Issue 10: Fact & Fiction 2 June 2026 This issue traverses the boundaries of truth, certainty and fabrication. Join us to illuminate the myriad grey space that lies in between. Editorial Shining Light on the Grey by Ingrid Sefton, Kara Miwa-Dale and Anabelle Dewi Saraswati A word from the Editors-in-Chief and some enlightening insights from this Issue's Cover Illustrator Biological evolution That Protein is AI, Dude by KJ Srivastava Move over nature, is artificial intelligence the new apex predator of protein evolution? Determinism and indeterminism Contingent Realities - the (Ph)ailure of a (Ph)act by Edmond Sim From Plato to quantum mechanics, Edmond muses whether objective facts truly exist — or if reality depends on who's observing it. Climate change To Prevent Climate Catastrophe, Keep Reading by Madeleine Kelly Madeleine argues its time to rewrite the landscape of climate fiction from one of impending doom into one of hope and action. Paleontological reconstructions Terrible Lizards and their Terrible Reconstructions by Kaya Czerwinska A flying Stegosaurus, upside-down Hallucigenias: Kaya revisits palaeontology's most delightfully bizarre mistakes. Traditional Chinese medicine The Human Body: A Portrait Painted by a Thousand Minds by Isaac Tian Isaac examines how different cultures have attempted to answer the same timeless question: how does the human body truly work? Neuroscience When Fiction Feels Real: How the Brain Builds Reality by Terra Gi Where does reality exist: in the world, or in our mind? Terra probes how the brain blurs the boundaries of perception and experience. Genetic engineering The Predictions of Genomics: Fictions Once Called Fact by Scarlett Yang Beyond mere educated guesses, precision in scientific prediction is paving the way forward in genomic innovation. Little scientists Young Scientists in the Making by Kacy Toombs Cultivating curiosity in children is not only considerate, but fundamentally scientific, Kacy posits. Biobanks How Population Biobanks Shed Light on Disease by Jason Chien Jason unlocks how biobanks are helping researchers probe new insights into human health and disease. Sex differences Unpacking Myths: Distortions of Sex Differences in Popular Culture by Vicenta Wheatley From dating podcasts to TikTok algorithms: how science on sex differences is simplified, sensationalised, and sold. Time travel Reimagining Time: From Relativity to Wormholes by Zahra Halela If time is relative, bending the bounds of physics and reality, Zahra considers how far-fetched the notion of time-travel really is. Truth under AI Are Truths Possible Under AI? by Vanessa Cheng As AI blurs the line between truth and deception, Vanessa considers how it is changing the way we see the world. Opposites attract Dating Isn’t Physics – Opposites Don’t Attract by Elva Assisan Elva repels the theory that our magnetic pull towards the trope of "opposites attract" is founded in science. Misinformation Fiction Disguised as Fact: The Cost of Scientific Misinformation by Kara Miwa-Dale Vaccines save lives — but as Kara explores, misinformation can undermine them just as powerfully.

< Back to Issue 10 The Human Body: A Portrait Painted by a Thousand Minds by Isaac Tian 2 June 2026 Illustrated by Chris Cao Edited by Adrija Dutta The only nourishment humans hunger for more than food is truth. For millennia, we have been propelled by this inarticulable appetite for discovery, yet our understanding of the human body has remained limited–and at times, conflicting. Our fascination with ourselves began long before the modern day. Prior to the interconnectedness of the contemporary global platform, research into the human body was undertaken independently in various cultures. As a result of geographical separation, cultures have arrived at different interpretations of our bodies, diseases, and treatments (1). The Chinese developed Traditional Chinese Medicine; from the Indian subcontinent arose Ayurveda; the Greek laid the basis for Unani. More recently, the Europeans gave us naturopathy, homeopathy, and of course–Western medicine. The modern Australian medical system is predominantly founded on conventional Western medicine. Nevertheless, traces of foreign medical practices have embedded themselves into the system (2). In a world now riddled with cultural intersections, the frontiers of knowledge and established practices collide, leaving us – as patients – with a critical question: who is right, and who is wrong? More interestingly, could both sides of the argument be right? The vast backdrop of conventional Western medicine has certainly served us well. Western scientists have – for the most part – established a reliable theoretical basis upon which our understanding of bodily functions, diseases and treatments are founded (3). Through various experiments, they have visualised the microscopic and characterised the medically novel, revealing previously undiscovered cellular and molecular mechanisms, ultimately birthing the biomedical foundations of Western medicine (3). Discoveries such as William Harvey’s elaboration of the circulatory system in 1628, Edward Jenner’s founding principles of vaccination in the 1700s, and Louis Pasteur’s discovery of microbial origins in the 1800s are episodes in a lengthy collection that forms the foundation for Western medicine (3). Whilst there are still gaps in the Western understanding of bodies, studies such as these largely suggest that the foundations for Western medicine are tangibly sound - rendering them reliable to an extent. The strength of Western medicine lies in the tangibility of the proposed cellular mechanisms. Alternative approaches such as Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda places greater emphasis on spirituality in body systems, undertaking the belief that intangible forces are at play to influence the human condition (3). Due to their immaterial nature, scientific inquiry is largely unable to support or refute these spiritual ideas. Although, interestingly – treatments based on these foundations aren’t completely unfounded. For example, the concept of Qi (pronounced chee ) is central to Traditional Chinese Medicine. Qi is thought to be a fundamental life force that circulates around the body, and it is believed that acupuncture can stimulate this circulation to relieve pain (1, 4). Sounds insane right? How can we manipulate an immaterial force to alleviate physical symptoms? It turns out that it may not be the immaterial Qi the acupuncture needle targets – but rather the fascia of musculoskeletal systems that cause the nerve stimulation experienced in acupuncture (5). Remarkably, acupuncture has been shown to reduce multiple types of pain in patients (4). The fascination here lies neither in the tangibility of Western mechanisms nor the grandeur of Chinese spirituality alone, but in how the two systems converge. The treatment stems from ancient China, but its mechanisms are more clearly elucidated by Western medicine. This harmonious combination of varying cultural understanding is fascinating. Better yet, it achieves the ultimate goal of treatments – to deliver a beneficial outcome to the patient. The interplay of medical systems extends beyond just China and the West. For instance, yoga – widely prevalent in Ayurveda – is traditionally grounded in the Ayurvedic ideas of the three energies (called doshas) and the five elements in the human body, a foundation that may seem outdated. However, the practice of Yoga remains highly effective and complements many Western medical treatments (1). Additionally, it has been shown to improve outcomes of chronic conditions and pain (6). These positive outcomes for patients bode well with the Western understanding of pain sensation pathways (7). The human body seems endlessly complex and rightly so. Medicine has been and will likely always be a developing field of intersecting understanding. By virtue of their persistence throughout centuries and even millennia, the medical systems from various cultures merit exploration and investigation. Whilst it is imprudent to single out a medical system as the best, it is prudent to cherish how differing approaches can complement each other to deliver benefits to patients. Validity and truth should not be overly emphasised when the goal of medicine is to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Through cooperation and unity, each system contributes to a more complete understanding of health. References Baars EW, Hamre HJ. Whole Medical Systems versus the System of Conventional Biomedicine: A Critical, Narrative Review of Similarities, Differences, and Factors That Promote the Integration Process. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2017;2017:4904930. doi: 10.1155/2017/4904930 PubMed PMID: 28785290; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5530407. Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. AHPRA Annual Report 2023-24 [Internet]. Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency; [cited 2026 May 10]. Available from: https://www.ahpra.gov.au/Publications/Annual-reports/Annual-report-2024/Highlights.aspx Silvano G. A brief history of Western medicine. Journal of Traditional Chinese Medical Sciences. 2021 Nov 1;8:S10–6. doi: 10.1016/j.jtcms.2020.06.002 Vickers AJ, Linde K. Acupuncture for chronic pain. JAMA. 2014 Mar 5;311(9):955–6. doi: 10.1001/jama.2013.285478 PubMed PMID: 24595780; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4036643. Finando S, Finando D. Qi, acupuncture, and the fascia: a reconsideration of the fundamental principles of acupuncture. J Altern Complement Med. 2012 Sep;18(9):880–6. doi: 10.1089/acm.2011.0599 PubMed PMID: 22874011. Holtzman S, Beggs RT. Yoga for chronic low back pain: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Pain Res Manag. 2013;18(5):267–72. doi: 10.1155/2013/105919 PubMed PMID: 23894731; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3805350. Gupta S, Gautam S, Kumar U, Arora T, Dada R. Potential Role of Yoga Intervention in the Management of Chronic Non-malignant Pain. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2022 May 28;2022:5448671. doi: 10.1155/2022/5448671 PubMed PMID: 35668780; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC9167073. Previous article back to Fact & Fiction Next article

< Back to Issue 10 Contingent Realities - the (Ph)ailure of a (Ph)act by Edmond Sim 2 June 2026 Illustrated by Eric Wang Edited by Rita Fortune "What is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me is true for me" – Protagoras sneered (1). “I cannot but agree” – Plato replied, terse and tight-lipped. They were bitter ideological enemies. Whilst Protagoras sold a world built entirely on human perception, Plato demanded absolute, unchanging facts: forms and realities that existed independently of human viewing (2). For millennia, the discipline of physics sided vehemently with him. The entire enterprise of the physical sciences was a crusade to banish the ‘will’ of anthropomorphic gods and heroes, to uncover the definitive and rational "facts" behind the universe. The pursuit of logos, rather than mythos. Eight years following Plato’s death, a student of his, Zeno of Citium, established the Stoic school, spreading the belief that the universe operated due to reason (logos), was monistic (i.e. one interconnected physical system governed by consistent laws), and operated on cause and effect (3). This belief in determinism (the idea that events in the future had been determined by a chain of past occurrences) reached its zenith in the Scientific Revolution of the 17/18th centuries. Fact: repeatable, reversible and reliable We will start with an easy question: what is a fact? I would argue that a statement is a fact if it: (i) stems from a pre-existing state of affairs in the world; and (ii) is singular, i.e. is restricted to reality, of which there is one. This is described in perhaps the most incomprehensible quotation of mankind by Aristotle (4). “To say that that which is, is not, and that which is not, is, is a falsehood; therefore, to say that which is, is, and that which is not, is not, is true” (4). ‘Pre-existing’ requires a past. For something to already be there, waiting for us to see it, it can't have just spawned from the void. Every 'is' requires a 'why'. This relentless search for the chain of cause and effect reached its extreme in the 18th century with the French polymath, Pierre-Simon Laplace. His proposal of a hypothetical entity, now famously known as Laplace’s Demon, served as the ultimate thought experiment for the deterministic worldview that dominated the Scientific Revolution. Imagine a massive, omnipresent intellect – a demon. If this intelligence knew the exact location and force of each single atom in the universe right now, it would know everything. Uncertainty would vanish. The past and the future would be simultaneously now (5). A rock does not "choose" to roll; rather it rolls because gravity acts upon its mass. Similarly, in a deterministic universe, you do not "choose" to act. Your current physical state was caused by the state of the universe one second ago. That state was caused by the state one year ago, which was caused by the state of the universe before you were born, stretching all the way back to the initial conditions of the Big Bang. We conclude: there only exists one unique solution that maps space to time. Two different pasts never merge into the exact same future. Two identical presents never split into different futures. ‘c’ is a constant (crisis): Classical mechanics, in all its beautiful and symmetrical mathematics, provides us this shocking revelation that reality may be deterministic, and that free will is an illusion, a fiction within the slow march of time (7). Occam’s razor (that is, that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one) is seemingly disproven through two fundamental flaws within the classical framework. Firstly, the speed of light (denoted as c) is unique because it stays the same regardless of how fast you are moving. James Clerk Maxwell discovered that electric and magnetic fields are perfectly synced; a ripple in an electric field creates a magnetic one, and that magnetic ripple in turn regenerates the electric field. This continuous loop creates an electromagnetic wave, which we see as light. The speed of this wave is determined by two fundamental properties of empty space: how easily it allows electric and magnetic fields to form and spread. As these properties of the vacuum itself never change, light always travels at the exact same speed, whether you are racing toward the light source or standing perfectly still. The immediate consequences of forcing light to travel at a constant value are rather disturbing. Consider the unfortunate events of a German salary worker in the early 20th century: It was another miserable, grey day in Germany. Albert was staring out the window of a Deutsche Bahn train that was currently four hours late, thinking that his day couldn’t get any worse. CRACK. Lightning strikes the metal frame of the train car, right at the front. Albert jumps, spilling his lukewarm coffee. But before he can even dry off his trousers, a second lightning bolt strikes the very back of the train. He spills his coffee over his shirt. Albert has to get off the train at the next stop, Bern, to get to his job working at the Swiss Patent office. As he dries off his clothes on the platform, he observes an express train that runs straight through the station. Lightning, particularly vicious today, strikes both the front and end of the train carriage at the exact same time. When he was sitting inside the moving carriage, the light from the front strike had reached his eyes first because he was moving toward it. Remember, the speed of light remains constant even in his moving carriage. But now, standing completely still on the damp Bern platform, the light from both strikes on this new express train reached him exactly simultaneously (9). The man on the platform and the passengers on the train would fundamentally argue on the chronological order of events in the universe. Yet the frightening fact was neither of them was wrong (10). (This assumes that the Deutsche-Bahn moves at speeds close to the speed of light, however due to strikes from the train worker union, it would be a challenge for the train to move at a non-zero speed at all.) Recall our first condition for the definition of fact – the existence of a pre-existing past. Yet, if two observers cannot even agree on "when” an event took place, this condition fails. Fact, it seems, depends entirely on how fast you go. Bohr-ing reality is fundamentally uncertain. The second deviation from naive Laplace was the discovery of the hollow atom. Rutherford used the analogy of planets (the electrons) orbiting a star (the nucleus) seemingly never straying from their tidy, well-defined and circular orbits. Electromagnetism prevented this model from being taken seriously. Any particle that possesses charge must release energy when accelerated. Now, imagine a satellite that constantly releases energy each orbit around Earth. Naturally, the satellite will fall into the Earth. The same would occur to the electron. It would spiral into the nucleus in less than a fraction of a picosecond. Every atom in the universe would instantly implode. Two independent theories then arose almost simultaneously following this discovery. In 1925-26, the landmark papers of Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics (which uses matrices to calculate important quantum properties) and Schrödinger’s wave mechanics (an equation that relates a quantum state to its energy) attempted to provide reasons as to why energy did not disappear from the electron’s orbit (11). Breaking with the tradition of presenting the quantum ‘ghost’ of randomness, quantum mechanics actually provides a more deterministic theory than one may realise. Akin to Laplace’s demon, Schrödinger’s equation describes the time evolution of a quantum system: given an initial quantum state, we can make a definite and certain prediction of what that quantum state will be at any later time (12). This is a very intangible concept and would likely be poorly understood, so let me demonstrate this by way of an example of a coin toss. Imagine a coin spinning rapidly on a table. If you try and guess whether it’s showing heads or tails at that specific microsecond, you probably can’t. It’d be too blurry. However, the blur itself is not random. The way the coin spins, its momentum, its wobble, the friction against the table is governed by strict, unbreakable rules. If you know exactly how the coin was flicked (the initial quantum state), Schrödinger’s formula can predict with 100% certainty exactly what that "blur" will look like five seconds from now, ten days from now, or one hundred years from now. The deterministic nature of quantum mechanics is that the blur itself evolves predictably. The infamous and rather misrepresented "quantum randomness" only applies at the very end, when you finally get fed up and slap your hand down on the coin, forcing it to be either heads or tails (the measurement) (13). The issue, therefore, with this notion of fact under a quantum lens is the lack of a singular outcome. Time evolution is a well-defined function, yet outcome can only be predicted probabilistically. Therefore, we fail yet again the second condition of fact. Fact is – the friends we made along the way? An ongoing unresolved issue in quantum theory is how to explain the two conflicting ways in which systems evolve. Unobserved states evolve smoothly, yet exhibit discontinuous jumps into an outcome when measured. The infamous “Wigner’s Friend” paradox provides an example (14). Suppose your friend is inside a sealed lab watching a spinning coin. In their perspective, when they stop the coin and read its face, its state collapses into a singular outcome. In the shivering cold, you curse that you had to be the one to stand outside. According to the rules of quantum mechanics, because you haven’t seen the coin face, the smooth, unbroken evolution is still happening. You get sick of suffering in the name of science, so you rush into the laboratory and ask your friend what the coin landed on. At that moment, the superposition abruptly collapses for you. Facts no longer appear grounded in an objective, observer-independent past. Instead, they become relational, contingent upon who is observing the system. Worse still, facts seem capable of multiplying: different observers may legitimately describe different realities. This forms the basis for Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics (15). In RQM, an object (like an electron, a coin, or a cat) does not inherently "possess" properties like position or momentum in isolation. Instead, those properties only exist when two physical systems interact. Asking "Where is the particle right now?" when nothing is looking at it is a grammatically incorrect question, equivalent to asking “What is the sound of one hand clapping?" The property of "position" only truly comes into meaning if there exists a detector for which the electron interacts with (16). Any interaction is essentially an exchange of information between two systems. Rovelli formalises this by proposing two foundational postulates. First, there is a finite limit to the relevant information one system can extract from another. Second, it is always possible to extract new information (17). At first glance, these seem at odds: how can you continually extract new data if the total capacity is capped? The consequence of this tension is what we traditionally call "collapse", but RQM reframes it simply as an update of relative information. If you have maxed out the information capacity of a system — for instance, by pinning down the spinning coin’s exact momentum — then asking a new question about its position forces the system to "forget" old information to make room for the new. This directly yields Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. If we wish to keep using the word "fact" in our theory of modern physics, we must redefine it. Facts are no longer global, pre-existing truths built into a singular reality. Instead, they are by nature local, inherently plural, and entirely dependent on the relationship between the watcher and the watched. Protagoras peers down, then looks up at Plato with a bright-eyed grin. "As I was saying,” References Plato. Theaetetus. Waterfield R, translator. London: Penguin Classics; 1987. Plato. The Republic. Lee D, translator. 2nd ed. London: Penguin Books; 2003. Sellars J. Stoicism. Berkeley: University of California Press; 2006. Aristotle. Metaphysics. Ross WD, translator. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1924. Laplace PS. A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities. Truscott FW, Emory FL, translators. New York: John Wiley & Sons; 1902. University of Oxford. The Eddington Number. Oxford: University of Oxford. 2020. https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/about-us/life-oxford-mathematics/oxford-mathematics-alphabet/e-eddington-number Mastin L. Determinism. The Basics of Philosophy. 2008. https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_determinism.html Einstein A. Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. Lawson RW, translator. New York: Henry Holt and Company; 1920. Norton JD. The Relativity of Simultaneity. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh. 2022. https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/Special_relativity_rel_sim/ Norton JD. Einstein for Everyone. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh. 2022. https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/Special_relativity_clocks_rods/ Heisenberg W. Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen. Z Phys. 1925;33(1):879-93. Nave R. Schrödinger Equation [Internet]. Atlanta: Georgia State University. 2017. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/quantum/schr.html Ismael J. Quantum Mechanics. Stanford: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm/ Wigner EP. Remarks on the mind-body question. In: Good IJ, editor. The Scientist Speculates. London: Heinemann; 1961. p. 284-302. Rovelli C. Relational quantum mechanics. Int J Theor Phys. 1996;35(8):1637-78. Laudisa F, Rovelli C. Relational Quantum Mechanics. Stanford: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-relational/ Rovelli C. Helgoland. Segre E, Carnell S, translators. New York: Riverhead Books; 2021. Previous article back to Fact & Fiction Next article

< Back to Issue 10 Dating Isn’t Physics – Opposites Don’t Attract by Elva Assisan 2 June 2026 Illustrated by Jessica Walton Edited by Cady Jacobson The opposites attract trope has a history of being very popular in our media, appearing quite literally everywhere from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen to 10 Things I Hate About You by Gil Junger. Its popularity is undoubtedly a result of the conflict and passion that this dynamic brings to a narrative. Popular culture portrays high contrast couples as those with more exciting, balanced and emotionally fulfilling lives. However, while it often looks like “you bring me out of my shell” when an introvert and extrovert meet in the beginning, it often ends in arguments about going out and staying in. Despite how popular the trope is, science suggests that opposites, in fact, do not attract. The ‘Similarity Attraction Affect’ theory proposes that individuals feel more attracted to those who are similar in attitudes (1). When people encounter those with similar attitudes, they feel affective attractions. They find that their interactions are smoother and therefore more enjoyable. Even in daily life, individuals find that they have more satisfying interactions with those that they have similarities with. When another person shares similar opinions or behaviours, it creates feelings of acceptance and emotional security. This validation strengthens self-esteem and encourages emotional closeness (1), as successful long-term relationships are usually built on compatibility and mutual understanding, rather than dramatic contrast. In addition to similarity increasing feelings of acceptance due to shared values, similarity has also been found to make communication easier. Couples who share values and lifestyles generally experience fewer misunderstandings and conflicts, as they approach situations in much the same way. If two people agree on major life decisions, such as family expectations, finances, and future goals, decision making becomes less stressful (2). On the other hand, relationships with more extreme differences become more exhausting over time as more major issues have to be resolved. Montoya, Horton and Kirchner conducted a meta-analysis examining attraction and found that both actual and perceived similarity significantly increased interpersonal attraction (3). Essentially, people are more likely to enjoy spending time with those who remind them of themselves by having shared humour, hobbies, and values. Building on this, it is not just about having similarities with another person, but having a dynamic where you are invited to act on your core traits and behaviours. For example, dominant people prefer to interact with partners who invite them to be dominant, and submissive people prefer to interact with partners who invite them to be submissive. When people have different qualities which work in conversation, that same mutual understanding is found. Another example of this is having an organised partner who remembers appointments, while the spontaneous partner ensures life contains fun, instead of colour-coded spreadsheets. Individuals are also naturally drawn to environments and relationships that reinforce their self-concept and worldview (4). Indeed, the idea that opposites attract may actually originate from this notion of complementarity. Importantly, the claim that similarity matters does not mean couples have to be the exact same. Healthy relationships still require individuality, compromise, and respect for differences. Minor differences can improve relationships by encouraging personal development and preventing boredom (2). While the idea that “opposites attract” sounds romantic and makes great material for movies, psychological research suggests that similarity is usually what keeps relationships alive, particularly once the excitement wears off. Ultimately, successful relationships are less about finding your complete opposite and more about finding someone whose weirdness matches your own closely enough that neither of you end up arguing about how to load the dishwasher every night. References Byrne D. An Overview (and Underview) of Research and Theory within the Attraction Paradigm. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships . 1997; 14 (3):417–431. doi:10.1177/0265407597143008 Luo S, Klohnen EC. Assortative Mating and Marital Quality in Newlyweds: A Couple-Centered Approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . 2005; 88 (2):304–326. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.88.2.304 Montoya RM, Horton RS, Kirchner J. Is actual similarity necessary for attraction? A meta-analysis of actual and perceived similarity. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships . 2008; 25 (6):889–922. doi:10.1177/0265407508096700 Dryer DC, Horowitz LM. When do opposites attract? Interpersonal complementarity versus similarity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . 1997; 72 (3):592–603. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.72.3.592 Previous article back to Fact & Fiction Next article

< Back to Issue 10 Reimagining Time: From Relativity to Wormholes by Zahra Halela 2 June 2026 Illustrated by Saraf Ishmam Edited by Thanishka Rajmohan Time is a social construct. It interweaves itself into the very fabric of humanity as a rigid structure that does not allow for tardiness. It creates and constrains, and at its essence, it controls. When viewed through a scientific lens, time is a fundamental physical dimension. It exists independently, within a fourth dimension invisible to the eye. It is not universal either – it passes at different rates according to speed and gravity. Is it truly too far-fetched to stretch and warp the limits of time itself, to imagine time that exists beyond the present, and into the past or future? One such consideration comes from the mathematical equation that describes how things change over time. Here, time is a quantity, often referred to as coordinate time. Coordinates are often thought to have direct and measurable quantities, as in, for every input of x there is an output of y . Special relativity, however, reaches beyond the limitations that direct coordinates constrain us to, and instead posits that these measurements’ results are dependent on the motion of an observer. Essentially, they conclude that absolute space and time are, in fact, products of fiction (1). Special relativity, then, can be harnessed in the understanding of time travel into the future. Another possibility is one presented by a well-known film, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar . In Interstellar , a different type of relativity is explored, namely general relativity, which contemplates the confounding query of how time travel into the past can be feasible. General relativity is a theory proposed by Einstein which interweaves time, gravity and space (2). While special relativity does acknowledge the connectedness of space and time, general relativity is able to tie in the fundamental ‘force’ of gravity as something that is not a force, but in fact a warping of spacetime. Essentially, general relativity propounds that massive objects are able to distort the relationship between space and time, which is a key concept in the film (3). Nevertheless, general relativity has its limitations, in that it fails to incorporate quantum physics and Mach’s principles (4). Thus, if general relativity still requires further modifications to be irrefutable and robust, then other possibilities must be considered for time travel to come to fruition in the future. One potential mechanism is the existence of wormholes. Wormholes are tunnels within spacetime that connect parts of the universe through a certain type of warping, its theoretical background aligning heavily with general relativity (5). This then begs the question – can wormholes provide a satisfactory solution for time travel? The answer is slightly more complicated than merely a yes or a no. If one were to consider travel between two distances, a wormhole seems to be the perfect answer, theoretically. Not only do they facilitate time travel between galaxies, but also allow for interterrestrial communication within parallel universes (6). On a more practical note, however, wormholes still have a marginally long way to go before a substantial discovery is made to turn a complex theory into fact. References Bertschinger E. Coordinates and proper time. Accessed April 6, 2026. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/8-224-exploring-black-holes-general-relativity-astrophysics-spring-2003/3982882af388dae3407906357a419cba_coordsproptime.pdf Buzzo D. Time Travel: Time Dilation. Electronic Visualisation and the Arts. 2014 . doi: 10.14236/EWIC/EVA2014.21 . Dutfield S, Bartels M, Tillman NT. What is the theory of general relativity? Understanding Einstein’s space-time revolution | Space. Accessed May 13, 2026. https://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html Palomo MU. Einstein’s theoretical failures of General Relativity. Independent physics. December 2, 2023. Accessed May 13, 2026. https://independentphysics.com/einsteins-failures-of-general-relativity-gravitational-potential-energy-and-machs-principle/ Aichelburg PC. Wormholes and time travel. In: Vol 504. AIP. 2000;504(1):1111-1112. doi: 10.1063/1.1290914 . Morris MS, Thorne KS, Yurtsever U. Wormholes, time machines, and the weak energy condition. Phys Rev Lett . 1988;61(13):1446-1449. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.61.1446 . Previous article back to Fact & Fiction Next article

< Back to Issue 10 That Protein is AI, Dude by KJ Srivastava 2 June 2026 Illustrated by Ciara Dahl Edited by Aimee Fogarty-Bennett For decades, scientists used a glowing jellyfish protein called Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) to light up living cells. This protein emits a bright green light when exposed to UV light, and is used to visibly ‘tag’ cells for all sorts of experiments. Then, researchers used AI to generate a protein that serves the same function. And… it worked? The resulting protein, esmGFP, is so different from known natural fluorescent proteins that researchers compare the gap between them to roughly half a billion years of evolution. This protein is widely marketed as ‘AI simulating evolution’; but how much evolution is actually happening here, how does this work, and why is this being AI generated a big deal? Before this, evolution was the only protein designer we had. A jellyfish glows because evolution happened to stumble onto a protein called GFP that can absorb and emit light (1). Over millions of years, random mutations, that is, changes in DNA, slightly altered proteins. Natural selection, however, kept the versions that still worked. In the same sense, biology uses trial and error to build things, and nature keeps what works. This means every protein on earth is part of a gigantic, evolutionary family tree. Scientists can compare proteins by looking at sequence identity (2) – the percentage of amino acids that match between two proteins. Usually, closely related proteins have similar sequences and similar functions. The farther apart two proteins are evolutionarily, the more likely the chemistry fails and the protein stops functioning entirely. If you try to mutate or engineer a protein to match the function of a very different, distantly related protein, the chemistry is highly likely to fail. Because their sequences and structures have drifted too far apart, you can't easily swap parts or force them to interact without losing the necessary biochemical function! Why? Proteins are unbelievably sensitive to shape. They are made up of units called amino acids, and only work if they fold into an extremely precise and stable 3D structure. A few bad mutations can completely ruin the fold. Some examples of this in humans are cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer's, Sickle Cell Anaemia, and Huntington’s (3). The model researchers used to generate this protein is called ESM3 (4). It was trained on enormous databases of natural proteins, like a large language mode (LLM), but for biology. ChatGPT predicts plausible next words. ESM3 predicts plausible amino acids, structures and functions. Give it part of a protein sequence and it can iteratively fill in the gaps, adjusting the molecule until the chemistry and structure begin to make sense together. One of these generated proteins is esmGFP! Now this is when stuff starts getting really weird: esmGFP shares around 58% sequence identity with the closest natural fluorescent protein. In evolutionary terms, that is an enormous gap. For context, you share 60% of your DNA with a banana (5). No, I’m not lying to you. This is an astonishing number, and researchers estimate the difference could correspond to roughly half a billion years of evolution. After reading the frankly ridiculous 58% number, I immediately thought that's weird. It is, in fact, comical to assume that a machine that only has 58% of the parts of another would behave in the same way. It's the same in biology. Normally proteins that are this different are not expected to behave in the same way. Proteins are incredibly dependent on structure, and structure depends on sequence! Change too much and the entire fold usually destabilises – the protein misfolds, clumps together or just stops working. The fact that esmGFP can glow is even weirder. Forgive the ‘nerd talk’ that will take over the rest of the paragraph, but glowing for a protein is not an easy feat. GFP glows because part of the protein folds inward and creates a tiny chemical structure called a chromophore (6). Inside this pocket, three amino acids – serine, tyrosine, and glycine – react together to form a ring-like structure capable of absorbing and emitting light. In other words, the amino acids all need to be at the right angles, surrounding proteins need to stabilise the structure, the fold has to protect the chromatophore from the outside environment, and more. A model, without simulating any atoms like a physics engine, iteratively predicted something that works out. This is fascinating because the AI model appears to have internalised some of the deeper rules that connect protein sequence to behaviour – rules that even biologists still don’t fully understand. Moreover, scientists can explain how esmGFP functions chemically. They can map the fold. They can identify the chromophore. They can experimentally confirm that the protein fluoresces. But they can’t explain how artificial intelligence made it to this protein. Inside models like ESM3, there's still a major interpretability problem for scientists and biologists. The model learned from huge amounts of biological data and somehow developed an internal representation of what ‘working proteins’ look like; however, that representation is mostly hidden from us. The logic the model used to navigate this protein space and propose sequences that evolution may never have encountered at all is a black box (7). Maybe biology has a hidden schema where functional proteins follow deeper statistical or geometric rules. A schema which AI models can learn before we can clearly articulate it ourselves. Nature is an incredible engineer, but it's also deeply conservative. Evolution does not search for the best possible molecule, only whatever is good enough to survive right now. If a protein helps an organism reproduce, it stays. If not, it disappears. As a result, biology is full of accidents and compromises. Proteins can be inefficient, unstable, or bizarrely complex simply because evolution had no reason, or no viable path, to improve them further. AI hence creates a different approach to biological design. Instead of searching nature for useful molecules, researchers can generate proteins tailored to human needs: enzymes that break down plastic, proteins that capture carbon more efficiently, medicines aimed at specific targets, or even synthetic underwater adhesives inspired by mussels and barnacles (8) (find the link to this incredibly cool project here !). The deepest implication of this discovery is philosophical; life on earth is a sample size of one. This means everything we call “biology” comes from the same evolutionary tree, shaped by chance, constraint, and what was “good enough” to survive. esmGFP works, even with a sequence drifted far from known fluorescence proteins. Unsettlingly enough, maybe life isn’t defined by specific molecules at all, but by the rules that make those molecules work. Thank you for reading and I hope I could convince you that esmGFP matters beyond “AI made a glowing thing.” Check it out and play with esm yourself here ! References University of Queensland. How the jellyfish revolutionised brain science. 2020. https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain/nature-discovery/how-jellyfish-revolutionised-brain-science RCSB Protein Data Bank. Data P. Sequence Similarity Search. 2017. https://www.rcsb.org/docs/search-and-browse/advanced-search/sequence-similarity-search Valastyan JS, Lindquist S. Mechanisms of protein-folding diseases at a glance. Disease Models & Mechanisms. 2014;7(1):9–14. doi: 10.1242/dmm.013474 EvolutionaryScale. Evolutionaryscale.ai . 2024. https://www.evolutionaryscale.ai/ Pfizer. How Genetically Related Are We to Bananas? Pfizer. 2022. https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/how_genetically_related_are_we_to_bananas Craggs TD. Green fluorescent protein: structure, folding and chromophore maturation. Chemical Society Reviews. 2009;38(10):2865. doi: 10.1039/b903641p Kosinski M. What is black box artificial intelligence (AI)? IBM. 2024. https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/black-box-ai Liao H, Hu S, Yang H, Wang L, Tanaka S, Takigawa I, et al. Data-driven de novo design of super-adhesive hydrogels. Nature. 2025;644(8075):89–95. doi: 10.1039/b903641p Previous article back to Fact & Fiction Next article

< Back to Issue 10 Young Scientists in the Making by Kacy Toombs 2 June 2026 Illustrated by Saraf Ishmam Edited by Ingrid Sefton When you look at a baby, a multitude of thoughts might cross your mind, ranging from “aww cute” to “ ew, I’m never having kids” . You might see a baby babbling, screaming, drooling, or giving you that heedless, unwavering stare, and think about how silly that baby is. How socially inept! There’s not a thought behind those eyes! But what if I told you that every single baby is actually a young scientist? That everyday, babies are conducting social and scientific experiments; testing the limits of their understanding and noting down the mechanics of our world? Together, let’s explore how everyday babies are deploying the scientific method to learn about the world around them, and how they use these techniques to navigate life. If you’re at all familiar with this magazine, you’ll most likely know exactly what the scientific method entails. For those of you who haven’t touched a science kit since your Year 9 biology class, I’ll briefly explain. The scientific method (also known as the analytical method) is the use of a series of experiments to test a hypothesis. These experiments are often circular in their function, with the hypothesis modified and further retested until consistent results are achieved (1). It is standard practice within the many fields of science, and can range from wildly entertaining social experiments, to closely controlled quantitative observations. In the most basic terms, the scientific method is the art of asking a question, then seeking an answer. Picture a baby in a highchair. They’re happily wobbling their arms and swinging their plump little legs. Maybe they are even dribbling out the remnants of their mushy lunches. They pick up their spoon, and instead of using the spoon for its intended purpose, they drop it onto the floor. There are a number of things happening in this given scenario. A baby isn’t simply dropping the spoon to be annoying or to make itself laugh; though many babies have in the past, and will in the future, think that this act is very, very funny. The baby is asking a question – creating a hypothesis – and testing a number of variables. What happens when I let go of this spoon? When they drop the spoon, they are observing science in action. Gravity – the spoon falls down. Physics – the spoon spins in the air and bounces on the floor. The energy of sound waves – the clattering of the spoon on tile is loud, versus the soft boff of it bouncing on carpet. There are also the social aspects to consider. How will the people around them react? Will they come pick up the spoon? Is this a good way to get somebody’s attention? Like all great scientists, a baby will need to run multiple tests to come to conclusive results, so they will drop a lot of spoons. Now, am I advocating for us to let children throw their spoons around? Of course not. Part of this experience is for children to also learn that throwing spoons at the dinner table isn’t classified as decent behaviour in our society. But I do believe that it is important to acknowledge what a child is doing here. This action stems from curiosity, and it is important to cultivate that curiosity rather than quash it. Curiosity is a common trait we associate with ourselves as a species, and more often than not, is an intrinsic characteristic of children. Ironically enough, science has a hard time pinpointing the ‘why’ behind our curiosity (2), though many theories on the cognitive development of humans link our need to observe the environment and animal behaviour to survival (3). The power of curiosity is a baby’s best tool in their metaphorical toolkit. As a newly conscious being, there’s a lot about the world that they simply don’t understand. There’s a reason why the phrase, “ a baby’s brain is like a sponge” , is so well known. They absorb everything, and are constantly using any newly acquired knowledge to test the limits of their own understanding. The art of observing the world and the willingness to learn from it can be broken down into four main categories: questioning (the act of verbalising curiosity), physical exploration (bodily curiosity as a sensory experience), philosophising (the act of verbalising wonder) and embodied fascination (bodily wonder that does not seek a cognitive answer) (4). Of course, a baby won’t start verbalising their curiosity until they can speak (at which point you might be forced into the repetitive hell of a child’s never-ending echolalia of “ but why?” ), but instinctually the questions are present. These four categories are not mutually exclusive; often wonder can lead to curiosity and curiosity can lead to wonder. When people are given the room to explore their curiosity in any learning institution, they naturally grasp the concepts taught to them with a better understanding (5). Unfortunately, many modern day schools prioritise academic performance over a child’s own understanding of any given topic. I’m sure we can all relate to being talked at by a lecturer in the classroom rather than being invited to participate in the conversation. It’s a pretty fast way to get your brain to switch off and dull any curious inclination you might have had. It is no secret that some children learn differently from others, and this method of simply giving instruction in class can work for some. But using the broadest methods of engaging in wonder and curiosity will help all students, alongside their relationship with learning as a whole (6). Have you ever wondered why children enjoy field trips so much? It isn’t just the novelty of breaking a set routine and ‘skipping’ a school day; it’s also much simpler than that. Field trips give students a safe space to have fun with their learning and actively immerses them in all four categories of wonder and curiosity. Let’s take the example of students going to a planetarium. A child has the opportunity to physically explore a space; by interacting with planet mobiles or using their hands to feel textures on touchable exhibits, children are engaging in their bodily curiosity. Questions are naturally prompted by these physical explorations – “Is this Mars?”, “Which planet is Earth?” – which can lead to further discussions with their teachers and peers. Through these discussions, children can start philosophising certain ideas based on their newly acquired knowledge: “ These space rocks look like rocks on Earth. I wonder if they are made of the same thing?” . And in the quieter moments, children can idly sit with their own embodied fascination, taking in the atmosphere of the universe from inside the cool dome of the planetarium. There are no examinations or grading on field trips. A child has the freedom to simply be. This cultivation of curiosity at such a young age actively helps aid in the development of more complex and abstract thoughts (7) and leads to children in learning institutions taking more intellectual risks when approaching topics unknown to them. There’s a magic in being curious, in this need to fill in the blanks of their own knowledge. When children are comfortable in their own lack of understanding, they are not only more receptive to learning, but are shown to be more flexible in their beliefs when presented with new ideas (8). They engage more in classrooms, they speak up when they don’t understand, and they embrace the discomfort of not knowing. It all starts with the little, nappy-wearing scientist, sitting in their highchair. These babies are setting up their own cognitive learning systems from the moment they open their eyes. They let their curiosity guide their experimentation, which shapes how they come to understand the world. So what if they’re not making any groundbreaking revelations? They don’t need to be. Give in to your own curiosity next time you encounter a baby in the wild. See if you can observe the little scientist in action as they interact with the world for the first time. And hell, maybe let them drop a few spoons. References Gregersen E. Scientific method. Britannica. 24 April 2026. https://www.britannica.com/topic/empirical-evidence Kobayashi K, Ravaioli S, Baranès A, et al . Diverse motives for human curiosity. Nature Human Behaviour. 2019;3:587-595. doi: 10.1038/s41562-019-0589-3 Del Claro K. It All Began Out of Necessity and Curiosity. Behavioral Ecology . 2026;1-10. doi: 10.1007/978-3-032-13988-7_1 Heggen MP, Lynngård AM. Wonder and curiosity beyond the obvious—a dynamic model of bodily and verbal understandings of these phenomena. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. 2026;13:167. doi: 10.1057/s41599-025-06467-3 Kidd C, Hayden B. The Psychology and Neuroscience of Curiosity.” Neuron. 2015;88(3):449-460. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.09.010 Peterson EM. Supporting curiosity in schools and classrooms. Behavioral Sciences. 2020;35:7-13. doi: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.05.006 Hall S. The Young Child as Scientist. A Learning Moments Collection. Videatives. 2015. https://videatives.com/node/2117 Jirout JJ, Vitiello VE, Zumbrunn SK. Curiosity In Schools. The New Science of Curiosity . Edited by Gordon G., 243-266. Nova, 2018. Previous article back to Fact & Fiction Next article

< Back to Issue 10 Terrible Lizards and their Terrible Reconstructions by Kaya Czerwinska 2 June 2026 Illustrated by Esme MacGillivray Edited by Vicenta Wheatley This comes as a surprise to nobody, but it isn't the easiest task in the world to figure out an extinct creature’s appearance, habitat and behaviour from a few bones. Our understanding of animals is constantly evolving with new discoveries and technology, much like the species themselves. Yet, no matter how cunning we are to glean all kinds of fascinating history about those who lived so long before us, we humans can't always get it right. Let’s take a walk down memory lane to look at some of history’s more eccentric paleontological reconstructions! Stegosaurus Figure 1 W.H. Ballou’s Vision of a Flying Stegosaurus. Note. Image reproduced from (3). Stegosaurus is one of the more well-known dinosaurs and can be easily spotted among a child’s plastic figurine set. When presented with something Stegosaurus -shaped, one is left with very little doubt in their mind that it is, indeed, a Stegosaurus . There’s no modern animal quite like it. However, this distinctness is exactly what gave scientists trouble when they first discovered it. More specifically, why did it have plates on its body, and where were they supposed to go? Othniel Charles Marsh, the paleontologist who discovered it, initially believed that the plates sat flat over its back like armour or roof tiles (1). This is where its name, which translates to ‘roofed lizard’, came from. The confusion did not end after realising the plates were supposed to stand upright, though. Imaginations ran wild as their function remained unclear. One 1912 edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer claimed that they were used for defence against predators, calling Stegosaurus the ‘most grotesque animal’ and ‘a freak of nature’ (2). Another article, written by William Hosea Ballou, was published in the Ogden Standard-Examiner in 1920, suggesting that it used its plates like wings for gliding or flight (3). This was considered absurd even for the time, but was certainly charming to picture. To this day, what our spiky friends used their plates for is up for debate. Some of the more recent hypotheses are that they assisted with regulating temperature or colourful displays, which have been supported by the discovery of channels inside the plates that might have held blood vessels (4). However, even once we conclusively figure out what their true function was, flying Stegosaurus will remain a whimsical and creative interpretation. Elasmosaurus Figure 2 Cope’s Initial Reconstruction of Elasmosaurus with its Head on the Wrong End. Note. Image reproduced from (5). Sometimes, one can get so distracted by workplace drama that they can’t make head nor tail of the work they’re supposed to be doing - literally. This was the case for Edward Drinker Cope, a rival of Othniel Charles Marsh (who described Stegosaurus ). Both paleontologists competed to discover more new species, often criticising and even sabotaging each other’s work. In 1869, Cope attempted to describe a new marine creature called Elasmosaurus , which had four flippers and a long neck, almost like the Loch Ness monster (5). Unfortunately, he made one crucial error. In his reconstruction, he had mistakenly attached the head to the tail end instead of the neck. While it was quickly pointed out and fixed, Cope’s blunder was much to the amusement of Marsh, who frequently mentioned it in order to call Cope a ‘careless’ scientist who rushed his work (6). People tend to use this moment as an example of the many insults and arguments Marsh and Cope threw at each other during their lifelong feud. However, an animal like Elasmosaurus had not been seen before, and it’s very common for lizards to have long tails. Deciding that the longer end must be the tail wouldn’t have been a completely unreasonable guess at the time. At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that paleontologists during their time were working from much less information than we have today. Hallucigenia Figure 3. Initial Reconstruction of Hallucigenia Walking Using Spines. Note. Image reproduced from (7). Hallucigenia ’s name means ‘hallucination’ or ‘dream producer’, which is a good indicator of the experience scientists had while attempting to figure this creature out. It lived around 505 million years ago during the Cambrian era, a time when evolution was being particularly experimental (7). All kinds of strange, worm-like creatures were wandering the ocean floor, and many of them were very small. This certainly doesn’t help scientists trying to interpret the vague and cryptic shapes these animals can create when they become fossils. The first proposed idea about Hallucigenia was that it moved on a set of stiff, straight legs, with tentacles coming out of its back (8). If that wasn’t confusing enough, there was also a mysterious stain near one end of the initial fossil’s body, prompting debate about which side was the head. The mystery was finally solved when a second specimen was discovered, sitting in the rock at a different angle that allowed its legs to be seen more clearly. The ‘legs’ were actually spines on its back, and its real legs were the ‘tentacles’ (9). Scientists had been looking at it upside-down the whole time. While we finally know roughly what it looked like, Hallucigenia continues to be somewhat of an enigma to this day, with many things left to figure out about its place in the tree of life and its relatedness to other species. Oviraptor Figure 4. Oviraptor Embryo from Flaming Cliffs. Note. Image reproduced from (12). As a fossilised animal’s behaviour can’t be observed in action, scientists often rely on context clues from the environment that the fossil was found in. This was the case for a dinosaur discovered on top of a nest of fossilised eggs in 1924. The new species was named Oviraptor , meaning ‘egg thief’, in reference to the belief that it preyed on the eggs of another dinosaur called Protoceratops (10). However, some later analyses revealed that Oviraptor didn’t have teeth well-suited for eating eggs, and probably didn’t include them in its diet (11). It was later discovered that the eggs from the original specimen contained not Protoceratops , but baby Oviraptor embryos - Oviraptor had been framed for eating its own children (12). While the mistake has been rectified for several decades by now, it is still food for thought that humanity’s first instinct was to assume this dinosaur was hunting the eggs and not incubating them. There has, first through our knowledge gaps and later through pop culture portrayals, persisted an idea of dinosaurs as nothing more than scaly, destructive beasts. Dinosaurs are unintelligent and run purely on impulse. Dinosaurs kill on sight. Dinosaurs would never take care of their children. Yet, they did. Humans are not the only animals capable of caring or compassionate acts, and Oviraptor is a reminder to be careful of anthropocentrism. Woolly Rhinoceros Figure 5. Reconstruction of the ‘Unicorn’ by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Note. Image reproduced from (13). Almost the holy grail of paleontological blunders is the Magdeburg Unicorn. Not knowing how to put together a Woolly Rhinoceros skeleton is understandable, but this specific reconstruction of one has many notable issues, including a lack of back legs and a completely missing torso. The glaring inaccuracies can be attributed to the fact that the fossil was discovered and reconstructed in the 1600s, long before any other examples in this article (13). Paleontology as a discipline was still in its infancy, and beliefs in creatures such as unicorns were still common. Thus, when a number of woolly rhinoceros and woolly mammoth bones were discovered in a cave, inexperience and superstition combined to manifest them into a brand new creature. The origin of the horn is somewhat dubious but was most likely a narwhal tusk (14). As paleontology advanced, the unicorn’s status as a plausible reconstruction gradually slipped away. However, on a bad day, it’s still helpful to picture a living Magdeburg Unicorn frolicking through fields in all its bizarre glory. Perhaps if this article had been written a few years from now, there would be a few new entries about animals that we think we understand well today. The only constant truth in science is that it never stops moving forward. With every step, we leave behind a piece of what we thought the truth was, and it’s only fair to show some appreciation for those who laid the path. However, two things can be true at once. We can respect the hard work of each scientist in history who has made attempts to improve humanity’s understanding of the world around us. And we can also laugh at the fact that in hindsight, many of those attempts turned out to be spectacularly strange. References Marsh OC. A new order of extinct Reptilia (Stegosauria) from the Jurassic of the Rocky Mountains. Zenodo [Internet]. 1877 Dec 1; Available from: https://zenodo.org/record/1450038#.YoPJRIjMLrc The Ogden standard-examiner. (Ogden, UT), Aug. 15 1920. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn85058393/1920-08-15/ed-1/ . "Was Most Grotesque Animal" Newspapers.com . The Cincinnati Enquirer, 22 June 1912. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-cincinnati-enquirer-was-most-grotesq/113116207/ . Farlow JO, Hayashi S, Tattersall GJ. Internal vascularity of the dermal plates of Stegosaurus (Ornithischia, Thyreophora). Swiss Journal of Geosciences. 2010 Aug 24;103(2):173–85. Cope ED. The Fossil Reptiles of New Jersey (Continued). The American Naturalist. 1869 Apr 1;3(2):84–91. Davidson JP. Bonehead mistakes: The background in scientific literature and illustrations for Edward Drinker Cope’s first restoration of Elasmosaurus platyurus. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 2002 Oct;152(1):215–40. Conway Morris S. A new metazoan from the Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia. Palaeontology. 1977;20(3):623–40. Stephen Jay Gould. Wonderful life : the Burgess Shale and the nature of history. New York: W.W. Norton & Company; 1989. Ramsköld L, Xianguang H. New early Cambrian animal and onychophoran affinities of enigmatic metazoans. Nature. 1991 May;351(6323):225–8. Henry Fairfield Osborn. Three new Theropoda, Protoceratops zone, central Mongolia. American Museum Novitates. 1924 Jan 1;144:1–12. Barsbold, R. "Khishchnye dinosavry mela Mongoliy" [Carnivorous Dinosaur of the Cretaceous of Mongolia]. Transactions of the Joint Soviet-Mongolian Paleontological Expedition . 1983 19: 5–119. Norell MA, Clark JM, Demberelyin D, Rhinchen B, Chiappe LM, Davidson AR, et al. A Theropod Dinosaur Embryo and the Affinities of the Flaming Cliffs Dinosaur Eggs. Science. 1994 Nov 4;266(5186):779–82. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Protogaea. University of Chicago Press; 2008. Kolfschoten, Thijs. THE WOOLLY RHINOCEROS FROM SEWECKENBERGE NEAR QUEDLINBURG (GERMANY). 157. 39-48. doi:10.11588/propylaeum.868.c11306. Previous article back to Fact & Fiction Next article

< Back to Issue 10 How Population Biobanks Shed Light on Disease by Jason Chien 2 June 2026 Illustrated by Chris Cao Edited by Cady Jacobson Imagine yourself as a researcher. Perhaps your work requires biological samples from a rare disease, but finding and collecting these samples from patients is difficult. Or maybe your research depends on comparing a person’s current cell or tissue data to what it was ten years ago, but you cannot afford to wait a decade. Thankfully, there are biobanks: specialised facilities that store biological samples and other relevant medical information from donors, while also distributing samples to researchers regardless of where they are based. Biobanks also act as data custodians, de-identifying and anonymising patient information. In addition, they work with Institutional Review Boards (essentially, university or agency ethics boards) to review the merits of each access request before deciding whether to deliver samples to applicants (1). For some biobanks and sample types, samples can even be returned after being used for research (2). There are biobanks storing non-human data, such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault or Australia’s Victorian Conservation Seedbank, which store viable seeds of many plant species and their various strains (3). Even within biomedical biobanks, they vary in the types of samples stored and by extension, their intended and fulfilled functions, as well as why they were built (4).There are disease-specific biobanks storing samples relevant to specific diseases; for example, a cardiovascular biobank that specialises in storing tissue immediately following a patient’s death, such that it can be used for physiological studies (2). However, this article will focus specifically on population biobanks, a subset of biomedical biobanks, in the context of disease investigation. Ethical issues surrounding biobanking will not be a major focus, including matters such as how sample donors provide consent for the use of their samples during research (4). Population biobanks store tissue samples, plus health and personal information of donors. Large sites have sample counts ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions (1). Population biobanks aim to have enough samples to represent the huge variation among a region or country’s population, and store many parameters of each sample donor, such as lifestyle data (e.g. cardiovascular disease or smoking status) and omics data (5). Biomedical scientists study many aspects of what goes on in human cells and tissues, down to the molecular level, due to their relevance for our understanding of disease. These factors include our genetic makeup, regulation and expression of genes, as well as the effects of environmental factors and metabolism (6). In such omics approaches, our existing knowledge of the complete set of genes in species such as humans allows information from an individual’s own genome to be generated and then compared or combined with data from other individuals. This gives rise to approaches such as genomics (concerning genes), proteomics (concerning proteins) and metabolomics (concerning molecules involved in metabolism). Large subsets of this data from individuals, as well as population-level variations associated with specific diseases, can be used for research. For example, the number of genes involved in cancer alone can easily exceed thousands (7). Large sample quantities allow researchers doing many different investigations to identify factors correlated with disease resistance and susceptibility to many diseases (1). This complements methods of investigating disease mechanisms involving specific genes and molecules by helping researchers identify candidate genes and molecules for further investigation. As a consequence, many samples in population biobanks are actually from healthy donors rather than hospital patients (5). Beyond providing samples, some of these large biobanks are also direct providers of omics data. While biobanks are not necessary for generating omics data from one or a few individuals, they enable the collection of data from enough samples to represent the diversity of the population and capture variants as rare as those in 0.1% of the population (6). Because of rigorous sample processing and quality control procedures standardised across biobanks, the omics data generated from samples collected by different biobanks can also be more easily combined by researchers to yield insights (1). Furthermore, as new higher-resolution biotechnology develops, they can be used to investigate samples collected in the past (1). For example, the UK biobank enrolled 500,000 participants for its first cohort in 2006, collecting blood, urine, and saliva samples, in addition to substantial lifestyle data and physical measurements for each participant (5). Though there is no flashy silver-bullet discovery like penicillin directly resulting from the biobank, it has greatly increased our knowledge of which genes and proteins to target when designing new drugs, along with which genetic variants increase our predisposition to a range of diseases, such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases (8). Population biobanks are huge, long-term investments. For example, funding from the UK government and various non-profits for the UK biobank have exceeded £90 million British Pounds from its inception to 2014 (1). Reasons for their construction include understanding the mechanisms of disease, translating research into interventions, improving health outcomes, and promoting biotechnology (1). Population biobanks that are able to effectively engage sample donors can generate population data to support research into diseases that most heavily affect a country (1). The majority of the world’s biobank datasets are still composed primarily of individuals with white Northern European ancestry (9), and using data from one population can be significantly less effective for identifying risk factors in another population. This limitation serves as a driver for developing countries to build their own population biobanks (9). Part of the reason most biobanks are built is to serve as a national public good, with data made accessible to both academic researchers at affordable rates and to industry researchers (1, 10). Large population biobanks are usually run as a public entity or as public-private partnerships with a large proportion of public funding (10). In fact, even with cost recovery measures that charge users for accessing biobank samples — often with higher rates for industry researchers — revenues still fall below operating costs (1). That said, biobanks create benefits beyond their own countries, and multinational collaborations have expanded their scale and reach (1), allowing researchers to access omics data and request samples from biobanks overseas. With biobanking infrastructures in place, multinational collaborations have emerged that facilitate data sharing between research institutions across different countries through consortia – formal collaborations between participating institutions that establish common research goals and reduce competition over the use of specialised facilities (11). In other words, they seek to minimise situations in which multiple research groups inadvertently work on the exact same project, leading to an inefficient allocation of resources. One example is the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC). This agreement creates a collaboration framework for data exchange in around 200 large-scale cancer research projects, with participating biobanks from Europe, China, Australia, USA, and other countries. Participating biobanks include large population biobanks, but also other types such as disease-specific biobanks (12). To finalise, biobanks are not simply a place where biological samples are stored. They are dynamic entities that can be scaled up and down, places where samples are sent in and out, and they face financial pressures as national research priorities change. They are places where innovation occurs in a wide range of areas, from cryostorage to management of digital information. The power of population biobanks and their research potential lies in their cohort sizes. Hopefully, biobanks will continue to generate valuable new discoveries as newly established cohorts around the world begin to mature. References Chalmers D, Nicol D, Kaye J. et al. Has the biobank bubble burst? Withstanding the challenges for sustainable biobanking in the digital era. BMC Med Ethics. 2016;17(1):39. doi:10.1186/s12910-016-0124-2. PMID: 27405974; PMCID: PMC4941036. Yamada, K.A., Patel, A.Y., Ewald, G.A. et al . How to Build an Integrated Biobank: The Washington University Translational Cardiovascular Biobank & Repository Experience. Clinical And Translational Science . 2013;6(3):226-231. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/cts.12032 Seed deposit at Doomsday Vault ensures Australia’s plant future. ABC News. 2018 Mar 1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-01/australia-makes-deposit-in-to-doomsday-vault-to-ensure-survival/9496308 De Souza, Yvonne G.; Greenspan, John S. Biobanking past, present and future: responsibilities and benefits. AIDS. 2013 ; 27(3):303-312. doi: 10.1097/QAD.0b013e32835c1244 Busby H, Martin P. Biobanks, national identity and imagined communities: The case of UK biobank. Science as Culture. 2006 Sep;15(3):237–51. doi:10.1080/09505430600890693 Murtagh, M.J., Demir, I., Harris, J.R. et al. Realizing the promise of population biobanks: a new model for translation. Hum Genet . 2011;130:333–345. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-011-1036-3 Ferolito BR, Dashti H, Giambartolomei C, Peloso GM, Golden DJ, Gravel-Pucillo K, et al. Leveraging large-scale biobanks for therapeutic target discovery. Human Genetics and Genomics Advances. 2026 Jan;7(1):100556. doi:10.1016/j.xhgg.2025.100556 Szustakowski JD, Balasubramanian S, Kvikstad E, Khalid S, Bronson PG, Sasson A, et al. Advancing human genetics research and drug discovery through exome sequencing of the UK Biobank. Nat Genet. 2021 Jul;53(7):942–8. doi:10.1038/s41588-021-00885-0 Rudan I, Marušić A, Campbell H. Developing biobanks in developing countries. J Glob Health. 2011 Jun;1(1):2–4. PubMed PMID: 23198094; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3484738. Caulfield T, Burningham S, Joly Y, Master Z, Shabani M, Borry P, et al. A review of the key issues associated with the commercialization of biobanks. Journal of Law and the Biosciences. 2014 Mar 1;1(1):94–110. doi:10.1093/jlb/lst004 Nature Index. 2021. How to be part of a research consortium. Available from: https://www.nature.com/nature-index/news/how-to-be-part-of-a-research-consortium Hudson (Chairperson) TJ, Anderson W, Aretz A, Barker AD, Bell C, Bernabé RR, et al. International network of cancer genome projects. Nature. 2010 Apr;464(7291):993–8. doi:10.1038/nature08987 Previous article back to Fact & Fiction Next article

< Back to Issue 10 Are Truths Possible Under AI? by Vanessa Cheng 2 June 2026 Illustrated by Saraf Ishmam Edited by Rita Fortune In the era of artificial intelligence (AI), humans are capable of generating wonders within seconds. Yet, isn’t it also destroying the sense of human intuition and authenticity that we are born with? The development of AI dates back to the pre-20th century when Jonathan Swift’s novel “Gulliver’s Travels” initially introduced the idea of an engine — a mechanical system used to assist the academics to generate new ideas. Throughout the 2000s, scientists have been continuously inventing “generations” of AI and discovering its applications. For instance, in 2000, MIT scientist Cynthia Breazeal invented a robot that interacts with humans, capable of reading emotional cues. In 2009, scientists at Northwestern University developed “Stats Monkey”, an engine capable of generating sports news stories without human intervention. Finally, throughout 2021 to 2023, OpenAI’s ChatGPT model DALL-E was introduced to society (1). It changed how we interpret information, how we communicate, and how we seek knowledge. Furthermore, the development of DALL-E 2 and 3 enabled us to generate visual content without traditional graphic skills. These models sparked debate surrounding ethics within the fields of politics and entertainment. On January 22, 2026, The White House posted a digitally altered photo of a woman arrested at the ICE protest, with her facial features appearing hysterical, sparking intense audience emotions (2). AI is no longer a tool, but rather a weapon with endless possibilities. The development of AI has the ability to fundamentally alter how we interact with reality. It changes how we understand knowledge and understand the world. New AI models, such as DALL-E 3, can generate hyperrealistic images, human-like texts, and even synthetic voices. Thus, the ways we can traditionally look for deception, such as hearing, seeing, and reading could no longer be a valid way of helping us understand the world. When we see something, we tend to believe that it exists; when we hear something, we assume that the voice is authentic. A photo is a proof of a scene, and our voice is our identity. However, AI disrupts this ancient relationship between how humans perceive information and reality. In fact, in Essay Concerning Human Understanding published in 1689 by the infamous philosopher John Locke, he pointed out that individuals typically understand reality through what they see and perceive, and that human knowledge originates from sensory experience (3). Our sensory experience becomes the foundation of truth itself. However, AI has disrupted this centuries old assumption. In a world where even emotions can be artificially generated, sensory perception does not guarantee authenticity. In his first text The Phenomenology of Perception , published in 1945, French philosopher Maurice Markeau-Ponty argues that human perception is our primary way of experiencing reality (4). However, with AI, traditional philosophical claims are threatened. In fact, in 2025, The New Yorker pointed out that AI models such as ChatGPT are becoming increasingly accurate in generating preferred text responses based on predictions of the user’s preference (5). Additionally, in some scientific fields, large language models predict patterns in brain activity. If such human things as thoughts, choices, and the very activity in our brains can be so easily manipulated by AI, we may have much less autonomy than we imagined. Our perceptions of reality are increasingly altered by these systems which we have created. The collapse of truth and our ability to trust our own sentences is leading to the collapse of humanity's free will. This dramatic change in how humans think and behave sparks further discussion on how we should view the ethics of AI. According to the Harvard Division of Continuing Education, AI systems raise significant ethical concerns regarding privacy, transparency, and accountability (6). Algorithms may inherit political biases and social inequalities within the training data scientists “feed” to the model. The development of deepfake images and synthetic voices not only creates ethical concerns surrounding misinformation, but also the erosion of social trust. The article also highlights the importance of “transparency and explainability”. Without transparency, AI risks being a “black-box” system in which “responses” that affect how humans live and make decisions are made through processes that cannot be fully explained by professionals (6). During the US-Iran War, AI has again been used as a weapon to manipulate public opinion and emotions. AI was used to generate videos and images of the Iran War that attracted millions of views, and these were used to make misleading claims about the conflict. For instance, BBC detected that a video of missiles striking the city of Tel Aviv in Israel, with sounds of explosions, was AI-generated (7). Timothy Graham, a digital media expert at the Queensland University of Technology, pointed out that “the scale [of AI generated videos] is truly alarming and this war has made it impossible to ignore now” (7). Mahsa Alimardani, a researcher specialising in Iran at the Oxford Internet Institute, also claimed that “fake videos like these have a detrimental impact on people's trust in the verified information they see online and make it much harder to document real evidence” (7). Moreover, AI doesn’t stop with just misleading humans in their daily life. The increasingly military adoption of the use of AI is concerning. On the morning of 28th February 2026, American army forces struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, a girls elementary school in southern Iran, and killed between 175 to 180 people, with most of them girls aged between 7 to 12 years old. What is the most shocking point is that the American forces blame this strike on a decision made by Claude, a chatbot by Anthropic, which selected the school as a target. In fact, as early as 2024, the US Department of War already outlined how the American forces have been adopting the AI-powered Maven Smart System to help soldiers identify and strike military targets (8, 9, 10). While supporters argue that such systems could improve efficiency, critics warn that delegating life-and-death decisions of hundreds of people should not be risked through allowing algorithms to make such decisions. The growing militarisation of AI also raises other ethical issues, such as who should take responsibility for such an action – the programmer, the commander, or AI? Ultimately, the danger of AI lies not only in its potential to “replace human brains”, but also in its ability to fabricate truth, challenging and reshaping centuries of respected philosophical beliefs. AI’s capacity to distance humans from taking moral responsibilities for their actions is also extremely concerning. Now, can you still believe your eyes and ears? What is the truth? Is truth even possible? References IBM. The History of Artificial Intelligence . IBM Think. https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/history-of-artificial-intelligence The Guardian. First Thing: White House posts digitally altered image of woman arrested after ICE protest . The Guardian. 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/23/first-thing-white-house-posts-digitally-altered-image-arrested-woman-ice-protest Locke J. John Locke . In: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy . https://iep.utm.edu/locke-kn/ Merleau-Ponty M. The Phenomenology of Perception . In: EBSCO Research Starters . https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/literature-and-writing/phenomenology-perception-maurice-merleau-ponty Somers J. The Case That A.I. Is Thinking . The New Yorker. 2025. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/11/10/the-case-that-ai-is-thinking ( newyorker.com ) Lizzie S. Harvard Division of Continuing Education. Ethics in AI: Why It Matters . Harvard Professional & Executive Development. 2026. https://professional.dce.harvard.edu/blog/ethics-in-ai-why-it-matters/ ( professional.dce.harvard.edu ) BBC News. AI-generated Iran war videos surge as creators use new tech to cash in . BBC News. 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg8wvz427vo Amaral N. The Iran war highlights the creeping use of AI in warfare . Chatham House. 2026. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/03/iran-war-highlights-creeping-use-ai-warfare Baker KT. AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying . The Guardian. 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blame-for-the-iran-school-bombing-the-truth-is-far-more-worrying The Week. Could the Iran war pop the AI bubble? The Week. 2026. https://theweek.com/world-news/iran-war-ai-artificial-intelligence-bubble-collapse Previous article back to Fact & Fiction Next article

< Back to Issue 10 To Prevent Climate Catastrophe, Keep Reading by Madeleine Kelly 2 June 2026 Illustrated by Kylie Wang Edited by Nushi Singh SPOILERS AHEAD: The Ministry for the Future, Strange World You’d be forgiven for thinking the world is ending. I’ve thought it’s happening too. As a climate science student who has left lectures in tears and had to put a cap on how many times I check the news, I often feel anxious for what the future will hold. What really frustrates me though, is that when I sit down to tune out the horrors, I’m presented with the same looming catastrophe in books and movies. Ecological collapse, war, deadly diseases and extreme weather events not only dominate our daily headlines, but also our entertainment. The way we imagine the future in fiction is too often bleak and dystopian. Stories like 1984 , The Hunger Games or The Handmaid’s Tale predict a future where ecological collapse has led to oppressive control by totalitarian governments (1, 2, 3). In Mad Max and Waterworld it has left us hunting each other for sport (4, 5). Eco-fascists destroy worlds in Snowpiercer (6) ; sea level rise has inundated Melbourne’s poorest in The Sea and Summer (7); and collective inaction leads to the literal end of the world in Don’t Look Up (8). Everywhere you look, the apocalypse is inescapable. Even comical stories like Sharknado forecast that devastating climate change is inevitable and will leave humanity scrambling to survive (9). We can’t catch a break. If this is all we can tell of our future, then this is cause for concern. Stories are more than just entertainment – they have real world impact. Science fiction, in particular, has already changed the world countless times over. Video phone calls, automatic sliding doors and self-driving cars are amongst the dozens of inventions inspired by the words and worlds of science fiction (10). Fiction can also influence and act as a warning of political and social systems. Cyberpunk as a genre anticipated worlds defined by mass surveillance, corporate greed and societal decay – all of which you can find inside a Coles supermarket today. Stories can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Warnings are all well and good to raise awareness, but when it comes to the climate crisis, we certainly don’t need any more catastrophising. Climate change is recognised as a serious threat to mental health, with eco-anxiety on the rise, especially amongst young people (11,12). In 2021, a survey found that 75% of young people believe the future is “frightening” and more than 50% felt “helpless and powerless” (13). For some, this can encourage them to engage in climate action (14), but for others it can be debilitating. Severe eco-anxiety has been linked to a feeling coined ‘eco-paralysis’, where individuals are too overwhelmed to take action on climate change (15, 16). Disaster and dystopian stories have, ironically, aided this rise of eco-anxiety and inaction. The Day After Tomorrow (2004), arguably the most famous piece of climate fiction, is set in a near future where the North Atlantic Oceanic current has broken down due to climate change, shepherding in an ice age that freezes over New York City (17). While the movie increased awareness and concern over climate change, research found it left audiences unsure of how to act and scared for the future (18, 19). With our crippled imagination for optimistic alternatives, we’re left stranded in the dystopia, watching helplessly as our future is swept away by Sharknado. We need to rewrite the script. Solarpunk, an emerging sci-fi subgenre and social movement, is trying to do just that. Solarpunk stories reject the doomism and imagine futures where humanity has succeeded in warding off devastating climate change. They include stories like Disney’s Strange World where humanity swaps an unsustainable fuel source for renewable energy (20), as well as stories like Arco and A Psalm for the Wild Built where we rely only on green technology, live within our means and rewild most of the planet (21, 22). What makes solarpunk stories so compelling is that they don’t shy away from showing how complex the problem is and how difficult system change can be. The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson centres around an organisation that is formed to protect the rights of future generations from climate change (23). Using different perspectives and writing styles, Robinson explains the science of climate change and the complicated world of climate economics and policy. He illustrates just how much needs to be changed, but without overwhelm. The story does not leave you eco-paralysed. Instead, it acts as a roadmap showing all the possible pathways to a sustainable future. In taking these actions, we not only address climate change, but also the social inequalities that are intertwined with it. The energy transition is complete, and a successful and equitable restructuring of the global economy has abolished billionaires. It’s a future we can look forward to. At their core, solarpunk stories have hope. A realistic hope that we can achieve a sustainable future using the tools we already have. We need this right now, because hope is incredibly useful in inspiring and navigating change. People with higher levels of hope are generally better equipped to navigate traumatic or stressful circumstances (24). Hopeful people are also more likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviour. One study of more than 500 high school students found that students who felt hopeful about the future were more likely to engage in sustainable behaviours (25). While a number of students also exhibited eco-anxiety, the study concluded that hope was the stronger predictor for actually taking action. If dystopian stories are becoming a self-fulling prophecy, I’m willing to bet – and science is too – that if we tell them, the same could be true for stories of ecological and societal care. The main challenge here is that these stories remain niche. Like most climate fiction, they often only circulate within audiences already concerned about environmental issues, rather than reaching people who are disengaged from or hostile towards climate action (26). This is precisely why these stories need to become more visible. To normalise this future, more of us need to be creating and consuming solarpunk stories. Preventing the climate apocalypse requires you to pick up a book or watch a movie. The stories we tell today shape the world we build tomorrow. So, let them be stories of hope. References Orwell G. 1984 . Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd; 1949. Collins S. The Hunger Games . Scholastic Press; 2008. Atwood M. The Handmaid’s Tale . McClelland & Stewart; 1985. Miller G. Mad Max . Roadshow Film Distributors; 1979. Reynolds K. Waterworld . Universal Pictures; 1995. Ho BJ. Snowpiercer . CJ Entertainment; 2013. Turner G. The Sea and Summer. Faber & Faber; 1987. McKay A. Don’t Look Up . Netflix; 2021. Ferrante AC. Sharknado . The Asylum and Syfy Films; 2013. BBC News. Science fact: Sci-fi inventions that became reality. 2016. Accessed May 24 2026. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38026393 Clayton S, Karazsia BT. Development and validation of a measure of climate change anxiety. Journal of Environmental Psychology . 2020;69:101434. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101434 Passmore H, Lutz PK, Howell AJ. Eco-Anxiety: A Cascade of Fundamental Existential Anxieties. Journal of Constructivist Psychology . 2020;36(2):138-153. doi:10.1080/10720537.2022.2068706 Hickman C, Marks E, Pihkala P, et al. Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey. Lancet Planet Health . 2021;5:e863-73. doi: 10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00278-3 Verplanken B, Marks E, Dobromir AI. On the nature of eco-anxiety: How constructive or unconstructive is habitual worry about global warming? Journal of Environmental Psychology . 2020;72:101528. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101528 Innocenti M, Santarelli G, Lombardi GS, et al. How Can Climate Change Anxiety Induce Both Pro-Environmental Behaviours and Eco-Paralysis? The Mediating Role of General Self-Efficacy. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health . 2023;20(4):3085. doi:10.3390/ijerph20043085 Leger-Goodes T, Malboeuf-Hurtubise C, Mastine T, Généreux M, Paradis P, Camden C. Eco-anxiety in children: A scoping review of the mental health impacts of the awareness of climate change. Frontiers in Psychology . 2022;13:872544. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.872544 Emmerich R. The Day After Tomorrow . 20th Century Fox; 2004. Svoboda, M. The lingering influence of ‘Day After Tomorrow’. Yale Climate Connections. 2014. Accessed May 24 2026. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2014/11/the-long-melt-the-lingering-influence-of-the-day-after-tomorrow/ Lowe T, Brown K, Dessai S, Doria MF, Haynes K, Vincent K. Does tomorrow ever come? Disaster narrative and public perceptions of climate change. Public Understanding of Science . 2006;15(4):435-457. doi:10.1177/0963662506063796 Hall D. Strange World . Walt Disney Studios and Motion Pictures; 2022. Bienvenu U. Arco . Diaphana Distribution; 2025. Chambers B. A Psalm for the Wild Built . Tor Books; 2021. Robinson KS. The Ministry for the Future . Orbit Books; 2021. Ritschel LA, Cassiello-Robbons C. Hope and depression and personality disorders. Current Opinion in Psychology . 2023;49:101507. doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101507 Finnegan W. Educating for hope and action competence: a study of secondary school students and teachers in England. Environmental Education Research . 2022;29:1617-1636. doi:10.1080/13504622.2022.2120963 Schneider-Mayerson M. The Influence of Climate Fiction: An Empirical Survey of Readers. Environmental Humanities . 2018;10(2):473-500. doi: 10.1215/22011919-7156848 Previous article back to Fact & Fiction Next article

< Back to Issue 10 Unpacking Myths: Distortions of Sex Differences in Popular Culture by Vicenta Wheatley 2 June 2026 Illustrated by Jessica Walton Edited by Han Chong Open TikTok, scroll through Reddit, or fall down a Youtube rabbit hole about dating and relationships, and you will almost certainly encounter a familiar set of claims: men are biologically wired to seek young, fertile women, while women are evolutionarily programmed to prefer high-status providers. These preferences are presented as universal, ancient, and essentially fixed. The studies cited are real, and the researchers exist, yet something crucial gets lost between the data that differentiates a statistical pattern from a universal truth. This is not simply a story about misunderstanding science. In some cases, simplified narratives about attraction may be actively reinforced because they are commercially effective (1). Dating platforms, for example, operate within engagement driven systems where presenting certain patterns such as “younger is more desirable” can increase competition, user activity, and in some cases subscription behaviour. Whether intentional or not, the result is the same: complex research is translated into persuasive but incomplete stories about how men and women are supposed to be. To understand how distortion happens, it helps to first understand what the science actually says, because the research is more careful and more interesting than its popular reputation suggests. Evolutionary psychology does not claim that all men and women behave identically, but instead it identifies probabilistic patterns shaped by millions of years of reproductive pressures. The key thing to note here is that these are tendencies, not rules, and they come with enormous individual variation. The question, then, is not whether differences exist, but how they are interpreted, and why that interpretation so often becomes simplified the moment it enters public discourse. What the Science Actually Says Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain certain human behaviours through the lens of reproductive adaptation. At its core is the idea that psychological tendencies, much like physical traits, may have evolved because they increased reproductive success in ancestral environments. One of the field’s most influential frameworks is the sexual selection theory first proposed by Charles Darwin, suggesting that traits linked to mate competition and mate choice become more common over generations. From this perspective, evolutionary psychologists argue that men and women may, on average, display somewhat different mating preferences due to asymmetries in parental investment (2). Figure 1 . Average importance ratings of partner characteristics across male and female participants in romantic and sexual attraction contexts. While average sex differences appear in some traits, substantial overlap remains between groups. Adapted from (3). Since women have historically faced greater biological costs associated with reproduction through pregnancy, childbirth and, for most of human history, primary infant care, the parental investment theory predicts that women may place greater emphasis on stability, commitment, and resources when selecting long-term partners. Men, in contrast, may be somewhat more likely to prioritise cues associated with fertility and reproductive health, such as youth and physical attractiveness (Fig. 1). Research in this area is not purely speculative, nor was it invented by a podcast host holding a microphone the size of a small telescope. In a widely cited 1989 cross-cultural study spanning 37 societies, evolutionary psychologist David Buss found that women consistently rated financial prospects and ambition as more important in long-term partners, while men placed greater emphasis on youth and attractiveness (4). Subsequent studies have identified similar broad patterns across cultures, lending support to the idea that some mating preferences may have evolutionary roots (5). Yet the popular interpretation of these findings is usually far more rigid than the research itself. Let’s be clear, evolutionary psychologists do not argue that all men pursue casual relationships, nor that all women seek wealthy providers. The differences observed are statistical averages across populations, not fixed scripts handed out at birth. In reality, the overlap between men and women is substantial, and human attraction is shaped by a dense interaction of biology, personality, culture, upbringing, social norms, economic conditions, and individual experience. Let’s also remember that humans exhibit mutual mate choice, meaning both sexes tend to value qualities such as kindness, intelligence, emotional stability and loyalty among others, particularly in long term relationships. The science, in other words, is far more nuanced and probabilistic than its online afterlife often suggests. When Research Becomes Content Once these findings leave academic journals, however, they often undergo a dramatic simplification. On social media platforms, dating podcasts, YouTube commentary channels, and algorithm-driven feeds, probabilistic patterns are frequently reframed as fixed biological truths. For instance, a statistical tendency for men, on average, to prioritise youth in certain contexts becomes the sweeping claim that women inevitably “lose value” with age, which is usually accompanied by a graph created from non-peer-reviewed data, a ring light, and enough confidence to make one briefly forget what a sample bias is. Findings about short-term mating strategies are transformed into declarations that men are biologically incapable of monogamy. The context and variation embedded within the original research are gradually stripped away and replaced with narratives that are far easier to package into viral content. Part of the appeal of these narratives lies in their simplicity. We all know human relationships are emotionally messy and socially complicated, but biological explanations can sometimes offer the illusion of certainty. Algorithms further intensify this process by rewarding emotionally charged claims that provoke engagement. Nuance rarely performs as well online as confidence does. A creator who states that attraction is shaped by a complex interaction of evolutionary, social, and cultural influences is unlikely to generate the same reaction as someone confidently declaring that “men are just wired this way” while speaking in a podcast. In this sense, the distortion of scientific findings is not always accidental. Simplified biological narratives are highly marketable because they are easily understood and capable of reinforcing existing insecurities. Within digital dating ecosystems, where apps and influencers often profit from continued dissatisfaction and competition, there may even be incentives to amplify narratives that encourage users to constantly optimise themselves in the pursuit of desirability. Dating app data provides a particularly striking example of how this process unfolds. OkCupid user data is frequently circulated online to support the claim that men of all ages overwhelmingly prefer women in their early twenties, with stronger aggregate attention toward younger women (Fig. 2b); while female preference patterns appear to remain relatively age-aligned. These visualisations are often interpreted in a highly deterministic way, stripped of their behavioural and contextual limitations. In particular, messaging and preference data from dating platforms reflect engagement patterns within an insular digital environment rather than stable or universal mate preferences. Despite this, such findings are repeatedly circulated as evidence of fixed biological tendencies. Figure 3. Distribution of age differences in unmarried/cohabitant straight couples within the U.S. Age disparity between male-to-female is displayed in years on the x-axis, while frequency of couple age gap is shown as a percentage on the y-axis. Data compiled from U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Adapted from (7). Messaging behaviour on dating apps does not necessarily reflect long-term compatibility or actual partner selection. When broader relationship outcomes are considered, this interpretation becomes less stable. Age differences in real-world couples are generally modest, with most partnerships clustering around relatively small age gaps (Fig. 3). Marriage and cohabitation data, for instance, show far smaller age gaps than viral internet discourse might imply. Nor do these datasets capture the influence of culture, social expectations, or the fact that attraction itself is highly multidimensional. The issue, then, is not that the original research is fabricated, but that selective interpretations become amplified to the point that statistical tendencies are reframed as fixed biological determinism. The Social Cost of Simplified Science The distortion of these findings matters because biological explanations rarely stay confined to academic discussion. Once ideas about attraction and sex differences enter popular culture, they begin shaping real expectations about relationships and personal value. Claims that men are biologically programmed to prioritise youth, for example, are often interpreted less as statistical observations and more as warnings directed at women. Entire online industries have emerged around this premise, from female value discourse to anti-ageing products marketed with thinly veiled evolutionary language. Exposure to enough of this content can encourage the perception that desirability functions like a countdown, reinforced by highly persuasive and aggressive marketing frameworks. What makes these narratives particularly persuasive is their association with science . Most people are not reading evolutionary psychology papers directly, nor are they spending their evenings analysing sample sizes and methodological limitations for fun. Instead, findings are filtered down through influencers, dating coaches, podcasts, and viral clips that present contested or nuanced ideas with remarkable certainty. Once a claim is framed as biological, it can become harder to critique because it appears rooted in nature itself rather than social interpretation. Statements such as “men are naturally non monogamous” or “women are wired to seek providers” can gradually shift from descriptive claims about averages into prescriptive assumptions about how people should behave. In this way, scientific language can end up reinforcing existing gender norms while giving them the appearance of inevitability. These narratives affect all genders, albeit in different ways. Men are increasingly told that their value depends on wealth, height, status, confidence, and sexual success, while emotional vulnerability is framed as weakness. Women, meanwhile, are frequently confronted with narratives suggesting that desirability peaks in their early twenties before declining with age; encouraging constant self-monitoring through beauty routines, cosmetic procedures, anti-ageing products, and pressure to remain attractive within increasingly narrow standards. However, while rising engagement with cosmetic procedures is often linked to these cultural narratives, this relationship is likely multifactorial rather than singular in origin. An increased access to minimally invasive treatments, changing medical norms around cosmetic enhancement, and broader social media exposure all plausibly contribute to these trends, alongside the influence of appearance-focused cultural messaging. For instance, reports indicate a substantial rise in cosmetic procedures among younger age groups in recent years (8,9), and while these figures cannot be attributed to a single causal driver, they are nonetheless consistent with environments in which aesthetic pressure and visibility have increased. Taken together, this suggests a complex interaction between cultural narratives, medical technology, and evolving aesthetic norms, where expectations about attractiveness may play a meaningful reinforcing role. Research into human attraction and sex differences can offer valuable insight into broad behavioural patterns, but those findings are frequently distorted once they enter popular culture. Probabilistic trends in mating preferences and behaviour are often repackaged into rigid truths about how men and women supposedly are. In an online environment that rewards certainty over nuance, scientific literacy matters more than ever for not only understanding the research itself, but for recognising when complex findings are being simplified into something far more prescriptive than they were ever intended to be. References Brady WJ, Wills JA, Jost JT, Tucker JA, Van Bavel JJ. Emotions shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017;114(28):73138. doi:10.1073/pnas.1618923114 Trivers, R. Parental investment and sexual selection. In: Campbell B, editor. Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man . Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company; 1972. P.136-79 Scheller M, de Sousa AA, Brotto LA, Little AC. The role of sexual and romantic attraction in human mate preferences. J Sex Res. 2023. doi:10.1080/00224499.2023.2176811 Buss, D. Sex differences in human mate preferences: evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Behav Brain Sci . 1989;12(1):1-14. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00023992 Thomas AH, Jonason PK, Blackburn JD, Kennair LEO, Lowe R, Malouff JM, et al. Mate preference priorities in the East and West: a cross cultural test of the mate preference priority model. J Pers. 2020;88(3):606-20. doi:10.1111/jopy.12514 Rudder C. Dataclysm: Who we are (when we think no one’s looking). New York: Crown; 2014. Kamenov A. Age disparities in relationships: statistics. City-Data Blog; 2020. https://www.city-data.com/blog/2620-age-disparity/ CNN Health. Surge in cosmetic procedures among young people. 2024 Jan 16. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/16/health/young-cosmetic-procedures Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Gen Z driving increase in cosmetic injectables. 2026 Feb 28. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-28/gen-z-driving-boost-cosmetic-injectables/106258646 Previous article back to Fact & Fiction Next article