Dr. Carlos Chaccour, physician scientist at the University of Navarra, noticed something fishy about a letter to the editor the New England Journal of Medicine received shortly after it published a paper of his on malaria treatment in July.
The letter was riddled with strange errors such as critiques supposedly based on other research Chaccour himself had written. So he and his co-author Matthew Rudd decided to dig deeper.
They analyzed patterns of letters to the editor over the last decade and found a remarkable increase in what they call "prolific debutantes" — new authors who suddenly had dozens, even hundreds of letters published, starting right around the time OpenAI’s ChatGPT came out.
Why would academics want to do this? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Chaccour to find out.
Once primarily limited to severely disabled people, autism began to be viewed as a spectrum that included children and adults far less impaired. Along the way, the disorder also became an identity, embraced by college graduates and even by some of the world’s most successful people, like Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called the steep rise in autism cases “an epidemic.” He blames theories of causality that mainstream scientists reject — like vaccines and, more recently, Tylenol — and has instructed the C.D.C. to abandon its longstanding position that vaccines do not cause autism.
Today, Azeen Ghorayshi explains what’s really driving the increase in diagnoses.
Guest: Azeen Ghorayshi, a science reporter for The New York Times.
The U.S. and Ukraine have updated President Trump’s 28-point peace proposal. They acted after widespread criticism of the original plan that appeared to heavily favor Russia.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia announced that she will resign form Congress early next year following a feud with Trump. She also said Trump and her party lost their ways.
Also, Israel and Hamas are accusing each other of ceasefire violations.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.
Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Willem Marx, Krishnadev Calamur, Miguel Macias, HJ Mai and Martha Ann Overland.
It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott. Our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
And our Supervising Producers are Vince Pearson and Michael Lipkin.
President Trump bewilders allies with his praise of incoming New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Diplomats scramble to craft a peace plan in Ukraine. And a new feature upends X accounts by disclosing their country of origin.
What can genetics and palmistry tell us about how we understand identity, character and health? Adam Rutherford is joined by Professor of Zoology Matthew Cobb; the historian Professor Alison Bashford and the geneticist Charlotte Houldcroft.
Matthew Cobb discusses his biography Crick: A Mind in Motion. From the discovery of DNA’s structure to Francis Crick’s later work on consciousness, Cobb reveals a restless thinker whose collaborations — with scientists, artists and poets — shaped some of the most profound ideas of the 20th century.
Alison Bashford turns to palm reading in her new book Decoding the Hand, a history of palmistry and its surprising entanglement with science, medicine and magic.
The geneticist Charlotte Houldcroft's research uses ancient DNA to work out how DNA viruses - such as smallpox and herpes - change over time and the consequences of this evolution for our immune systems.
• Officer-involved shooting during Guntersville underage sex-sting • Troy suspect opens fire on police; later hospitalized • Limestone County traffic stop turns into major drug-trafficking bust • Two UAB football players stabbed; teammate charged • Alabama and Auburn football updates ahead of the Iron Bowl
National Stories
• President Trump moves to designate Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization • ICE operation in Charlotte leads to 30,000 student absences • USF hate-crime case raises the question: Would Christians get the same response?
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Richard S. Ruback is the Willard Prescott Smith Professor of Corporate Finance at Harvard Business School.
Royce Yudkoff is a Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School. Yudkoff cofounded and served for over 20 years as Managing Partner of ABRY Partners, a leading private equity investment firm.
Leah, Melissa, and Kate dive into the raging legal battles over redistricting ahead of next year’s midterms, Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan’s massive oopsies in her prosecution of James Comey, developments with L’Affaire Epstein, and other assorted legal quagmires and outrages from the Trump administration. Then, Kate chats with University of Minnesota Law Professor Jill Hasday about her book We the Men: How Forgetting Women's Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality. Check out Leah’s review of Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s book, Listening to the Law, for the Los Angeles Review of Books here.
