Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

Ruth Mace @ruthmace.bsky.social · 21h

African harps as units of cultural evolution: a cladistic analysis on their morphology. New paper by Salome Strauch et al| Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core - www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

African harps as units of cultural evolution: a cladistic analysis on their morphology | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core

African harps as units of cultural evolution: a cladistic analysis on their morphology - Volume 7

www.cambridge.org

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 15h

If you're expecting the call, just stay awake all night. That'll show 'em

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Reposted by Rebecca Sear

Confront-Eugenics @confronteugenics.bsky.social · 16h

Upcoming talk by the historian of eugenics Marius Turda!
👉 wienerholocaustlibrary.org/event/findin...
🗓 Tuesday 4th November, 6.30pm, London

Finding Ivy exhibition talk: Disability, Dehumanisation and Extermination, with Prof Marius Turda - The Wiener Holocaust Library

Held as part of the Finding Ivy: a life worthy of life exhibition events series. In this talk Marius Turda will discuss the eugenically-driven and state-sponsored determination to eugenically ‘purify’...

wienerholocaustlibrary.org

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 17h

Why does every story about Nobel prize winners receiving the call involve them being woken in the middle of the night? Do the Nobel people not understand how time zones work or is it a deliberate strategy to generate fun stories about confused winners...?

Kate Holterhoff, PhD @kateholterhoff.com · 1d

We are all Dr. Brunkow 😴
“Dr. Brunkow said she did not expect to win a Nobel Prize. ‘My phone rang, and I saw a number from Sweden and thought, well that’s just spam of some sort, so I disabled the phone and went back to sleep,’“ www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/h...

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Is Awarded for Work on Immune Systems

www.nytimes.com

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 19h

In work on relationships between evolutionary psychology & the manosphere, it's been suggested the relationship may be two-way. Ideas from ev psych inform the manosphere but also the manosphere may influence ev psych. Wonder if the idea that "women are the protected sex" is an example of the latter

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 20h

“The idea that humans evolved to be protective & sensitive to harm directed towards women appears increasingly popular in evolutionary psych [but] ethnographic evidence conflict with this perspective, [which seems] rooted in contemporary WEIRD values rather than an evolved psychological mechanism”

Did humans evolve to 'protect' women?

Ethnography complicates a convenient narrative

open.substack.com

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Reposted by Rebecca Sear

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 2d

I have been trying to get this published as an op-ed, but I am going to post it here since I think it is timely in light of the "consent" extortion events.

Deafening Quiet from the Scientific Establishment

jeremymberg.github.io/jeremyberg.g...

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jeremymberg.github.io

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Reposted by Rebecca Sear

EHBEA @ehbea.bsky.social · 1d

EHBEA is looking for new PRESIDENT and SECRETARY for 2026-2029! 👀

If you know of anybody who could represent EHBEA, nominate them as president!

If you know with good organisational skills, nominate them as secretary!

DEADLINE: 16/12/2026

HERE IS THE FORM 👇

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

EHBEACommitteeNominationForm_Pres_Sec.doc

EHBEA Committee 2026-2029: Nomination Form The EHBEA Steering Committee is calling for nominations for the following open committee positions for 2026-2029. You are invited to nominate one or more c...

docs.google.com

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Reposted by Rebecca Sear

Annals of Human Biology @annalshumanbio.bsky.social · 1d

🗣️COMMENTARY

A timely piece for AHB addresses the current public health divide in the U.S., highlighting the need to ‘create space for dialogue rather than continued confrontation’, and how academics can better reach communities their research impacts

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Whose health? Whose truth? Navigating the “Make America Healthy Again” – public health divide

Published in Annals of Human Biology (Vol. 52, No. 1, 2025)

www.tandfonline.com

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Reposted by Rebecca Sear

Elizabeth Gadd @lizziegadd.bsky.social · 1d

Adding my voice to the chorus battling to retain an increased focus on people, culture, and environment in the next REF... wonkhe.com/blogs/the-ba...

The battle for people, culture and environment

Lizzie Gadd makes the case for embracing People, Culture and Environment and sets out why reverting to REF 2021 would be a mistake

wonkhe.com

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Reposted by Rebecca Sear

Paula Villa Braslavsky @paulita.bsky.social · 1d

"Key take-away: Political communication by mainstream parties plays a central role in the electoral success of the far right. When mainstream parties adopt far-right issues, they help to disseminate far-right ideas and legitimise them."

Teresa Völker @tevoelker.bsky.social · 1d

New paper out with @dasalgon.bsky.social: “Far-Right Agenda Setting: How the Far Right influences the Political Mainstream” doi.org/10.1017/S1475676525100066 #openaccess in @ejprjournal.bsky.social🧵

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 2d

George Monbiot on Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now: “Under-researched and over-claiming, deferring to authority rather than data, sloppy and derivative, Pinker insults the Enlightenment principles he claims to defend”

George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 27d

Tell me about it. I've had his number for a while, on other matters: www.monbiot.com/2018/03/09/c...

Contrary to Reason

Steven Pinker claims to champion Enlightenment values. But his latest book is an affront to them

www.monbiot.com

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Reposted by Rebecca Sear

🎃nisillos @onisillos.bsky.social · 2d

A great and informative discussion of peer review. I have too many opinions to go into depth here.

My general solution is to better value, in all senses, both peer and editorial review. If peer review was formally counted as work by an academic that might encourage more engagement.

CMI Communications @cmicomms.bsky.social · 3d

🎙️ Just published: Communicable E37: 'Peer review is broken'

Hosted by @angelahuttner.bsky.social & @anniejoseph.bsky.social

w/ invited guests: Melinda Baldwin @mbaldwin.bsky.social & Serge Horbach

Listen on Communicable:

#IDSky #Clinmicro #MedSky #peerreview #AI

Communicable E37: 'Peer review is broken'

share.transistor.fm

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Reposted by Rebecca Sear

George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 27d

A very disturbing thing I missed in researching this week's column. Three of the four junktank ultras hired by Labour to groom civil servants are named in this investigation of a Westminster network involving the disgraced eugenicist Andrew Sabisky. investigations.hopenothate.org.uk/andrew-sabis...

Unravelling Westminster’s secret influence network | HOPE not hate

An ex-Tory aide linked to race science has created a group of political allies to craft policy in the shadows

investigations.hopenothate.org.uk

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Reposted by Rebecca Sear

Hampton Gaddy @hggaddy.bsky.social · 2d

Even though the demography is clear, the idea that polygamy is unsustainable and is the root of male-vs-male violence is super influential in political science, incel groups (⚠️), and theories about the evolution of monogamy. In the article, we talk through all three sets of discourse (13/14)

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 2d

If one man marries two women, another man must go unmarried, right? No. Demography matters. If sex ratios are skewed towards women, then polygyny can exist alongside universal marriage for men (who want to marry women). If only more people understood demography 😊

Hampton Gaddy @hggaddy.bsky.social · 2d

🚨 The Economist has been telling you for years that polygamy causes civil war by locking men out of marriage. A new article with @rebeccasear.bsky.social and @anthrolog.bsky.social explains that the demography of marriage markets doesn't actually work that way. 🧵

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

High rates of polygyny do not lock large proportions of men out of the marriage market | PNAS

There is a widespread belief, in both the scholarly literature and the popular press, that polygyny prevents large numbers of men from marrying by ...

www.pnas.org

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Reposted by Rebecca Sear

Lynda Boothroyd @drboothroyd.bsky.social · 2d

Say you were looking for a free, online textbook to use in your teaching of #EvoPSych, Human Behavioural Ecology, Cultural Evolution (or all combined)... which of these titles would tempt you most?

(see post below...)

#EHBEA
#HBES
#CulturalTransmisison
#HigherEduction
#TLHE

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 2d

The conflation of academic freedom with free speech has predictable consequences. A Cambridge academic who made scientifically indefensible claims has had complaints against him dismissed on the grounds that his claims were "lawful free speech". This doesn't end well for science.

Uni clears don accused of ‘abhorrent racism’

The University's internal investigation launched last year has dismissed all complaints against Nathan Cofnas, and found his ideas 'represented lawful free speech'

www.varsity.co.uk

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 2d

Unfortunately, new legislation initiated by the previous UK government on free speech in higher education conflates freedom of speech and academic freedom

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Amia Srinivasan · Cancelled: Can I speak freely?

Most of us would find it horrible to be told that we aren’t worth engaging with, that our views are socially...

www.lrb.co.uk

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 2d

Cites this excellent piece: "A university isn’t a town square where anyone has the right to say anything they like... Universities contribute to society not by producing more speech, but by producing better speech. Our business is quality, not quantity"

academicmatters.ca/free-speech-...

Free speech and the battle for the university - Academic Matters

At the University of Waterloo, a controversial talk had the faculty association looking for creative ways to respond. How did the faculty [...]

academicmatters.ca

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 2d

Thoughtful piece on the distinction between freedom of speech and academic freedom, and how the former is being mobilised to erode the latter:

"Under freedom of speech, the distinction between true and false is irrelevant. Academic freedom is about seeking truth or producing better knowledge"

Knowledges from the classroom | Amsterdam University Press Journals Online

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, ...

www.aup-online.com

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 2d

"We test the "social capital buffer" hypothesis, which posits that greater social connectedness promotes risk-taking by buffering against negative outcomes [Bangladesh]....findings reveal that social capital does not uniformly promote or constrain risk-taking"

doi.org/10.31235/osf...

OSF

doi.org

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Reposted by Rebecca Sear

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 2d

'Mann, whose book Science Under Siege with co-author Peter Hotez was published last month, urged scientists in the US to speak out against the political pressures on research and higher education, even if there is a risk to their careers'.

Research Professional News @resprofnews.bsky.social · 2d

‘US anti-science stance poses global existential threat’.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-worl...

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Reposted by Rebecca Sear

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 9d

What does all this have to do with pronatalism? Maybe raising birth rates (as if you could) would lower women’s labor force participation, lower education levels, lower average incomes — and make people more MAGA. In other words, turn back the clock on social development.
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Reposted by Rebecca Sear

Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia.bsky.social · 3d

,While these articles and blog posts have appeared in different media ...() they all share commonalities, such as similar introductions, trying to discredit the targeted scientists’ expertise, or question their neutrality or integrity, and seem to be generated by chatbots.'

Scientists targeted by dark PR tactics: Several academic scientists critical of de-extinction projects have become the targets of anonymous smear articles and weaponized copyright infringement claims:...

EMBO Press is an editorially independent publishing platform for the development of EMBO scientific publications.

www.embopress.org

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