The Conversation

'Micro snails' we scraped from sidewalk cracks help unlock details of ancient earth's biological evolution

Written by Matthew Brown, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, Mississippi State University

A live _Padaungiella lageniformis_ wiggles its pseudopods.Daniel J. G. Lahr, CC BY-ND

Every step you take, you’re likely walking on a world of unseen and undescribed microbial diversity. And you don’t need to head out into nature to find these usually unnoticed microscopic organisms.

As biologists, we know this firsthand. A meetup for...

How being beautiful influences your attitudes toward sex

Written by Robert Urbatsch, Associate Professor of Political Science, Iowa State University

Beauty can mean more opportunities – but can it also influence values?Nataliass/Shutterstock.com

People tend to feel strongly about matters of sexual morality, such as premarital sex or gay marriage.

Some sources of these differences are obvious. Religion, media portrayals and parents and peers are big social forces that shape attitudes about...

What drives the appeal of 'Passion of the Christ' and other films on the life of Jesus

Written by S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Cinema and Media Studies, by special appointment, Hamilton College

A still from Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ.Courtesy 20th Century Fox.

Church isn’t the only place people go to learn about Jesus.

At the beginning of Lent, 15 years ago, devout evangelical Christians did not go to church to have ashes marked on their foreheads. Rather, they thronged to theaters to watch a decidedly Catholic film to begin...

A new way to pay for innovative drugs, provide universal access and not break the bank

Written by Neeraj Sood, Professor of Public Policy, University of Southern California

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, prepares for the Feb. 26, 2019 hearing with CEOs from several U.S. drug makers.Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo

On the heels of congressional testimony by the CEOs of major drug makers, there are some important things to keep in mind. The U.S. faces a drug pricing crisis in large...

Listening in to brain communications, without surgery

Written by Salvatore Domenic Morgera, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Bioengineering, University of South Florida

Signals from inside the brain can reveal what's happening in nerve cells.Peshkova/Shutterstock.com

Plenty of legitimate science – plus a whole lot of science fiction – discusses ways to “hack the brain.” What that really means, most of the time – even in the fictional examples – involves surgery, opening the...

Why wealth equality remains out of reach for black Americans

Written by Darrick Hamilton, Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, The Ohio State University

When it comes to wealth, black families still lag far behind in the U.S.Twinsterphoto/shutterstock.com

Black History Month has become the time to reflect on all the progress black Americans have made, but the sobering reality is that when it comes to wealth – the paramount indicator of economic security – there has been virtually no...

Sequencing the white shark genome is cool, but for bigger insights we need libraries of genetic data

Written by Gavin Naylor, Director, Florida Program for Shark Research, University of Florida

Of more than 500 species of sharks in the world's oceans, scientists have only sequenced a handful of genomes – most recently, white sharks.Terry Goss/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

The headlines are eye-catching: Scientists have sequenced the genome of white sharks. Or the bamboo lemur, or the golden eagle. But why spend so much time and money figuring...

3 reasons why people fall for politicians' lies about statistics

Written by Mack Clayton Shelley, II, University Professor of Political Science, Statistics, and School of Education, and Chair of the Department of Political Science, Iowa State University

They said it, but is it true?EQRoy/shutterstock.com

Why do people make such poor decisions about politics? Why are they so often distracted by lies, irrelevant alternatives and specious arguments?

Politicians use and abuse statistics and fabricate when it suits their purposes. Contemporary examples of either deliberate or inadvertent misuse of data...

Michael Cohen's testimony on Trump business reveals conduct that's widespread in corporate America

Written by Bert Spector, Associate Professor of International Business and Strategy at the D'Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University

The Trump Organization, Donald Trump’s private, family-run business, is well known to have operated at the fringes of what’s legal. Trump got his start in the rough-and-tumble atmosphere of New York City real estate development, after all.

And so, as someone who pays close attention to how businesses operate, I was glued to the Feb. 27...

Michael Cohen's verbal somersault, 'I lied, but I'm not a liar,' translated by a rhetoric expert

Written by Jennifer Mercieca, Associate Professor of Communication, Texas A&M University

Michael Cohen, who admits to lying, also says he’s not a liar.

Can we separate what someone does from who they are? Cohen thinks we should and it would help us to understand both him and Trump better.

Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, testified before Congress about his former client Wednesday.

Cohen claimed that...