By Julian Baggini from The Independent "As soon as the identity of the Cumbria killer became known, people immediately started to ask what kind of man Derrick Bird was. And there were always going to be only two possible answers. Almost every perpetrator of an atrocity is assigned the role of either...

By William Saletan from Slate "When Elizabeth Loftus began to plant false memories to test their therapeutic benefits, the memories seemed innocuous. They weren't about families or politics. They were just about food. You went into the experiment thinking you'd always loved strawberry ice...

From The Economist To create life is the prerogative of gods. Deep in the human psyche, whatever the rational pleadings of physics and chemistry, there exists a sense that biology is different, is more than just the sum of atoms moving about and reacting with one another, is somehow infused with a divine...

By Carlos A. Ball from Huffington Post. "In 1968, the pioneer gay rights activist Frank Kameny coined the phrase "Gay is Good," a slogan that was used with some frequency by gay rights proponents in the years following the Stonewall riots. The slogan, like the phrase "Black is Beautiful"...

By Michelle Roberts from BBC News. "Brain scans could be useful as lie detectors to show if a witness lies when identifying a suspect in a crime investigation, US researchers believe. Scientists at Stanford University were able to tell when a person recognised a mug shot by reading their brain waves...

By Nick Wadhams from Time. "In the history of foreign aid, it looked pretty harmless: a young Florida businessman decided to collect a million shirts and send them to poor people in Africa. Jason Sadler just wanted to help. He thought he'd start with all the leftover T-shirts from his advertising...

By Belinda Luscombe from Time. "In the age of hyperengaged parenting, globalization and the Internet, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has become a freighted organization. Every position statement released by the group — whether about ***-feeding, autism or obesity — sends waves of fury...

By David Tuller from The New York Times. "Demand for human ova has been growing in recent years, fueled by infertility treatments and increased investment in stem cell research. Young women at top colleges and universities, long a prized source of eggs, are now being recruited not just through advertising...

By BBC News "Scientists in Scotland filmed a group of chimps grooming and caressing an elderly female who died, and remaining subdued for several days afterwards. Other researchers saw females carrying around the bodies of their dead offspring. Both studies are reported in the journal Current Biology...

By Marcelo Gleiser from NPR . "Is ethics part of this core-self? I dare speculate that, yes, some people have higher ethical standards than others. They will carry such standards wherever they go, whatever they do. Can such standards be tempered by events in life, education, relationships etc.?...

By Roya Ayman and Karen Korabik "For decades, understanding of leadership has been largely based on the results of studies carried out on White men in the United States. We review major theories and models of leadership as they pertain to either gender or culture. We focus on 3 approaches to leadership...

By Rhonda Shaw This article mobilizes accounts of the phenomenology of ethical expertise to discuss the actions and experiences of people who have participated in body gifting practices. The body gifting practices specifically addressed in the study are drawn from empirical research on shared breastfeeding...

By Debasmita Patra, E. Haribabu and Katherine A. McComas Many developing countries have allocated significant amounts of funding for nanoscience and nanotechnology research, yet compared to developed countries, there has been little study, discussion, or debate over social and ethical issues. Using in...

By Gabriel Ignatow. This article argues that a modified version of Bourdieu's habitus concept can generate insights into moral culture and the ways people use culture to make changes in their lives. If revised in light of recent findings from cognitive neuroscience, the habitus allows for the analysis...

"What is a good life? What does it mean to be a good person? Richard White answers these questions by considering aspects of moral goodness through the virtues: courage, temperance, justice, compassion, and wisdom. White explores how moral virtues affect and support social movements such as pacifism...

Abstract: In a world of continued and expanding empire, does sociocultural anthropology in itself offer grounds for moral and social criticism? One line in anthropological thought leads to cultural relativism and an awareness that a cloud of alternative possibilites surrounds any moral code. However...

This book lucidly explains how the Parallel Lives of Plutarch (c. AD 45-120) are more than mere `sources' for history. The Lives offer us a unique insight into the reception of Classical Greece and Republican Rome in the Greek world of the second century AD. They also explore and challenge issues...