history of science 
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SOURCE: Boston Review
5/17/2022
What if Mental Illness Isn't All In Your Head?
by Marco Ramos
A historian of mental health reviews two new books and concludes that pharmaceutical and neurological approaches to mental health have failed and it's time to turn the lens onto society.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
4/28/2022
Dog Breed Stereotypes are Poor Guides to Behavior; Historian Explains Why they Are So Common
Science Historian Michael Worboys explains that the Victorian craze for dog breeding enshrined both a focus on dogs' outward appearances and the idea that heredity was all-important to a dog's quality, leading to frequent disappointment for owners who find their pets don't fit expectations.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
4/19/2022
These Books Tell of Change Happening Slowly, then Suddenly
Historians Lynn Hunt, Adam Hochschild, Kate Clifford-Larse and Keenaga-Yamahtta Taylor are among the authors whose books dig beneath the surface of famous leaders to describe how social movements built the strength to change laws, institutions and ideas.
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SOURCE: Boston Globe
4/16/2022
Darwin's Enduring Hold on Our Imaginations
by Tom Chaffin
The excitement that greeted the return of missing notebooks by the British naturalist reflect the fact that his work, while foundational, remains both controversial and poorly understood.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/10/2022
Why Following Joe Rogan Seems Easier than Following the Science
by Yair Rosenberg
"But in order for this science to be followed, it has to include the science of how people interact with each other. In other words, there has got to be a science of the virus, and there’s also got to be a science of society."
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/3/2022
Richard Leakey, Finder of Fossils Key to Story of Human Origins, Dies at 77
Leakey's discoveries were foundational both to the study of human origins and the model of scientific investigation.
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/12/2021
History of Past Pandemics Shows COVID Will Be an Era, not an Event
Medical and Science Historians Allan Brandt, Jeremy Greene, Frank Snowden and Jonathan Moreno argue that we are unlikely to experience any clear end of the COVID pandemic.
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10/3/2021
Latitude: The Pioneering International Mission to Measure the Earth
by Nicholas Crane
The scientists and technicians of the Geodetic Mission to the Equator did more than measure a degree of latitude; they showed how a disparate group of human beings from different countries and backgrounds could pool their collective resources and solve problems.
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SOURCE: The Nation
9/7/2021
Carl Zimmer's Planet of Viruses and the Politics of Popular Science Writing
by Danielle Carr
Carl Zimmer's work as a science popularizer has been hailed as a key to bringing Americans on board with public health measures in the pandemic. But does his approach to writing about the science of viruses obscure the context of politics in which science unfolds?
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SOURCE: Times of Israel
8/27/2021
Researchers Work on Mystery Uranium Cubes to Better Understand Nazi Progress on Atomic Bomb
New forensic research techniques could fill in missing details of the progress of Nazi nuclear weapons programs and improve contemporary efforts to enforce nuclear nonproliferation.
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SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
8/25/2021
Noel Swerdlow, U. of C. Professor who Won a Macarthur ‘Genius Grant,’ Dies at 79
Noel Swerdlow wove together the humanities and the sciences through his study of the history of science.
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SOURCE: Inverse
8/4/2021
Proto-Geometry Found in Babylonian Tablet, a Thousand Years Older than Pythagoras
"It’s generally thought that trigonometry — a subset of geometry and what’s displayed on the tablet in a crude sense — was developed by ancient Greeks like the philosopher Pythagoras. However, analysis of the tablet suggests it was created 1,000 years before Pythagoras was born."
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SOURCE: Boston Review
8/4/2021
UFOs and the Boundaries of Science
by Greg Eghigian
The history of the UFO phenomenon is a lens on to the process by which scientists police the bounds of respectable inquiry.
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6/20/2021
Recovering the Stories of Pioneering Frenchwomen of Science
by Nina Gelbart
The stories of six French women of science show that women have been part of the scientific revolution from the beginning, and that moving toward gender parity in professional science is imperative.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
5/25/2021
The Feminist Past History Can't Give Us
by Paula Findlen
"What it really meant to be a woman of science three centuries ago is not so easily conscripted into contemporary narratives of feminist liberation."
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SOURCE: Smithsonian
5/24/2021
Looking Beyond the Female Firsts of Science History
by By Anna Reser and Leila McNeill
While celebrating the pioneering achievements of women in science is worthwhile, it shouldn't substitute for close scrutiny of how scientific communities include or exclude participants and how society's gender and racial norms shape the work of scientists in that society.
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SOURCE: ScienceNews
5/4/2021
2,500 Years Ago, the Philosopher Anaxagoras Brought Science’s Spirit to Athens
2,500 years ago, Anaxagoras brought the Ionian philosophical outlook to Athens, where he helped to advance a naturalistic and empirical understanding of natural phenomena.
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SOURCE: Scientific American
5/2/2021
The Fermilab Muon Measurement May or May Not Point to New Physics, But ...
by Robert P. Crease
The measurement of the behavior of muons may or may not prove to be a groundbreaking discovery. But it is an achievement that demonstrates the collaboration across disciplines and national borders that represents the best of science.
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5/2/2021
Another Bite at the Apple: Isaac Newton's Time as a Man of Politics and Economics
by Patricia Fara
Isaac Newton's life has been retold according to the values of successive historians. Until now, most have shied away from Newton's second career at the Royal Mint, during which he was part of the growth of a British prosperity that was rooted in colonialism and slavery.
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4/11/2021
Can Space Exploration Restore American Faith in Science?
by John Baick
The 60th anniversary of the first manned space flight is time to reflect on the devolution of space exploration from an expression of science as a public and collective enterprise to a vanity project of fame-seeking billionaires.
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