A study of more than 5,000 pages of agency documents on mifepristone over 12 years found that agency leaders almost always followed the evidence-based recommendations of scientists.

© Hannah Yoon for The New York Times

Behaviour among non-human species could help keep groups together in face of social challenges, says study

Same-sex sexual behaviour among non-human primates may arise as a way to reinforce bonds and keep societies together in the face of environmental or social challenges, researchers have suggested.

Prof Vincent Savolainen, a co-author of the paper from Imperial College London, added that while the work focused on our living evolutionary cousins, early human species probably experienced similar challenges, raising the likelihood they, too, showed such behaviour.

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© Photograph: wellsie82/Getty Images

© Photograph: wellsie82/Getty Images

© Photograph: wellsie82/Getty Images

An expert in both disciplines makes a bold attempt to convince sceptics, and partially succeeds

Vladimir Nabokov notoriously dismissed the “vulgar, shabby, and fundamentally medieval world” of the ideas of Sigmund Freud, whom he called “the Viennese witch doctor”. His negative judgment has been shared by many in the near 90 years since Freud’s death. A reputational high-water mark in the postwar period was followed by a collapse, at least in scientific circles, but there are signs of newfound respectability for his ideas, including among those who once rejected him outright. Mark Solms’s latest book, a wide-ranging and engrossing defence of Freud as a scientist and a healer, is a striking contribution to the re-evaluation of a thinker whom WH Auden described as “no more a person now but a whole climate of opinion”.

It would be difficult to improve on Solms’s credentials for the task he sets himself. He is a neuroscientist, expert in the neuropsychology of dreams, the author of several books on the relationship between brain and consciousness, a practising psychoanalyst and the editor of the 24-volume revised standard edition of Freud’s complete works. He is also a wonderfully witty and lucid writer.

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© Photograph: API/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

© Photograph: API/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

© Photograph: API/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

Honeybees can solve simple addition and subtraction problems and even possess some understanding of the concept of zero

© Getty

Chaque jour, notre corps affronte des milliards de microbes sans que nous en ayons conscience. Pourtant, parfois, la maladie s'installe : pourquoi et comment cela arrive-t-il ?Cette semaine dans Futura Santé, on va parler de l'immunité, de son fonctionnement, et des raisons scientifiques pour...

Previous research links tiny plastic particles to a range of adverse health conditions but largely stops short of establishing direct causal link

© AFP via Getty

Neuroscientist Ben Rein is on a mission to show that being around others not only feels good, but can even improve recovery from strokes, cancer and heart attacks. So why are so many of us isolated and glued to our phones?

‘I hate it.” I’ve asked the neuroscientist Ben Rein how he feels about the online sea of junk neuroscience we swim in – the “dopamine fasts”, “serotonin boosts” and people “regulating” their “nervous system” – and this is his kneejerk response. He was up early with his newborn daughter at his home in Buffalo, New York, but he’s fresh-faced and full of beans on a video call, swiftly qualifying that heartfelt statement. “Let me clarify my position: I don’t hate it when it’s accurate, but it’s rarely accurate.”

He draws my attention to a reel he saw recently on social media of a man explaining that reframing pain as “neurofeedback, not punishment” activates the anterior cingulate cortex (a part of the brain involved in registering pain). “That’s genuinely never been studied; you are just making this up,” he says. He posted a pithy response on Instagram, pleading with content creators to “leave neuroscience out of it”. “That’s why I think it’s especially important for real scientists to be on the internet,” he says. “We need to show the public what it looks like to speak responsibly and accurately about science.”

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© Photograph: Brandon Watson/The Guardian

© Photograph: Brandon Watson/The Guardian

© Photograph: Brandon Watson/The Guardian

Comments by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his allies suggest the revised schedule may presage an approach to immunization that prizes individual autonomy and downplays scientific expertise.

© Desiree Rios for The New York Times

NASA makes unprecedented decision to bring International Space Station crew home early after medical emergency – first time in 25-year station history.

The Nobel prize winner discusses claims of a ‘boys’ club’, Elon Musk’s fellowship and rightwing attacks on science

Paul Nurse is a turn up for the books. A Nobel prize-winning geneticist, former director of the Francis Crick Institute and erstwhile head of Rockefeller University in the US, his CV marks him out as one of this generation’s most eminent scientific figures.

But his presidency of the Royal Society, a position he has taken up for a second time, makes him rarer still. No other scientist in centuries has had a second term at the head of the academy.

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© Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

© Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

© Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

Results of research offer hope to older women – but it will be several years at least before technique is approved

• Human eggs ‘rejuvenated’ in an advance that could boost IVF success rates

It is a rollercoaster of emotional extremes that will be familiar to many who have gone through IVF treatment: hope and joy turns to despair and back again. This is especially true for women over 35, the age when IVF success rates decline steeply and for whom the only real way to improve the odds is to keep trying.

While there has been huge progress in IVF in the past decades, including the advent of genetic testing, egg freezing and techniques to overcome male infertility, the primary cause of age-related female infertility – egg quality – has not been directly addressed.

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© Photograph: Maxx-Studio/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Maxx-Studio/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Maxx-Studio/Shutterstock

Experts and community trying to untangle mystery of outburst that saw water travel almost 10km overland into a bigger lake

Manoel Dixon had just finished dinner one night last May when a phone dinged nearby with a Facebook message.

Dixon, 26, was at his family’s hunting camp near their northern Quebec home town of Waswanipi. They knew the fellow hunter who was messaging Dixon’s father, but what he wrote didn’t make sense.

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© Photograph: Snap Quebec

© Photograph: Snap Quebec

© Photograph: Snap Quebec