Editor's note

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.

Naomi Schalit

Senior Editor, Politics + Society

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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

Michael Cohen’s verbal somersault, ‘I lied, but I’m not a liar,’ translated by a rhetoric expert

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.

They said it, but is it true? EQRoy/shutterstock.com

3 reasons why people fall for politicians’ lies about statistics

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.

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

Sequencing the white shark genome is cool, but for bigger insights we need libraries of genetic data

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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"Entries on women still constituted less than 30 percent of biographical coverage."

 

Why Wikipedia often overlooks stories of women in history

 

Tamar Carroll

Rochester Institute of Technology

Tamar Carroll
 

Lara Nicosia

Rochester Institute of Technology

Lara Nicosia