Ethics

The withdrawal after 22 years of a controversial stem cell paper highlights how perverse incentives can distort scientific progress

A technology meant to help severely premature infants raises questions of inequity and may someday threaten parents’ rights to make decisions

Requiring FDA approval for laboratory-developed tests would be an overreaction to the Theranos debacle and would ultimately harm patients

An Alabama court ruling that human embryos outside the uterus should be regarded as children has raised concerns among doctors and scientists about the future of the fertility treatment in vitro fertilization

A state court ruling that embryos from in vitro fertilization are unborn children harms access to care for fertility patients, as well as medical innovations

Capital punishment must come to an end. It does not deter crime, is not humane and has no moral or medical basis

Scientific research needs to slow down, not speed up, to produce trustworthy results

Organized crime is mining sand from rivers and coasts to feed demand worldwide, ruining ecosystems and communities. Can it be stopped?

The world has launched into an era of injectables not just to treat obesity but to manage weight. Is that all good news?

Today’s Silicon Valley billionaires grew up reading classic American science fiction. Now they’re trying to make it come true, embodying a dangerous political outlook

Research on morality shows that it can counterintuitively impede peace and progress

A new tool based on machine learning uses features of writing style to distinguish between human and AI authors