research on news stories

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts

Latest science news, discoveries and analysis

Scientists discover first algae that can fix nitrogen — thanks to a tiny cell structure

This fMRI technique promised to transform brain research — why can no one replicate it?

How to supercharge cancer-fighting cells: give them stem cell skills

Peter Higgs: science mourns giant of particle physics

Is chatgpt corrupting peer review telltale words hint at ai use, randomness in computation wins computer-science ‘nobel’, the rise of eco-anxiety: scientists wake up to the mental-health toll of climate change, total solar eclipse 2024: what dazzled scientists, ai-fuelled election campaigns are here — where are the rules rumman chowdhury.

The ‘ghost roads’ driving tropical deforestation

After the genocide: what scientists are learning from Rwanda

Audio long read: Why are so many young people getting cancer? What the data say

How we landed job interviews for professorships straight out of our PhD programmes

India is booming — but there are worries ahead for basic science, iran frees scientists who studied big cats in surprise move, bird flu outbreak in us cows: why scientists are concerned, brazil budget cuts could leave science labs without power and water.

Peter Higgs obituary: physicist who predicted boson that explains why particles have mass

What happens when climate change and the mental-health crisis collide?

Rwanda 30 years on: understanding the horror of genocide

Frans de waal (1948–2024), primatologist who questioned the uniqueness of human minds, ai can help to tailor drugs for africa — but africans should lead the way, current issue.

Nanoscale scythe cuts molecular tethers using mechanical forces

A massive galaxy that formed its stars at z ≈ 11, an optical tweezer array of ultracold polyatomic molecules, research analysis.

Blocking cell death limits lung damage and inflammation from influenza

Scalable, high-quality 2D telluride nanosheets for energy and catalysis applications

Wildlife boost in African forests certified for sustainable logging

Light makes atoms behave like electromagnetic coils, a bitter taste receptor activated in a surprising way, the biologist who built a faraday cage for a crab, a quirky fluid that has robotic capabilities.

Digging in: last chance to save a native forest

How two PhD students overcame the odds to snag tenure-track jobs

How i harnessed media engagement to supercharge my research career, ready or not, ai is coming to science education — and students have opinions, books & culture.

Survival of the nicest: have we got evolution the wrong way round?

The comings and goings of ants: how are social skills shaped in an ever-changing world?

Three possible muses

Wild women and restoring public trust: books in brief, these monkeys make no sense, nature podcast.

Latest videos

Nature briefing.

An essential round-up of science news, opinion and analysis, delivered to your inbox every weekday.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Suggestions or feedback?

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Machine learning
• Social justice
• Black holes
• Classes and programs

Departments

• Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Architecture
• Political Science
• Mechanical Engineering

Centers, Labs, & Programs

• Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
• Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
• Lincoln Laboratory
• School of Architecture + Planning
• School of Engineering
• School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
• Sloan School of Management
• School of Science
• MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

MIT’s top research stories of 2021

Press contact :, media download.

*Terms of Use:

Images for download on the MIT News office website are made available to non-commercial entities, press and the general public under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license . You may not alter the images provided, other than to crop them to size. A credit line must be used when reproducing images; if one is not provided below, credit the images to "MIT."

Previous image Next image

Despite the pandemic’s disruptions, MIT’s research community still found a way to generate a number of impressive research breakthroughs in 2021. In the spirit of reflection that comes with every new orbit around the sun, below we count down 10 of the most-viewed research stories on MIT News from the past year.

We’ve also rounded up the year’s top MIT community-related stories .

10. Giving cancer treatment a recharge . In October, researchers discovered a way to jump-start the immune system to attack tumors. The method combines chemotherapy and immunotherapy to spur immune cells into action. The researchers hope it could allow immunotherapy to be used against more types of cancer.

9. Generating 3D holograms in real-time . Computer scientists developed a deep-learning-based system that allows computers to create holograms almost instantly. The system could be used to create holograms for virtual reality, 3D printing, medical imaging, and more — and it’s efficient enough to run on a smartphone.

8. Creating inhalable vaccines . Scientists at the Koch Institute developed a method for delivering vaccines directly to the lungs through inhalation. The new strategy induced a strong immune response in the lungs of mice and could offer a quicker response to viruses that infect hosts through mucosal surfaces.

7. Assessing Covid-19 transmission risk . Two MIT professors proposed a new approach to estimating the risks of exposure to Covid-19 in different indoor settings. The guidelines suggest a limit for exposure based on factors such as the size of the space, the number of people, the kinds of activity, whether masks are worn, and ventilation and filtration rates.

6. Teaching machine learning models to adapt . Researchers in CSAIL developed a new type of neural network that can change its underlying equations to continuously adapt to new data. The advance could improve models’ decision-making based on data that changes over time, such as in medical diagnosis and autonomous driving.

5. Programming fibers . In June, a team created the first fabric fiber with digital capabilities. The fibers can sense, store, analyze, and infer data and activity after being sewn into a shirt. The researchers say the fibers could be used to monitor physical performance, to detect diseases, and for a variety of medical purposes.

4. Examining the limitations of data visualizations . A collaboration between anthropologists and computer scientists found that coronavirus skeptics have used sophisticated data visualizations to argue against public health orthodoxy like wearing a mask. The researchers concluded that data visualizations aren’t sufficient to convey the urgency of the Covid-19 pandemic because even the clearest graphs can be interpreted through a variety of belief systems.

3. Developing a Covid-detecting face mask . Engineers at MIT and Harvard University designed a prototype face mask that can diagnose the person wearing the mask with Covid-19 in about 90 minutes. The masks are embedded with tiny, disposable sensors that can be fitted into other face masks and could also be adapted to detect other viruses.

2. Confirming Hawking’s black hole theorem . Using observations of gravitational waves, physicists from MIT and elsewhere confirmed a major theorem created by Stephen Hawking in 1971. The theorem states that the area of a black hole’s event horizon — the boundary beyond which nothing can ever escape — will never shrink.

1. Advancing toward fusion energy . In September, researchers at MIT and the MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems ramped up a high-temperature superconducting electromagnet to a field strength of 20 tesla, the most powerful magnetic field of its kind ever created on Earth. The demonstration was three years in the making and is believed to resolve one of greatest remaining points of uncertainty in the quest to build the world’s first fusion power plant that produces more energy than it consumes.

Share this news article on:

Related topics.

• MIT Sloan School of Management
• School of Architecture and Planning
• School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences

Related Articles

MIT community in 2021: A year in review

Top MIT research stories of 2020

MIT community in 2020: A year in review

Top MIT research stories of 2019

Previous item Next item

More MIT News

A biomedical engineer pivots from human movement to women’s health

Read full story →

MIT tops among single-campus universities in US patents granted

A new way to detect radiation involving cheap ceramics

A crossroads for computing at MIT

Growing our donated organ supply

New AI method captures uncertainty in medical images

• More news on MIT News homepage →

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA

• Map (opens in new window)
• Events (opens in new window)
• People (opens in new window)
• Careers (opens in new window)
• Accessibility
• Social Media Hub
• MIT on Facebook
• MIT on YouTube
• MIT on Instagram

Supported by

What Makes Tiny Tardigrades Nearly Radiation Proof

New research finds that the microscopic “water bears" are remarkably good at repairing their DNA after a huge blast of radiation.

By Carl Zimmer

No ‘Hippie Ape’: Bonobos Are Often Aggressive, Study Finds

Despite their peaceful reputation, bonobos act aggressively more often than their chimpanzee cousins, a new study found.

Complications From Alcohol Use Are Rising Among Women

New research shows that alcohol-related liver disease and other health problems increased even more than expected among women ages 40 to 64 during the pandemic.

By Dani Blum

Evan Stark, 82, Dies; Broadened Understanding of Domestic Violence

He and his wife wrote pioneering studies; he used the term “coercive control” to describe psychological and physical dominance by abusers.

By Richard Sandomir

She Dreams of Pink Planets and Alien Dinosaurs

Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University, hunts for aliens in space by studying Earth across time.

By Becky Ferreira

Los anteojos mejoran los ingresos, no solo la vista

Un estudio reveló que cuando un grupo de trabajadores hipermétropes en Bangladés recibían lentes de lectura gratuitos, ganaban un 33 por ciento más que los que no contaban con ellos.

By Andrew Jacobs

Youth Gender Medications Limited in England, Part of Big Shift in Europe

Five European countries have recently restricted hormone treatments for adolescents with gender distress. They have not banned the care, unlike many U.S. states.

By Azeen Ghorayshi

Seriously, Now Is the Time to Stop Kissing Sick Birds

A citizen-science collaboration in New York has turned up a half-dozen birds infected with the avian flu virus.

By Apoorva Mandavilli

New Method That Pinpoints Wood’s Origin May Curb Illegal Timber

The study could help identify wood from Russia, which has been banned by many countries because of the war.

By Alexander Nazaryan

PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ Are Pervasive in Water Worldwide, Study Finds

A global survey found harmful levels even in water samples taken far any obvious source of contamination.

By Delger Erdenesanaa

Advertisement

Read our research on: Gun Policy | International Conflict | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

What makes a news story trustworthy americans point to the outlet that publishes it, sources cited.

Americans see a variety of factors as important when it comes to deciding whether a news story is trustworthy or not, but their attitudes vary by party affiliation, demographic characteristics and news consumption habits, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey .

Overall, broad majorities of U.S. adults say it is at least somewhat important to consider each of five surveyed factors when determining whether a news story is trustworthy or not: the news organization that publishes it (88%); the sources cited in it (86%); their gut instinct about it (77%); the person, if any, who shared it with them (68%); and the specific journalist who reported it (66%). Just 24% of adults say it’s at least somewhat important to consider a sixth factor included in the survey: whether the story has a lot of shares, comments or likes on social media.

But notably fewer Americans see each of these factors as very important. Half of U.S. adults point to the news organization that publishes a story as a very important factor when determining its trustworthiness, while a similar share (47%) point to the sources that are cited in it. Fewer cite their gut instinct about the story (30%), the specific journalist who reported it (24%), the person who shared it with them (23%) or the engagement it has received on social media (6%), according to the March 8-14 survey of 12,045 adults. The survey was part of a broader study of media coverage of President Joe Biden’s first 60 days in office.

This analysis examines the factors that Americans see as important when deciding whether a news story is trustworthy or not. It is based on a Pew Research Center survey conducted from March 8-14, 2021, among 12,045 U.S. adults. Everyone who took the survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology .

This is the latest report in Pew Research Center’s ongoing investigation of the state of news, information and journalism in the digital age, a research program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are slightly more likely than Republicans and GOP leaners to say it’s very important to consider the news organization that publishes a story (55% vs. 47%) and the sources that are cited in it (51% vs. 44%). Republicans, in turn, are more likely than Democrats to see their own gut instinct as very important (35% vs. 26%), though this is a minority view in both parties.

Older Americans are generally more likely than younger Americans to point to the news organization that publishes a story and the sources that are cited in it as critical factors when determining its trustworthiness. For example, among those 65 and older, 57% say the news organization is a very important factor and 54% say the same about the sources cited. Smaller proportions of adults under 30 see these as very important factors (42% and 41%, respectively). These findings are consistent with previous Pew Research Center studies, which found that younger Americans tend to feel less connected to their sources of news and are less likely to remember the sources of online news links they clicked on.

When it comes to education, 59% of adults with a college degree say it’s very important to consider the news organization that publishes a story, and 54% say the same of the sources that are cited in it. That compares with around four-in-ten of those with a high school diploma or less education (43% and 40%, respectively). Conversely, those with a high school diploma or less are more likely than those with a college degree to see the other factors asked about as very important when determining a news story’s trustworthiness.

Black Americans are more likely than those in other racial and ethnic groups to see some factors as very important when determining the trustworthiness of a news story. For example, around four-in-ten Black adults (38%) point to their own gut instinct as a very important factor, compared with three-in-ten or fewer White (30%), Hispanic (26%) and Asian American adults (22%). Black adults are also more likely than other Americans to point to the specific journalist who reported the story and the person who shared it with them; about a third of Black adults say these are very important factors to consider.

Avid news followers are more likely to see all of the factors asked about in the survey as critical when deciding on a news story’s trustworthiness. For instance, Americans who are very closely following news about the Biden administration are especially likely to say it’s very important to consider the news organization that publishes a story (69%) and the sources that are cited in it (65%). Among those who are following Biden administration news less closely, fewer see these factors as very important.

Most Americans pay attention to the sources cited in news stories

In addition to asking about the factors that the public considers when deciding whether a news story is trustworthy, the survey asked Americans how closely they pay attention to the sources they see in the news. Overall, 22% of U.S. adults say they pay very close attention to the sources that are cited in news stories, while another 45% say they pay somewhat close attention.

Democrats are slightly more likely than Republicans to say they pay very close attention to the sources cited in news stories (25% vs. 19%) – a finding that aligns with the fact that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to see sourcing as very important to a story’s trustworthiness. Americans ages 65 and older (27%), those with a college degree (27%) and Black adults (28%) are also especially likely to say they pay very close attention to the sources that are mentioned in news stories.

Americans who have been following news about the Biden administration very closely are again the most likely to say they pay very close attention to the sources cited in news stories. Nearly half of these Americans (47%) say this, compared with smaller shares of those who follow news about the Biden administration fairly closely (20%) or not too or not at all closely (8%).

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology .

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivered Saturday mornings

Trust in America: Do Americans trust the news media?

Partisan divides in media trust widen, driven by a decline among republicans, republicans less likely to trust their main news source if they see it as ‘mainstream’; democrats more likely, americans blame unfair news coverage on media outlets, not the journalists who work for them, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

• See us on facebook
• See us on twitter
• See us on youtube
• See us on linkedin
• See us on instagram

Stanford Medicine magazine explores the brain and nervous system

The new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine features articles about developments in neuroscience and treatments for conditions affecting the brain and nervous system.

October 14, 2021 - By Rosanne Spector

The new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine focuses on how researchers are unlocking secrets of the brain. Illustration by Craig Cutler

The brain has long been a black box and, until recently, we were in the dark about anything that might have gone wrong under its lid and what to do about it. That’s changing.

A themed section of the new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine, “The most mysterious organ: Unlocking the secrets of the brain,” provides new insights into neurological conditions ranging from Alzheimer’s disease to stroke and conveys clinicians’ optimism about the relatively recent understanding that the brain is surprisingly adaptable. As Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine, wrote in his letter to readers :

“One of our most fascinating discoveries is that the brain isn’t as fixed and fragile as we once believed. The organ we thought was set in its ways by our late 20s is much more active — and resilient — for our entire lives.”

Advances in brain imaging and a more accurate understanding of the brain’s workings are enabling researchers and health care practitioners to develop new treatments. Some of these are available only at Stanford Medicine through clinical trials, while others have been adopted around the world.

The issue includes:

• A roundup of research and treatments aimed at addressing diseases of the brain and nervous system. These advances are enabling the paralyzed to move and the blind to see . They’re also suggesting strategies for preventing the loss of cognitive abilities .

• An article about brain trauma data from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs revealing that women have a more difficult recovery from severe brain trauma than men do. The article is accompanied by a video featuring neurosurgery faculty members Odette Harris, MD, and Maheen Adamason, PhD, and a veteran talking about her experience of severe brain trauma.

• A story of the decadeslong quest to save more stroke patients from a life of disability. It was a tough sell to other neurosurgeons, but research by Gregory Albers, MD, and a team of researchers eventually succeeded in extending the window for effective treatment from just a few hours to a full day.

• A recounting of a high-stakes, innovative surgery to save a toddler’s life by removing a brain tumor through his nose .

• A Q&A with renowned flutist Eugenia Zukerman in which she reflects on the healing power of writing during the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, her first book of poetry and the hope her poetry offers other patients.

• An article about an experimental treatment for Parkinson’s disease that seems like magic: a vibrating glove that reduces symptoms for patients who wear it a few hours a day.

• An essay adapted from a new book by psychiatry professor Karl Deisseroth , MD, PhD, Projections : A Story of Human Emotions , that describes an encounter with a young man who couldn’t cry and the neurological mechanisms behind shedding tears of joy and sorrow.

• A story about the efforts of neurosurgery chair Michael Lim, MD, to apply the successes of immunotherapy cancer treatments to some of the most pernicious tumors — those that originate in the brain.

• An article about an unusual surgery for a rare disease: Hope Kim needed a second bypass surgery to treat the brain disorder moyamoya , but no blood vessels in the scalp were right for the job. What to do? Professor of neurosurgery Gary Steinberg, MD, PhD, piped a blood vessel from her abdomen up to her brain.

This issue also includes a profile of associate professor of bioengineering Drew Endy, PhD, who believes that solving civilization’s most vexing challenges depends on harnessing “bioengineering to flourish in partnership with nature,” and excerpts from The Puzzle Solver , by Stanford Medicine science writer Tracie White with professor of genetics and of biochemistry Ron Davis, PhD. The book describes Davis’ desperate attempt to find a cure for severe chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis, which has left his son bedridden by pain, fatigue and other disabling symptoms.

Stanford Medicine magazine is available online at stanmed.stanford.edu as well as in print. Print copies of the new issue are being sent to subscribers. Others can request a copy by sending an email to [email protected] .

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu .

Artificial intelligence

Exploring ways AI is applied to health care

1 in 5 U.S. Cancer Patients Join in Medical Research

HealthDay April 3, 2024

CDC: Tuberculosis Cases Increasing

While the U.S. has one of the lowest rates of tuberculosis in the world, researchers found that cases increased 16% from 2022 to 2023.

Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder March 28, 2024

Researchers Find New Way to Curb Asthma Attacks

HealthDay March 26, 2024

Biden to Sign Order Expanding Health Research in Women

HealthDay March 18, 2024

Politics Hasn't Shaken Most Americans' Faith in Science: Study

HealthDay March 12, 2024

Jill Biden Announces $100 Million for Research on Women's Health

HealthDay Feb. 22, 2024

Study Links Living Alone to Depression

New research bound to influence conversations about America’s ‘loneliness epidemic’ suggests living alone could have implications for physical and mental health.

Steven Ross Johnson Feb. 15, 2024

Scientists Discover New Way to Fight Estrogen-Fueled Breast Cancer

HealthDay Feb. 14, 2024

Food Insecurity Tied to Early Death

An inability to get adequate food is shaving years off people’s lives in the U.S., a new study suggests.

Steven Ross Johnson Jan. 29, 2024

Dana Farber Cancer Center to Retract or Fix Dozens of Studies

HealthDay Jan. 23, 2024

America 2024

• Fellowships
• Business Models
• Mobile & Apps
• Audience & Social
• Aggregation & Discovery
• Reporting & Production
• Translations

Asking people to “do the research” on fake news stories makes them seem more believable, not less

When it comes to digital spreaders of misinformation, social media platforms typically get the brunt of the blame. After all, they’re the places with the black-box algorithms, the propagandist bots, and the partisan screamers. On social media, we can watch the bad information spread, in real time. Social media is, at least metaphorically, a passive experience — a place where the news finds you .

But what’s the most enraging thing your uncle can say at Thanksgiving, right after he tells you about how the Rothschilds are behind an army of Colombians set to invade Idaho next week? “I’ve done my own research on this.” In other words:

I’m not just some guy who believes everything in his News Feed. No, I put in the work, double-checking everything Ezr4P0und2024 says about the Protocols. I’m telling you, he’s onto something — it all fits.

There’s something about this appeal to self-authority — that these ideas didn’t just happen to him, that he worked in some sense to rediscover them himself — that’s incredibly powerful.

Media literacy proponents often advocate doing your own research — emphasis on the search , since Google is typically Tool No. 1 here — as a weapon against misinformation. Search horizontally, they say — opening new tabs to seek confirmation or debunking — rather than keep scrolling vertically.

But what if, rather than yanking you toward the light, doing your own research leads you deeper into the information dark?

That’s the question raised by an interesting new paper that was published over the winter break in Nature . Its title is “Online searches to evaluate misinformation can increase its perceived veracity,” and its authors are Kevin Aslett , Zeve Sanderson , William Godel , Nathaniel Persily , Jonathan Nagler , and Joshua A. Tucker . (Lead author Aslett is at the University of Central Florida and Nate Persily is at Stanford. The other four authors are all at NYU .) Here’s the abstract; emphases, as usual, are mine:

Considerable scholarly attention has been paid to understanding belief in online misinformation, with a particular focus on social networks. However, the dominant role of search engines in the information environment remains underexplored, even though the use of online search to evaluate the veracity of information is a central component of media literacy interventions. Although conventional wisdom suggests that searching online when evaluating misinformation would reduce belief in it, there is little empirical evidence to evaluate this claim. Here, across five experiments, we present consistent evidence that online search to evaluate the truthfulness of false news articles actually increases the probability of believing them . To shed light on this relationship, we combine survey data with digital trace data collected using a custom browser extension. We find that the search effect is concentrated among individuals for whom search engines return lower-quality information . Our results indicate that those who search online to evaluate misinformation risk falling into data voids, or informational spaces in which there is corroborating evidence from low-quality sources. We also find consistent evidence that searching online to evaluate news increases belief in true news from low-quality sources , but inconsistent evidence that it increases belief in true news from mainstream sources. Our findings highlight the need for media literacy programmes to ground their recommendations in empirically tested strategies and for search engines to invest in solutions to the challenges identified here.

Because the phrasing can get a bit unwieldy, the authors use SOTEN as a shorthand for “searching online to evaluate news,” and I’ll do the same. The basics of each study were similar: A group of internet users were given a variety of news articles, many of which had been rated “false or misleading” by a group of six professional fact-checkers. They were asked to read the articles, then to SOTEN — to search online to evaluate the news story — and then to say whether they considered each story true or not. (Others were not asked to SOTEN and acted as controls.) The individual studies varied the methodology to tease out the strength of the effects they found:

• Study 1 (3,006 participants) involved fresh articles — one published within the previous 48 hours. Their newness makes it less likely that fact-checkers and other outlets would have had time to debunk anything that needs debunking.
• Study 2 (4,252 participants) also involved just-published articles, but participants were asked to evaluate them twice — once just after reading it and once after SOTENing their hearts out. “If we assume that the respondents have a bias towards consistency,” the authors write, “this offers an even stronger test than in study 1 because, to find a search effect, the respondents would have to change their previous evaluation.”
• Study 3 (4,042 participants) was like Study 2, but this time the articles to be evaluated were older — published 3 to 6 months ago. Over that timespan, one would hope the internet’s immune system would’ve had some time to kick in and seed those search results with accurate information.
• Study 4 (1,130 participants) was also like Study 2, with freshly published articles — but this time those stories were about a highly salient topic, COVID-19. (Study 4 was done in June 2020.) Would people’s online research produce better outcomes if they’re searching about something that’s important to their lives, like an ongoing pandemic?
• Finally, Study 5 (1,677 participants) was like Study 1, but with a key technological difference. Participants were also asked to download a browser extension that would track their web-surfing behavior before they render a verdict on an article’s accuracy — including the URLs their Google searches produced during their research.

That’s a lot. And the results? They weren’t great for Team Search Engine:

Taken together, the five studies provide consistent evidence that SOTEN increased belief in misinformation during the point in time investigated. In our fifth study, which tested explanations for the mechanism underlying this effect, we found evidence suggesting that exposure to lower-quality information in search results is associated with a higher probability of believing misinformation , but exposure to high-quality information is not.

How much of a difference did SOTEN make? Study 1 found that asking people to research a false claim led to “a 19% increase in the probability that a respondent rated a false or misleading article as true,” compared to people who did no research at all.

How about Study 2, where people were asked to evaluate an article’s accuracy, then go SOTEN, then evaluate it again?

We found that, among those who first rated the false/misleading article correctly as false/misleading, 17.6% changed their evaluation to true after being prompted to search online (for comparison, among those who first incorrectly rated the article as true, only 5.8% changed their evaluation to false/misleading after being required to search online). Among those who could not initially determine the veracity of false articles, more individuals incorrectly changed their evaluation to true than to false/misleading after being required to search online. This suggests that searching online to evaluate false/misleading news may falsely raise confidence in its veracity .

It sure does suggest that, yes! Study 3, where the articles being reviewed were older? Story age made virtually no difference (“18% more respondents rated the same false/misleading story as true after they were asked to re-evaluate the article after treatment”). Study 4, the one about COVID mid-pandemic? SOTEN brought “an increase in the likelihood of believing a false/misleading article to be true of 20%.”

These results are frustratingly consistent — 19%, 17.6%, 18%, 20%. There sure seems to be something about opening up a new tab to research a false story that makes it seem more believable, at least to a meaningful share of people.

Why would that be the case? One potential culprit is those aforementioned data voids . That term was coined by Microsoft’s Michael Golebiewski in 2018 “to describe search engine queries that turn up little to no results, especially when the query is rather obscure, or not searched often.”

Fake news stories, especially their wilder variants, are often spectacularly new . Part of their shock comes from presenting an idea so at odds with reality that their key words and phrases just haven’t appeared together online much. Like, before Pizzagate , would you have expected a Google search for “comet ping pong child rape pizza basement hillary” to turn up much? No, because that’s just a nonsense string of words without a bonkers conspiracy theory to tie it all together.

But imagine that, in 2016, someone heard that conspiracy theory in some remote tendril of the web and — seeking to SOTEN! — went to Google and typed those words in. What results would it have returned? Almost certainly it would have shown links to pro-Pizzagate webpages — because those were the only webpages with those keywords at the time. The bunkers always have a time advantage over the debunkers, and data voids are the result.

Low-quality publishers have been found to use search engine optimization techniques and encourage readers to use specific search queries when searching online by consistently using distinct phrases in their stories and in other media. These terms can guide users to data voids on search engines, where only one point of an unreliable view is represented. Low-quality news sources also often re-use stories from each other, polluting search engine results with other similar non-credible stories… [Francesca Bolla] Tripodi shows how Google’s search algorithms interact with conservative elite messaging strategies to push audiences towards extreme and, at times, false views. This ‘propaganda feedback loop’ creates a network of outlets reporting the same misinformation and therefore can flood search engine results with false but seemingly corroborating information. The topics and framing of false/misleading news stories are also often distinct from those covered by mainstream outlets, which could limit the amount of reliable news sources being returned by search engines when searching for information about these stories. Finally, direct fact-checks may be difficult to find given that most false narratives are never fact-checked at all and, for stories that are evaluated by organizations such as Snopes or PolitiFact, these fact-checks may not be posted in the immediate aftermath of a false article’s publication. As a result, it would not be surprising that exposure to unreliable news is particularly prevalent when searching online about recently published misinformation.

That brings us to Study 5 — the one that combined the participants’ evaluations with their search histories. (In this study, SOTEN’s effect on making false stories seem true was even larger than in studies 1 through 4 — but the authors chalk that up to greater motivation by the participants who were being paid to install those browser extensions.)

Using digital trace data collected through the custom browser plug-in, we are able to measure the effect of SOTEN on belief in misinformation among those exposed to unreliable and reliable information by search engines . To this end, we measured the effect of being encouraged to search online on the belief in misinformation for our control group and two subsets of the treatment group: those who were exposed to Google search engine results that returned unreliable results (defined as at least 10% of links coming from news sources with a NewsGuard score below 60) or very reliable results (defined as the first ten links coming only from sources with a NewsGuard score above 85). Roughly 42% of all evaluations in the treatment group fit in either of these two subsets; although subsetting the data in this way ignores 58% of the treatment group, we are interested in the effect of search among groups exposed to very different levels of information quality.

Broken down into those two groups, the negative effects of SOTEN disappear for those for whom Google returns high-quality results. If Google allocates those 10 blue links to legitimate news sites, people are not more likely to finish their research more likely to believe a bogus story. But if Google serves up a bunch of Gateway Pundit and Western Journal, some number of people will be led astray.

And those low-quality results are more common when people are researching a false story than a true one. Among participants who were asked to research a true story, only 15% got at least one low-quality site among their top Google results. Among those asked to research a false story, though, that percentage jumped to 38%.

But the presence of bogus results isn’t just about the accuracy of the story being researched. Even among people researching the same stories, some get high-grade links and some get junk. Why?

Confession time: When I first read that the negative effect of SOTEN “is concentrated among individuals for whom search engines return lower-quality information,” I was a little confused. (Are there some people who are only allowed to use Altavista? Does Google hold grudges against certain users and only give them janky results?) It turns out it’s a matter of the quality of people’s search terms . Their google-fu , you might say.

Another possible explanation is that individuals with low levels of digital literacy are more likely to fall into these data voids. Previous research has found that individuals with higher levels of digital literacy use better online information-searching strategies, suggesting that those with lower levels of digital literacy may be more likely to use search terms that lead to exposure to low-quality search results. To assess the empirical support for these two potential explanations, we begin by investigating which individual-level characteristics are associated with exposure to unreliable news by fitting an OLS regression model with article-level fixed effects and standard errors clustered at the respondent and article level to predict exposure to unreliable news sites in the search results. We include basic demographic characteristics (income, education, gender and age) in the model. Evidence from these results suggest that lower levels of digital literacy correlate with exposure to unreliable news in search results after conditioning on demographic characteristics.

So what do the low-google-fu people do to generate bad results? Often, they just literally plug the questionable article headline or URL into Google. If your search terms are “SHOCK REVELATION: SHILLARY CAUGHT DRINKING BABIES’ BLOOD AT MARTHA’S VINEYARD ESTATE,” Google’s probably going to give you results that go along with their assumptions.

To determine whether this affects the quality of search engine results, we coded all search terms for whether they contained the headline or URL of the false article. We found that this is indeed the case. Approximately 9% of all search queries that individuals entered were the exact headline or URL of the original article, and Fig. 3b shows that those who use the headline/lede or the unique URL of misinformation as a search query are much more likely to be exposed to unreliable information in the Google search results . A total of 77% of search queries that used the headline or URL of a false/misleading article as a search query return at least one unreliable news link among the top ten results, whereas only 21% of search queries that do not use the article’s headline or URL return at least one unreliable news link among the top ten results… Using the headline/lede as a search query probably produces unreliable results because they contain distinct phrases that only producers of unreliable information use.

An example: One article used in the study was headlined “U.S. faces engineered famine as COVID lockdowns and vax mandates could lead to widespread hunger, unrest this winter.”

The term ‘engineered famine’ in the article is a unique term that is unlikely to be used by reliable sources. An analysis of respondents’ search results found that adding the word ‘engineered’ in front of ‘famine’ changes the search results returned. 0% of search terms that contained the word ‘famine’ without ‘engineered’ in front of it returned unreliable results, whereas 63% of search queries that added ‘engineered’ in front of the word ‘famine’ were exposed to at least one unreliable result. In fact, 83% of all search terms that returned an unreliable result contained the term ‘engineered famine.’

One final ironic twist: The boost in believability that false articles get from SOTEN doesn’t seem to apply much to true articles — at least not true stories published in mainstream news outlets. Researchers did find cases when true stories published on low-quality, misinfo-heavy sites seem more believable after SOTEN. (Even a blind squirrel, etc.) But traditional news outlets get no such boost in believability. (The authors acknowledge a potential ceiling effect here.)

What does this all mean? Asking people to “do their own research” when confronted with questionable information isn’t a cure-all. It isn’t even a cure- most — it’s more likely to make someone believe a false story than it is the opposite. It’s not just about searching — it’s about searching well .

After all, one of the main mantras of the QAnon delusion was “ do the research .” The education system has taught us to think of “doing the research” as an uncomplicated good. But just as “reading news” today means something wildly different than “reading a print newspaper” did 30 years ago, “doing the research” today often means dipping into a hyperpolluted sea of misinformation. It’s worlds away from flipping through the local library’s card catalog or cracking open a World Almanac . It takes skill to navigate that sea, and a lot of Americans aren’t great at it.

…our findings suggest that the strategy of pushing people to verify low-quality information online might paradoxically be even more effective at misinforming them . For those who wish to learn more, they risk falling into data voids — or informational spaces in which there is plenty of corroborating evidence from low-quality sources — when using online search engines, especially if they are doing ‘lazy searching’ by cutting and pasting a headline or URL. Our findings highlight the need for media literacy efforts combatting the effects of misinformation to ground their recommendations in empirically tested interventions, as well as search engines to invest in solutions to the challenges identified here.

Cite this article Hide citations

Benton, Joshua. "Asking people to “do the research” on fake news stories makes them seem more believable, not less." Nieman Journalism Lab . Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, 8 Jan. 2024. Web. 10 Apr. 2024.

Benton, J. (2024, Jan. 8). Asking people to “do the research” on fake news stories makes them seem more believable, not less. Nieman Journalism Lab . Retrieved April 10, 2024, from https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/01/asking-people-to-do-the-research-on-fake-news-stories-makes-them-seem-more-believable-not-less/

Benton, Joshua. "Asking people to “do the research” on fake news stories makes them seem more believable, not less." Nieman Journalism Lab . Last modified January 8, 2024. Accessed April 10, 2024. https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/01/asking-people-to-do-the-research-on-fake-news-stories-makes-them-seem-more-believable-not-less/.

{{cite web     | url = https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/01/asking-people-to-do-the-research-on-fake-news-stories-makes-them-seem-more-believable-not-less/     | title = Asking people to “do the research” on fake news stories makes them seem more believable, not less     | last = Benton     | first = Joshua     | work = [[Nieman Journalism Lab]]     | date = 8 January 2024     | accessdate = 10 April 2024     | ref = {{harvid|Benton|2024}} }}

To promote and elevate the standards of journalism

Covering thought leadership in journalism

Pushing to the future of journalism

Exploring the art and craft of story

The Nieman Journalism Lab is a collaborative attempt to figure out how quality journalism can survive and thrive in the Internet age.

It’s a project of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University .

• Subscribe to our email
• Follow us on Twitter
• Like us on Facebook
• Download our iPhone app
• Subscribe via RSS
• Tweet archive

• Follow us on Facebook
• Follow us on Twitter
• Criminal Justice
• Environment
• Politics & Government
• Race & Gender

Expert Commentary

Measuring the media agenda: How to research news coverage trends on topics

2014 study in Political Communication presenting recommendations for researchers studying news media agenda trends.

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Joanna Penn, The Journalist's Resource May 27, 2014

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/media/measuring-agenda-how-research-coverage-trends-topics/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

The amount of media coverage that different subjects receive can affect public knowledge and opinion on that issue, which in turn can influence policy makers and legislators , both in terms of setting the agenda and influencing its direction. Likewise, the more politicians and the public are concerned with certain subjects, the more likely they are to be covered in the media. The media’s ability to shape opinion in this way makes patterns of coverage a key variable in determining how the democratic system functions.

But what is a scientifically valid approach to discerning these patterns with precision? Many researchers point toward factors that encourage a single national media agenda, such as shared norms for news-worthiness, limited resources for newsgathering, and copycat propensities among journalists. If a single national news agenda exists for a topic, then studying one or two news sources to understand the media’s coverage of that topic is a valid approach. However, critics point out that a single source may have a particular set of influences that alter the amount of attention it gives to different issues, making it a poor proxy for the wider news agenda. Differences in print and broadcast media, for example, mean the former can cover more topics than the later, to which the availability of good visual images is also of greater importance. Other factors such as regional salience , and the need to appeal to different target audiences that advertisers wish to reach, may act against the formation of a single media agenda.

How to measure the tenor of media coverage on a particular issue  — pinpointing consistent features that appear across news outlets — is a difficult task. One common technique used by university scholars and popular columnists alike is to employ keywords to search for a representative sample of articles in a database and then present the trends in the sample as representing the general media agenda. A 2014 study published in Political Communication , “ Measuring the Media Agenda ,” examines the conditions under which a single national media agenda emerges and those under which it does not. To do this, Mary Layton Atkinson of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and John Lovett and Frank R. Baumgartner of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill conducted 90 different keyword searches covering a wide range of policy topics, on 12 national and regional media sources going back as far as the 1980s. Policy topics ranged from domestic issues such as Social Security, education and crime to international issues such as war and trade negotiations. The searches also included non-policy topics such as sports and natural disasters. The study is “empirically the most extensive study to date,” the researchers write.

The study’s findings include:

• Across the 90 different search topics, the presence of a single national news agenda could explain between 12 percent and 93 percent of the variance in the news coverage of that issue. In other words, on any given topic a consistent national media agenda can be obvious — or barely discernible.
• For each topic, across all sources, the average number of articles per month ranged from 1.7 to 687, with a median of around 60 stories a month.
• Topics with low levels of coverage, a maximum of around 23 articles per month, were not necessarily trivial or unimportant. They included subjects such as such as water pollution, farm subsidies, the unemployment rate, and racial discrimination.
• Issue salience is a key determinant of whether a national news agenda emerges on that topic. This can be understood in two ways: the amount of coverage a topic receives, on average over time, and when a subject receives an “attention spike” of high coverage for a short time.
• These two factors — average levels of coverage, and whether there is a spike in coverage — account for around 90% of the factors that predict whether a national media agenda exists for a particular subject or not.
• “Researchers studying low-salience issues, such as school prayer or food safety, for instance, should be wary of creating time series measures of media attention.”

If an issue is of high salience and receives consistently high levels of coverage or attention spikes, almost any major news source will show similar patterns in coverage. In such circumstances, using one or two news sources as a proxy for the wider media agenda would be appropriate, conclude authors Atkinson, Lovett and Baumgartner. For topics where there is low coverage and no spikes in attention, it is much less likely that there is a cohesive news agenda. In such cases not only would the use of a small sample of media as a proxy for a wider agenda be inappropriate, the construction of a wider news index would be unlikely to work either. Such an index may smooth differences across publications, but would be unlikely to represent an accurate picture of how any single person would consume such media, the study’s authors note.

One suggestion for further research relates to the construction of the keyword searches themselves, which can have a significant effect on results. Low hit rates produce data sets that are too small to be reliable. The study’s authors found surprisingly low numbers of results for issues that they would expect to be more prominent. Experimenting with the search terms may do more for the reliability of researchers’ results than the selection of media to use as a source: “Greater error likely creeps into any analysis based on poorly thought out or verified keyword searches than from the inclusion of any individual media source. For robust searches based on many hits, our analysis shows that a single media agenda is the rule.”

Keywords: news

About The Author

Joanna Penn

Secondary Menu

• Research News Stories

The Department of Psychology and Neuroscience is thrilled to announce that senior Cai Liu, pursuing a double major in Psychology and Sociology, has been honored as the recipient of the 2023-2024 Jerome S. Bruner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research. Cai’s undergraduate thesis, titled “Cross-Cultural Differences between Love and Gratitude,” consists of a two-part study comparing the experiences of love and gratitude across three distinct regions—North America, Latin America, and East Asia. Recently, she completed… read more about Senior Cai Liu Receives 2023-2024 Jerome S. Bruner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research  »

Generous funding from the Charles Lafitte Foundation Program in Psychological & Neuroscience Research at Duke University has come full circle, providing positive experiences for families worldwide.  Eve Puffer, Pamela and Jack Egan Associate Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience, was awarded a Lafitte Faculty Seed Grant to help foster programs that teach families practices that create healthy, functioning environments for children and their caregivers. In partnership with Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI… read more about It Takes a Village: "Tuko Pamoja" Two-Tiered Approach to Family Intervention  »

read more about Postdoctoral Associate Meltem Yucel Answers: Why Do We Gossip?  »

The Jerome S. Bruner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research is presented each year to an undergraduate Psychology major who exemplifies “excellence in intellectual curiosity with emphasis on research experience and potential for future scholarly activity.” This academic year, two graduating seniors — Pranav Athimuthu and Anna Greenleaf — have been selected to receive the honor, the highest award that can be presented by the department to undergraduate researchers.  Bringing… read more about Two Undergraduate Researchers Receive Highest Honor from Department  »

read more about Misophonia: how ‘sound rage’ destroys relationships and forces people to move home  »

read more about Research Enables Undergraduate Students to Move From Absorbing Knowledge to Creating It  »

The Department of Psychology and Neuroscience is pleased to release the 2020-2021 Impact Report for the Charles Lafitte Foundation Program in Psychological & Neuroscience Research at Duke University. This special funding report highlights the program's achievements, including stories, data, photographs, and student testimonials. A link to the full 14-page report can be found below.  In a statement from department leadership on June 30, 2021 Professor and Department Chair Scott Huettel shared these words: … read more about Department releases 2020-2021 Charles Lafitte Foundation special funding report  »

Members of the Yin Lab including supervisor Dr. Henry Yin, former post-doctoral associate Dr. Glenn Watson, and current Ph.D. candidate in the Systems and Integrative Neuroscience program Ryan Hughes, have discovered a new functional pathway in the brain going from the parafascicular nucleus of the thalamus to the subthalamic nucleus, naming it the ‘super-direct’ pathway. In a recently published paper in AAAS, the team found that by selectively stimulating this pathway, … read more about Yin Lab discovers new ‘super-direct’ functional pathway in the brain  »

The Summer Training in Academic Research (STAR) Program , led by Pediatrics faculty members Drs. Kanecia Zimmerman and Danny Benjamin has for many years offered summer research experiences for local high school and undergraduate students. Former participants have been deeply engaged in biomedical research at Duke and nearly all have become co-authors on scientific papers.  This year, through generous support from the Biogen Foundation, P&N faculty members … read more about Neuroscience extension to Duke STAR program funded by Biogen Foundation  »

Duke researchers, led by Reut Avinun Ph.D., a postdoctoral associate at Professor Ahmad Hariri’s lab, analyzed the MRI scans of over a thousand people to determine potential links between personality and brain shape.   Although there are many personality neuroscience studies, consistent and reliable findings have not been established. While most previous studies used less than 300 individuals, this study has a large sample of 1,107 individuals. Additionally, this research comprehensively… read more about New study from Hariri Lab casts doubt on links between personality and brain structure  »

All Babies and Children Thrive (ABC Thrive) has awarded seed grants of up to $40,000 to four interdisciplinary teams of Duke faculty, two of which are teams from the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience. The teams will explore new interventions to support positive early childhood development ranging from tools for earlier identification of children at risk for neurodevelopmental challenges, to methods for teaching young children prosocial behaviors, to improving outcomes for black children and families… read more about Two P&N faculty teams receive ABC Thrive Seed Grants to improve early childhood outcomes  »

Sarah Gaither , PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience has received the prestigious 2020 Sage Young Scholar Award.  The Sage Young Scholar Awards recognize outstanding achievements by young scholars who are early in their research careers. The awards are intended to provide these scholars with funds that can be flexibly applied in extending their work in new and exciting directions. Previous recipients of this award have gone on to positions of intellectual… read more about Sarah Gaither receives 2020 SAGE Young Scholar Award  »

Eight faculty members from the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience have been awarded Research Seed Grants via philanthropic support from  The Charles Lafitte Foundation P rogram in Psychological and Neuroscience Research at Duke University. The faculty projects – all chosen by review committee – show great promise both for generating exceptional research and for providing opportunities for students. In a letter to recipients, P&N Chair Scott Huettel offered… read more about 2020-2021 Faculty Research Seed Grant recipients announced  »

The Department of Psychology and Neuroscience is pleased to release its special funding  2019-2020 Impact Report, Charles Lafitte Foundation Program in Psychological Research at Duke University. The document highlights the program's achievements with feature stories, data, photographs, and student testimonials. A link to the full 15-page report can be found below.  In a statement from leadership about the special funding opportunities provided to the department, Professor and… read more about Special Funding Report 2019-2020: Charles Lafitte Foundation Program in Psychological Research at Duke University  »

In the summer of 2020, the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience issued a charge to form the  P&N Task Force on Diversity, Inclusion, and Climate.  As its first act, The Task Force created the  Stella Powell-Williams Award , using internal support to supplement selected grants submitted as part of a special call for graduate and postdoctoral research projects related to  identity, diversity, inclusion, equity… read more about Task Force announces recipients of the 2020 Stella Powell-Williams Award  »

Different use of brain circuits may help explain the tenacity of post-traumatic stress Published: June 29, 2020 in  Duke Today by Karl Leif Bates DURHAM, N.C. – Your brain handles a perceived threat differently depending on how close it is to you. If it’s far away, you engage more problem-solving areas of the brain. But up close, your animal instincts jump into action and there isn’t as much reasoning, like when the guy at the haunted house jumps up right next to you. And that,… read more about New Study from the Lab of Professor Kevin LaBar Reveals that Closer Threats Inspire a More Primitive Kind of Fear  »

In response to the changed research climate in the era of COVID-19, the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience put out a special call for Graduate/Postdoctoral Research Awards: Psychological Research related to COVID-19.  With generous support from The Charles Lafitte Foundation,  funds that were  was previously designated for now prohibited conference attendance and travel were redirected to support small research projects related to… read more about P&N Graduates Awarded Funding for Psychological Research Related to COVID-19  »

Studies of Brain Activity Aren't as Useful as Scientists Thought , By Karl Leif Bates, Published June 3, 2020  Hundreds of published studies over the last decade have claimed it's possible to predict an individual’s patterns of thoughts and feelings by scanning their brain in an MRI machine as they perform some mental tasks. But a new analysis by some of the researchers who have done the most work in this area finds that those measurements are highly suspect when it comes to drawing conclusions about… read more about Professor Ahmad Hariri Reanalyzes Years of Functional MRI Data  »

Members of the Yin Lab including  Ryan Hughes, Konstantin Bakhurin, Elijah Petter, Glenn Watson, Namsoo Kim, Alexander Friedman, and Henry Yin  have published a new paper on the functional significance of dopamine in the journal  Current Biology .  Despite decades of research, the exact function of dopamine remains controversial.  While many believe that it encodes a reward prediction error (RPE), the Yin Lab's reseach … read more about Yin Lab Publishes Paper in Current Biology: Ventral Tegmental Dopamine Neurons Control the Impulse Vector during Motivated Behavior  »

UPDATE as of March 11, 2020: To minimize potential health risks amid COVID-19 concerns, Duke University has cancelled all Duke-sponsored in-person events; therefore, the North Carolina Cognition Meeting scheduled for March 21st, 2020 is cancelled. All registrants will receive a refund. Duke University's Psychology & Neuroscience Department will proudly host the 2020 Annual Meeting of the North Carolina Cognition Group . The annual conference will take place on  March 21st, 2020… read more about Duke Hosts Annual Meeting of the North Carolina Cognition Group  »

P&N Professors Avshalom Caspi & Terrie Moffitt, and Duke Postdocs Leah Richmond-Rakerd & Renate Houts publish paper in Nature Human Behavior: "Clustering of health, crime and social-welfare inequality in 4 million citizens from two nations."  Abstract:   Health and social scientists have documented the hospital revolving-door problem, the concentration of crime, and long-term welfare dependence. Have these distinct fields identified the same citizens? Using administrative databases linked… read more about P&N Professors Caspi & Moffitt and Duke Postdocs Richmond-Rakerd & Houts Publish New Research Findings  »

P&N graduate student Matthew Bachman and Professor Scott Huettel publish paper in Nature Human Behavior: "Motivated control as a bridge between neuroeconomics and cognitive neuroscience."    read more about P&N Graduate Student and Professor Co-Author Paper in Nature Human Behavior  »

Gregory Samanez-Larkin, assistant professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke, received an Early Career Award this October from the Society for Neuroeconomics for research that examines how aging affects motivation and cognition across the lifespan. The award recognizes significant contributions to understanding the neural basis of decision making, or the impact of this knowledge on formal understanding of decision behavior, according to the society website. “So many people invested so much in training me that I… read more about P&N Faculty Member Gregory Samanez-Larkin Recognized for Research at the Intersection of Neuroscience, Psychology and Economics  »

11 faculty members from the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience have been awarded Research Seed Grants via philanthropic support from The Charles Lafitte Foundation. The faculty projects – all of which exhibit great promise for generating exceptional research – were chosen by review committee. Award letters stated, “It has been heartening to see all of the creative ways our faculty proposed to engage students in world-class science – and to anticipate how these projects would have continuing impact over… read more about 11 P&N Faculty Members Selected for 2019-2020 Research Seed Grants  »

Congratulations to Julia Nicholas, winner of the 2019 Karl E. Zener Award. This award is given annually to an undergraduate psychology major at Duke University who has shown outstanding performance and scholarship, as determined on the basis of both the honors thesis (evaluated by a committee of faculty members) and the total academic record. "Julia is going to make the world a better place," said Dr. Nancy Zucker, her faculty mentor. "She is passionate about studying how people's negative life experiences, such as the… read more about Julia Nicholas wins 2019 Zener award  »

The Duke Global Digital Health Science Center (Duke Digital Health), which is directed by Gary Bennett (Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and P&N Professor) and Dori Steinberg (Duke University School of Nursing) moved to the newly renovated suite in the basement of the Sociology-Psychology building last week. While they are getting settled in to their new space they remain focused on their mission: to close health disparities using digital health. They do this by designing, testing, and disseminating effective… read more about Duke Digital Health Moves to Sociology-Psychology Building  »

Congratulations to P&N's Elika Bergelson for receiving a 2018-2019 Research Incubator Award from the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. The awards provide seed funding to support collaborative brain science research for projects of exceptional innovation and broad significance to the field. The projects engage at least two faculty representing multiple fields or levels of analysis and bring together investigators from across Duke whose individual programs of research are not already… read more about Elika Bergelson Receives DIBS Research Incubator Award  »

The Duke Identity and Diversity Lab, led by Dr. Sarah Gaither, had an amazing showing with other Duke P&N members at the Society of Southeastern Social Psychologist Conference this year. Their day started off with lab manager Joshua Perlin's first ever data blitz talk on prosocial behaviors for children sharing across racial group lines. Next, graduate students Brenda Straka and Adam Stanaland each presented their first conference talks on their work focusing on social exclusion expectations and… read more about Society of Southeastern Social Psychologists Conference Reflections  »

Psychology & Neuroscience is proud to announce the inaugural winners of the Graduate / Postdoctoral research awards. These students and fellows each received awards of up to $5,000 to spark novel research projects and to connect their research ideas to faculty and undergraduate students in our department. Christina Bejjani Modeling How Episodic Memory Affects the Learning of Cognitive Control on an Individual and Group Level Alexander Breslav Do computational models of human learning generalize to… read more about P&N Graduate Students and Postdocs Receive Research Seed Grants  »

• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
• Climate Handbook
• P&N Team Resources
• Degree Requirements
• Practicum and Ongoing Research Projects in Psychology
• Research Participation Requirements for Psychology Courses
• Summer Vertical Integration Program (VIP)
• Psychology Courses
• Graduate School Advice
• Career Options
• Forms & Resources
• Global Education
• Trinity Ambassadors
• Co-requisite Requirement
• Neuroscience Courses
• Neuroscience: Undergraduate Research Opportunities
• Neuroscience Research Practicum & Laboratories
• Summer Neuroscience Program
• Research Independent Study in Neuroscience
• Graduation with Distinction
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Neuroscience Teaching Lab
• Student Spotlights
• Other Job Boards
• Student Organizations
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognition & the Brain
• Developmental Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Systems and Integrative Neuroscience
• Admitting Faculty
• Application FAQ
• Financial Support
• Teaching Opportunities
• Departmental Graduate Requirements
• MAP/Dissertation Committee Guidelines
• MAP/Oral Exam Guidelines/Timeline
• Dissertation and Final Examination Guidelines
• Awards for Current Students
• Teaching Resources
• Instructor/TA Guidelines
• Faculty Mentorship Vision Statement
• All Courses
• Psychology: Course Sequence
• Psychology: Methods Courses
• Neuroscience: Course Clusters
• Neuroscience: Courses By Category
• Primary Faculty
• Joint Graduate Training Faculty
• Instructional Faculty
• Secondary Faculty
• Graduate Students
• Postdocs, Affiliates, and Research Scientists
• Faculty Research Labs
• Child Studies
• Community Volunteers
• Charles Lafitte Foundation: Funding Support
• Meet Our Alumni
• For Current Students
• Assisting Duke Students
• Neuroscience Graduation 2023 Program
• Psychology Graduation 2023 Program
• Giving to the Department

Northwestern launches effort to develop best practices for news organizations using artificial intelligence

• Artificial Intelligence

For decades the media industry has grappled with how to responsibly incorporate rapidly accelerating technology in the production of news. But since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, debate about balancing the promise with the threat of powerful AI tools has reached a fever pitch on complex questions relating to byline policies and plagiarism; legal issues, including terms of use and copyright; and societal implications like the impact generative AI could have on jobs and public trust in media.

To help journalists and news organizations understand potential use and misuse of generative artificial intelligence, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has granted Northwestern University $1 million from its aligned commitment through Press Forward .

“Individual journalists and small teams need the kind of powerful newsgathering tools that have traditionally been limited to larger news organizations,” said Marc Lavallee, Knight’s director of Technology Product and Strategy for Journalism. “Generative AI holds great potential for empowering all journalists, but proper adoption requires deep analysis. Northwestern's multidisciplinary approach, blending journalism, computer science, and product innovation, ensures these advancements will be adopted responsibly.”

With support from the grant, Northwestern faculty members Nick Diakopoulos of the School of Communication and Jeremy Gilbert of the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications will address these issues and develop best practices for news organizations experimenting with and adopting generative artificial intelligence.

“The interdisciplinary approach that Northwestern takes to unspool AI is critical in staying a step ahead of its evolution,” said E. Patrick Johnson, dean of the School of Communication. “This partnership will unequivocally advance our efforts to engage with this technology and help strengthen journalism and democratic institutions at a moment when they are most in peril.”

Knight Foundation announced in September 2023 a $150 million investment over five years to support Press Forward, a new collaborative that aims to revitalize local news. That’s double their commitment to the field of journalism on top of the $632 million Knight has invested since 2005.  

“For more than a century, Medill has been committed to shaping the news industry's future, and exploring artificial intelligence is the next natural step for us to explore,” said Medill Dean Charles Whitaker. “Medill is grateful to Knight Foundation for its ongoing support through this program, the Knight Lab, the Knight Chair and many other initiatives.”

A Northwestern alum, Gilbert returned to Medill as a professor and Knight Chair in Digital Media Strategy following a career at The Washington Post, where he directed a lab dedicated to experimental storytelling and built The Post’s first artificial intelligence storytelling system, Heliograf, which used machine-generated text to expand coverage of events, elections and the Olympics.

Diakopoulos, professor in communication studies and computer science, leads the Computational Journalism Lab in Northwestern’s School of Communication, where he conducts research focused on automation and algorithms in news production, algorithmic accountability and transparency, and social media in news contexts. He is the author of “Automating the News: How Algorithms are Rewriting the Media.”

What unites the two professors is the belief that with the right practices, technology will lead to better journalism, and in turn, a stronger democracy.

“Generative AI offers journalism an opportunity to rethink the products our audiences want, the methods we use to gather information and the ways we compile our stories,” Gilbert said. “Just like personal computers and smart phones, GenAI is a transformational technology. Universities like Northwestern have an opportunity and obligation to help the industry understand the potential and the challenges these technologies represent.”

Gilbert and Diakopoulos see generative AI as a crucial tool to help the diminished Fourth Estate by freeing journalists from routine tasks so they can spend more time on important stories and investigations. But smaller and mid-sized news organizations face barriers to adoption and have fallen behind, according to an Associated Press study, with Knight Lab collaboration, that was also funded by Knight Foundation to help local newsrooms expand the use of AI. 

The Northwestern project, titled “The Generative AI + Journalism Initiative: Developing Responsible Practices for Generative AI in News Production (GAIN),” will help close the gap in journalists’ understanding of the capabilities and limitations of generative AI technologies. Through prototyping and publishing, GAIN will focus on the needs of local news outlets by conducting research and small-scale pilots in working newsrooms.

“There are so many facets to how generative AI could be useful to or problematic for the news media ecosystem,” Diakopoulos said. “The need for university-driven research to sort out what works well and what’s over-hyped is more apparent than ever. I’m excited to work with Medill on advancing the research base for responsible practice with GenAI, and to blaze a path forward for how to leverage the tech to support better news media for society.”

How-to guides, results from prototype tools, and broader context on the ethical, legal and societal implications will be published on the Generative AI in the Newsroom project website. Diakopoulos created the site a year ago as a collaborative space for practitioners to discuss how the technology is and is not working. Through the grant, the site will be expanded to include a wealth and range of knowledge resources and create a channel where the latest in research on the topic will be translated for practitioners’ use.

The grant also includes funding for contributions from postdoctoral and Ph.D. researchers in the field of human-centered AI, as well as an editor position and writers to assist with reporting on the research findings or media. The funding will also support faculty, staff, professionals and students in designing and building tools in the Knight Lab and Computational Journalism Lab.

Editor’s Picks

Redevelopment of Norris University Center’s East Lawn to begin this summer

‘the night watchman’ named next one book selection, the healing powers of theater, related stories.

Great Lakes project selected to receive up to $160 million from NSF

New $5 million nih grant to study how pregnancy affects children with disabilities, small, implantable device could sense and treat cancer.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

6 in 10 U.S. Catholics are in favor of abortion rights, Pew Research report finds

Jason DeRose

Pope Francis remains popular among U.S. Catholics, with 75% having favorable views of him, according to a Pew Research report. But many self-identified Catholics disagree with various teachings of their church. Andrew Medichini/AP hide caption

Pope Francis remains popular among U.S. Catholics, with 75% having favorable views of him, according to a Pew Research report. But many self-identified Catholics disagree with various teachings of their church.

Catholics in the U.S., one of the country's largest single Christian groups, hold far more diverse views on abortion rights than the official teaching of their church.

While the Catholic Church itself holds that abortion is wrong and should not be legal, 6 in 10 U.S. adult Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a newly released profile of Catholicism by Pew Research .

Catholic opinion about abortion rights, according to the report, tends to align with political leanings: Fewer Catholic Republicans favor legal abortion than Catholic Democrats. And Pew says Hispanic Catholics, who make up one-third of the U.S. church, are slightly more in favor of legal abortion than white Catholics.

Despite church prohibitions, Catholics still choose IVF to have children

Pew found that 20% of the U.S. population identifies as Catholic, but only about 3 in 10 say they attend mass regularly. Opinions about abortion rights appear to be related to how often someone worships — just 34% of Catholics who attend mass weekly say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, whereas that number jumps to 68% among those who attend mass monthly or less.

Most U.S. Catholics are white (57%), but that number has dropped by 8 percentage points since 2007, according the new report. About 33% identify as Hispanic, 4% Asian, 2% Black, and 3% describe themselves as another race.

Pew Research also found that as of February, Pope Francis remains highly popular, with 75% of U.S. Catholics rating him favorably. However, there is a partisan divide, with Catholic Democrats more strongly supporting him.

About 4 in 10 U.S. Catholics view Francis as a major agent of change, with 3 in 10 saying he is a minor agent of change.

Catholic Church works to explain what same-sex blessings are and are not

Pew reports that many U.S. Catholics would welcome more change. Some 83% say they want the church to allow the use of contraception, 69% say priests should be allowed to get married, 64% say women should be allowed to become priests, and 54% say the Catholic Church should recognize same-sex marriage.

In December 2023, the Vatican issued guidance to priests that they may bless people in same-sex relationships. But the church insists those blessings not be construed in any way to be a form of marriage or even take place as part of a worship service.

• Pope Francis
• Abortion rights
• Catholic church
• Pew Research

Psychology Research News

Top headlines, latest headlines.

• Connecting Lab-Grown Brain Cells
• How We Perceive Bitter Taste
• Tiny Brain Bubbles Carry Complete Codes
• Are Lab-Grown Brain Tissues Ethical?
• A Welcome Hug Is Good for Your Health
• Exposure to Environmental Carcinogens: Distress
• Feeding the Lonely Brain
• Prairie Voles Display Human-Like Depression
• How the Brain Regulates Emotions
• Treatment for Xylazine Overdose in People

Earlier Headlines

Tuesday, april 2, 2024.

• How the Brain Senses Body Position and Movement

Monday, April 1, 2024

• Universal Brain-Computer Interface Lets People Play Games With Just Their Thoughts

Thursday, March 28, 2024

• New Imaging Method Illuminates Oxygen's Journey in the Brain
• For Younger Women, Mental Health Now May Predict Heart Health Later
• Reverse Effects of Trauma? Older Brain Cells Linger Unexpectedly Before Their Death

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

• Researchers Introduce Enhanced Brain Signal Analysis Technique
• Could AI Play a Role in Locating Damage to the Brain After Stroke?
• Making Long-Term Memories Requires Nerve-Cell Damage
• Risk Factors for Faster Aging in the Brain Revealed in New Study

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

• Study Finds High Prevalence of Hidden Brain Changes in People With Heart Disease
• Common Degenerative Brain Disease May Begin to Develop in Middle Age
• Large-Scale Animal Study Links Brain pH Changes to Wide-Ranging Cognitive Issues

Monday, March 25, 2024

• Human Brains Are Getting Larger: That May Be Good News for Dementia Risk

Friday, March 22, 2024

• The Aging Brain: Protein Mapping Furnishes New Insights
• Movement Disorder ALS and Cognitive Disorder FTLD Show Strong Molecular Overlaps, New Study Shows
• Early Intervention After the First Seizure May Prevent Long-Term Epilepsy and Associated Cognitive Deficits

Thursday, March 21, 2024

• Research Finds a Direct Communication Path Between the Lungs and the Brain
• Research Offers Hope for Preventing Post-COVID 'brain Fog' By Targeting Brain's Blood Vessels

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

• Treating Anxiety, Depression in People With Heart Disease Reduced ER Visits, Hospitalizations

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

• Brain Recordings in People Before Surgery Reveal How All Minds Plan What to Say Prior to Speaking
• Is the Secret to Anxiety in Young Women Hidden in Our Brain Chemistry?
• Biomarkers of the Middle-Aged Brain Predict Cognitive Health in Old Age
• How Neurochemicals Affect fMRI Readings

Monday, March 18, 2024

• Five Factors to Ensure an Infant Thrives
• Researchers Find Unanticipated Complexity in Aging Brain's Memory Decline

Friday, March 15, 2024

• Fatty Food Before Surgery May Impair Memory in Old, Young Adults
• Gut Bacteria Make Neurotransmitters to Shape the Newborn Immune System
• Abnormal Brain Structure Identified in Children With Developmental Language Problems

Thursday, March 14, 2024

• How Fear Unfolds Inside Our Brains

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

• Blast-Related Concussions Linked to Higher Alzheimer's Risk
• Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associated With ADHD in Youth

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

• Researchers Expand Our Understanding of How the Body and Brain Communicate

Monday, March 11, 2024

• Researchers Identify Gene Involved in Neuronal Vulnerability in Alzheimer's Disease

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

• Patience Pays Off
• A Noninvasive Treatment for 'chemo Brain'

Thursday, March 7, 2024

• Does Iron Accumulate in Brain After Concussions?

Monday, March 4, 2024

• A Better Way to Deliver Fetal Therapy for Serious Genetic Disorders

Friday, March 1, 2024

• Link Between Adversity, Psychiatric and Cognitive Decline

Thursday, February 29, 2024

• Tiny Magnetic Particles in Air Pollution Linked to Development of Alzheimer's
• Molecular Clusters on Glial Cells Show They Are More Than Our Brain's 'glue'

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

• Continued Cocaine Use Disrupts Communication Between Major Brain Networks
• Neurons Help Flush Waste out of Brain During Sleep
• In Fight Against Brain Pathogens, the Eyes Have It
• Could We Assess Autism in Children With a Simple Eye Reflex Test?
• More Than Just Neurons: A New Model for Studying Human Brain Inflammation

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

• Addressing Societal Concerns of Genetic Determinism of Human Behavior by Linking Environmental Influences and Genetic Research
• New Study Links Placental Oxygen Levels to Fetal Brain Development
• Visual Prosthesis Simulator Offers a Glimpse Into the Future
• Learning and Memory Problems in Down Syndrome Linked to Alterations in Genome's 'dark Matter'

Monday, February 26, 2024

• Gut-Brain Communication Turned on Its Axis
• Intervention Reduces Likelihood of Developing Postpartum Anxiety and Depression by More Than 70%
• Yoga Provides Unique Cognitive Benefits to Older Women at Risk of Alzheimer's Disease

Sunday, February 25, 2024

• Revolutionary Brain Stimulation Technique Shows Promise for Treating Brain Disorders

Friday, February 23, 2024

• Hearing Relaxing Words in Your Sleep Slows Your Heart Down

Thursday, February 22, 2024

• Cracking the Code of Neurodegeneration: New Model Identifies Potential Therapeutic Target
• Uncovering Anxiety: Scientists Identify Causative Pathway and Potential Cures
• Researchers Use Deep Brain Stimulation to Map Therapeutic Targets for Four Brain Disorders
• Living in Violent Neighborhoods Affects Children's Brain Development
• Newly Discovered Brain Cells Play a Key Role in Right and Left Turns

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

• Air Pollution Linked to More Signs of Alzheimer's in Brain
• How Does the Brain Make Decisions?
• Possible Trigger for Autoimmune Diseases Discovered : B Cells Teach T Cells Which Targets Must Not Be Attacked

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

• Fixing Rogue Brain Cells May Hold Key to Preventing Neurodegeneration
• Modifying Brain Molecule Relaxin-3 Can Potentially Reduce Side Effects in Treating Anxiety, Depression and More
• Blocking Key Protein May Halt Progression of Alzheimer's Disease
• Stress During Pregnancy Can Lead to Early Maturation of First-Born Daughters
• Mapping Potential Pathways to MND Treatment

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

• Exposure to Agent Orange Damages Brain Tissue in Ways Similar to Alzheimer's Disease

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

• Neural Prosthetic Device Can Help Humans Restore Memory
• Are You Depressed? Scents Might Help

Friday, February 9, 2024

• Immune Genes Are Altered in Alzheimer's Patients' Blood

Thursday, February 8, 2024

• How Emotions Affect Word Retrieval in People With Aphasia
• Patterns of Brain Connectivity Differ Between Pre-Term and Term Babies
• Pharmacological Inhibitor Protects Nerve Cells in ALS Disease
• Researchers Identify Potential Way to Treat Genetic Epilepsy by Replacing 'lost' Enzyme

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

• Researchers Make Progress Toward Developing Blood Tests for Psychiatric and Neurological Disorders
• New Direct Links Discovered Between the Brain and Its Surrounding Environment
• Stress Influences Brain and Psyche Via Immune System
• Things We Can Do to Help Cope With Traumatic Loss

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

• Study Finds Strongest Evidence to Date of Brain's Ability to Compensate for Age-Related Cognitive Decline
• Bullied Teens' Brains Show Chemical Change Associated With Psychosis

Monday, February 5, 2024

• Scientist Shows Focused Ultrasound Can Reach Deep Into the Brain to Relieve Pain
• World's Largest Childhood Trauma Study Uncovers Brain Rewiring

Thursday, February 1, 2024

• Researchers 3D-Print Functional Human Brain Tissue
• Scientists Discover a Potential Way to Repair Synapses Damaged in Alzheimer's Disease

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

• Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Tied to Memory, Thinking Problems
• Firing Nerve Fibers in the Brain Are Supplied With Energy on Demand
• Brain Changes Behind Pain Sensitivity May Affect Older Women More

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

• How a Mouse's Brain Bends Time

Monday, January 29, 2024

• Playing an Instrument Linked to Better Brain Health in Older Adults

Friday, January 26, 2024

• Using fMRI, New Vision Study Finds Promising Model for Restoring Cone Function
• Brain Drain: Nasopharyngeal Lymphatics Found to Be Crucial for Cerebrospinal Fluid Outflow
• Decoding How the Brain Manages the Appetite for Salt and Water

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Alters Brain Activity in Children With Anxiety

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

• Bioengineers on the Brink of Breaching Blood-Brain Barrier
• New Technology Lets Researchers Track Brain Cells' 'off Switches'

Monday, January 22, 2024

• Mechanism Linking Anxiety to Testosterone
• Thinning of Brain Region May Signal Dementia Risk 5-10 Years Before Symptoms
• How Aging Alters Brain Cells' Ability to Maintain Memory

Friday, January 19, 2024

• Bacterial Meningitis Injures One in Three Children for Life
• LATEST NEWS
• Health & Medicine
• Diseases & Conditions
• Alzheimer's Research
• Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
• Attention Deficit Disorder
• Back and Neck Pain
• Birth Defects
• Bladder Disorders
• Blood Clots
• COVID and SARS
• Cervical Cancer
• Bladder Cancer
• Multiple Myeloma
• Pancreatic Cancer
• Brain Tumor
• Colon Cancer
• Breast Cancer
• Ovarian Cancer
• Lung Cancer
• Mesothelioma
• Skin Cancer
• Prostate Cancer
• Cerebral Palsy
• Chikungunya
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• Cold and Flu
• Crohn's Disease
• Cystic Fibrosis
• Dengue Fever
• Down Syndrome
• Eating Disorder Research
• Encephalitis
• Epilepsy Research
• Erectile Dysfunction
• Fibromyalgia
• Gastrointestinal Problems
• HIV and AIDS
• Headache Research
• Hearing Loss
• Heart Health
• Cholesterol
• Stroke Prevention
• Heart Disease
• Hormone Disorders
• Hypertension
• Infectious Diseases
• Insomnia Research
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome
• Kidney Disease
• Liver Disease
• Lung Disease
• Lyme Disease
• Mental Health Research
• Multiple Sclerosis Research
• Mumps, Measles, Rubella
• Muscular Dystrophy
• Osteoporosis
• Parkinson's Research
• Prostate Health
• Restless Leg Syndrome
• Sickle Cell Anemia
• Sleep Disorder Research
• Thyroid Disease
• Triglycerides
• Tuberculosis
• Medical Topics
• Accident and Trauma
• Alternative Medicine
• Birth Control
• Bone and Spine
• Chronic Illness
• Controlled Substances
• Dietary Supplements and Minerals
• Epigenetics
• Food Additives
• Foodborne Illness
• Foot Health
• Gene Therapy
• Health Policy
• Human Biology
• Immune System
• Joint Health
• Medical Imaging
• Nervous System
• Pain Control
• Personalized Medicine
• Pharmacology
• Psychology Research
• Wounds and Healing
• PHYSICAL/TECH
• ENVIRONMENT
• SOCIETY & EDUCATION
• Genes for Strong Muscles: Healthy Long Life
• Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst
• Stellar Winds of Three Sun-Like Stars Detected
• Fences Causing Genetic Problems for Mammals
• Ozone Removes Mating Barriers Between Fly ...
• Parkinson's: New Theory On Origins and Spread
• Clash of Stars Solves Stellar Mystery
• Secure Quantum Computing at Home
• Ocean Currents: Collapse of Antarctic Ice ...
• Pacific Cities Much Older Than Previously ...

Trending Topics

Strange & offbeat.

Research News & Stories

Making headlines.

The bold discoveries coming out of UMass Amherst research labs draw national and international attention, and frequently make headlines. UMass researchers conduct impactful research across a wide range of disciplines, with real-world applications in Health and Wellness ; Energy Transition ; Environment and Sustainability ; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ; and the Social Sciences . Take a peek inside UMass research labs, and meet some of amazing faculty and students behind the work. UMass recognizes exceptional research, scholarship, and creative activity by its faculty through its Spotlight Scholars honor, and by students through the Rising Researchers award program.

Keep up with the latest in research and innovation from UMass Amherst through our quarterly REVOLUTIONARY RESEARCH e-newsletter.

Read Recent Highlights

Research to promote sustainable and equitable access to clean water.

At UMass Amherst, researchers across multiple disciplines are convening to accelerate translatable research and innovation in the water sector.

A Comic Approach to Scholarly Inquiry

The CBR Lab at UMass Amherst is building community and capacity around comics-based research, a novel, rapidly growing research methodology that can be applied to virtually any academic discipline. 

Story Archive

Researchers making a difference.

Get to know some of the faculty and students conducting exceptionally creative and impactful research on campus.

Follow Us on Social Media

Keep reading.

How pregnancy may speed up the aging process

The fatigue and pangs of pregnancy have made many women feel older than their years. Now there’s new research that suggests pregnancy may, in fact, accelerate the aging process.

Two new studies of genetic markers in the blood cells of pregnant women suggest that their cells seem to age at an exaggerated clip, adding extra months or even years to a woman’s so-called biological age as her pregnancy progresses.

But one of the studies also suggests this process may reverse itself once a woman gives birth, rewinding time so that some mothers’ cells seemingly end up biologically younger afterward than they’d been during gestation, especially if a mother breastfeeds her baby.

Together, the studies underscore how physically demanding pregnancy is. But they also raise important questions about aging itself and whether it really can be sped up, slowed or reversed by pregnancy.

Aging in pregnancy

The newest of the studies , published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found pregnancy “has a big impact on a woman’s body” and biological age, said Calen P. Ryan, an associate research scientist at the Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University in New York, who led the new research.

In it, scientists used several different biological-age “clocks” and other measures to analyze DNA markers in blood samples. These clocks aren’t timepieces but, instead, algorithms, developed using artificial intelligence programs, that examine the patterns of specialized chemical markers found on the outside of some genes. These markers accumulate and change in response to our age, health and lifestyles, a process known as epigenetics.

The algorithms can use these epigenetic markers to estimate the relative age of cells. This measure, often referred to as biological age, can differ from someone’s chronological age, which just means how long he or she’s been alive.

In the new study, the researchers checked blood samples from 825 young women in the Philippines, all born in the same year. Some had been or were pregnant, and others hadn’t conceived. Analyzing these samples, the epigenetic clocks broadly agreed that the biological age of the young women who’d been or were pregnant tended to be higher than that of the others, by at least several months, even after the researchers controlled for economic disparities and other social and health factors.

Pregnancy as a stress test

Similarly, the other new study, published in March in Cell Metabolism , used several different epigenetic clocks to estimate the changing internal age of pregnant women at several points during their pregnancies.

“We were very interested in looking at the impacts of pregnancy as a naturally occurring stress test,” said Kieran J. O’Donnell, an assistant professor at the Yale Child Study Center and Yale School of Medicine, who oversaw one of the new studies.

Get Well+Being tips straight to your inbox

With blood samples from 119 pregnant American women and five different clocks, the researchers tracked the epigenetic changes related to the women’s biological age, starting early in gestation and ending three months after they’d given birth.

The clocks again agreed that pregnancy seemed to be aging the incipient moms as they approached full term, making their blood cells’ DNA appear to be as much as two years older than it had been earlier in the pregnancy.

More encouraging, though, O’Donnell said, is that this aging seemed to reverse for most of the women within three months after birth. In general, their patterns of DNA markers soon reverted to an earlier, more-youthful state, and for some new moms who’d breastfed exclusively in the first three months postpartum, overshot the mark, leaving them apparently “younger” biologically than before, by as much as eight years, the study’s authors wrote, “indicating a pronounced reversal of biological aging.”

Disagreement about aging

But some researchers who study aging, longevity and epigenetics are skeptical of the studies’ findings and conclusions. “It seems unlikely to me that pregnancy induces a whole-body acceleration of biological aging which is then reversed soon after pregnancy,” said Matt Kaeberlein, a longtime longevity researcher who serves as CEO of Optispan, a company that promotes longevity and produces the “Optispan” podcast.

Charles Brenner, who studies metabolism, cancer and aging at the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope National Medical Center in California was blunter in an email. “100%, it’s a misuse of aging biomarkers,” he wrote.

Both scientists, as well as others who’ve discussed the studies online, speculate that the epigenetic shifts seen during pregnancy probably reflect the profound physiological demands of carrying a child. They’re “a transient response to the stress of pregnancy, particularly in the immune system,” Kaeberlein said.

What they aren’t is evidence that pregnant women suddenly get older and then younger, these researchers say, or experience lasting effects that could directly shorten or lengthen their life spans.

But the cellular changes being picked up and analyzed by the epigenetic clocks might someday be useful health indicators. If a pregnant woman’s epigenetic markers don’t soon bounce back once she’s no longer pregnant, she and her doctor might want to closely monitor her blood pressure, blood sugar and other standard measures of health, not because she suddenly seems older after becoming pregnant, but because, Ryan said, “pregnancy is such a big deal, physically.”

Do you have a fitness question? Email [email protected] and we may answer your question in a future column.

Read more from Well+Being

Well+Being shares news and advice for living well every day. Sign up for our newsletter to get tips directly in your inbox.

Are you taking your meds wrong ? Many patients make these common mistakes.

Centenarians give their advice about everything.

The wall sit is a simple exercise that can lower your blood pressure.

Tart cherries — more specifically, tart cherry juice — may help with inflammation and pain.

Do you self-sabotage ? Here’s how to stop.

• Accessibility Options:
• Skip to Content
• Skip to Search
• Skip to footer
• Office of Disability Services
• Request Assistance
• 305-284-2374
• High Contrast
• School of Architecture

College of Arts and Sciences

• Miami Herbert Business School
• School of Communication
• School of Education and Human Development
• College of Engineering
• School of Law
• Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science
• Miller School of Medicine
• Frost School of Music
• School of Nursing and Health Studies
• The Graduate School
• Division of Continuing and International Education
• People Search
• Class Search
• IT Help and Support
• Privacy Statement
• Student Life
• University of Miami
• Division of University Communications
• Office of Media Relations
• Miller School of Medicine Communications
• Hurricane Sports
• UM Media Experts
• Emergency Preparedness
• Faculty Recognition
• Student Corner
• People and Community
• Lowe Art Museum
• Social Sciences
• The Advanced Study of the Americas
• Publications
• Research & Outreach
• Latest Headlines
• Arts & Sciences
• Subscribe to News@TheU Newsletter
• UM NEWS HOME

Psychology professor and team awarded $750,000 grant for autism research

By Jordan Rogers 04-12-2024

University of Miami researchers are part of a team that recently won a $750,000 grant from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) to conduct groundbreaking multidisciplinary research on children with autism.

Daniel Messinger , a professor of psychology, pediatrics, electrical and computer engineering, and music engineering in the psychology department at the College of Arts and Sciences , is part of the research team.

SFARI’s human cognitive and behavioral science grants prioritize research “that produces foundational knowledge about the neurobehavioral differences associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD),” according to the foundation’s press release .

Messinger is collaborating with University of Miami professors Lynn K. Perry in the psychology department and Chaoming Song in the physics department and their graduate students, as well as professors at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles. Together, they will execute a multidisciplinary project that incorporates cutting-edge technology into autism detection research in children ages 3 to 5.

The grant will support the research team with three years of funding.

“It is lovely to involve people from such different fields,” Messinger said of the complex project his team has devised. “Aside from psychology, the research incorporates physics and electrical and computer engineering. Each person on the ’Canes team does their part.”

It might initially seem as if these fields have little in common. However, with creativity and collaboration, the connections start to materialize.

“The first major task is forming working relationships and finding questions that everyone is interested in,” Messinger explained. “Then it’s about submitting conference papers on our research on the kids, writing manuscripts together, and applying for research funding while thinking about everybody’s needs.”

For the Miami-based portion of the project, the research team will test children in classroom settings, including the University of Miami's Linda Ray Intervention Center . The kids will wear specially made vests fitted with movement and location trackers, as well as non-invasive microphones, which will record diverse forms of data.

Song, an associate professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, will be responsible for monitoring the children’s movements in the lab. “He looks at whether or not kids are in social contact when they are in close physical proximity,” said Messinger.

Anchen Sun, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering, will oversee the experiment’s audio component in collaboration with a graduate student in the psychology department.

“He takes the audio recordings and figures out who is speaking and what they are saying,” Messinger explained. “Kids with ASD might speak with a higher pitch in their voice. This vocal data is an important byproduct for the detection of autism.”

Messinger has a long track record of producing high-quality scholarship with colleagues in his field. He recently contributed research to a multi-authored journal article alongside University of Miami psychology professors Batya E. Elbaum and Lynn K. Perry . The article, “ Investigating Children’s Interactions In Preschool Classrooms: An Overview of Research Using Automated Technologies ,” can be found in the journal Early Childhood Research Quarterly.

The stakes are high for this cutting-edge research, which promises to shed some important light on how autism intersects with other topics.

“The work has an equity and social justice component as well,” said Messinger. “More boys are diagnosed with autism than girls. Having more objective knowledge on the topic would help us to understand why.”

Undergraduate and Graduate

Research and outreach, get started, give to the college, make a gift.

• 1252 Memorial Drive Ashe Building - Rm # 227 Coral Gables , FL 33146
• 305- 284-4117 305- 284-4117
• UM News and Events
• Alumni & Friends
• 'Cane Watch

Tools and Resources

• Academic Calendar
• Department Search
• Parking & Transportation
• social-facebook
• social-twitter
• social-youtube
• social-instagram

Copyright: 2024 University of Miami. All Rights Reserved. Emergency Information Privacy Statement & Legal Notices Title IX & Gender Equity Website Feedback

Individuals with disabilities who experience any technology-based barriers accessing the University’s websites or services can visit the Office of Workplace Equity and Inclusion .

Subscribe or renew today

Every print subscription comes with full digital access

Science News

These are the most popular science news stories of 2023.

A lung infection called histoplasmosis can be caused when the spores of soil fungi called Histoplasma (illustrated) are inhaled. The discovery that the fungi, along with two others, have become widespread in the United States ranked among Science News ' most-read stories of 2023.

Roger Harris/Science Photo Library/Getty Images

Share this:

By Science News Staff

December 21, 2023 at 7:00 am

Science News drew over 21 million visitors to our website this year. Here’s a look back at the most-read and most-watched stories of 2023.

Top news stories

1. fungi that cause serious lung infections are now found throughout the u.s..

An analysis of Medicare records from 2007 through 2016 reveals that Histoplasma , Coccidioides and Blastomyces fungi have become more widespread in the United States . The fungi, which cause serious lung infections, were once thought to be confined to certain regions of the country ( SN: 1/14/23, p. 32 ).

2 . A new look at Ötzi the Iceman’s DNA reveals new ancestry and other surprises

Ötzi the Iceman’s ancestors may have been Neolithic farmers , a new genetic analysis indicates. Previous studies suggested that the roughly 5,300-year-old frozen mummy had ancestors from the Pontic-Caspian steppe. Ötzi also had male-pattern baldness and darker skin than previously thought ( SN: 9/23/23, p. 5 ).

3 . Mathematicians have finally discovered an elusive ‘einstein’ tile

A newfound 13-sided shape dubbed the hat is the first true “einstein,” a tile that forms a pattern that can cover an infinite plane but does not repeat ( SN 4/22/23, p. 7 ). Mathematicians had been searching for an einstein for half a century .

4 . Earth’s inner core may be reversing its rotation

Earth’s heart may have temporarily stopped spinning relative to the mantle and crust in 2009 ( SN: 2/25/23, p. 7 ). Now, the inner core may be reversing its spin as part of a cycle that happens every few decades.

5 . Astronomers spotted shock waves shaking the web of the universe for the first time

Shock waves ripple along the magnetic fields that permeate the cosmic web — the tangle of galaxies, gas and dark matter that fills the universe ( SN: 3/25/23, p. 14 ). Studying these shock waves, which were revealed by hundreds of thousands of radio satellite images, could help astronomers better understand those mysterious magnetic fields .

A video about Beethoven’s hair was our most-viewed TikTok posted this year. In the video, civic science fellow Martina Efeyini (shown below) talks about what DNA extracted from the composer’s locks reveals about how he may have died.

@sciencenewsofficial DNA from Beethoven’s hair may explain how he died. #DNA #history #beethoven #sciencetok #genetics ♬ original sound – sciencenewsofficial

Top long reads

1 . a massive cavern beneath a west antarctic glacier is teeming with life.

A vast, water-filled “cathedral” roughly 500 meters beneath the Kamb Ice Stream, a glacier in West Antarctica, bustles with marine organisms . The cavern provides a window into the continent’s warmer ancient past ( SN: 4/22/23, p. 18 ).

2. Why scientists are expanding the definition of loneliness

Social scientists now increasingly recognize that loneliness results not just from isolation from people , but also from animals, places, routines, rituals and more. That view may lead to new ways to manage the feeling, which is becoming a public health concern in the United States ( SN: 11/4/23, p. 24 ).

3. How brain implants are treating depression

Deep brain stimulation, a technology that pulses electricity deep into the brain, may be the only hope for relief for some patients with severe depression. In this series, the stories of Jon Nelson and three other patients undergoing the experimental treatment offer an intimate look at how it has changed their lives ( SN: 9/23/23, p. 16 ).

4. A chemical imbalance doesn’t explain depression. So what does?

Depression is often blamed on a “chemical imbalance” in the brain. In reality, despite decades of sophisticated research, scientists still don’t have a great explanation of what depression is or what causes it ( SN: 2/11/23, p. 18 ).

5. How one device could help transform our power grid

Coal-fired power plants across the United States are shutting down as society shifts toward clean energy sources. A smooth transition to renewables could depend in large part on grid-forming inverters , devices that hook up solar and wind farms to the existing power grid and stabilize the system ( SN: 8/26/23, p. 22 ).

More Stories from Science News on Science & Society

What  Science News  saw during the solar eclipse

​​During the awe of totality, scientists studied our planet’s reactions

Your last-minute guide to the 2024 total solar eclipse

Protein whisperer Oluwatoyin Asojo fights neglected diseases

How a 19th century astronomer can help you watch the total solar eclipse

Timbre can affect what harmony is music to our ears

Not all cultures value happiness over other aspects of well-being

‘Space: The Longest Goodbye’ explores astronauts’ mental health

Subscribers, enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions.

Not a subscriber? Become one now .

From science to ‘Suits,’ Northeastern community shows off its research in the 2024 RISE Expo

• Search Search

Over 400 Northeastern students presented research inside Matthews Arena, a record-breaking number for the RISE Expo.

• Copy Link Link Copied!

A line of people snaked around the block outside Matthews Arena on Northeastern’s Boston campus Thursday afternoon, each of them eager to get inside to see the research presented by students, faculty and graduates during the 2024 RISE Expo.

The RISE Expo gives participants the chance to show off their research and creative projects. A record 448 posters were presented in person on topics ranging from Brexit to breast cancer treatment. (An additional 55 posters were shared online, allowing students on Northeastern’s 13 global campuses to partake.)

Jethro Lee, a data science and psychology major, focused his research on a little-studied sport: field hockey. His study looked at success probabilities in the sport based on factors such as whether the team was playing at home or whether the shot occurred after a penalty corner.

“My supervisor and I believe that field hockey is very underrepresented in literature, especially in regards to sports literature,” Lee said. “A lot of empirical studies generally focus on sports like basketball or baseball. We want to collaborate with coaching staff to tailor our findings to areas that are most important for improvement and feedback for players and coaches.”

Lee collected data from Northeastern’s field hockey website for the study. His goal is to use this data to eventually spearhead the development of a machine-learning model to help inform decisions on the field hockey field.

Paul Ambarus, a health sciences student, presented research he’s done in his job at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, looking at ovariectomized pigs as a way to study women’s heart health. Removing the ovaries of a pig creates a model to study the postmenopausal cardiovascular system of a human woman.

Amabarus’ team removed the ovaries from four young pigs. He then studied the heart tissue and found an increased expression of a certain protein that the team hypothesized was due to a lack of protection of estrogen, indicating that certain sex hormones produced by the ovaries may have a protective effect on the heart.

“That’s something we’ll be looking into in the future,” Amabarus said. “Seeing these differences helps us understand what is going on at a very micro level, specifically in menopausal women that ended up having heart disease.”

Many of the presentations focused on complex science, but others dealt with public health issues. Sarah Abukwaik, a health sciences major, spent months studying the role religion has on people’s sexual health education and attitudes toward sexuality. She surveyed over 80 people and ranked their level of religious devotion with their knowledge of sex education-related issues and their views on sexuality.

Ultimately, she found that being religious does not mean a person has a higher or lower level of sex education, but religious beliefs do influence people’s decision-making about sex.

“There has been somewhat of a cultural battle between religion and sex education,” she said. “That’s why you’ll see mostly across the nation abstinence-only programs even today, and not a standard form of sexual education curriculum. 

“There is definitely a need to not only to reform our sex education so we do have more of a standard, but also bridge the connection between religion and sex education, so that it does not seem because it isn’t as incompatible as we believe it to be.”

But not all the research focused on STEM . Naz Ozturk, a theater and communication studies major, presented research on the TV show “Suits” and the male friendships presented in it.

Featured Stories

Overheated or dehydrated after the Boston Marathon? These Northeastern physical therapy students will help you recover

Northeastern’s Entrepreneurship Treks program connects students on Oakland campus with industry giants like Tesla and Block

With cancer cases rising in young people, could earlier screenings help save lives?

What is ‘Fallout’? Physicist breaks down the science of Amazon’s sci-fi show and the horrifying reality of nuclear radiation

“When I was first watching ‘Suits,’ I thought it was really, really interesting how it’s centered around male characters,” Ozturk said. “And two of the male characters, Louis and Harvey, they’re completely at odds with each other … whereas Harvey and Mike (get along).”

Ozturk decided to look into what this says about masculinity in the West. To do so, she analyzed seasons one and two of the show, taking notes on interactions between the male characters. She also reviewed literature on research on what traits are considered masculine versus feminine and developed cognitive schemas to group the traits together.

What she found was conflict between Louis and Harvey often occurred when Louis was presenting a more feminine trait such as negotiating. On the flip side, Mike had many masculine traits that made Harvey more keen toward him.

“I found out Harvey is this kind of idyllic male persona that we would see in the West,” Ozturk said. “He sees parts of himself in Mike (who’s also) competitive, self-serving, competent and very intelligent. Whereas even though Louis is also intelligent, and self-serving, he presents a lot more feminine traits. Every time they have a spat, it’s because Louis is showing female behavior.

“My conclusion that I came to is that our gender presentation mediates the formation of friendships. … We are so addicted to media nowadays but then looking deeper and seeing what it says about our society is really big. It’s super significant.”

University News

Recent Stories

Election worker turnover has reached historic highs ahead of the 2024 vote, new data shows

Election officials across the country are leaving their jobs at the highest rates in decades, according to new research shared first with NBC News, putting thousands of new officials in place to oversee a tense and high-stakes 2024 presidential contest. 

At least 36% of local election offices have changed hands since 2020, following a similar exodus in the run-up to the midterms in 2022, when 39% of jurisdictions had new lead election officials from four years previously. Both points in time represented the highest four-year turnover rates in two decades, a development that worries election experts and officials who say such jobs are complex and come with a steep learning curve and no margin for error. And 2024’s turnover rate could continue to rise as the year goes on.

Election workers have been exposed to unprecedented scrutiny, threats and harassment following the presidential election in 2020, when Donald Trump falsely claimed the election was stolen and made baseless claims of voter fraud. And as Trump seeks the presidency for the third time, he has continued to predict voter fraud — seeming to lay the groundwork to again claim the election was stolen if he loses in November.

While the turnover rate has jumped in recent years, researchers found that it has been gradually rising for years, suggesting that both new and long-standing challenges are driving administrators from their jobs. From 2000 to 2004, about 28% of local election officials left their jobs. Four years later, 31% of election offices had changed hands.

Experts say that dynamic only reinforces the need to provide better funding and support for election workers to ensure the smooth administration of future elections.

“This gradual increase that we’ve seen over the last two decades really does highlight the need for comprehensive, coordinated strategies that seek to better fund election administration, that seek to reduce the burdens being placed on these election administrators,” said one of the study’s co-authors, Rachel Orey, senior associate director at the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project. “Because clearly, this isn’t something that only happened back in 2020.”

The research was conducted by UCLA researchers Daniel M. Thompson and Joshua Ferrer, who spent years collecting lists and directories of election officials in counties and municipalities around the country to produce the most accurate and expansive picture of election worker turnover available yet. Their data was analyzed and published in partnership with the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank, in an effort to better understand turnover as election administrators face harassment, violent threats and increasingly complex and heavy workloads.

The data for 2024 is current through January and is preliminary.

Turnover surged in populous jurisdictions after 2020

The 2020 election appears to have escalated and shifted the trend in turnover, which researchers found was consistent across geographic and partisan lines. 

Until recently, the bulk of the turnover was driven by the resignations of election officials in small towns and counties, where election officials must wear many hats and oversee all parts of the election process with limited help and staffing. After 2020, officials from larger jurisdictions began leaving their jobs at a higher rate: Districts with at least 100,000 voting-age residents had a turnover rate of 46% from 2018 to 2022.

Trump and his allies have particularly focused their baseless fraud allegations on large cities like Phoenix, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Detroit. His supporters have seized on the claims, protesting near and harassing officials and poll workers, suggesting that election denialism may be fueling departures in large jurisdictions. Still, there was no clear tie between areas where more threats have been reported — like the states Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020 — and higher turnover, according to the data.

In Georgia, a key battleground state, many election offices have been flooded with voter challenges , public information requests and frequent harassment and threats. All four election offices in Georgia’s most populous counties, all in and around Atlanta, have changed hands since 2020, with many lower-level staffers following, too. 

“I got here in August ’21. By the time we ran our first election in May of ’22, I think it was something like 75% of the staff had never run an election before,” said Zach Manifold, Gwinnett County’s elections supervisor.

Since then, he said, turnover has slowed in his office, making everyone’s lives a bit easier. He said camaraderie has developed among the new election chiefs in the Atlanta area as they talk about their shared experiences.  

“I’m part of the new generation of election administrators,” said Tate Fall, Cobb County’s new elections director. Fall, 30, started in December — “baptism by fire,” she called it — after having worked in elections in Virginia and studied election administration in graduate school.

“We’ve heard so much about the great resignation and people retiring and stepping down, and I definitely see why — this job is exhausting. It’s draining,” she said. “We have seen our predecessors, our mentors, the people that we’ve seen speak at conferences for years, stepping down, and understandably so, but we’re not afraid to step into those positions. We’re not going in blind.”

And the next generation is entering the top jobs with a significant level of experience, the researchers determined after having drawn on data from a survey of local election officials last year conducted by the Elections & Voting Information Center at Reed College in Oregon. On average, new election officials had eight years of experience; in large jurisdictions, new officials had an average of 11 years of experience.

Public attacks and heavy workloads 

In interviews, election officials who have left their jobs in recent years said that their decisions were based on many factors but that public attacks and scrutiny particularly weighed heavily on their experiences.

“I still love elections to this day,” said Teresa DeGraaf, the former clerk of Port Sheldon Township, Michigan. “But it changed. I’ve never had a job where I had so many sleepless nights. I would wake up at 3 in the morning, and you feel like you’re under the microscope, and you feel like everything you’re doing is being watched. We had folks that sat in our parking lot at 2 in the morning to watch our ballot box before the election.”

In Charleston County, South Carolina, Joe Debney, 44, resigned from running the county’s elections in December 2020.

“After 2020, you could go home and people would question you in your own household. Your family members around Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas time are like, well, we trust you, Joe, but we’re not so sure we trust the rest of the United States,” he said.

Another factor that may be driving resignations is that the work has become more complicated and time-consuming. 

Many states’ election codes have been overhauled repeatedly over the last few years, including changes to mail voting and new restrictions driven by unfounded fear of fraud. 

Isaac Cramer, who succeeded Debney in Charleston County, said South Carolina’s election code doesn’t consolidate special elections onto the existing elections calendar, leaving officials in his state running multiple elections per week at times. He said it’s burning out election workers, and after a spate of resignations this year, he said, he knows few other election directors in the state because so many have resigned. 

Cramer said that after three years in the top job, he believes he’s one of the most senior officials in the state. When nuances in the law arise, he said, there isn’t anyone more experienced to ask.

Debney said: “There’s a learning curve. Thank God we have people like Isaac who are reaching out to those counties and trying to work with them and give them the tools in order to succeed.”

Debney, who had previously worked with the South Carolina Election Commission, said there was a similar exodus of election directors when the state upgraded its voting system. He went across the state, training and supporting officials, talking through nuances and best practices.

“If those things don’t occur, I think, there could be some pitfalls,” he said.

Debney now runs a local YMCA and serves on the Board of Elections in his home county, Dorchester, South Carolina. On Election Day in November, he’ll be in the field supporting his county’s election director.

“I really do miss it,” he said. “What I did was good. It helped not only our community but our state and nation as a whole.”

Jane C. Timm is a senior reporter for NBC News.