Science

From repeat lightning strikes to identical lottery draws, mathematician Sarah Hart explains why incredibly unlikely events happen all the time

As families gather for festive time together, tensions can rise. David Robson delves into the science to find the best technique to stop arguments getting the better of us

Here are 10 words that entered our vocabulary this year, capturing discoveries at the cutting edge of science, elusive emotions and the various ways technology is changing our lives

We assembled a crack team to create a record-breaking snowflake. Along the way, we learned just how impressive the natural kind really are

The northern lights, or aurora borealis, came strangely far south this year and there may be more of the same while the sun is experiencing a solar maximum

For a truly exquisite glimpse of plants and animals, check out some of the top entries and the winner of the 2024 Evident Image of the Year contest

Evidence for the origins of complex language can be found in creative two-word insults such as busy-body and kill-joy

The discovery of ancient cities in Asia and the Americas point to earlier bouts of social and climatic upheavals. The good news is that humanity survived, says Annalee Newitz

AI made incredible progress in 2023, but with a less-impressive pace of development this year, it may be that existing techniques are reaching their limits

Our Future Chronicles column explores an imagined history of inventions and developments yet to come. This time we fast forward to the 2050s, when people gain the ability to hibernate and use it for far more than escaping the winter blues

Red lights continued to flash on the climate dashboard as many aspects of the natural world declined in 2024, although there were a few green shoots of hope to cling to, says Graham Lawton

Events across the globe have conspired to create a sense of chaos, but many fields of research can help us make sense of the world, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Feedback, feeling somewhat Grinch-like, digs into the knotty history of NORAD Tracks Santa, in which the North American Aerospace Defense Command shows its cuddly side

2024 was another year of record-breaking heat and extreme weather, including devastating floods, storms and wildfires across the globe

Solving challenges like climate change not only requires ambitious targets, but also an honest appraisal of uncertainty and possible failure

Will Indigenous knowledge, as instantiated in Native North American tribal “ways of knowing”, help ameliorate climate change?  One would think “not much” because anthropogenic climate change, now a virtual certainty, is caused by the accumulation of greenhouse gases, and it’s hard to imagine that Native Americans either generate much of those gases or have any knowledge to slow their accumulation, which derives mostly from industrial countries.

But the Biden administration thinks otherwise, perhaps for two reasons: the “progressive” sacralization of indigenous people and their knowledge, and, second, the assumption that Native American knowledge, which derived largely from finding empirical ways of making a living (when to grow food, how to hunt, etc.), made them “stewards of the environment.”  The latter isn’t really the case, as Native Americans engaged in several practices, among them overhunting of bison and overburning of the prairie and woodlands (the latter also was done to facilitate hunting). At any rate, a reader sent me a link to the right-wing Free Beacon site below that reports a last-minute Biden Administration initiative to meld modern science with Native American ways of knowing to attack the problem of climate change. Below that is the press release from the Administration that gives details and links to the official government memorandum of collaborating with indigenous people.

Here’s an excerpt from The Free Beacon which is explicitly hostile to wokeism, but is otherwise pretty accurate:

The White House ordered the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal regulatory agency, to expand its use of “Indigenous Knowledge” on Monday, as part of a last-minute push in the federal government to embrace what scientists call pseudoscience.

The agency, according to a press release, signed a formal memorandum of understanding with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium to “advance Indigenous Knowledge” and “achieve strong climate resilience for our tribal nations.” The agreement will impact at least 35 accredited universities and “empower our tribal colleges and universities to be leaders in the ongoing response to climate change.”

“Indigenous Knowledge” is a discredited belief system posting that native-born peoples possess an innate understanding of how the universe works. While scientists have referred to its ideas as “dangerous” and a rejection of the scientific method, those criticisms have not stopped the Biden administration from ordering the federal government to consider “Indigenous Knowledge” when implementing rules and regulations.

President Joe Biden issued a memo in November 2022 that directed more than two dozen federal agencies to apply “Indigenous Knowledge” to “decision making, research, and policies.” The memo called on agencies to speak with “spiritual leaders” and reject “methodological dogma.”

NOAA’s language in its announcement echoes Biden’s guidance. The agency contrasts “Indigenous Knowledge” with “western science,” although it declined to define either term.

Now I’m wholly in favor of trying to incorporate Native Americans into modern science and higher education. After all, they were largely given a raw deal by the government, still suffer more than many others from poverty and ill health, and deserve the same chance that other Americans get. Ergo, incorporating modern science into universities largely serving Native Americans, as well as casting a wider net to bring Native American science, is something to be admired. The problem with the Free Beacon piece is that not all “indigenous knowledge” is “pseudoscience”. For there are empirical facts that indigenous people discovered—in fact, that they needed to discover—for Native Americans to make a living before the U.S. was colonized by Europeans. Saying that “it’s all pseudoscience” is simply a slur.

Likewise for this sentence: “‘Indigenous Knowledge’ is a discredited belief system posting that native-born peoples possess an innate understanding of how the universe works.”  This is wrong on several counts, including the characterizing of indigenous knowledge as “discredited.” While much of it is, both in North America and New Zealand, not all of it is! Further who claims that indigenous people have an innate knowledge of how the universe works? Nobody has that—it has to be discovered by observation! The implication that indigenous “ways of knowing” are somehow in their bearers’ DNA is misleading.

Neverthless, we have to be very careful of both diluting science with wokeness to expiate our guilt, and of using spiritual, religious, and moral teachings as part of indigenous knowledge, for those teachings have nothing to do with modern science, whose job is to understand the universe.

Perhaps you’ll get a better idea of this “two-eyed” seeing that melds of modern and indigenous knowledge from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s press release on the agreement. Click below to read:

But although this release affirms the admirable desire to give opportunities to Native Americans, several aspects are worrisome—especially the claim that we can help solve global warming in a big way by incorporating indigenous knowledge.  I’ll give a few quotes.

First, a good aim:

NOAA and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) signed a formal memorandum of understanding (MOU) to advance Indigenous Knowledge, science, technology, engineering and mathematics education, and workforce training opportunities for tribal communities with the goal of building climate resilience.

But this is worrisome:

“NOAA is excited to team up with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium to accelerate information-sharing aimed at building climate resilience, adaptation and co-production of knowledge in communities across the United States and tribal nations,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “Indigenous Knowledge has made it possible for Indigenous Nations to persist and thrive for millennia. These knowledge systems are needed more than ever to inform NOAA and our nation’s approach to environmental stewardship.”

Are they needed more than ever? I doubt it. Modern science has long ago eclipsed indigenous knowledge as a way of understanding the universe. And, of course, “indigenous knowledge” often incorporates nonscientific forms of spirituality and superstition.

Can we have some examples, and not just trivial ones, about how indigenous knowledge has aided conservation of the North American environment? I’m sure there will be something, but I doubt that we’ll find any equitable “coproduction of knowledge” except for that of people engaged not in indigenous ways of knowing but in modern science. And the worries are exacerbated when considering how the NOAA plans to deal with our most serious environmental crisis: climate change. Here are some of the program’s goals:

• Identifying western science and Indigenous Knowledge priorities for the AIHEC, an organization that provides leadership and influences policy for 35 accredited U.S. tribal colleges and universities.
• Creating opportunities for NOAA to learn from faculty and students from tribal colleges and universities through coordinated partnerships that promote co-learning and co-development of knowledge, include community-driven research to advance NOAA’s mission to build a Climate-Ready Nation, as well as shared AIHEC-NOAA objectives.

I think we have to face the fact that if climate change is to be stopped or reversed, the main impetus for that will come from modern science (as well as political agreements to curb greenhouse gas emissions), and not from indigenous knowledge. “Environmental stewardship” that helped native Americans hunt and cultivate food will, I suspect, play almost no role in this endeavor. How could it?

So far the U.S. isn’t nearly as bad off in sacralizing indigenous knowledge as is New Zealand, where the battle continues to rage about whether Māori knowledge is comparable to modern scientific knowledge (it isn’t). But these American initiatives are the canary in the coal mine. I wish that somebody in charge would make rational decisions about exactly what indigenous knowledge could contribute not only to climate change, but also to the progress of modern science.

Artificial intelligence, AI, is rapidly transforming work also in the financial sector. A recent study explored how integrating AI into the work of sales teams affects the interpersonal communication competence required of sales managers. The study found that handing routine tasks over to AI improved efficiency and freed up sales managers' time for more complex tasks. However, as the integration of AI progressed, sales managers faced new kind of communication challenges, including those related to overcoming fears and resistance to change.

Researchers have designed a new compound to remove nitrogen oxides, which constitutes a step towards the development of a system to purify the air under real conditions.

Just like we recycle waste, repurposing excess CO2 from the atmosphere could be one way to abate the worsening climate crisis. In electrochemical reduction, CO2 is converted into industrial products like carbon monoxide, methane, or ethanol. However, scientists have difficulty tailoring the reaction to produce specific products. Now, an international research team has harnessed the versatility of copper to find a solution to this conundrum.

The Sun generates its tremendous energy through the process of nuclear fusion. At the same time it releases a continuous stream of neutrinos -- particles that serve as messengers of its internal dynamics. Although modern neutrino detectors unveil the Sun's present behavior, significant questions linger about its stability over periods of millions of years. Finding answers to this is the goal of the LORandite EXperiment (LOREX).