical interventions (e.g., lockdowns) should be used to slow the contagious spread of the virus. In a new ...

Maternal Mental Conditions Drive Climbing Death Rate in U.S., Evidence Review Finds

Feb. 21, 2024 — Researchers culled years of data demonstrating that maternal mental illness is an under-recognized contributor to the death of new mothers. They are calling for urgent action to address this public ...

Why Do(n't) People Support Being Nudged Towards Healthier Diets?

Feb. 16, 2024 — You may not realize it, but 'nudge' has been used by businesses, policy-makers and governments for years to prod the public into making different choices. Small changes in our environment ...

Why Politics Bring out the Worst in Us

Feb. 8, 2024 — In a survey involving a total of 2,472 respondents, researchers asked participants about nonpolitical and political moral behavior and nonpolitical and political moral tolerance. They found people ...

Many Excess Deaths Attributed to Natural Causes Are Actually Uncounted COVID-19 Deaths, New Analysis Reveals

Feb. 6, 2024 — A new study provides the first concrete data showing that many of these excess deaths were indeed uncounted COVID-19 deaths. The study compared reported COVID-19 deaths to excess deaths due to ...

Bullied Teens' Brains Show Chemical Change Associated With Psychosis

Feb. 6, 2024 — Researchers have found that adolescents being bullied by their peers are at greater risk of the early stages of psychotic episodes and in turn experience lower levels of a key neurotransmitter in a ...

Hiring the Most Qualified Candidate Might Be Unfair

Feb. 1, 2024 — Both liberals and conservatives are more likely to believe that merit-based hiring is unfair after learning about the impacts of socioeconomic disparities, according to a new ...