The Conversation

When noted journalists bashed political polls as nothing more than 'a fragmentary snapshot' of a moment in time

Written by W. Joseph Campbell, Professor of Communication Studies, American University School of Communication

Legendary New York City columnist Jimmy Breslin, right, ready to do shoe-leather journalistic research in a bar, said preelection polls were "monstrous frauds."Michael Brennan/Getty Images

Poll-bashing – the aggressive, even extreme lambasting of pollsters and their work – used to be blood sport among prominent American journalists.

Mike...

A language generation program's ability to write articles, produce code and compose poetry has wowed scientists

Written by Prasenjit Mitra, Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Information Sciences and Technology, Pennsylvania State University

GPT-3 is 10 times more complex than its predecessor.antoniokhr/iStock via Getty Images

Seven years ago, my student and I at Penn State built a bot to write a Wikipedia article on Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s play “Chitra.” First it culled information about “Chitra” from the internet. Then it looked at...

3 research-based ways to cope with the uncertainties of pandemic life

Written by Bethany Teachman, Professor of Psychology, University of Virginia

Don't assume that something you're uncertain about will have a terrible outcome.LWA-Dann Tardif/Stone via Getty Images

It’s 1:36 a.m. and I’ve just gotten my daughter back to sleep after she threw up violently. She has no fever, no cough, no shortness of breath, but what if…. I think it’s food poisoning and not COVID-19,...

How and when will we know that a COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective?

Written by William Petri, Professor of Medicine, University of Virginia

How much longer must society wait for a vaccine?ANDRZEJ WOJCICKI/Getty Images

With COVID-19 vaccines currently in the final phase of study, you’ve probably been wondering how the FDA will decide if a vaccine is safe and effective.

Based on the status of the Phase 3 trials currently underway, it is unlikely that the results of these trials will...

3 ways a 6-3 Supreme Court would be different

Written by Morgan Marietta, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell

People gather outside the U.S. Supreme Court building as news spread of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Sept. 18 death.AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

If the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is replaced this year, the Supreme Court will become something the country has not seen since the justices became a dominant force in American cultural...

The case of Biden versus Trump – or how a judge could decide the presidential election

Written by John E. Finn, Professor Emeritus of Government, Wesleyan University

Will judges decide who wins the presidential election?Geoff Livingston/Getty

Imagine the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020. Given the unprecedented number of mail-in votes this election, Americans may wake up and still not know who won the presidential contest between Republican President Donald J. Trump and Democratic challenger Joseph Biden.

The...

Tips for living online – lessons from six months of the COVID-19 pandemic

Written by Pamela Scott Bracey, PhD, Associate Professor of Instructional Systems and Workforce Development, Mississippi State University

Life online isn't ideal, but it is manageable.Alistair Berg/DigitalVision via Getty Images

Valentine’s Day was sweet, spring break was fun, then… boom! COVID-19. Stay-at-home orders, workplace shutdowns, school closures and social distancing requirements changed lives almost overnight. Forty-two percent of the U.S. workforce now works...

Pandemic crushes Guyana’s dreams of big oil profits as ‘resource curse’ looms over oil-producing nations

Written by Amy Myers Jaffe, Research professor, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with Guyana's president, Mohamed Irfaan Ali, Sept. 18. Pompeo is the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the tiny South American country. AFP via Getty Images

This year was supposed to bring great things for Guyana.

ExxonMobil discovered massive oil deposits off the South American country’s Caribbean coast in...

How can smoke from West Coast fires cause red sunsets in New York?

Written by Jeffrey B. Halverson, Professor of Geography & Environmental Systems, Associate Dean of the Graduate School, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

A red hazy sunset over Indiana caused by wildfire smoke from the Western U.S. SOPA Images/LightRocket va Getty Images

If you are one of the millions of people in the Midwest and Eastern U.S. who turned your gaze toward the sky recently, you may have noticed the Sun shining through an odd, milky haze. This widespread opaque veil was caused not by...

Retiring early can be bad for the brain

Written by Plamen Nikolov, Assistant Professor of Economics, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Continuing to engage in mental challenges keeps the brain from deteriorating in early retirement. Westend61/Getty Images

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

People who retire early suffer from accelerated cognitive decline and may even encounter early onset of dementia, according to a new economic study I...