Mark Lynas on the complexity of disagreeing on GMOs

'I try to take people at face value in terms of what their objections are, and to not ascribe them with ill-intent'

Here are the answers to your most-frequently-asked GMO questions

The art of publicly changing your mind on GMOs

'Seeds of Science' makes a persuasive case for GM technology by a man who used to oppose it

Why I'm quitting GMO research

Constantly confronting people who think my research will harm them is profoundly distressing

How 'Frankenstein' unfairly sways the GMO debate

The novel ushered in a concept that actively harms the Global South two centuries later

Plants are not conscious, whether you can 'sedate' them or not

A New York Times story is a case study in what can go wrong in translating science

Simulating evolution helped scientists design a better virus

It sounds like an arcane superpower. It boils down to random mutation and selection

Scientists are recruiting live bacteria to fight deadly infections

A study in rural India is raising hopes for a future without antibiotics

The prolific life of Wang Zhenyi, autodidact, astronomer, and poet

Progressive in science and art, she disregarded sexist norms of Qing-dynasty China

The Mother's Curse: how a French king’s legacy revealed a loophole in evolution

New research with roots in colonial Canada suggests new wrinkles in ideas of evolution

The science Nobel Prizes are sexist, racist, and misleading. Let's rethink them

We should be rewarding discoveries, not individuals

This biologist believes we should embrace human gene editing

It could free millions from preventable, predetermined suffering

Inside the effort to create entire genomes from scratch

Yes, even human ones

Billionaires are rushing into biotech. Inequality is following them into science

'Free-market philanthropy' raises yet more questions about the future of American public research

Why is it so hard for scientists to talk about leaving academia?

We should value scientists who transfer their skills

The Graduate Research Fellowship Program favors elite schools – again

The early-career grants, meant to boost diversity, end up perpetuating disparities

The risks and rewards of genetic engineering, animated

Pioneering biologist David Baltimore on the ethical quandary of engineering 'cures'

How farmers on the Great Plains are changing the local climate

New crop practices trap more carbon in the soil, increasing rainfall and adding profits

Don't fear germs – at least not too much

Microbes are neither purely 'good' nor 'bad'

A rare disease offers clues to how genes affect social behavior

Williams syndrome is helping scientists understand the roots of sociality

Should peer review stop being anonymous?

Prominent researchers can take the gamble, but junior scientists risk retribution

A nuclear attack could be a lot like an asteroid strike

Nothing compares to the impact that killed the dinosaurs, but nuclear blasts are far more likely

Low doses of contaminants, long ignored, can have vast consequences

Scientists found cocaine – and a lot of other chemicals – in Minnesota snow

The brain treats questions about beliefs like physical threats. Can we learn to disarm it?

Street epistemologists are trying to give people 'the gift of doubt'

Scientific knowledge is drowning in a flood of research

A comic about the problems with the -omics, illustrated by Matteo Farinella

Is light pollution changing how plants do – and don't – grow?

Plants depend on cycles of light. Now, they're always on

We can no longer count on nature's 'self-correction' to curb warming

Plants are reaching their carbon-storage limit

Toxic chemicals are being freed from melting glaciers

Scientists are finding decades-old DDT and PCB flowing from the Tibetan Plateau

What ancient corn farmers can teach us about engineering crops for climate change

In the era of GMO crops, farmers can learn old lessons of diversity