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May 13, 2026

‘Poverty porn’: the moral dilemma behind MrBeast’s billion-dollar empire

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Paul Formosa, Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Macquire University Ethics & Agency Research Centre, Macquarie University

Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, runs the most subscribed-to YouTube channel in the world (with 484 million subscribers) and has an estimated net worth of US$2.6 billion.

He is also a prominent philanthropist. Beyond his involvement in fundraising initiatives such as #TeamTrees, which claims to have planted more than 24 million trees worldwide, Donaldson runs a dedicated Beast Philanthropy YouTube channel.

He claims 100% of profits from this channel’s ad revenue, merch sales and sponsorships go towards helping others. This has included paying for 1,000 cataract surgeries, constructing a medical clinic for children rescued from slavery, and building 100 wells to provide clean water in Africa.

These impressive philanthropic endeavours have dramatically improved the lives of their recipients. How could any of this be controversial?

The murky ethics of ‘stunt philanthropy’

Many of Donaldson’s videos involve subjecting people to what might be seen as degrading or exploitative situations, in exchange for money.

In Donaldson’s “Ages 1 – 100 Decide Who Wins $250,000” video, contestants (including young children) are put in an intense competitive structure and forced to eliminate one another. We see a grown man help to intentionally eliminate an 11-year-old girl, which leads to her sobbing on camera.

In another video, he tells a random group of shoppers they will win US$250,000 if they are the last to leave the store. Under pressure to stay, they are kept from their families and forced to endure poor living conditions, with some experiencing emotional breakdowns.

These videos have been labelled by various critics as “poverty porn”, as they could be seen as exploiting the desperation of vulnerable people to generate clicks and ad revenue.

The Beast Games reality series, which airs on Prime Video, is also built around challenges designed to provoke contestants into backstabbing one another, experiencing emotional distress, and revealing depressing stories about how badly they need the money.

Allegations against Donaldson also extend to behind the scenes, particularly in regards to the culture of work in his companies.

In 2024, several contestants who took part in Beast Games filed a lawsuit against Donaldson’s MrB2024 and other companies involved in the production. They allege they were subject to “chronic mistreatment”, including the infliction of emotional distress, inadequate food and rest breaks, delays in receiving medication, exposure to dangerous conditions, and a failure to prevent sexual harassment.

More recently, a former Beast Industries employee sued two of Donaldson’s production companies after suffering alleged sexual harassment and gender bias at work.

You can’t morally offset exploitation of people

When it comes to assessing the ethics of Donaldson’s work, one option is to take a simple “consequentialist” perspective. Act consequentialism is the view that the right action is the one which leads to the most amount of good.

If a few people suffer exploitative conditions so many more people can enjoy life-saving surgery, then the moral calculus is likely to come out in favour of this situation. Of course, there are longstanding philosophical worries with such a view.

The 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant argued it is wrong to use others as tools to achieve our own ends, even if our ends are morally admirable. Treating some people as mere means right now can’t be morally justified by promising to help others later on.

According to Kant, one’s motives for helping others are also important, and the moral worth of an action is determined by these motives. So helping others out of a sense of duty has a moral worth that doing the same act out of self-interest does not.

Is Donaldson’s philanthropy motivated by duty and care for others, or by clicks, esteem and ad-revenue? Or perhaps both?

We can’t know the answer. Although, Kant himself did believe all humans are likely to be morally corrupt at the very root of their character.

Consent and power

Irrespective of Donaldson’s motives, a broader point remains: his philanthropic videos are an integral part of his overall brand. The philanthropy helps to make the other, more exploitative videos (and the significant revenues they generate) more “morally palatable”.

After all, Donaldson could simply give his money away. He doesn’t need to make people compete, scheme and suffer for it.

One might counter that the participants have consented to being involved. But when you offer people in economically vulnerable situations potentially life-changing amounts of money to endure degrading conditions, the “voluntariness” becomes contestable.

This is not what ethicists consider “informed consent”. The offer can be so large that it clouds judgement. And for people without genuine alternatives, saying “no” may not be a realistic option.

The fact that Donaldson sometimes subjects himself to similar treatment, such as when he buried himself alive for seven days, deepens rather than lessens the worry, given the power asymmetries at play. He owns the production company, controls the conditions, and profits from the content in ways other participants do not.

The underlying structural concerns

When political problems, such as poverty, or a lack of access to healthcare or clean water, are reduced to entertainment, they undergo a form of what scholars call “depoliticisation”. Political failures that demand collective action, institutional reform and democratic deliberation instead become fodder for entertainment.

If we think we can help solve these problems just by watching viral videos, then we can avoid facing the structural issues that underpin them.

Paul Formosa has received funding from the Australian Research Council, and Meta (Facebook)

– ref. ‘Poverty porn’: the moral dilemma behind MrBeast’s billion-dollar empire – https://theconversation.com/poverty-porn-the-moral-dilemma-behind-mrbeasts-billion-dollar-empire-282050

May 13, 2026

370 billion crickets are farmed for food every year. Scientists have discovered they may feel pain

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Thomas White, Associate Professor, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

House Cricket (_Acheta domesticus_). mani_raab/iNaturalist, CC BY-NC

You’re cooking dinner, distracted, and your hand brushes a hot pan. Nerve signals race to your spinal cord and back to yank your arm away in a fraction of a second, with no thought required.

Then comes the pain. A sharp, spreading sting gives way to a pulsing ache, and you cradle your hand and run it under cold water until it subsides. That felt experience is distinct from the reflex that preceded it. While the reflex moved your body out of danger, pain drives you to protect the wound, recover, and learn to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

We readily accept that other people feel pain by reading cues in their behaviour, like the inspection and nursing of an injury. We extend this to some animals too – a dog licking its paw or a cat favouring a limb rightly stir our sympathies. But what happens when we turn that lens on animals far less like us?

In our new study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, we searched for behavioural signs of pain in house crickets, one of the most widely farmed insects. After applying heat to an antenna, we found that crickets didn’t just reflexively flinch and recover. They nursed the harm, returning again and again to groom the affected site, much as we rub a burned hand.

The frontiers of feeling

French philosopher René Descartes considered animals unfeeling biological machines, and for centuries the circle of moral concern barely extended beyond our own species.

But the boundaries have steadily crept outward. Recognition that mammals experience pain came first, followed by birds. Fish too, once assumed to lack the necessary brain structures, are now widely accepted as capable of pain-like states.

The leap into invertebrates has been greater and more contentious. Their nervous systems bear little resemblance to our own, so arguments from brain anatomy alone don’t carry us far. Instead, we look to behaviour. Does the animal respond to harm in ways that go beyond reflex, ways that are flexible, persistent, and sensitive to context?

Over the past decade, testable indicators for pain in non-humans have been developed and are increasingly accepted. These include learning from unpleasant events, trading off harms against rewards, and actively protecting the site of injury. Evidence meeting these criteria helped crabs and lobsters gain legal recognition as sentient under United Kingdom law in 2022.

Among insects, the evidence has been accumulating fast. Yet most of this evidence comes from bees. Bumblebees weigh the risk of harm against the richness of a food reward, and groom the site of an injury. Honeybees learn to associate particular smells with harmful stimuli and avoid them.

Far less attention has been paid to Orthoptera, the group that includes grasshoppers, locusts and crickets. That gap matters, because the house cricket (Acheta domesticus) is the world’s most widely farmed insect, with more than 370 billion reared annually.

A large warehouse, divided into separate pens, each filled with thousands of crickets. — A cricket farm in Thailand.
Afton Halloran

Do crickets feel pain?

We tested 40 male and 40 female crickets, each experiencing three conditions in random order: a hot probe to a single antenna (65°C, to activate damage receptors but not cause lasting injury), the same probe unheated, or no contact at all.

We filmed their behaviour for ten minutes. Observers scoring the footage did not know which treatment any animal had received.

The results were clear. After the hot probe, crickets were more than twice as likely to groom the affected antenna compared to controls, and spent roughly four times longer doing so.

Could this simply reflect general disturbance rather than targeted care? Unlikely: grooming was directed specifically at the heated side, not spread evenly across both antennae as it was after gentle touch or no contact.

And the behaviour wasn’t a brief, reflexive reaction. It was elevated from the outset and tapered gradually over minutes, much like rubbing a burned hand as the felt sting slowly fades.

Small minds, big feelings

Subjective experience cannot be directly observed in any animal, not even humans.

But we have shown crickets respond to harm in a way that satisfies a key criterion many scientists and philosophers use to infer pain: flexible, directed self-protection. Combined with the knowledge that crickets possess damage receptors, can learn to avoid harms, and respond less to injury under morphine, the weight of evidence for an inner life is growing.

The practical stakes are real. Hundreds of billions of farmed insects are slaughtered each year by freezing, boiling and baking. Pesticides kill trillions more, optimised for lethality with no consideration of potential suffering.

If we take a precautionary approach, credible evidence of suffering should motivate proportionate protections well before we are certain.

Insects have been around for more than 400 million years and are far more behaviourally and cognitively sophisticated than once assumed. The question, then, may not be whether some insects feel, but why we ever assumed they couldn’t.

Thomas White receives funding from The Australian Research Council, the Arthropoda Foundation, and The Australia and Pacific Science Foundation. He is a scientific advisor for the registered charity Invertebrates Australia.

Kate Lynch receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Arthropoda Foundation, and the Australia & Pacific Science Foundatio. She has previously received funding fromand the John Templeton Foundation.

– ref. 370 billion crickets are farmed for food every year. Scientists have discovered they may feel pain – https://theconversation.com/370-billion-crickets-are-farmed-for-food-every-year-scientists-have-discovered-they-may-feel-pain-279855

May 12, 2026

Your local storm forecast is likely based on weather miles away – mesonets can help bridge that gap

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Chris Vagasky, Meteorologist and Research Program Manager, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Weather apps might see that a storm is coming, but mesonets capture what’s happening as it arrives with local real-time data. Patrick Emerson/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Whether you’re planning a weekend hike, deciding what to wear to work or preparing your home for severe storms, the weather forecast is essential. You might instinctively grab your smartphone and check an app for an instant weather update.

But how many times have you looked at your app, only to step outside and see the sky painting a different picture than what’s on your screen?

As a meteorologist who operates a weather station network in Wisconsin, I’ve heard many of the same cliches time and again: “The weatherman is always wrong!” “Just wait five minutes and the weather will be different!”

Before you blame the local forecasters, let’s talk about where the data in your weather app comes from, and why it might not always show what you expect. It’s why my colleagues and I are working to bring forecast data closer to home.

The nuts and bolts of weather forecasting

Earth is huge. It has a diameter of 7,926 miles (12,756 kilometers) at the equator and has 62 miles (100 kilometers) of atmosphere overhead.

If you want a perfect weather forecast, you will have to precisely measure every molecule of the atmosphere, land and water, and perfectly predict how they will interact with each other for the next minute, day or week. This is, of course, physically impossible.

Instead, scientists run computer models. These models take the observations we do have and simulate the weather on a large scale to a remarkable degree of accuracy. In fact, storm track forecasts from the National Hurricane Center were among its best ever in 2025, and forecasts using machine learning are starting to improve those forecasts even further.

These models are hungry for data. Supercomputers ingest measurements from satellites, weather balloons, Doppler radar, lightning detection networks, buoys, surface weather stations and other measurement platforms to solve the equations that provide weather predictions.

When you open your phone, your weather app isn’t doing the meteorology – it’s just showing the output of the model’s calculations. Even though they generally aren’t tailored by a local meteorologist, these short-term forecasts are usually pretty good. But they could be better.

All weather is local

You’ve probably seen it before: It’s raining on one side of the street and not on the other. You flip on the news to see the nearest airport received an inch of rain, but your garden is dry.

There are more than 2,500 airports in the United States with weather stations, which is where much of the weather data shared on TV and online is collected. But for many people, the closest airport is more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) away. This is especially true in rural areas.

A map shows large gaps in many states, particularly across the West but also in large parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri and Arkansas, as well as regions of the Northeast. — All of the areas in green are more than 20 miles from an airport weather station. In many cases, that means they’re 20 miles or farther from the weather observations feeding their local forecasts.
Chris Vagasky

Because of the chaotic nature of weather, the only way to truly know what’s happening in your yard is to measure the weather in your yard. But not everyone is interested in installing a rain gauge or personal weather station.

Filling the gaps

To bridge this gap, many states and universities have established local weather station networks called mesonets – short for mesoscale networks, meaning intermediate scale. These weather stations are installed in locations to ensure everyone in the state is within 20 miles of the nearest station.

Nationally, there are nearly 3,000 mesonet stations installed in 38 states, with more networks planned.

Like the weather stations at airports, mesonets measure things like air temperature and relative humidity, air pressure, rainfall or melted snow, and wind speed and direction – often every five minutes.

Many mesonets collect additional data such as soil moisture levels to help farmers. Some even have camera images updated every five minutes to show current weather conditions. Mesonet data is then shared through websites or direct data transmission so that the public, weather forecasters and researchers can easily access it.

I lead the team at Wisconet, a new mesonet that just finished installing 78 weather stations across Wisconsin. Our stations are installed on 10-foot-tall (3-meter) tripods in open areas near orchards and cranberry marshes, farms and airfields, schools and other educational centers, and on city, state and federally owned lands.

A tall tripod with various weather equipment and a solar panel for power. — Wisconet weather stations, like this one in Amery, Wisc., provide local weather data for areas where forecasts used to be based on what was happening many miles away.
Caitlin Wienkes, Wisconet

These added weather stations are already proving useful. On Aug. 18, 2025, slow-moving thunderstorms moved over a Wisconet station, with more than 3 inches of rain falling in just a couple of hours. The National Weather Service was able to issue a flash flood warning for the area because of the data provided by that station.

In addition to providing a near-real-time snapshot of the local weather, mesonets help farmers decide when to run irrigation systems, spray pesticides or plant crops. They also help provide better weather warnings, particularly when tornadoes and other storms intensify over small areas that farther-away weather stations would miss.

A nationwide network of networks

Because of the immense value of high-frequency weather and soil measurements, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration leads a National Mesonet Program. The program collects weather data from public, private and academic sources, validates the quality of the data, and ensures it flows to users, including the National Weather Service. National Weather Service forecasters use that data to make more timely and accurate severe weather warnings.

Congress is considering expanding that program, with legislation proposed in the House and the Senate. The bills aim to authorize $50 million to $70 million annually to the National Mesonet Program between 2026 and 2030 to improve and expand mesonets across the country. An expansion would mean more weather stations and new capabilities, like real-time snowfall, fire weather and air quality measurements, closer to the people who rely on them.

So the next time you check your smartphone and grumble because the app doesn’t match the weather in your backyard, remember that all weather is local. If you don’t have a nearby mesonet station, the nearest measurements may be many miles away.

This work is supported by the Institute for Rural Partnerships, project award no. 2023-70500-38915, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.

Wisconet receives monthly payments for their data from the National Mesonet Program.

– ref. Your local storm forecast is likely based on weather miles away – mesonets can help bridge that gap – https://theconversation.com/your-local-storm-forecast-is-likely-based-on-weather-miles-away-mesonets-can-help-bridge-that-gap-280985

May 12, 2026

École à trois vitesses : les garçons issus de milieux défavorisés en paient le prix fort

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Simon Bilodeau-Carrier, Étudiant au doctorat en sciences de l’éducation, Université de Montréal

Le système scolaire québécois nourrit les inégalités. Avec ses trois filières distinctes, il répartit les élèves, notamment en fonction de leur réalité socioéconomique. Ce sont les garçons des milieux défavorisés qui en paient le prix le plus fort.

Dans son récent livre blanc « Ceux qu’on échappe », Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois détaille les effets de ce système selon plusieurs angles, soit le retard scolaire, le décrochage, la maîtrise du français et l’accès aux études supérieures.

Pour pallier ces problèmes, le député met de l’avant une réforme ambitieuse, visant à rassembler toutes les filières de l’école. Est-ce que cette réforme peut réellement réduire à la fois les inégalités scolaires et atténuer les tensions sociales émergentes ?

Je suis doctorant en sociologie de l’éducation, spécialisé dans l’étude des parcours scolaires et des inégalités qui les traversent. À ce titre, les débats entourant la ségrégation scolaire au Québec et les solutions proposées pour y remédier s’inscrivent directement dans mon champ d’expertise.

La ségrégation scolaire au Québec

Les écoles secondaires québécoises sont divisées en différentes filières. On les rassemble souvent en trois catégories, qui sont parfois appelées les « trois vitesses » du système : 1) les programmes « réguliers » des écoles publiques, 2) les programmes pédagogiques particuliers des écoles publiques (ex. sports-études) et 3) tous les programmes dispensés dans les écoles privées.

Seule la première catégorie accueille tous les types d’élèves, alors que les deux autres mobilisent des processus de sélection. En outre, plusieurs programmes particuliers et l’ensemble des écoles privées exigent que les parents paient certains frais pour que leurs enfants puissent s’inscrire. C’est ce qu’on appelle un quasi-marché scolaire.

En théorie, tous les élèves peuvent s’inscrire dans toutes les filières, alors qu’en pratique, les opportunités réelles varient fortement. Par exemple, les critères de sélection comme les résultats scolaires et les examens d’entrée excluent un bon nombre d’élèves, y compris plusieurs vivant des situations de handicap. D’autre part, certains programmes de sports-études demandent aux parents de payer du matériel supplémentaire, ce qui exclut d’emblée plusieurs élèves provenant de familles moins bien nanties.

Ainsi, les diverses filières d’enseignement sélectives sont souvent inaccessibles pour les élèves provenant de milieux socioéconomiques défavorisés. Il s’agit donc d’un système inéquitable et ségrégatif, notamment sur le plan socioéconomique.

En outre, bien que la reproduction des inégalités sociales dépende également de facteurs externes au système scolaire, comme le quartier ou le niveau d’éducation des parents, ce système contribue à les prolonger à long terme, dans la mesure où les élèves issus des programmes réguliers du secondaire s’inscrivent moins souvent au cégep et à l’université que les autres

Le livre blanc

L’ouvrage de Nadeau-Dubois explore l’effet de l’exclusion des filières sélectives sur les garçons provenant de milieux socioéconomiques défavorisés. L’auteur explique s’y intéresser afin d’éviter que ces frustrations n’alimentent la polarisation, la haine et l’exclusion envers les femmes.

En s’appuyant sur de nombreuses recherches et statistiques, le député solidaire met en lumière les inégalités vécues par les garçons de milieux plus modestes dans le programme « général » du système public. En moyenne, selon les données consultées, les garçons sont moins performants à l’école que les filles.

Toutefois, les écarts observés entre les genres, par exemple dans les résultats scolaires ou par rapport à la littératie, sont systématiquement plus grands dans les milieux moins sélectifs. La conclusion est donc que la ségrégation scolaire est particulièrement nocive pour la réussite scolaire des garçons.

Devant ce constat, l’auteur met de l’avant la solution du mouvement citoyen École ensemble, voulant que le système scolaire soit unifié en une seule voie. L’idée est d’offrir à l’ensemble des élèves des programmes particuliers en lien avec leurs intérêts, sans frais et sans sélection. On abolirait ainsi le cheminement « régulier » et les écoles privées subventionnées telles qu’elles existent aujourd’hui. L’initiative prévoit que les établissements privés qui souhaiteraient maintenir leur financement gouvernemental devraient se joindre au réseau commun et donc cesser de faire de la sélection d’élèves.

Pour la suite de cet article, j’explorerai la portée de la solution proposée sous deux angles. Je détaillerai d’abord son effet sur les inégalités dans les parcours scolaires et ensuite sur les préjugés et la polarisation entre les genres.

Une solution aux opportunités d’études inégalitaires

Le chercheur en administration publique Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard critique l’approche proposée par Nadeau-Dubois. Selon lui, retirer le financement aux écoles privées refusant de se joindre au réseau réduirait la liberté de choix des élèves, tant en ce qui concerne les programmes que les établissements.

À l’opposé, certains soutiennent que la perte d’accessibilité dans quelques écoles privées serait largement compensée par un accès accru pour la majorité des élèves québécois, grâce à un réseau scolaire plus équitable.

Au-delà de ce débat de fond, comme le décrit la chercheuse en sociologie de l’éducation Véronique Grenier, la réforme proposée pourrait être contournée. Par exemple, si une école privée intègre le réseau public tout en conservant des infrastructures et des équipements supérieurs, des parents mieux nantis pourraient choisir de déménager à proximité afin d’y inscrire leurs enfants.

Ainsi, la suppression des mécanismes officiels de sélection ne constitue pas une solution complète. Des mécanismes informels risquent d’émerger et de produire des effets similaires.

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Favoriser la mixité socioéconomique des élèves

Pour éviter que la réforme ne soit contournée, elle devrait s’accompagner d’investissements importants dans les infrastructures publiques afin de les rendre aussi attrayantes que celles du secteur privé.

Cette limite renvoie plus largement au caractère structurel des inégalités scolaires. Comme le montrent plusieurs travaux en sociologie de l’éducation, celles-ci ne découlent pas uniquement des ressources matérielles des établissements, mais aussi des politiques publiques encadrant les parcours scolaires.

Concrètement, lorsque certains établissements et programmes regroupent majoritairement des élèves de milieux favorisés tandis que d’autres accueillent majoritairement des élèves de milieux défavorisés, les écarts de réussite ont tendance à se creuser. À l’inverse, des structures plus intégrées, où des élèves de différents milieux sociaux fréquentent les mêmes écoles et les mêmes classes, favorisent davantage la mixité et contribuent à atténuer ces disparités.

Dans cette perspective, investir dans les infrastructures publiques demeure nécessaire, mais insuffisant. Sans transformation des mécanismes de répartition des élèves, les dynamiques de ségrégation risquent de se maintenir.

Une solution pour éviter la polarisation

Comme le souligne la professeure de sociologie Maryse Potvin, le fonctionnement même des systèmes scolaires et des écoles peut avoir des impacts sur la polarisation, l’exclusion et même parfois la radicalisation.

Les marchés scolaires, incluant les quasi-marchés scolaires comme le système québécois, sont notamment identifiés comme des vecteurs d’inégalité et de discrimination. Dans cette perspective, la solution proposée par Nadeau-Dubois paraît pertinente pour réduire la polarisation, mais il est possible d’aller plus loin.

En effet, d’autres pratiques scolaires peuvent également favoriser l’exclusion. Par exemple, certaines normes implicites, comme les façons de s’exprimer ou de participer en classe, avantagent les élèves pour qui les habitudes correspondent aux attentes de l’école. Tel que cela est présenté dans le livre blanc de Nadeau-Dubois, la socialisation des filles est souvent plus en phase avec le monde scolaire que celle des garçons. À l’inverse, les garçons peuvent être perçus comme moins engagés, ce qui peut alimenter des incompréhensions et des sentiments d’injustice. Ces attentes implicites participent donc à l’exclusion et aux problèmes scolaires des garçons.

Dans cette optique, la mise en place de l’enseignement inclusif constitue une autre piste pertinente. En valorisant la diversité des expériences, en reconnaissant différentes formes de réussites et en adaptant les pratiques pédagogiques aux besoins de l’ensemble des élèves, cet enseignement vise à réduire ces décalages et à favoriser des interactions plus équitables, contribuant à limiter les dynamiques d’exclusion.

Un bon point de départ

En somme, le livre blanc de Nadeau-Dubois produit un discours pertinent par rapport aux enjeux liés à la ségrégation scolaire dans le système québécois, particulièrement par rapport aux garçons issus de milieux défavorisés. La proposition d’un réseau unifié apparaît comme une piste prometteuse pour réduire ces écarts et limiter la ségrégation scolaire.

Toutefois, ses effets dépendront fortement des moyens qui l’accompagnent et des pratiques pédagogiques mises en place. Sans investissements et sans transformation plus large du système, les inégalités risquent simplement de se déplacer plutôt que de disparaître.

Simon Bilodeau-Carrier est doctorant en sciences de l’éducation à l’Université de Montréal. Il est récipiendaire d’une bourse de recherche octroyée par les Fonds de recherche du Québec. Enfin, il possède une carte de membre pour le parti politique Québec Solidaire, sans toutefois y occuper un poste.

– ref. École à trois vitesses : les garçons issus de milieux défavorisés en paient le prix fort – https://theconversation.com/ecole-a-trois-vitesses-les-garcons-issus-de-milieux-defavorises-en-paient-le-prix-fort-281693

May 12, 2026

Bilingualism and sex hormones may provide a new link to brain resilience and dementia risk

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Noelia Calvo, Research Associate, Neuroscience, University of Toronto

Why do some people maintain good memories and have healthy brains even as they age?

Research that my colleagues and I recently published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring, explored the effects and interactions of social, linguistic and endocrinological factors on cognitive health.

With Canada’s aging population, the question of brain health is a relevant one. The most recent census in 2021 indicated that one in eight Canadians is aged 70 or over, and there are 1.7 million who are age 80 or older. These numbers show a growing population of older adults at increased risk of cognitive decline, highlighting the need to examine protective factors.

Previous research indicates that bilingualism may be a possible protective factor. Notably, the 2021 census indicated that bilingualism is also increasing among Canadians, with four in 10 (41 per cent) speaking more than one language.

While bilingualism may be one piece of the puzzle, other cognitive or biological factors also influence brain health. Verbal memory — the ability to remember words — has been linked to cognitive resilience. The presence of sex hormones such as estrogen and testosterone, which are present in both men and women, may also influence how the brain ages.

Studying a trio of factors

The relationship between these three factors — bilingualism, verbal memory and sex hormones — has not been studied before. To address this gap, my colleagues and I conducted a new study in Canada. We found that bilingualism may interact with verbal memory and sex hormones to influence dementia risk in unexpected ways.

Our study included data from 335 older adults with mild cognitive impairment and 170 patients with Alzheimer’s disease drawn from the Comprehensive Assessment of Neurodegeneration and Dementia (COMPASS-ND) cohort, which is part of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration and Aging.

COMPASS-ND includes more than 1,200 Canadian adults aged 50–90 years recruited across more than 30 sites nationwide. Using this rich and current database, we examined how sex hormones, verbal memory and bilingualism jointly influence cognitive resilience, brain structure and blood-based markers of Alzheimer’s disease.

This article is part of our ongoing series The Grey Revolution. The Conversation Canada and La Conversation are exploring the impact of the aging boomer generation on Canadian society, including housing, working, culture, nutrition, travelling and health care. The series explores the upheavals already underway and those looming ahead.

We created a resilience index for each participant that incorporated sex hormones, verbal memory, bilingual proficiency, education, age and immigration status. Age, education, and immigration status were included as covariates because they may influence cognitive resilience through differences in language experiences, educational opportunities and sociocultural adaptation across the lifespan.

Each unit increase in the resilience index was associated with a significant reduction in the odds of dementia-related pathology. Higher resilience index scores were also linked to better performance on clinical diagnostic tools such as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), as well as lower levels of key markers associated with neurodegeneration and glial activation, a process in which the brain’s support cells become reactive in response to injury or disease.

Overall, bilingual participants showed the highest resilience index scores, but with notable differences in how these effects manifested across biological sex.

Our findings challenge the idea that risk and resilience can be understood by looking at biological or social factors in isolation. By studying bilingualism and sex hormones together, we reveal how these factors may interact to shape brain resilience.

Bilingualism and verbal memory

Another important finding of our study was related to verbal memory. Consistent with previous research, women showed better performance in verbal memory. This sex difference is clinically important because verbal memory is often used as a proxy for general cognitive function, meaning it can influence how dementia is diagnosed in women.

One might expect that bilingual women would be especially protected, since they have both the bilingualism benefit and strong verbal memory.

Surprisingly, our study found the opposite: bilingual men showed greater brain protection. Our findings suggested that a combination of two factors may be a mechanism behind enhanced verbal memory and cognitive resilience in aging men: aromatization — the conversion of testosterone into estradiol — and bilingual language experience.

In people with mild cognitive impairment, higher estradiol levels produced through aromatization, together with bilingualism, may work synergistically to protect verbal memory, making older bilingual men more resilient to cognitive decline and neurodegenerative pathology.

Overall, our study suggests that bilingual men may have greater resilience to neuropathology and that sex hormones could influence dementia risk in aging women. These findings underscore the need for more research on how sex hormones affect brain health, as well as the importance of using measures beyond verbal memory to improve the accuracy of cognitive decline diagnoses in Canada.

The research discussed in this article was supported by external funding from the Synapse Challenge award, Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration (CCNA). The funding period has now concluded.

– ref. Bilingualism and sex hormones may provide a new link to brain resilience and dementia risk – https://theconversation.com/bilingualism-and-sex-hormones-may-provide-a-new-link-to-brain-resilience-and-dementia-risk-279490

May 12, 2026

Conflit Inde-Pakistan : la médiation impromptue de Trump embarrasse New Delhi

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Amélie Chalivet, Candidate au doctorat et chargée de cours en Relations internationales, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

En mai 2025, une brève flambée de violence entre l’Inde et le Pakistan ramène le Cachemire au centre de l’attention internationale.

Le président américain Donald Trump s’en saisit pour annoncer un cessez-le-feu qu’il présente comme « médié » par Washington. Pour New Delhi, c’est un revers diplomatique.

Pour comprendre cette réaction, il importe de tenir compte à la fois de l’histoire du conflit indo-pakistanais et des spécificités de l’approche américaine sous Donald Trump.

Le Cachemire et l’enjeu de l’internationalisation

Depuis la Partition des Indes britanniques en 1947, qui a créé deux États autonomes, l’Inde et le Pakistan, le Cachemire (région himalayenne à la jonction des deux pays) est un enjeu central source de tensions. Les deux pays se sont livré une guerre à ce sujet dès 1947. Une médiation de l’ONU, à la demande de l’Inde, avait alors permis d’aboutir à un cessez-le-feu en 1948.

En 1972, les accords de Simla marquent une rupture avec cette politique de médiation externe, en précisant que les différends seront désormais résolus par des négociations bilatérales directes. Le gouvernement indien a donc cherché, à partir de cette date, et encore davantage depuis 2019, à rejeter l’idée qu’un acteur tiers, qu’il s’agisse d’un État ou des Nations unies, puisse intervenir dans les négociations autour du Cachemire. Les accords de Simla ont depuis été utilisés comme un bouclier contre l’ingérence des grandes puissances.

Le 5 août 2019, le gouvernement indien de Narendra Modi abroge néanmoins l’Article 370 de la Constitution. Cet Article conférait à l’ancien État du Jammu-et-Cachemire un statut spécial et un certain niveau d’autonomie, ancrés dans la Constitution depuis son adhésion à l’Inde en 1947. L’abrogation de l’Article a pour conséquence de transformer le Jammu-et-Cachemire en deux territoires (Jammu-et-Cachemire d’un côté, et Ladakh de l’autre) directement administrés par le pouvoir central, dans un contexte de durcissement du contrôle étatique.

Le Cachemire a longtemps été traité comme un conflit international, ce qui légitimait par exemple l’implication de l’ONU. En supprimant le statut spécial du Jammu-et-Cachemire, New Delhi souhaitait le recadrer comme une affaire relevant strictement de l’autorité indienne.

Le Pakistan a opéré le mouvement inverse et a cherché à internationaliser encore davantage cet enjeu en faisant régulièrement référence au Cachemire dans ses discours aux Nations unies et en menaçant de suspendre les accords de Simla. C’est dans ce contexte d’opposition fondamentale sur la question de la médiation extérieure qu’entrent en jeu les événements de mai 2025.

La guerre des quatre jours et la médiation américaine

À la suite d’un violent conflit de quatre jours qui s’est déroulé dans un épais brouillard médiatique, les hostilités entre les deux États prennent fin le 10 mai 2025 avec l’annonce d’un cessez-le-feu par le président américain. Celui-ci attribue cette réussite à sa propre intervention et à son talent diplomatique.

Au-delà de cette annonce, Donald Trump se propose d’agir en tant que médiateur entre les deux pays dans le cadre de négociations sur le sujet précis du Cachemire, en invoquant un conflit « vieux d’un millier d’années » qu’il serait capable de résoudre. Or, dans la perspective indienne, cette mention de négociations internationales au sujet du Cachemire brise un tabou complet et remet en cause sa souveraineté sur ce territoire.

La médiation a fréquemment servi de voie de sortie pour des gouvernants qui ne parvenaient pas à désescalader un conflit. L’attitude du président américain, qui insiste sur son rôle personnel et multiplie les déclarations publiques, a néanmoins contribué à créer un important sentiment de malaise à New Delhi. En effet, cette médiation a été particulièrement mal reçue en Inde, perçue comme imposée et comme relevant d’une tentative d’internationalisation.

Dans les discours officiels, New Delhi a insisté sur le fait que la désescalade avait été décidée bilatéralement, que « la date, l’heure et la formulation précises de l’accord » avaient été déterminées par les directeurs généraux des opérations militaires des deux pays. Les dirigeants indiens ont continué à nier l’implication américaine tout au long de l’année, tandis que Trump aurait mentionné son rôle de « faiseur de paix » en Asie du Sud plus de soixante fois. De son côté, le premier ministre pakistanais, Shehbaz Sharif, a ouvertement remercié le président américain pour son implication et son « rôle proactif » dans la région.

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Parallèlement à cette divergence complète des narratifs, un rapprochement entre les États-Unis et le Pakistan s’est opéré, comme l’a illustré l’invitation du chef d’État-major pakistanais, Asim Munir, à la Maison-Blanche en juin 2025. Cette visite s’est accompagnée d’un soutien pakistanais à la candidature de Trump au prix Nobel de la paix, puis, plus récemment, de la mise en avant du rôle du Pakistan dans les négociations relatives au conflit au Moyen-Orient.

La question de la médiation remise en perspective

La comparaison historique révèle une constante : la médiation internationale n’est jamais neutre. En 1966 (avant les accords de Simla), la médiation soviétique à Tachkent a permis de rétablir le statu quo ante bellum à la suite de la guerre indopakistanaise de 1965 et a donné l’opportunité à l’URSS « d’affirmer son rôle de leader dans la région ».

À la suite de la guerre de Kargil en 1999, les États-Unis ont exigé le retrait pakistanais sans se positionner en tant que médiateurs officiels, une posture alors perçue positivement par New Delhi.

Depuis, la conception qu’a l’Inde de son propre statut sur la scène internationale a évolué. Pour New Delhi, la médiation de 2025 implique une « rehyphenation » (rassemblement par un trait d’union) qui la place sur un pied d’égalité avec Islamabad. Cette évolution est ainsi perçue par l’Inde comme une remise en question de son statut, qui se perçoit plutôt comme la rivale à l’échelle de la Chine dans la région.

Par ailleurs, la forme de la médiation a compté : une médiation discrète peut permettre aux parties de « sauver la face », mais une médiation performative et médiatisée, comme celle que l’administration Trump s’est félicitée d’avoir menée en 2025, réduit l’Inde à un acteur passif. En proposant une négociation autour d’un conflit « de mille ans » et en revendiquant le prix Nobel de la paix pour ce rôle de médiateur, les États-Unis, par la voix de Trump, ont été perçus par New Delhi comme niant la capacité du pays à gérer ses propres crises.

Cette médiation n’est donc pas neutre et révèle une asymétrie structurelle ainsi qu’une compréhension mutuelle limitée entre les deux partenaires. Si le partenariat indo-américain est loin d’être rompu, cet inconfort lié à la médiation de 2025 pèse sur les relations entre les deux États, alors qu’ils tentent de conclure un accord commercial dans la foulée des tarifs imposés par Washington. Cela incite l’Inde à poursuivre la diversification de ses partenariats, aux premiers rangs desquels figurent l’Union européenne et le Canada.

Amélie Chalivet ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. Conflit Inde-Pakistan : la médiation impromptue de Trump embarrasse New Delhi – https://theconversation.com/conflit-inde-pakistan-la-mediation-impromptue-de-trump-embarrasse-new-delhi-278286

May 12, 2026

École à trois vitesses : les garçons défavorisés en paient le prix fort

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Simon Bilodeau-Carrier, Étudiant au doctorat en sciences de l’éducation, Université de Montréal

La ségrégation scolaire au Québec

Le livre blanc

Une solution aux opportunités d’études inégalitaires

Ainsi, la suppression des mécanismes officiels de sélection ne constitue pas une solution complète. Des mécanismes informels risquent d’émerger et de produire des effets similaires.

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Favoriser la mixité socioéconomique des élèves

Une solution pour éviter la polarisation

Un bon point de départ

– ref. École à trois vitesses : les garçons défavorisés en paient le prix fort – https://theconversation.com/ecole-a-trois-vitesses-les-garcons-defavorises-en-paient-le-prix-fort-281693

May 12, 2026

Are you exercising at the wrong time? How your body clock can affect your workouts

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Hough, Lecturer Sport and Exercise Physiology, University of Westminster

Your chronotype plays an important role in many bodily processes. we.bond.creations/ Shutterstock

While some people can spring out of bed at six in the morning and go straight into their day, others prefer to wake up later as they’re most productive in the afternoon or evening. This difference is due to your chronotype – the biological tendency to prefer certain times of day for sleep, waking and activity.

But these aren’t the only factors affected by your chronotype. A growing body of research also suggests that your chronotype can affect the benefits you see from exercise.

People who naturally rise early and feel sharpest in the morning are “early chronotypes”, whereas those who prefer to wake later and function better in the afternoon or evening are “late chronotypes”. People who fall in between are “intermediate chronotypes”.

Your chronotype is determined by your circadian rhythms – the body’s natural daily cycles that repeat around every 24 hours. Although these are strongly influenced by our environment, they function even without external cues such as daylight and food. These rhythms affect our physiology, behaviour and health.

Our circadian rhythms are controlled by the body’s circadian system, which is made up of tiny biological clocks composed of proteins, which are found in organs and tissues. These clocks rely on genes that help coordinate when different processes happen, such as when we feel alert or sleepy.

The circadian system also influences many other bodily functions, including blood pressure, heart rate, blood sugar regulation and blood vessel function. As these factors are also affected by physical activity, this may explain why aligning your workouts to your natural chronotype can be beneficial.

Some studies support this, suggesting that the time of day people exercise can influence health outcomes – including cardiovascular fitness and reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity and some cancers.

However, as these were observational studies (which only show associations rather than cause and effect), they can’t definitively prove that the findings were solely caused by the timing of the exercise.

But a recent randomised controlled trial has investigated whether aligning workouts with chronotype could enhance the benefits of exercise. The researchers specifically looked at people who were at risk of cardiovascular disease.

Participants were grouped according to their chronotype, which was measured using a specialist questionnaire. Morning types exercised between 8–11am and evening types exercised between 6-9pm. A third group exercised at the opposite time to their chronotype (morning types in the evening and evening types in the morning).

Participants whose exercise was aligned with their chronotype experienced greater improvements in blood pressure, aerobic fitness, blood glucose, cholesterol and sleep than participants whose training times were misaligned with their chronotype.

But though these improvements show that timing exercise to your chronotype can enhance its health benefits, there are a couple of important nuances.

Even the group that exercised at the supposedly wrong time still experienced health benefits, showing that exercise is beneficial even when it doesn’t align with your chronotype. The study also did not include intermediate chronotypes, who make up around 60% of the adult population. For these people, the timing of exercise may be less important.

Based on the available evidence, exercise timing appears to be a meaningful consideration, particularly for people who are strong morning or evening chronotypes.

Beyond your chronotype

So how do you know your chronotype?

Most people have an intuitive sense of this based on when they naturally prefer to sleep and wake. However, work schedules and care-giving responsibilities often force us into routines that conflict with our chronotype. Over time, this makes it harder to be sure of your chronotype.

A fit man and woman perform a yoga move in an apartment while the morning sun shines through a window. — Morning chronotypes may better benefit from exercising soon after they wake up.
Gorodenkoff/ Shutterstock

For this reason, researchers developed a questionnaire to help you determine your chronotype. The 19 questions include what time you feel you’re at your peak and how easy you find it to wake up in the morning.

Once you have a clearer sense of your chronotype, you can start thinking about when to schedule your training.

However, chronotype isn’t the only factor that can affect training and how you respond to exercise. This is good news for those who may not be able to align workouts with their chronotype.

For instance, body temperature usually peaks in the afternoon regardless of chronotype, which enhances muscle function. This is why strength, speed and coordination tends to be best in the afternoon, making it a prime window for resistance training and technical practice for most people.

Habitual training time can also shift performance over time as the body adapts to the time you regularly train. So even if you’re naturally a night owl, consistent morning training may eventually make you perform better at that time.

Another critical factor to consider when deciding when to workout is sleep.

If you haven’t slept well the night before, research suggests it’s better to exercise earlier in the day, regardless of your chronotype. This is because the drive to sleep, known as “sleep pressure”, builds steadily from the moment you wake up and peaks just before you fall asleep. By evening, growing sleep pressure makes exercise feel harder and can impair your performance.

Exercising late in the evening can also reduce sleep quality, particularly when the session is intense. As a general rule, leave at least a two-hour gap between exercise and bedtime.

There’s no single best time to exercise that works for everyone. While the evidence on the long-term health benefits of matching exercise time to chronotype is growing, some principles apply broadly.

Peak performance varies by chronotype, and matching your workout time to yours may help you train harder and achieve better health benefits. However, any exercise is better than none – regardless of timing.

If you’re a night owl but can only train in the morning, a warm-up is essential. Wear extra clothing and start with 10-15 minutes of light aerobic activity to gradually increase body temperature and increase alertness.

If evenings are your only option, opt for moderate or low-intensity activities (such as yoga or a jog) to avoid disrupting sleep.

Paul Hough does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Are you exercising at the wrong time? How your body clock can affect your workouts – https://theconversation.com/are-you-exercising-at-the-wrong-time-how-your-body-clock-can-affect-your-workouts-282297

May 12, 2026

AI doesn’t create bias, it inherits it – how do we ensure fairness when it comes to automated decisions?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael Mayowa Farayola, PhD Graduate, School of Computing, Dublin City University

Hiring algorithms are one of the systems that could be affected by discrimination. PeopleImages

If artificial intelligence (AI) systems shape decisions that affect people’s lives, they should do so fairly. This should be a given considering that potential applications for AI include automated hiring systems, as well as tools used in education, finance and criminal justice.

But ensuring the fairness of AI systems is far more complex than it might sound. Despite years of research, there is still no consensus on what fairness means, how it should be measured, or whether it can ever be fully achieved.

Fairness inherently depends on context. What counts as fair in one domain may be inappropriate or even harmful in another. In criminal justice, fairness may prioritise avoiding disproportionate harm to particular communities. In education, it may focus on equal opportunity and long-term outcomes.

In finance, it often involves balancing access to credit with risk assessment. Because AI systems must be formalised mathematically, researchers translate fairness into technical definitions expressed through metrics that specify how outcomes should be distributed across groups.

These metrics are useful tools, but they are not neutral. Each encodes assumptions about which differences matter and which trade-offs are acceptable.

Problems with the data

A deeper issue lies in the data itself. AI systems learn from historical datasets that reflect past decisions, institutional practices, and social inequalities. When a model is trained to replicate observed outcomes, such as hiring decisions or loan and mortgage approvals, it may reproduce existing injustices under the appearance of objectivity.

Optimising for one notion of fairness often means violating another. This tension is evident in automated loan approval systems. An algorithm may be designed so that applicants with the same predicted probability of default are treated similarly across demographic groups.

Yet one group may still be more likely to be incorrectly denied credit, while another may be more likely to receive loans they later struggle to repay. Fairness in predictive accuracy can therefore conflict with fairness in how financial risk and opportunity are distributed.

These differences often reflect structural inequalities embedded in the data the model is trained on. Groups that have historically faced barriers to credit, due to factors such as discrimination or exclusion from financial systems, may have thinner credit histories or lower recorded incomes.

As a result, models can treat socioeconomic disadvantage as a signal of higher risk, even when it does not reflect an individual’s actual ability to repay.

The same pattern emerges in hiring. If a company historically promoted fewer women into senior roles, a system trained to predict “successful” candidates may learn patterns that favour characteristics more common among men, even if gender is not explicitly included as an input. In both cases, the model does not invent bias, it inherits it.

A fundamental question is whether AI systems mirror the world as it was, or attempt to correct for known injustices.

The idea of fairness is further complicated by how it is assessed. Many assessments examine a single protected attribute, such as gender or race, in isolation. While common, this approach can obscure how discrimination operates in practice.

An automated hiring system might appear fair when comparing men and women overall, and fair when comparing ethnic groups overall, yet it might also consistently disadvantage older women from minority backgrounds.

Structural inequalities may be embedded in the data used for AI systems covering everything from mortgage approvals to loans.
Pla2na

Complex evaluation

People are defined by several characteristics that intersect, including age, ethnicity, disability, and socioeconomic background. Because these intersectional subgroups are often small and underrepresented in data, the harms they face may remain invisible in standard evaluations.

This invisibility has a direct technical consequence. When a subgroup is small, the model encounters too few examples to learn reliable patterns for that group and instead applies generalisations drawn from the broader categories it has seen more of, which may not reflect that group’s actual characteristics or circumstances.

Errors and biases affecting small subgroups are also less likely to surface in standard performance metrics, which aggregate results across all users and can therefore mask poor outcomes for minorities within minorities. Which means that those most at risk are therefore often the least visible.

These challenges suggest that fairness in AI cannot be reduced to better metrics or more sophisticated algorithms. Fairness is shaped by institutional context, historical legacies, and power relations.

Decisions about what data to collect, which objectives to optimise, and how systems are deployed are influenced by social and organisational factors. Technical fixes are necessary but insufficient. Meaningful approaches must engage with the broader context in which AI systems operate.

This includes involving interested parties beyond engineers and data scientists. People affected by AI systems, often members of marginalised communities, possess contextual knowledge about risks and harms that may not be visible from a purely technical perspective.

Participatory approaches, in which affected groups contribute to the design and governance of AI systems, acknowledge that fairness cannot be defined without considering those who bear the consequences of automated decisions.

Even when interventions appear successful, they may not remain so. Societies change, demographics shift and language evolves. A system that performs acceptably today may produce unfair outcomes tomorrow. In particular, recent advances in large language models, the technology underlying many widely used AI tools, add further complexity.

Unlike traditional systems that make specific predictions, these models generate language based on vast collections of historical text. Such datasets inevitably contain stereotypes and imbalances.

Fairness is therefore not a one-time achievement but an ongoing responsibility requiring monitoring, accountability, and a willingness to revise or withdraw systems when harms emerge.

Together, these challenges suggest that fairness in AI is not a purely technical problem awaiting a finite solution. It is a moving target shaped by social values and historical context.

Rather than asking whether an AI system is fair in the abstract, a more productive question may be: fair according to whom, under what conditions, and with what forms of accountability? How we answer that question will shape not only the systems we build, but the kind of society they help to create.

Michael Mayowa Farayola receives funding from Taighde Éireann Research Ireland grants 13/RC/2094_P2 (Lero) and 13/RC/2106_P2 (ADAPT) and is co-funded under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

– ref. AI doesn’t create bias, it inherits it – how do we ensure fairness when it comes to automated decisions? – https://theconversation.com/ai-doesnt-create-bias-it-inherits-it-how-do-we-ensure-fairness-when-it-comes-to-automated-decisions-280927

May 12, 2026

Vitamin B12: the essential nutrient with a complicated cancer link

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ahmed Elbediwy, Senior Lecturer in Cancer Biology & Clinical Biochemistry, Kingston University

We’ve all heard the advice: eat your fruit and vegetables, get your vitamins, and stay healthy. For the most part, that guidance holds up. But some nutrients have a more complicated story, and vitamin B12 is a fascinating example.

Also known as cobalamin, B12 is essential for life. It helps the body produce red blood cells, keeps the nervous system functioning, and plays a central role in how cells copy and repair DNA.

B12 is found naturally in animal products such as meat, fish, eggs, milk and cheese. Some cereals and breads are also fortified with it, helping people who do not eat meat get enough. Most people following a varied diet get the recommended amount, but vegans, people with certain gut conditions and older adults who absorb nutrients less efficiently may need supplements.

Selection of dairy products, meats and vegetables that contain vitamin B12 — Most people can get sufficient vitamin B12 from their diet.
Tatjana Baibakova/Shutterstock

Without enough B12, things can go wrong, sometimes seriously, especially if deficiency is not recognised and treated. Yet in recent years, researchers have been asking whether high levels of B12 intake or high levels of B12 in the blood could be linked to cancer.

Staying balanced

The body is constantly making new cells. Every time a cell divides, it needs to copy its DNA accurately. Vitamin B12 is critical to that process. When levels are too low, DNA can be copied incorrectly, leading to mutations that, over many years, may increase the risk of certain cancers, particularly colon cancer. This is why B12 deficiency is taken seriously.

A 2025 case-control study from Vietnam found what researchers described as a U-shaped relationship between B12 intake and cancer risk, with both lower and higher intakes associated with increased risk. Because this kind of study can show an association but cannot prove cause and effect, the takeaway is not that B12 is dangerous. It is that balance matters.

It might seem logical that if B12 helps healthy cells thrive, taking extra doses should offer extra protection against cancer. But research does not fully support this. Vitamin B12 supports cell growth generally, not only the growth of healthy cells. One concern is that, if pre-cancerous cells are already present, very high availability of growth-supporting nutrients such as B12 could, in theory, support their growth too. But this remains difficult to prove in humans.

Overall, studies of high-dose B vitamin supplements taken over long periods have not shown clear protective effects against cancer incidence or cancer deaths. One analysis did report a reduced risk of melanoma, but this was a cancer-specific finding rather than evidence that high-dose B vitamins prevent cancer generally. Some observational research has also suggested a slight increase in lung cancer risk linked to long-term, high-dose B6 and B12 supplementation, particularly among men and smokers, although this kind of study cannot prove that the supplements caused the cancers.

Doctors have noticed that many cancer patients show unusually high levels of B12 in their blood. This raises an important question: does elevated B12 contribute to cancer, or can cancer itself cause B12 levels to rise?

Research in 2022 concluded that high B12 in cancer patients is often an “epiphenomenon”. In other words, the vitamin appears alongside the disease but does not necessarily trigger it. Further research from 2024 reached a similar conclusion.

This effect is thought to involve two main mechanisms. First, tumours can affect the liver, which stores large amounts of B12. When the liver is damaged or under strain, it may release more B12 into the bloodstream. Second, some tumours may increase proteins that bind to B12 in the blood. This can push blood test readings higher without necessarily meaning the body’s cells are receiving or using more B12.

Useful indication

Researchers are also recognising that elevated B12 may not be a cause of cancer, but it could be a useful marker of whether cancer is present or progressing. A large 2026 study found that colon cancer patients with very high B12 levels survived a median of around five years, compared with nearly eleven years for those with normal levels.

Similar patterns have been found in oral cancer and in patients receiving immunotherapy, where elevated B12 has been associated with poorer outcomes. This means that unexplained, persistent high B12, especially when it is not caused by supplements, should not be ignored. It may point to liver disease, blood disorders or an underlying cancer that has not yet been detected.

For most people, this is not something to worry about. B12 from a normal diet containing meat, fish, eggs, dairy or fortified foods is not usually the issue: it is very difficult to consume too much B12 from food alone. Deficiency remains a more common and better-established problem than excess.

The concern is prolonged high-dose supplementation without medical advice, or a blood test showing persistently high B12 when someone is not taking supplements.

The broader message is simple: more is not always better. Cancer cannot be prevented by loading up on any single vitamin. Long-term habits matter more: eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, avoiding smoking, protecting your skin and attending routine health screenings.

So what about vitamin B12? Get enough through food or supplementation if you need it, especially if you are vegan, older or have a condition that affects absorption. But leave the megadoses on the shelf unless a doctor advises them. With B12, as with many nutrients, the goal is not as much as possible. It is the right amount.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Vitamin B12: the essential nutrient with a complicated cancer link – https://theconversation.com/vitamin-b12-the-essential-nutrient-with-a-complicated-cancer-link-282527