Till Truth Makes All Things Plain

Till truth makes all things plain: human hearts and stem cells.

Incentivizing Evaluation via Limited Access to Ground Truth: Peer-Prediction Makes Things Worse

In many settings, an effective way of evaluating objects of interest is to collect evaluations from dispersed individuals and to aggregate these evaluations together. Some examples are categorizing online content and evaluating student assignments via peer grading. For this data science problem, one challenge is to motivate participants to conduct such evaluations carefully and to report them h...

Opinion: What makes things humorous.

In a familiar parable, a group of blind men try to discern the shape of an elephant, but each man’s perspective differs depending on whether he’s touching the trunk, tusk, or tail (Fig. 1). After 2,500 years of studying humor, scientists similarly have differing perspectives on what makes things funny (1). We present three common perspectives on humor. Although each is insightful, no one perspe...

All Things to All People

Myc is an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Attempts to identify Myc target genes, particularly in cancer, have been fraught with dead ends and context-specific functions. Lin et al. and Nie et al. address this conundrum by showing that Myc acts to amplify the output of existing transcriptionally active genes.

The plain truth about tobacco packaging.

Hymenopus coronatus (the Malaysian preying mantis) has a cunning hunting technique. It disguises itself as an orchid; its four walking legs are exquisite replicas of petals and its lethal jaws blend into the background. This makes it beautiful to behold, but for the lizards and insects that are its prey, ruthless and deadly. What looks like a flower, and an enticing source of nectar, is actuall...