Part of my online life includes editorial duties at ResearchBlogging.org, where I serve as the Social Sciences Editor. Each Thursday, I pick notable posts on research in anthropology, philosophy, social science, and research to share on the ResearchBlogging.org News site. To help highlight this writing, I also share my selections here on AiP.

This week:

• Neuroskeptic isn’t quite sold on a study suggesting that family history of neurological and psychiatric disorders may be a predictive factor in the major college students choose.
• Context is king. Katy Meyers demonstrates how skeletal information, burial context, grave goods, and ethnographic information combine to reveal details about lives long gone in the Bahamas.
• For more on using skeletal information, Michelle Ziegler traces evidence from a few types of sources to gain a better understanding of malaria in medieval England.
• Social cues are most influential from people we know and trust. A new blog calledThe Scorpion and the Frog by Sarah Jane Alger discusses a study on eye gazes between macaques, finding that the same appears to be true for them as well.

I’ll be back next week with more from anthropology, philosophy, and research.