Science

Before the Endangered Species Act, the federal government had actually encouraged the killing of certain species.

Maybe what we need is not just a new form of poultry farming but a complete revolution in how we relate to meat.

Two gifted sisters in Philadelphia helped to transform early American science.

New analysis confirms precolonial lineage of this extinct breed, once kept for their wool.

Wednesday night will bring a brilliant meteor shower, but the far bigger Leonid shower 190 years ago had people believing Judgment Day was at hand.

The US military’s greatest enemy worked in an institution saturated with military funding. How did it shape his thought?

Reexamining biases and injustices that the New England Journal of Medicine has historically helped to perpetuate.

Sturmann Yanghis, a 17-year-old South African, was put on stage in America as a “wild savage.” Harvard claimed his remains when he died. Then they disappeared.

The two-volume ‘Codex of the Endangered Species Act’ takes a long look back — and forward.

Decisions about medical training and licensing in the 19th and early 20th century are still having an impact today.

The anthropologist helped popularize both techno-optimism and the concept of existential risk.

Asbestos was a miracle material, virtually impervious to fire. But as we fixed city fires in other ways, we came to learn about its horrific downsides.

These groups are invoking ACT UP's legacy to push for further deregulation of the FDA. Here's why they're wrong.

The American Ornithological Society says it will alter all human names of North American birds, starting with up to 80 species.

Three-quarters of a century before artificial intelligence concerns, rapid advances in automation prompted panic about mass unemployment—and radical solutions.

The rise and rise and rise of data.

In a century-long tradition, students at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania came together in solidarity to combat illness among their members.

Life as a Signal Corps weatherman was dangerous: besides inclement weather, they faced labor riots, conflicts with Native Americans, yellow fever outbreaks, fires, and more.

New dating methods have added more evidence that these fossils date to 23,000 years ago, pushing back migration to the Americas by thousands of years.

How the dream of air conditioning turned into the dark future of climate change.

A new book exposes effects of anti-Black myth-making and calls for an end to the family policing system.

Societies celebrate heroes and commemorate tragedies. But why is there so little public acknowledgment of environmental disasters?

A worldwide effort to heal damage to the ozone layer is showing early progress.

When I looked at the archives, I found a history hidden in plain sight.

The straightforward way in which Google answers this query is a case study in how new science becomes accepted as fact in the modern era of rapid communication.

In the years before Roe v. Wade, maternity homes in the United States housed residents who, upon giving birth, often relinquished their children for adoption.

Will our own elites perform any better than the rulers of Chaco Canyon, the Mayan heartland, and Viking Greenland?

The Peshtigo fire ran through 17 towns and killed more than 1,000. It was worsened by a dry season and extreme winds — not dissimilar to what happened in Maui.

The Smithsonian’s human brains collection was led by Ales Hrdlicka, a museum curator in the 1900s who believed that White people were superior.

In the 1960s, the government proposed the construction of two dams in the Grand Canyon, potentially flooding much of Grand Canyon National Park.