Mary Elizabeth Sutherland

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared...

Check out this recent @nature.com paper reporting a field experiment on X. It shows X's algorithm boosts conservative content and downranks traditional media—shifting users’ views on key issues. Switching to chronological doesn’t reverse the effect. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A roadmap for evaluating moral competence in large language models - Nature This Perspective offers a roadmap for tackling the challenges of the facsimile problem, moral multidimensionality and moral pluralism in large language models.

A recent @nature.com paper asks a big question: Do LLMs actually have moral competence or are they just good at sounding right? This question is answered by distinguishing between moral performance and competence and a roadmap to assess what LLMs are really doing www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Synthesizing scientific literature with retrieval-augmented language models - Nature A specialized, open-source, retrieval-augmented language model is introduced for answering scientific queries and synthesizing literature, the responses of which are shown to be preferred by human eva...

I'm excited to see what people think of @openscholar.bsky.social, an open-source language model that can answer scientific queries with accuracy similar to human experts. Read more in the @nature.com paper here: 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Parkinson’s disease as a somato-cognitive action network disorder - Nature The substantia nigra and all Parkinson’s disease deep-brain stimulation targets are selectively connected to the somato-cognitive action network rather than to effector-specific motor regions.

The highlight of my week was the publication of "Parkinson’s disease as a somato-cognitive action network disorder" in @nature.com. It's a great paper that shows how conceptual changes in fundamental neuroscience - the discovery of SCAN - can improve treatment 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

AI tools boost individual scientists but could limit research as a whole Analyses of hundreds of thousands of papers in the natural sciences reveal a paradox: scientists who use AI tools produce more research but on a more confined set of topics.

or reading the related News and Views: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

AI can turbocharge scientists’ careers — but limit their scope Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 14 January 2026

Happy Friday! For those of you who didn't see the excellent @nature.com paper showing that scientists who use AI tools produce more research but on a narrower range of topics, consider listening to the podcast: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Distinct neuronal populations in the human brain combine content and context - Nature Single-neuron recordings in humans reveal largely separate content and context neurons whose coordinated activity flexibly places memory items in context.

Recently published in @nature.com :the human brain stores what happened and the context in mostly separate neurons—binding them only when needed, which enables flexible memory (and hopefully avoids confusion) 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus - Nature Artificial intelligence boosts individual scientists’ output, citations and career progression, but collectively narrows research diversity and reduces collaboration, concentrating work in data-rich a...

One of the best parts of my week was seeing this paper -showing that the use of AI/ML tools leads to more publications, citations, and faster career progression but a narrowing of topics studied - come out in @nature.com 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Not sure why the links aren't displaying correctly, but they do take you to the correct article pages www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A recent @nature.com shows that it's possible to reduce the suffering of chronic pain without numbing sensation or using opioids... at least in mice 🧪. Read more here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Nature Podcast festive spectacular 2025 Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 17 December 2025

As 2025 draws to a close, consider listening to @nature.com's end of year podcast - it's a great way to end 2025 and this holiday season 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

AI chatbots can persuade voters to change their minds Conversations with AI can sway people’s political views. Concerningly, a chatbot’s facts are not always accurate, especially when it supports right-wing positions.

And finally a great news and views in our pages that brings the two papers together: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The levers of political persuasion with conversational artificial intelligence There are widespread fears that conversational artificial intelligence (AI) could soon exert unprecedented influence over human beliefs. In this work, in three large-scale experiments (N = 76,977 part...

And here's the @science.org paper www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Persuading voters using human–artificial intelligence dialogues - Nature Human–artificial intelligence (AI) dialogues can meaningfully impact voters’ attitudes towards presidential candidates and policy, demonstrating the potential of conversational AI to influence politic...

Did you know that chatting with LLMs can shift people's attitudes towards political candidates & policy issues? A recent @nature.com paper show that AI chatbots can persuade voters to change their minds; a related paper in @science.org describes when they work best www.nature.com/articles/s41...

No meta-analytical effect of economic inequality on well-being or mental health - Nature A meta-analysis of 168 studies reveals that economic inequality is not significantly associated with subjective well-being or mental health.

A recent meta-analysis published in @nature.com finds that there is no general effect of economic inequality on well-being or mental health (though there are some effects for specific groups, e.g. low-income samples). Read more details in the full paper here: 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ethically sourced image data set encourages fairness in AI research AI systems rely on data that often lack diversity, perpetuate biases and violate intellectual-property rights. An ethical human-image data set addresses these problems.

Read the associated News and Views by Walter Scheirer www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Fair human-centric image dataset for ethical AI benchmarking - Nature The Fair Human-Centric Image Benchmark (FHIBE, pronounced ‘Feebee’)—an image dataset that implements best practices for consent, privacy, compensation, safety, diversity and utility—can be used respon...

All AI models are constrained by the quality of their data. A recent @nature.com paper introduces the Fair Human-Centric Image Benchmark (FHIBE), a diverse dataset implementing best practices for consent, privacy, compensation, safety and utility. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Video-call glitches trigger uncanniness and harm consequential life outcomes - Nature Glitches in video calls can have a negative effect on the judgement of the people involved and correspond to worse outcomes in major areas of life such as job interviews and parole hearings.

Do glitches on video calls annoy you? A new study in @nature.com shows that they reduce trust in telehealth, lowered job-interview ratings, weakened social connection, and decreased likelihood for parole, likely due, in part, to the sense of uncanniness they trigger 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Vicarious body maps bridge vision and touch in the human brain - Nature A mode of brain organization that connects visual and bodily reference frames may translate raw sensory impressions into more abstract formats that are useful for action, social cognition and semantic...

How does the brain integrate visual and somatosensory representations? A recent @nature.com paper presents a model that, when applied to ongoing co-activations during rest, results in detailed maps of body-part tuning that aligns with visual tuning 🧪 Read more here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Shared and language-specific phonological processing in the human temporal lobe - Nature The human superior temporal gyrus processes acoustic–phonetic properties of speech regardless of whether the language is familiar to the listener, but only encodes word boundaries and language-sp...

What aspects of language are universal, and which are due to familiarity? A @nature.com paper finds that while STG shows shared responses to basic speech sounds, only native language boosts encoding of word boundaries + sound-sequence stats 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Associate or Senior Editor, Nature Biological, Clinical, and Social Sciences - New York City, New York (US) job with Springer Nature Ltd | 12848260 Title: Associate or Senior Editor, Nature Biological, Clinical, and Social Sciences Organization: Nature Portfolio Locations: New York, Jersey City...

Do you have a background in applied #AI and an interest in joining @nature.com's editorial team? If so, consider applying! www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Protests are infectious: mapping rural unrest in Revolutionary France Researchers have used epidemiological models to determine whether the wave of riots in 1789 known as the Great Fear spread through irrational panic or rational protest.

And News and Views: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Viral spread: how rumours surged in revolutionary France Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 27 August 2025

It's accompanied by a great episode of our podcast www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Epidemiology models explain rumour spreading during France’s Great Fear of 1789 - Nature Epidemiological methods are used to show that the Great Fear of 1789, a series of peasant insurrections in rural revolutionary France, was driven by deliberate political action rather than spontaneous...

How did rumors related to the peasant insurrections in revolutionary France (1789) spread? Researchers used epidemiological models to provide a quantitative answer, marking - to my knowledge - the first quantitative history paper that @nature.com has published www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm sorry! The original article - currently unformatted - can be accessed without a paywall using this link: rdcu.be/eMUcR

Associate Multimedia Editor or Senior Multimedia Editor Job Title: Associate Multimedia Editor or Senior Multimedia Editor (12 Month Fixed Term Role) Organisation: Nature Portfolio Location: London – Hybrid Working Model Application Deadline: Sunday 9th No...

This is exciting: We just opened a position for a multimedia editor to broaden @nature.com 's presence on social media, including TikTok. If you're interested, consider applying springernature.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/de-DE/Spring...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

AI discovers learning algorithm that outperforms those designed by humans An artificial-intelligence algorithm that discovers its own way to learn achieves state-of-the-art performance, including on some tasks it had never encountered before.

Did you know that AI can figure out its own way to learn, and that its way is better than one designed by humans? Read more in a @nature.com N&V (and the original paper is in the comment) 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Age and gender distortion in online media and large language models - Nature Stereotypes of age-related gender bias are socially distorted, as evidenced by the age gap in the representations of women and men across various media and algorithms, despite no systematic age differ...

And see the original @nature.com paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...