Ethics

Vast amounts of valuable research data remain unused, trapped in labs or lost to time. Frontiers aims to change that with FAIR² Data Management, a groundbreaking AI-driven system that makes datasets reusable, verifiable, and citable. By uniting curation, compliance, peer review, and interactive visualization in one platform, FAIR² empowers scientists to share their work responsibly and gain recognition.

A University of Toronto study found that nearly one in four adults aged 60+ who reported poor well-being were able to regain optimal wellness within three years. The research highlights that physical activity, healthy weight, good sleep, and emotional and social support play crucial roles in recovery. Those with strong psychological wellness at the start were five times more likely to bounce back.

Gaslighting, often seen as a form of manipulation, has now been reframed by researchers at McGill University and the University of Toronto as a learning process rooted in how our brains handle prediction and surprise. Instead of merely being explained through outdated psychodynamic theories, this new model highlights how trust and close relationships can be exploited by manipulators who repeatedly undermine a person’s confidence in their own reality.

BMJ Group has pulled a widely reported apple cider vinegar weight-loss study after experts uncovered major flaws in its data and analysis. Attempts to replicate the results failed, and irregularities raised questions about the trial’s reliability. The authors admitted mistakes and agreed to the retraction, while editors stressed the importance of transparency and warned against citing the discredited findings.

Researchers found that middle-aged adults, especially women, are far more likely to be addicted to ultra-processed foods than older generations. Marketing of diet-focused processed foods in the 1980s may have played a major role. Food addiction was linked to poor health, weight issues, and social isolation, highlighting long-term risks. Experts warn that children today could face even higher addiction rates in the future.

What started as a frustrating kitchen challenge turned into award-winning science: Fabrizio Olmeda and his colleagues scientifically decoded the secret of creamy cacio e pepe and earned the Ig Nobel Prize. Their research showed how starch can stabilize Pecorino into a smooth sauce, turning a culinary mystery into physics-driven perfection.

Preschoolers with ADHD are often given medication right after diagnosis, against medical guidelines that recommend starting with behavioral therapy. Limited access to therapy and physician pressures drive early prescribing, despite risks and reduced effectiveness in young children.

A groundbreaking project is piecing together Leonardo da Vinci’s genetic profile by tracing his lineage across 21 generations and comparing DNA from living descendants with remains in a Da Vinci family tomb. If successful, the effort could reveal new insights into Leonardo’s health, creativity, and even help confirm the authenticity of his works.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping law, ethics, and society at a speed that threatens fundamental human dignity. Dr. Maria Randazzo of Charles Darwin University warns that current regulation fails to protect rights such as privacy, autonomy, and anti-discrimination. The “black box problem” leaves people unable to trace or challenge AI decisions that may harm them.

Whale sharks in Indonesia are suffering widespread injuries, with a majority scarred by human activity. Researchers found bagans and boats to be the biggest threats, especially as shark tourism grows. Protecting these gentle giants may be as simple as redesigning fishing gear and boat equipment.

In a health system where speed often replaces empathy, researchers highlight the life-changing power of listening. Beyond simple questions, values-driven listening—marked by presence, curiosity, and compassion—can transform both patients and providers.

Scientists found that Great Salt Lake’s chemistry and water balance were stable for thousands of years, until human settlement. Irrigation and farming in the 1800s and a railroad causeway in 1959 created dramatic, lasting changes. The lake now behaves in ways unseen for at least 2,000 years.

A sweeping international study has revealed that when faced with complex decisions, people across cultures—from bustling megacities to remote Amazon communities—tend to rely on their own judgment rather than seeking advice. The research, spanning over 3,500 participants in 12 countries, challenges the long-held belief that self-reliance is primarily a Western trait. While cultural values influence how strongly individuals lean on their inner voice, the preference for private reflection remains a shared human tendency.

A study finds that people are more open to plant-based eggs when they’re part of familiar foods, like pancakes, rather than served plain. While taste and appearance still favor regular eggs, vegan eggs score higher on environmental and ethical benefits. Familiarity is the key to getting people to try them.

AI is now a routine part of workplace communication, with most professionals using tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. A study of over 1,000 professionals shows that while AI makes managers’ messages more polished, heavy reliance can damage trust. Employees tend to accept low-level AI help, such as grammar fixes, but become skeptical when supervisors use AI extensively, especially for personal or motivational messages. This “perception gap” can lead employees to question a manager’s sincerity, integrity, and leadership ability.

Every time someone snaps a wildlife photo with iNaturalist, they might be fueling breakthrough science. From rediscovering lost species to helping conservation agencies track biodiversity and invasive threats, citizen observations have become vital tools for researchers across the globe. A new study reveals just how deeply this crowdsourced data is influencing modern ecological science, and how much more it could do.

AI-generated videos are becoming dangerously convincing and UC Riverside researchers have teamed up with Google to fight back. Their new system, UNITE, can detect deepfakes even when faces aren't visible, going beyond traditional methods by scanning backgrounds, motion, and subtle cues. As fake content becomes easier to generate and harder to detect, this universal tool might become essential for newsrooms and social media platforms trying to safeguard the truth.

Ancient Iranians hosted epic feasts with wild boars that had been hunted and transported from distant regions. These animals weren’t just dinner—they were symbolic gifts. Tooth enamel analysis revealed they came from different areas, suggesting early communities valued geography in gift-giving. The event took place even before agriculture began, hinting at deeply rooted cultural traditions.

In a groundbreaking UK first, eight healthy babies have been born using an IVF technique that includes DNA from three people—two parents and a female donor. The process, known as pronuclear transfer, was designed to prevent the inheritance of devastating mitochondrial diseases passed down through the mother’s DNA. The early results are highly promising: all the babies are developing normally, and the disease-causing mutations are undetectable or present at levels too low to cause harm. For families once haunted by genetic risk, this science offers more than treatment—it offers transformation.

President Trump s diagnosis of Chronic Venous Insufficiency (CVI) has brought renewed attention to a frequently overlooked yet dangerous condition. CVI affects the ability of veins especially in the legs to return blood to the heart, often leading to swelling, pain, skin changes, and ulcers. The American Heart Association warns that CVI isn t just a cosmetic issue; it's strongly linked to cardiovascular disease and increased mortality, even when other risk factors are accounted for. Seniors, smokers, those with sedentary lifestyles, and people with obesity are particularly at risk.

Long-tailed macaques given short videos were glued to scenes of fighting—especially when the combatants were monkeys they knew—mirroring the human draw to drama and familiar faces. Low-ranking individuals watched most intently, perhaps for self-protection, while high-strung ones averted their gaze.

When you're mentally exhausted, your brain might be doing more behind the scenes than you think. In a new study using functional MRI, researchers uncovered two key brain regions that activate when people feel cognitively fatigued—regions that appear to weigh the cost of continuing mental effort versus giving up. Surprisingly, participants needed high financial incentives to push through challenging memory tasks, hinting that motivation can override mental fatigue. These insights may pave the way to treating brain fog in disorders like PTSD and depression using brain imaging and behavior-based therapies.

A sweeping review of more than a century’s research upends the popular notion that left-handers are naturally more creative. Cornell psychologist Daniel Casasanto’s team sifted nearly a thousand studies, ultimately finding no consistent advantage for lefties on standard divergent-thinking tests—and even a slight edge for right-handers in some. The myth appears to thrive on coincidence: left-handedness is rare and so is creative genius, plus lefties’ overrepresentation in art and music gets cherry-picked while other professions are ignored.

Footprints found in the ancient lakebeds of White Sands may prove that humans lived in North America 23,000 years ago — much earlier than previously believed. A new study using radiocarbon-dated mud bolsters earlier findings, making it the third line of evidence pointing to this revised timeline.

Swap steaks for spinach and you might watch the scale plummet. In a 16-week crossover study, overweight adults who ditched animal products for a low-fat vegan menu saw their bodies become less acidic and dropped an average of 13 pounds—while the Mediterranean diet left weight unchanged. Researchers link the shift to lower “dietary acid load,” a hidden inflammation trigger driven by meat, eggs, and cheese.

Poachers are using a sneaky loophole to bypass the international ivory trade ban—by passing off illegal elephant ivory as legal mammoth ivory. Since the two types look deceptively similar, law enforcement struggles to tell them apart, especially when tusks are carved or polished. But scientists may have found a powerful new tool: stable isotope analysis.

A lifelong fascination with nature and fieldwork led this researcher to the world of ethnobiology a field where ecology, culture, and community come together. Investigating how local people relate to species like the anaconda, their work blends traditional knowledge with scientific methods for better conservation. The tale of the mythic Great Snake morphs into economic concerns over vanishing chickens, revealing how cultural beliefs and practical needs coexist.

Study suggests that appetite for bushmeat -- rather than black market for scales to use in traditional Chinese medicine -- is driving West Africa's illegal hunting of one of the world's most threatened mammals. Interviews with hundreds of hunters show pangolins overwhelmingly caught for food, with majority of scales thrown away. Survey work shows pangolin is considered the most palatable meat in the region.

Australia can reach net-zero emissions and still protect its natural treasures but only if everyone works together. New research from Princeton and The University of Queensland shows that the country can build the massive amount of renewable energy infrastructure needed by 2060 without sacrificing biodiversity, agriculture, or Indigenous land rights. But the path is delicate: if stakeholders clash instead of collaborate, the result could be soaring costs and a devastating shortfall in clean energy.

Human-AI interactions are well understood in terms of trust and companionship. However, the role of attachment and experiences in such relationships is not entirely clear. In a new breakthrough, researchers from Waseda University have devised a novel self-report scale and highlighted the concepts of attachment anxiety and avoidance toward AI. Their work is expected to serve as a guideline to further explore human-AI relationships and incorporate ethical considerations in AI design.

To achieve the European Green Deal's goal of 25% organic agriculture by 2030, researchers argue that new genomic techniques (NGTs) should be allowed without pre-market authorization in organic as well as conventional food production. NGTs -- also known as gene editing --- are classified under the umbrella of GMOs, but they involve more subtle genetic tweaks.

Many policy discussions on AI safety regulation have focused on the need to establish regulatory 'guardrails' to protect the public from the risks of AI technology. Experts now argue that, instead of imposing guardrails, policymakers should demand 'leashes.'

A new study shows that wildlife underpass tunnels dramatically reduce deaths of frog, salamanders, and other amphibians migrating across roads.

Reducing travel speeds and using an intelligent queuing system at busy ports can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from oceangoing container vessels by 16-24%, according to researchers. Not only would those relatively simple interventions reduce emissions from a major, direct source of greenhouse gases, the technology to implement these measures already exists.

Close to five million smuggled seahorses worth an estimated CAD$29 million were seized by authorities over a 10-year span, according to a new study that warns the scale of the trade is far larger than current data suggest. The study analyzed online seizure records from 2010 to 2021 and found smuggling incidents in 62 countries, with dried seahorses, widely used in traditional medicine, most commonly intercepted at airports in passenger baggage or shipped in sea cargo.

When formulating climate policy, too little attention is paid to social factors and too much to technological breakthroughs and economic reasons. Because citizens are hardly heard in this process, European governments risk losing public support at a crucial moment in the climate debate.

When it comes to public attitudes toward using self-driving cars, understanding how the vehicles work is important -- but so are less obvious characteristics like feelings of excitement or pleasure and a belief in technology's social benefits.

A new study shows that monitoring and managing select bird species can provide benefits for other species within specific regions.

A new study says students appear to be using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) responsibly, and as a way to speed up tasks, not just boost their grades.

When deciding whom to trust, people are more likely to choose individuals who grew up with less money over those who went to private schools or vacationed in Europe, according to new research.

Poor mental health, rising obesity rates, exposure to violence and climate change are among the key challenges facing our adolescents today, according to a global report.

Worldwide, coastal areas are squeezed between a rising sea level on one end and human structures on the other. The distance between a sandy coastline and the first human structures averages less than 400 meters around the world. And the narrower a coastline is, the lower its biodiversity as well.

Encouraging people in North America and Sub-Saharan Africa to adopt a low-carbon lifestyle could help to cut global household emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide by up to two-fifths, a new study reveals.

Photovoltaic systems are increasingly being installed not only on roofs but also on open land. This does not always meet with citizens' approval. What is known as agrivoltaics (Agri-PV), however, is viewed more favorably, as researchers have now been able to show. In this case, the solar cells are installed in spaces used for agriculture -- such as on pastures or as a canopy over grapevines. According to a survey of almost 2,000 people, this form enjoys much higher acceptance than normal solar parks.

A study has shown scientific knowledge on the conservation of endangered species is often overlooked when not presented in English.

A new study found that over a quarter of the world's naturalized plant species are threatened in parts of their native range -- raising questions about the role non-native populations may play in global conservation efforts.

A new game-based experiment sheds light on the tradeoffs people are willing to make about data privacy.

From seatbelt laws to new speed limits -- many people soon stop resisting policy changes that restrict their personal freedom once the new rules come into force. Researchers also identified the underlying psychological mechanism to gain important insights for possible communication strategies when introducing such measures.

What makes people think an AI system is creative? New research shows that it depends on how much they see of the creative act. The findings have implications for how we research and design creative AI systems, and they also raise fundamental questions about how we perceive creativity in other people.

Wealthy individuals have a higher carbon footprint. A new study quantifies the climate outcomes of these inequalities. It finds that the world's wealthiest 10% are responsible for two thirds of observed global warming since 1990 and the resulting increases in climate extremes such as heatwaves and droughts.

Climate scientists reveal that millions of today's young people will live through unprecedented lifetime exposure to heatwaves, crop failures, river floods, droughts, wildfires and tropical storms under current climate policies. If global temperatures rise by 3.5 C by 2100, 92% of children born in 2020 will experience unprecedented heatwave exposure over their lifetime, affecting 111 million children. Meeting the Paris Agreement's 1.5 C target could protect 49 million children from this risk. This is only for one birth year; when instead taking into account all children who are between 5 and 18 years old today, this adds up to 1.5 billion children affected under a 3.5 C scenario, and with 654 million children that can be protected by remaining under the 1.5 C threshold.

Physically punishing children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has exclusively negative outcomes -- including poor health, lower academic performance, and impaired social-emotional development -- yielding similar results to studies in wealthier nations, finds a new analysis.

A groundbreaking study reveals that North American bird populations are declining most severely in areas where they should be thriving. Researchers analyzed 36 million bird observations shared by birdwatchers to the Cornell Lab's eBird program alongside multiple environmental variables derived from high-resolution satellite imagery for 495 bird species across North America from 2007 to 2021.

Urgent action must be taken to reduce the ever-rising number of people killed by extreme temperatures in India, say the authors of a new 19-year study which found that 20,000 people died from heatstroke in the last two decades. Cold exposure claimed another 15,000 lives.

Many people around the world believe in karma -- that idea that divine justice will punish people who do bad deeds and reward those who good. But that belief plays out differently for oneself versus others, according to new research.

New research finds that tropical cyclones reduce years of schooling for children in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in areas unaccustomed to frequent storms. Girls are disproportionately affected.

Large language models (LLMs) are at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) and have been widely used for conversational interactions. However, assessing the personality of a given LLM remains a significant challenge. A research team has now developed an AI-driven assessment system, the Language Model Linguistic Personality Assessment (LMLPA), with capabilities to quantitatively measure the personality traits of LLMs through linguistic analysis.

Why do some people do more for the community than others? A new study now shows that personality traits such as extraversion and agreeableness correlate with volunteering and charitable giving.

In examining how different countries have rolled out climate change mitigation strategies, research has found reasons to be optimistic about preserving our environment while promoting prosperity and well-being.

Bite marks found on a skeleton discovered in a Roman cemetery in York have revealed the first archaeological evidence of gladiatorial combat between a human and a lion.