What Counts as Research Misconduct Under Federal Rules, and What Happens Next
Federal research misconduct means fabrication, falsification or plagiarism with intent or recklessness. Here is how ORI and NSF cases move from allegation to outcome.
Peter Kalafatis
Model Collapse: What Happens When AI Trains on AI-Generated Data
Training AI on AI-generated data can erase rare knowledge, but keeping real data seems to stop most of the damage. A look at the evidence,…
Character.AI Files for Chapter 11 as Disney Signs a $20 Million License
In the news: Character.AI says it has filed for Chapter 11, with Disney paying $20 million for a license and a court-supervised sale expected by…
Does Technology Evolve Like Life? What Cultural Phylogenetics Shows
Researchers use biology’s tree-building methods on artifacts from cornets to car models, but borrowing between designs may make those trees unreliable. This article weighs the…
Is Web Scraping Legal? What the CFAA, hiQ and Van Buren Cases Say
Scraping public pages is not a CFAA crime on its own, but terms of service, copyright, server harm and privacy law still apply. The key…
Is Facial Recognition Legal? Where It Is Restricted in the US and EU
Facial recognition is mostly legal in the US, but who uses it and where decides everything. Illinois and Texas, city bans, the FTC and the…
Peto’s Paradox: Why Don’t Elephants and Whales Get More Cancer?
Big, long-lived animals should get far more cancer than they do. Here is what the evidence shows about Peto’s paradox, the competing explanations, and a…
Who Owns an Invention Made With Federal Money? Bayh-Dole Explained
Under Bayh-Dole, universities and small businesses can keep title to inventions made with federal funds, but must meet strict deadlines and grant the government a…
Why Do We Age? Evolutionary Theories of Senescence Tested
Selection weakens with age, and that much is settled. Which mechanism dominates, and whether danger speeds aging, is still open; a small simulation shows why…
Integrated Information Theory vs Global Workspace: What Was Settled
In 2025 the two leading theories of consciousness faced a preregistered head-to-head test, and both lost something. Here is what it settled, what it did…