News & Comment

Requiring undergraduate students to perform what is termed original research for their thesis, an investigation that cannot constitute a replication of an existing study, is a failed opportunity for science and education, argues Daniel Quintana.

Science is not separate from societal issues. The production and impact of research are fundamentally social processes, and these too warrant scrutiny.

Code is at the heart of computational social and behavioural science. To increase code reliability and reproducibility, we are implementing formal peer review of the code behind computational models whenever they are essential to the research we publish. We ask our authors to prepare and store their code with readability, transparency and future replicability in mind.

Authors can appeal editorial decisions, and editors will always consider each appeal carefully. However, not all appeals are successful. Under what circumstances is appealing an editorial decision likely to reverse the outcome, and what are the features of a strong appeal?

The world’s population does not split neatly into two groups, WEIRD and non-WEIRD people, argues Sakshi Ghai. Because the non-WEIRD brush does not do justice to the complexity of human lives, she calls upon behavioural science to ensure that samples represent human diversity.

Automation can depress wages even without eliminating jobs. Ashley Nunes explains this risk and argues that universal basic income offers a solution.

What is the long-term impact of technological advances on cognitive abilities? We critically examine relevant findings and argue that there is no clear evidence for detrimental lasting effects of digital technology on cognitive abilities. But we also suggest how digital technology may be changing predominant ways of cognition.

Fieldwork-based research by non-local scholars is valued in social science, but the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the exclusionary mechanisms and power differentials that sustain such research. This must change, writes Adriana Rudling.

Titles are the first, and often the only, part of your paper that others will read. That’s why they matter so much, and here’s some practical advice on how to write them.

At the time that COVID-19 began to take hold in India, a group of Indian scientists came together to combat what Reeteka Sud describes as one of the most potent threats: the spread of misinformation fueling the pandemic.

Research over the past decades has demonstrated the explanatory power of emotions, feelings, motivations, moods, and other affective processes when trying to understand and predict how we think and behave. In this consensus article, we ask: has the increasingly recognized impact of affective phenomena ushered in a new era, the era of affectivism?

Jens Foell recently changed careers and began working fulltime for maiLab, Germany’s biggest science communication YouTube channel. In this World View, he shares his experiences as a science communicator and discusses the advantages and challenges.

The current surge of COVID-19 cases and deaths are a result of ineffective policy responses, an anti-scientific attitude, and a fragile underfunded health care system, argues Vipin Bahadur Singh.

Science is a cumulative enterprise, and systematic evidence synthesis is invaluable for appraising what is known and what is not known on a specific research question. We strongly encourage the submission of systematic reviews and meta-analyses to Nature Human Behaviour.

Science is still an enterprise in which positions of power are mainly held by white, cis-gender, male academics. We discuss how the legacy of science’s exclusionary past still persists in scientific structures and propose concrete changes to open the system to a more diverse future.