Science

The history of the movement is one of unlikely success. But what can we learn from embattled experiments like prescribed heroin? 

An act of love in the form of a medicinal tonic.

Fewer fires are burning worldwide than at any time since antiquity. But in banishing fire from sight, we have made its dangers stranger and less predictable.

Hiding behind "academic freedom," E. O. Wilson actively propagated race pseudoscience in collusion with white supremacists.

How the rise of alternative, "natural," medicines led Americans to equate food with moral character.

Vaccine skepticism and misinformation have persisted since the smallpox epidemics. With the internet, it's only gotten worse.

What the autism diagnosis says about you.

The white pine known as Tree 103 had lost the dewy glow that it had back in 1675.

Actions by the medical profession in the 1970s still reverberate today.

Corporate deregulation has long curtailed OSHA’s power to safeguard workers.

Access to information only goes so far to explain the curious link between secrets and those who tell them.

The past provides a key lesson to minimize the damage from the omicron surge.

Plastic production just keeps expanding, and now is becoming a driving cause of climate change.

The farm tractor wasn’t born overnight. Perfecting it led to a three-way battle between Ford, John Deere and International Harvester.

Fire is a planetary feature, not a biotic bug. What can we learn from Yosemite’s experiment to restore natural fire?

On the nineteenth-century artists and thinkers who pictured a future of abundance powered by steam.

We all can thank a 19th century Boston-born cookbook author and domestic science pioneer for revolutionizing the way recipes are replicated at home.

The ivory-billed woodpecker hasn't been seen for decades. The government is ready to declare it extinct—but at what cost?

Fifty years later, the legacy of the National Cancer Act illustrates the need for a broad approach.

Did Ancestral Puebloans watch the skies from Mesa Verde's Sun Temple? Solving its mysteries requires overcoming archaeology’s troubled past.

Counting both uninfected and infected people helps us better understand a pandemic.

The maternal health intervention from a century ago that worked.

In moving away from fossil fuels, some in aviation are thinking of bringing back helium-assisted flight.

Understanding the battle over immunization—from the pre-Victorian era onward—between public health and the people may help in treating anti-vax sentiment.

Museums construct knowledge by constructing objects—literally.

Ryan White’s story both reinforced and challenged assumptions about the disease.

The challenges of 536 CE, including cold temperatures and volcanic fallout, prompted a flourishing of Ancestral Pueblo society.

A blinking cursor follows us everywhere in the digital world, but who invented it and why?

Tens of thousands of sick and injured soldiers became addicted.

As the country grew, each census required greater effort than the last. That problem led to the invention of the punched card – and the birth of an industry.