Google Scholar ' the largest and most comprehensive scholarly search engine ' turns 20 this week. Over its two decades, some researchers say, the tool has become one of the most important in science. But in recent years, competitors that use artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the search experience have emerged, as have others that allow users to download their data. The impact that Google Scholar ' which is owned by web giant Google in Mountain View, California ' has had on science is remarkable, says Jevin West, a computational social scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle who uses the database daily. But 'if there was ever a moment when Google Scholar could be overthrown as the main search engine, it might be now, because of some of these new tools and some of the innovation that's happening in other places,' West says. Many of Google Scholar's advantages ' free access, breadth of information and sophisticated search options ' 'are now being shared by other platforms', says Alberto Martin Martin, a bibliometrics researcher at the University of Granada in Spain....

When I was taking German in college in the early years of this millennium, I once stumbled upon a word that appeared foreign even when translated into English: Diphtherie, or diphtheria. 'What's diphtheria'' I wondered, having never encountered a single soul afflicted by this disease. Diphtheria, once known as the 'strangling angel,' was a leading killer of children into the early 20th century. The bacterial infection destroys the lining of the throat, forming a layer of dead, leathery tissue that can cause death by suffocation. The disease left no corner of society untouched: Diphtheria killed Queen Victoria's daughter, and the children of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and Cleveland. Parents used to speak of their first and second families, an elderly woman in Ottawa recalled, because diphtheria had swept through and all their children died. Today, diphtheria has been so thoroughly forgotten that someone like me, born some 60 years after the invention of a diphtheria vaccine, might have no inkling of the fear it once inspired. If you have encountered diphtheria outside of the historical context, it's likely because you have scrutinized a childhood immunization schedule: It is the 'D' in the DTaP vaccine....

When I lived in China, a decade ago, I often saw propaganda billboards covered in words that supposedly expressed the country's values: Patriotism. Harmony. Equality. And ' Democracy. Indeed, China claims to consider itself a democratic country. So do Russia, Cuba, Iran, and so on down the list of nations ranked by their level of commitment to rights and liberties. Even North Korea fancies itself part of the club. It's right there in the official name: the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. I thought of those Chinese billboards recently, when a postelection poll showed that many American voters touted the importance of democracy while supporting a candidate who had tried to overturn the results of the previous presidential election. According to a survey by the Associated Press, a full one-third of Trump voters said that democracy was their top issue. (Two-thirds of Harris voters said the same thing.) In a poll conducted before Joe Biden dropped out of the race, seven out of 10 uncommitted swing-state voters said they doubted that Donald Trump would accept the election results if he lost'but more people said they'd trust Trump to handle threats to democracy than said they'd trust Biden....

For anyone who teaches at a business school, the blog post was bad news. For Juliana Schroeder, it was catastrophic. She saw the allegations when they first went up, on a Saturday in early summer 2023. Schroeder teaches management and psychology at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. One of her colleagues'''a star professor at Harvard Business School named Francesca Gino''had just been accused of academic fraud. The authors of the blog post, a small team of business-school researchers, had found discrepancies in four of Gino's published papers, and they suggested that the scandal was much larger. 'We believe that many more Gino-authored papers contain fake data,' the blog post said. 'Perhaps dozens.' The story was soon picked up by the mainstream press. Reporters reveled in the irony that Gino, who had made her name as an expert on the psychology of breaking rules, may herself have broken them. ('Harvard Scholar Who Studies Honesty Is Accused of Fabricating Findings,' a New York Times headline read.) Harvard Business School had quietly placed Gino on administrative leave just before the blog post appeared. The school had conducted its own investigation; its nearly 1,300-page internal report, which was made public only in the course of related legal proceedings, concluded that Gino 'committed research misconduct intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly' in the four papers. (Gino has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing.)...