Science

Undoing the politics of fear will require us to reckon with the legacies of nativism that divert our attention from the greatest threats to our health.

The anti-vaccine movement has gained ground because the public health community has denied the truth about measles.

Putting the burden on the government to demonstrate significant risk of harm before regulating has allowed willful ignorance to undermine public health.

When Thomas Kuhn coined the term, he wasn’t referring simply to “out of the box” thinking.

The company found its own toxic compounds in human blood—and kept selling them.

Cardboard boxes hold a world of meaning that spans from Amazon to the Container Corporation of America.

The carcinogenic effects of asbestos have been known for decades. We should have banned it long ago.

Beware of theories about human nature based on the study of our earliest ancestors.

Professional nurses who moved north during the Great Migration worked in New York City’s most contagious sanatorium — and changed the course of public health.

In Beth Linker’s new book, she applies a disability studies lens to the history of posture.

For more than a century, school nurses have improved public health in schools and beyond.

When the creator of MDMA first experimented with the drug, he felt a mellow sensation that he compared to "a low-calorie martini."

On May 1, 1924, the first iodized salt appeared on shelves, quickly solving an iodine deficiency crisis that plagued the northern U.S. “goiter belt.”

A collection of records from the Nixon Presidential Library and other sources on the internal debates Nixon advisors were having about climate change and environment.

On museum ethics and animal welfare in 19th century America.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s “On Death and Dying” sparked a revolution in end-of-life care. But soon she began to deny mortality altogether.

An interview with sociologist and historian of psychiatry Andrew Scull about the history and legacy of psychiatric deinstitutionalization.

Earth First! was founded in 1980 to defend wildlife and wilderness areas more directly and uncompromisingly than most environmental groups.

Despite assumptions about its demise, it is still enmeshed in the foundations of how some professions think about the world.

Considering how relationships of cooperation and perhaps even solidarity might be forged between human beings and animals.

How psychedelics went from counterculture to grind culture.

Historians are working to shine a light on Alice Ball’s legacy and contributions to an early treatment of a dangerous and stigmatizing disease.

The history of the Nutrition Facts label exposes the power — and limitations — of such transparency.

Clare Beams on the dark legacy of a purported pregnancy miracle drug.

The nuisance of a new season.

Rat bones collected from centuries-old shipwrecks tell a story of ecological competition and swift victory.

The Chesapeake 1000, which can lift 1,000 tons, arrived in Baltimore on Friday. Decades ago, it helped build a ship for a CIA mission to recover Soviet secrets.

Injecting the world’s deadliest toxin into one’s eye was always going to be a hard sell.

Meet the Washington artist who pioneered the field of medical illustration — and helped repair the lives of soldiers returning from WWI.

Wang Huning and Alexis de Tocqueville’s dark vision of the future.