Science

Summary: a snake collector immunized himself on a rotating basis to lots of lethal snakes. I will not certify him as sane, since at some point he allowed snakes to directly bite himself and ended up in coma for several days (it was by accident). As a result of prolonged work with increasing doses and cyclically repeating venoms, he seems to have done human kind a considerable favour: it was possible to isolate venom antibodies from his blood which have broad and powerful effect and don't cause as much allergy as animal antibodies.

Study of the calls that bonobos use to communicate indicates that their vocal system shows both trivial and non-trivial compositionality, the latter previously thought to occur only in human languages.

Science ‘storytelling’ urgently needed amid climate and biodiversity crisis.

By the 17th century, it wasn’t just God who could create a vacuum. Physicists Evangelista Torricelli and Blaise Pascal had also managed it using a mercury barometer. But had they really created nothing?

Summary: back in 2008, researchers found a big difference between the incidence and mortality of prostate cancer in Asian and "western" countries (even if situated in Asia). Incidence of the disease in "western" countries was several times higher. Additional data was pulled in to determine if the cause was genetic. People of Asian descent born in "western" countries had a comparably high risk, but people who had immigrated to "western" countries retained a lower risk. Thus, evidence pointed at society. The obvious candidate explanation was eating food that contains phytoestrogens from soy beans.

Two scientists and an editor spent six months investigating so-called paper mills, which churn out bogus scientific papers that impede actual research on lifesaving breakthroughs.