News & Comment

Violence is the greatest public health problem of our time, but is the only epidemic in which the health sector is not leading the response, says Gary Slutkin.

Individual and collective human behaviour is studied by numerous fields, spanning the social and natural sciences and beyond. Genuine progress in understanding human behaviour can only be achieved through a multidisciplinary community effort. Nature Human Behaviour aims to foster that effort.

The brain can be viewed as an organic computer that can be reprogrammed to incorporate external elements, such as artificial tools. But is there a risk that our increasing reliance on digital devices, such as smartphones, could also be reprogramming our brains and blunting our human attributes?

Performance data is dominating education policy, with many researchers and policymakers convinced that a data-based approach results in improved performance. The implications of this should be questioned by the research community to promote debate and consideration of choices excluded by data dependency.

To understand voting behaviour, we must consider voters' emotions and their interaction with electoral arrangements and the complex functions elections serve in democracies. We can then optimize voting via electoral ergonomics — the design of electoral arrangements that consider voters' bodies and minds.

Authors who wish to publish their work with us have the option of a registered report. With this format, acceptance in principle happens before the research outcomes are known. As a result, publication bias is neutralized, as are incentives for practices that undermine the validity of scientific research.

Despite significant investment, contemporary anticorruption efforts have failed to be effective. A new index — the Index of Public Integrity — offers a transparent, evidence-based approach to controlling corruption and measuring progress.

Public health officials and politicians often use statistical complexity as an excuse to do nothing, says Danny Dorling.

As humans, our decision-making process is biased towards maintaining the status quo, even if an alternative choice has substantial long-term benefits. This cognitive myopia and present bias, when applied to decisions that affect sustainability, could be threatening our future.

Researchers dig deeper into why the cultural practice of female genital cutting continues — and how best to halt it.