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The fundamental ethos of natural selection dictates that species optimally adapt to a given environment over time. If the environment during a given time is unlike the environment that the species adapted to, the species is considered mismatched, in that its traits are no longer optimal for that environment.

Both climate crisis denial and the anti-vaccination movement follow the same trend of dismissing science. But the phenomenon of religious and political science denial extends far beyond the obvious examples. It can get much worse, and much uglier.

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How far might people be willing to go to avoid rejecting someone?

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Just because an event hasn't been positively "attributed" to climate change in a formal "detection and attribution" study does not preclude speaking about the role climate change may have played, when the event is (a) consistent with expectations in a warming world, and (b) part of a larger trend.

Many prominent efforts to engage non-specialists these days are crafted as personal narratives. A new generation of science communicators has adopted classic techniques of storytelling, with an emphasis upon scientists' subjective experience, casual informality, even strategic uses of humor.

A rotavirus vaccine study in which infants received a placebo would never have been permitted in the U.S., and it should not have been permitted in India. The continued conduct of such trials reflects a persistent, troubling disregard for international ethical principles for human subjects research, particularly research involving disadvantaged subjects in the developing world.

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Seven days; lots of science in the news. Here's our roundup of this week's most notable and quotable items.

The stem-cell disgrace of Korean cloning fraudster Hwang Woo-suk has now inspired a movie. Whistle Blower opened in Korea this week. Names have been changed, and it's presented as fiction, but no one is even pretending it's not about the scientific "scandal of the century" that unfolded between 2004 and 2006.

Basic evolutionary principles suggest that Ebola is extremely unlikely to evolve the capacity to spread via the respiratory route.

For decades, studies of how our brains work by neurophysiologists and psychologists have turned up a massive User's Manual that seems to explain how and why we think the way we do. The reason that so many people distrust these findings is that they sometimes tell us unpleasant things about our deepest-held beliefs about who we are.

So is one of the missing links between successfully creating a new generation of rocket scientists, computer programmers and technology geniuses simply that they aren't exposed to any role models? Are we not lifting up scientists and engineers? Where is the Serena Williams of the STEM world?

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From its orbit at the so-called L2 Lagrangian point (about a million miles from Earth, in the direction opposite to the Sun), Gaia will use its two telescopes and three science instruments to observe each one of its target stars about 70 times during the five-year mission duration.

When the Moon is totally in the Earth's shadow, called totality, the Moon will turn an eerie shade of red as sunlight bends through the Earth's atmosphere to reach it. After totality, the Earth's shadow will slowly wipe off the Moon and return it to its normal, full self.

Robotic telescopes constantly collect astronomical data and generate enormous astronomical databases. But these huge databases are of almost no value unless there are tools that can analyze them and turn them into knowledge.

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We humans are not meant to survive alone. We are not here to outlast every other creature. That is not why we've struggled so hard to make life better for our kind. We have struggled for millennia to find that balance, that perfect equilibrium between wild things and civilized ones.

A study comparing physiological aspects of anorgasmic women and others who do not have problems reaching climax concludes that the size and the internal position of the clitoris could condition genital excitement and orgasm.

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Misplaced diagnostic exuberance has turned age-appropriate immaturity into a psychiatric disease and treats it with a pill, rather than just letting the kid grow up.