Kris Smith

Controversial US study on hepatitis B vaccines in Africa is cancelled $1.6m project drew outrage over ethical questions about withholding vaccines proven to prevent disease

BREAKING: The controversial hepatitis B vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau has been *cancelled,* I can now report. A senior official with Africa CDC confirmed the cancellation and said GB officials are working to make sure any research is conducted ethically:
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

predominantly ‘Jewish’ ­ human psy­ chol­ ogy with a new psy­ chol­ ogy that was ‘properly German.’ ”51 Lorenz joined the Nazi party in June of 1938. By 1940, he was appointed to the Kant Professorship of Psy­ chol­ ogy at the Albertus University of Königsberg in East Prus­ sia, which came along with the directorship of an Institute of Comparative Psy­ chol­ ogy. Adapting his domestication theme to the Nazi context, Lorenz wrote two articles in 1940 making explicit connections between Nazi racial hygiene and his own studies of animal be­ hav­ ior; the second of ­ these was published in the official Nazi journal for biology teachers.52 Lorenz quickly became part of the Nazi war machine. In Oc- tober 1941, just eight months ­ after assuming his Königsberg position, he was drafted into the German Army, first as a military psychologist in Poznan, a city in western Poland taken over by the Nazis ­ after their inva- sion of Poland in 1939. In Poznan, as a member of the Nazi Office of Race Policy, Lorenz administered ­ mental tests aimed at sorting “mixed Poles and Germans into German-­ like ­ people that could be rehabilitated and Poles who could not,” and who ­ were subsequently sent to concentration camps.53 When such psychological testing was discontinued, he worked as a physician and psychiatrist at the reserve hospital in Poznan.54 Along with ­ these practical activities, Lorenz continued to support Nazi ideology through intellectual ­ labors. In 1943, he published another article extol- ling the virtues of race purity, and warning of the disruptive effects of do- mestication on animals’ instincts.

I am reading "Killer Instinct: The popular science of human nature in 20th century America" by Nadine Weidman, and I am learning a lot. I was aware that Konrad Lorenz (father of field of ethology, winner of 1973 Nobel prize) was a Nazi, but didn't know he was so enthusiastic about it.

a poster that says " friends become our chosen " on it Alt: a poster that says " friends become our chosen " on it

Woke up this morning feeling grateful for friends who are chosen family. I am beyond blessed.

The earliest Homo species did not look human, partial skeleton shows Homo habilis, 2 million years old, was known mainly from teeth and jaw bones

“If you dressed up a Homo habilis individual in clothes and you saw her walking in the distance, would you do a double take? … This study shows us that the answer is YES!” https://scim.ag/4aSsPJT

The 0.5.0 version of my {brms} + {tidyverse} translation of McElreath's "Statistical Rethinking" (2nd ed) is up!

solomon.quarto.pub/sr2/

1/3

#rstats

1. My new preprint has its own bluesky account. Why? The problems facing social media & scientific publishing are similar: both are dominated by powerful oligopolies. The @atproto.com tech underlying bluesky that aims to solve the social media prob might also help solve the scientific pub prob 🧪 🧵

Favorite article on how evolution and culture (sociocultural, not CET) aren't at odds with each other. Go!

Evolutionary Cultural Anthropology : Containing Ebola Outbreaks and Explaining Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods | Current Anthropology: Vol 57, No S13 In this paper I outline an integrated framework for the study of culture, called evolutionary cultural anthropology, that highlights culture and its interactions with biology and ecology. Applied rese...

Almost everything by Barry Hewlett, I always thought his Evolutionary Cultural Anthropology framework was underappreciated. Here's an overview w/ application to disease outbreak www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

I am impeaching Secretary Kristi Noem, who is an incompetent leader and a disgrace to our democracy.

She wreaked havoc in the Chicagoland area and has brought her reign of terror to Minneapolis. One of her rogue ICE agents shot and killed an innocent woman today. It must come to an end.

Killer whales and dolphins are ‘being friends’ to hunt salmon together White-sided dolphins seem to help killer whales "scout" and catch Chinook salmon near Vancouver Island, then eat the leftovers

White-sided dolphins seem to help killer whales "scout" and catch Chinook salmon near Vancouver Island, then eat the leftovers

screenshot of my post

Big new blogpost!

My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more.

--> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

The Claims of Close Reading - Boston Review Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.

Yes! An ode to close reading. (via @annehelen.bsky.social)

@anthrofuentes.bsky.social and I are working on a letter regarding the archiving of #NSF #DDRIGs in the #SBE Directorate and impacts on our fields. What did you/your students discover as a result of a DDRIG award? What other impacts resulted from the award? Post here or DM. Please repost for viz.

A hard year for federal workers offers a real-time lesson in resilience During a year of extraordinary uncertainty, workers built resilient networks within and across boundaries and distance. An anthropologist explains how these clusters and long-distance ties help people...

It's been a rough year for #federalworkers.

But here's what most people don't see: workers are building remarkably resilient networks of mutual support 🤝

In @us.theconversation.com, federal workers share their stories with me... 👇🏻

Abstract: A necessary prerequisite for the accumulation of beneficial knowledge, or ‘cumulative cultural evolution’, is the sharing of information via social learning. Yet little work in the field of cultural evolution has examined the mechanisms that support information sharing in the face of exploitative information free-riding and information hoarding. We ran a series of online interactive experiments (N = 716) combined with computational reinforcement and social learning models to test whether the mechanism of reputation-based partner choice can effectively support information sharing. Participants in groups chose whether to (i) engage in costly innovation and (ii) whether to share the resultant knowledge. Sharers received increased reputations for sharing and participants could use reputations to select recipients of knowledge. Study 1 found, in participants from the UK and China, high levels of information sharing but only weak partner choice. Study 2 replicated this finding with various methodological improvements. Study 3 showed that participants used partner choice to exclude non-sharing artificial bots from receiving information. Study 4 found that when partner choice was impossible, preferences for information sharing declined to levels comparable to non-sharing. Overall, our findings provide tentative positive experimental evidence that partner choice can facilitate information sharing and enable cumulative cultural evolution.

This week's Cooperation Colloquium:

Alex Mesoudi @alexmesoudi.com

Experimental evidence that reputation-based partner choice facilitates information sharing in humans

Date: December 5
Time: 15:00 UTC+1 (Vienna) / 9 am ET (NYC)

Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

If you like milk science... <dusts off the ol’ blog> On Thanksgiving, a Facebook “human interest story pages” dropped an essay about mother’s milk and me as a milk rese...

<dusts off the ol' blog> to say something about "celebrating science" in the age of AI & current political context.

EVEN THOUGH I HAD OTHER THINGS I WANTED TO DO THIS HOLIDAY WEEKEND.

mammalssuck.blogspot.com/2025/11/if-y...

Many of you are aware that NSF has terminated DDRIs for anthropologists and archaeologists. This is obviously a blow to these fields. It means we need to be proactive in revising expectations and training programs. This sort of thing reminds us again how important it is to be able to pivot.

Dr. Thornton and collaborators at the site of Monte Albán (Oaxaca, MX).

Domestic turkeys in a modern Mexican market.

Ruins of turkey pens within a plaza at the site of Paquimé (Chihuahua, MX).

🦃 Fresh off the press for Turkey Week! Dr. Erin Thornton co-edited a volume on turkey domestication. It highlights research on human–turkey relationships across the Americas, including two chapters by Professor Emeritus Bill Lipe. Read here: sciencepress.mnhn.fr/sites/defaul...

Current & recent federal workers! Are you connecting in new ways with people across agencies this year? I’m writing about it for The Conversation & would love to hear your experiences! DM me if you want to share (& happy to switch to Signal). You can remain anonymous in the article 👍🏻. Please repost!

Reminder to anyone considering submitting for #HBES2026 and/or #CES2026 that the abstract submission deadline is November 16th!

Two more weeks left to apply!

Please welcome Dr. Sarah Richardson to the WSU Department of Anthropology! Her research explores state violence, human rights, memory, and political ecology in Latin America. Meet her at today’s meet & greet (with snacks and Italian sodas): College Hall lounge, 2:30–4:30! 🐾

Excited to share my new preprint. My work focuses on solitude, but I am not one to advocate for a "solitude theory"; psych has too many theories so one less would be good. So, what I did the past 2 yrs is talking to people, reading work outside of my literature, essentially to shop for a framework 🧵

The dept is mostly scientific anthropologists with a biocultural focus, and we're looking for a colleague interested in collaborating across streams and with other depts across the university

Assistant Professor Online applications must be received before 11:59pm on: November 2, 2025 If a date is not listed above, review the Applicant Instructions below for more details. Available Title(s): 270-NN_FACULTY - A...

We're hiring! WSU anthropology is looking to hire a TT Asst Prof in cultural anthropology, with a health, well-being, or human-environment interactions. This is a great dept with friendly folks! CV and cover letter due by 11/2 wsu.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/WSU_Jo...

We’re delighted to share that the 37th annual Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference (HBES2026) website is now live!

#HBES2026

Who doesn't like playing in dirt?? At Future Cougs Day, the Department of Anthropology and the Museum of Anthropology featured dig boxes. Pictured here are: archaeology faculty member Dr. Rachel Horowitz, museum curator Madison Pullis, and graduate student Abby Antinossi. #FutureCougs #archaeology

The count down starts for #CESRabat! Follow @ces2026.bsky.social and join us May 11-13 next year for an exciting meeting in Rabat, Morocco.

Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee:
Sarah Alami (co-chair)
Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair)
Zachary Garfield
Edmond Seabright

📝 Writing Wednesday! Ph.D. Candidate Michael Gaffney first-authored an article on on how children communicate their needs through crying. This research was recently published in Human Nature, and his photo taken in Utila, Honduras made the cover image! Article: link.springer.com/article/10.1...