Ed Note: 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. [...]

I continue on break from the UMN Markingson story as I try to make sense—although there appears none to be had—of the tragic death of Aaron Swartz. I am haunted and infuriated by the senselessness of his death and his persecution by overzealous prosecutors. I am also reminded of other witch hunts that were equally [...]

As reports of bubonic plague in the Democratic Republic of Congo have filtered into neighboring Uganda, the Ugandan government is taking preemptive action, according to Uganda’s Daily Monitor and reported by ProMED-mail. The Ugandan Ministry of Health has announced a plague prevention program, including spraying pesticides throughout the Arua and Nebbi districts, which have combined [...]

The plague bacteria that swept through medieval Europe had been declared extinct just over a month ago. A quick google search reveals articles with headlines such as ‘Medieval plague bacteria strain probably extinct’ and ‘Black death strain extinct’. Few writers mentioned that the original research on which they reported was a technical paper first and [...]