Catalina I. Fernández, PhD (she/her)

How to turn off Gmail's AI "summaries" while retaining the helpful inbox category tabs--finally!

"It's less harmful to me to make sure that they can do the things without the AI than to try and push the AI into my classroom knowing that, at least for some of them, it's going to mean that they don't get to acquire the skills that they need."

This this this this this this this this this this 🙏

A person with polio lying inside an 'iron lung'

1 in 200 #polio infections leads to irreversible paralysis.

In the 1960s children suffering from irreversible paralysis caused by polio were required to use 'iron lungs' to help them breathe.

We don't see these 'iron lungs' anymore today because #VaccinesWork

The risks of AI in schools outweigh the benefits, report says A new report warns that AI poses a serious threat to children's cognitive development and emotional well-being.

An invaluable new report. A "premortem" is exactly what we need.

The MAHA Dietary Guidelines I: Personal Responsibility vs. Public Health Policy

This is the first of a series of posts I will be writing about the new Dietary Guidelines for America, 2025-2030 Yesterday, I gave an overview of the guidelines, finding them cheerful, but muddled, contradictory,…

How saturated fats lost, and won, on new food pyramid New dietary guidelines limit saturated fats to 10% of total calories, but also encourage full-fat dairy, red meat, and beef tallow. How will that work?

“The recommendation to limit saturated fats remains intact. Yet the guidelines also encourage people to eat foods higher in saturated fats… “It’s almost laughable that they kept the 10% limit for saturated fat while really pushing red meat and dairy… Good luck trying to circle that square.”

Poster for the talk by Rebecca Sear, entitled "21st century eugenics, scientific racism and the role of academia in promoting political ideology". It will take place on Monday, 8 December 2025 at 4 pm (CET) via Zoom.

Next week, we welcome @rebeccasear.bsky.social in our Lecture Series. Rebecca will talk about 21st century eugenics, scientific racism and the role of academia in promoting political ideology. Just register here to participate 👉 rotorub.wordpress.com/roto-lecture...
#PhilSci #HPBio

EHBEA awarded a workshop grant this year to researchers aiming to strengthen evolutionary approaches to the study of behaviour in Chile & elsewhere in Latin America, as we're keen to use these awards for outreach beyond our usual community. Congrats to the organisers, & hope the workshop goes well 😊

New Study Finds Gender Equality Linked to Modest Fertility Rebound – But Not Enough to Reverse Long-Term Decline A new study from the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science reassesses whether rising gender equality can help reverse falling birth rates, a long-standing theory in demography. The research, publi...

📉 Many countries are seeing falling birth rates—but can rising gender equality reverse the trend?
A new study from our centre revisits a major debate in demography and finds a modest fertility rebound at high levels of gender equality.

www.demography.ox.ac.uk/news/new-stu...

Under RFK Jr., CDC reverses course on stance that vaccines don’t cause autism A CDC website now promotes the debunked idea of a link between vaccines and autism.

“All I can say is ‘Wake up, America. This administration wants to take your vaccines away from you. And they’re on a path to do that,’” Michael Osterholm, director of @cidrap.bsky.social

www.statnews.com/2025/11/20/c...

No se pierda este 10 de diciembre de 2025 el workshop en Evolución Biocultural!

Estaremos hablando de salud, comportamiento y evolución! 🤓

Link de inscripción aquí 👇

tr.ee/ytgK8OIO7V

@catferna.bsky.social @ehbea.bsky.social

🚨 PUBLICATION ALERT 🚨

Happy to share a comment, together with Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, on the need of formal models and a developmental perspective to really understand the relationship between environmental uncertainty and the reproductive behaviour of humans 🤓😉

doi.org/10.1017/S014...

Going against my personal rules to post this, but …

Veep is telling us that he likes Grok bc it is most pseudoscientific.

ANTHROPOLOGISTS!
if you can hear me (and you don’t know this already), Grok will come at you with Phillipe Rushton papers to say you’re wrong about genetics and race.

Lead is leaching into the environment and lurking in our homes. It's in soil, in water, in food, in our housing.

And it's poisoning people.

The first episode of Untold: Toxic Legacy launches October 22. Trailer here:

open.spotify.com/episode/6M4H...

It is hard to overstate the stress produced by the incoherence of academic institutions pumping generative AI when they want to play business and then leaving instructors to deal with the results when they want to play school

Mother rhesus macaque with her baby

Postdoc position available at NYU Anthropology to work on topics related to longitudinal aging in the long-running (>80 years) study of rhesus macaque biology on Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico 🧪 #primates #academicsky

apply.interfolio.com/173938

📷: davidraju, wikimedia commons

Will America finally treat child care as a public good? Some states are about to find out In November, New Mexico will become the first state to offer free daycare for children as young as 6 weeks. On the other side of the country, child care is a key issue in New York City's mayoral elect...

Childcare is a public good. The return on investment is high (and VERY well-documented). It benefits children, mothers, families, businesses, and the economy.

The lack of a robust childcare infrastructure is a choice the U.S. has made. We could make a different one.

www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/...

ICYMI Notre Dame Anthropology will be hiring a post-doc for 2026-2028. This is part of a university-wide initiative to support early career scholars. Deadline is Oct. 31...sorry for late notice.

apply.interfolio.com/171503

Our new paper is now out in SS&M! In a sample of US youth attempting weight loss, we found that those motivated to lose weight because of teasing engaged in riskier weight loss strategies and had higher BP and CRP compared to those citing other motivations authors.elsevier.com/a/1ltOu-CmV5...

Fat shaming is not just morally bad but also bad for your health. Awesome research by @jennifercullin.bsky.social and Kurt.E White.

A photo of the Susan Welch Liberal Arts building at sunrise

📢 Come join us! Penn State Anthropology is hiring *two tenure-track assistant professors*, one in human reproductive ecology and one in archaeology. Here are just a few reasons why working at Penn State is awesome:

Why the total fertility rate doesn’t necessarily tell us the number of births women eventually have The fertility rate is commonly confused with the eventual number of births per woman. This can result in misinterpreting the impact of policies and trends over time.

New Bluesky rule: you can’t post a figure showing dramatic decline in the TFR without either explaining what TFR can, and can’t tell us, or posting the excellent explainer by @scientificdiscovery.dev on the topic.

A few friendly reminders about autism:

- Autism is not inherently a bad thing.
- Autism is not a death sentence.
- Autism is not a pejorative term.
- Autism is not a moral failing.
- Autism is not something to shame or ridicule.
- Autism is not something to hide.
- Autism is not a crime.

How Universal Child Care Could Change the Economy

Universal childcare wouldn't just relieve working families of a massive cost burden. It improves the whole economy.

"There are a lot of reasons building a child care system that works for everyone is important to our children, to parents, to employers and to economic growth."

Stop blaming yourself for your expanding waistline. It’s the food supply, expert says | CNN A leading nutrition researcher overturns nutritional myths that have led to fat-shaming in his new book, “Food Intelligence.” Here’s who to blame instead.

Thanks to Sandee LaMotte @cnn.com for interviewing me about topics from my new book FOOD INTELLIGENCE with @juliabelluz.bsky.social that will be published tomorrow! www.cnn.com/2025/09/22/h...

One more week left to apply for a 3-year postdoc in Demography (deadline: Sept 30, 12:00 midday UK time). Join me at the Sociology Department in Oxford to study global fertility change as part of the DIVREP project!👇

Extended Data Table 1: a compendium of estimates of deaths attributed to anthropogenic climate change

Climate change is causing excess deaths at every scale, from global trends in the burden of disease down to the number of people who die in the first 24 hours of a heat wave or hurricane.