Editor's note
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Can we separate what someone does from who they are? Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen told the House oversight committee in his blockbuster hearing Wednesday that “I have lied, but I am not a liar.” Rhetoric scholar Jennifer Mercieca of Texas A&M describes the argumentative strategy of dissociation that Cohen used to help himself – and damn his former employer. But will the public buy his argument?
Should you trust that statistic your favorite politician just cited? Many Americans are not especially good at analyzing numbers, writes Iowa State University’s Mack Clayton Shelley II. He describes three common reasons why people fall for statistics that actually require more scrutiny.
Scientists made news recently for sequencing the white shark genome. While this kind of research yields insights into individual species, University of Florida evolutionary biologist Gavin Naylor explains that in comparative genomics, more is better.
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Naomi Schalit
Senior Editor, Politics + Society
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Top stories
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A sign behind Republican members of the committee during Michael Cohen’s testimony before a House Committee Wednesday.
REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Jennifer Mercieca, Texas A&M University
Michael Cohen wants you to know that throwing your kid a ball doesn't make you a Red Sox pitcher. So he told lies, he says, but that doesn't make him a liar. A rhetoric scholar dissects his argument.
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They said it, but is it true?
EQRoy/shutterstock.com
Mack Clayton Shelley, II, Iowa State University
Psychological phenomena like confirmation bias and the Dunning-Kruger effect make it easy for people to fall for deliberate or inadvertent lies in the news.
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Of more than 500 species of sharks in the world’s oceans, scientists have only sequenced a handful of genomes – most recently, white sharks.
Terry Goss/Wikimedia
Gavin Naylor, University of Florida
Why do scientists spend so much time and money mapping the DNA of species like white sharks? Single studies may offer insights, but the real payoff comes in comparing many species to each other.
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Economy + Business
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Bert Spector, Northeastern University
While Trump may be an extreme example, much of the conduct Cohen highlighted reflects attitudes and actions commonplace among public companies.
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Darrick Hamilton, The Ohio State University; Trevon Logan, The Ohio State University
Thanks to a long history of exclusionary government programs, the typical black family now has only 10 cents for every dollar held by the typical white family.
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Most read on site
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Jay L. Zagorsky, Boston University
At the moment, fuel taxes pay for most of the maintenance of US roads, bridges and highways. What happens when the majority of cars no longer run on gasoline?
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Raymond Huahong Tu, University of Maryland
Robocalls are common and becoming increasingly frequent. A scholar explains how they work, and why they're such a pain.
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Marie Helweg-Larsen, Dickinson College
Pyt doesn't have an exact English translation, but there's a rich strain of psychological research devoted to its benefits in everyday life.
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