Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, head of Canada’s official opposition, recently became the first Canadian political leader to appear on the controversial Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
Poilievre had been asked to sit for an interview with Rogan amid the federal election campaign in April 2025, but was reportedly advised by his team to pass since Rogan was, and remains, a polarizing and contentious figure. Nonetheless, Rogan’s podcast is one of the world’s longest running, averaging 11 million listeners per episode and ranked No. 1 globally on Spotify in 2025.
Whether his efforts worked remains to be seen, but could there be unintended consequences to Poilievre’s appearance on the podcast? Did he spread any harmful disinformation about Canada and North America to a massive audience that, while possibly popular among his base, could be detrimental to Canadians in general?
Our findings show that manosphere influencers spread toxic content about marginalized populations, including dangerous misinformation about health, politics, immigration and the environment. The Joe Rogan Experience is part of this ecosystem.
While recent coverage of the podcast episode in news media has focused on tariffs, Canada-U.S. relations and a shared love of fitness, we found misinformation on immigration, the health and environmental consequences of Alberta’s oilsands, seed oils, safer drug supply measures and the causes of inflation.
1. Immigration
Poilievre, citing no evidence, told Rogan that Canada admits one million immigrants per year.
But information from the Canadian government website shows that targets for temporary residents — students and work visa holders — make up 385,000 people for 2026, while permanent resident targets are at 380,000 people. Combined, that’s significantly fewer than the number cited by Poilievre.
Inflating immigration numbers is a known rhetorical tactic in far-right online spaces, where it functions to fuel anxieties about demographic change. Repeating it on a platform with millions of listeners legitimizes a distortion that creates division and harms racialized communities.
Canada’s immigration system is not without criticism and immigrants often face challenges. (Unsplash)
2. Oilsands
Poilievre told Rogan that Alberta’s oilsands have very few health or environmental consequences, stating that it has “no impact to groundwater … no impact to the environment” and that people who live near the oilsands are “very healthy.”
But a 2024 report on the Athabasca oilsands released by scientists at the University of British Columbia suggest significant environmental and health impacts from the oilsands, meaning that, at best, Poilievre oversold the safety of oil development. His characterizations don’t reflect scientific research and they sideline those most affected.
One of Rogan’s favourite topics is health and diet, so it wasn’t surprising to hear him discuss seed oils with Poilievre. They talked about how beef tallow or butter is better for people’s health than foods made from seed oils.
Canada is also the largest exporter of canola oil in the world, so when Poilievre failed to push back against Rogan’s health misinformation, he tacitly supported an idea that harms the very trade he was purportedly aiming to bolster with his appearance on the podcast.
Poilievre told Rogan that inflation during and following the COVID-19 pandemic was a direct result of the previous Liberal government’s actions. He said:
“Like back during COVID when all these governments were printing money and all the politicians and bankers said ‘Oh, this is great. Well, look at all this money we get to spend.’ I’d walk around communities and I’d have like mechanics say, you know, we’re going to have inflation. And I would say, yeah, it makes sense to me… And sure enough, all that money filtered into the economy, bid up all the goods we buy, and everybody got smoked with higher prices.”
Does it matter if Poilievre is spreading misinformation about Canada on Rogan’s podcast? We believe it does.
Poilievre aspires to become prime minister and should aim to lead the country in ways that benefit all Canadians, including canola farmers, immigrants, people who use drugs and the communities that are currently polluted by oil development.
Making false accusations about drug-related crime or unmitigated drug trafficking reinforces the case for greater governmental oversight of citizens. It also justifies, to some extent, the false narratives cited by the U.S. in its retaliatory actions against Canada, including tariffs.
By promoting politically expedient misinformation on a show like Joe Rogan’s, Poilievre risks eroding Canadians’ shared understanding of public health, environmental challenges and social cohesion — all issues he should be working to address.
At a time when democratic communication is strained by misinformation and deepening polarization, Canadians should expect better from their political leaders, regardless of party.
Jaigris Hodson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Brianna I. Wiens receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Nick Ruest receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Shana MacDonald receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Eranda Jayawickreme, Professor of Psychology & Senior Research Fellow, Program for Leadership and Character, Wake Forest University
Traditional dancers perform in front of the Buddhist Temple of the Tooth, celebrating the Buddhist festival of Esala Perahera, in Kandy, Sri Lanka, on Aug. 8, 2025.Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP via Getty Images
I grew up in Sri Lanka. Much of my adolescence was spent in Kandy, a city built around a lake, set amid the lush tea plantations of the hill country. Its northern shore houses the Temple of the Tooth, one of Buddhism’s most sacred sites. Each year, it came alive with drummers, dancers and elephants parading through the streets in a “perahera,” or procession, honoring the Buddha’s relic.
But Buddhism was only one part of Kandy’s mosaic of religious life. I went to a high school where students from different religious and ethnic backgrounds got along easily. Within walking distance stood Buddhist temples, Christian churches, brightly colored Hindu temples, or “kovils,” and Muslim mosques whose call to prayer echoed across the city multiple times a day. Religious observances filled the calendar; Sri Lanka has more holidays than almost any other country.
Our own home was a glimpse into the island’s diversity. I attended both churches and temples with ease. My mother regularly visited a Hindu kovil with a close friend – though she was Catholic and my father was Buddhist. Her family had emigrated from Kerala, the southwestern tip of India, at the turn of the 20th century. His was Sinhalese, Sri Lanka’s largest ethnic group.
I grew up during Sri Lanka’s civil war, which consumed the country from 1983 to 2009. The brutal conflict was fought between the Sinhalese-majority government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist group fighting to create an independent state for the Tamil minority. An estimated 80,000-100,000 people lost their lives, and the war divided the country along religious and ethnic lines. Meanwhile, a separate insurrection led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, a Marxist political party, tore through the southern part of the country in the late 1980s, killing tens of thousands of people.
As a child, I did not possess the vocabulary to describe my own personal experience during this tumultuous time. All I knew was that some people withdrew into their own groups and vilified Sri Lankans who were different from them. Others worked hard to maintain relationships. Ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances could still choose connection over anger.
Those experiences sparked enduring interest in a question that animates my work as a personality psychologist. What allows people to live together across deep religious differences, without sliding into hostility or dehumanization? What helps them commit to pluralism?
Over time, I have come to believe that pluralism requires more than laws and institutions, although such structures are important. It is a moral commitment: a virtue that we each have a responsibility to cultivate.
What pluralism is
The phrase “pluralism” is often used loosely. Sometimes it simply refers to diversity: people of many religions or ethnicities living in one society.
This can look quite ordinary: a Buddhist teacher attending a Christian colleague’s church wedding out of respect, or a Muslim shopkeeper and a Buddhist neighbor debating over tea, disagreeing sharply, but chatting again the following day. Many of the shopkeepers my family relied on every week were either Tamil or Muslim. One of my tutors – a Muslim man who had worked for the Sri Lankan foreign service in his youth – would sit with me over lessons and then linger to talk with me about politics, culture and the country.
Pluralism lives in these repeated, small acts: decisions to sustain relationships with people whose deepest convictions differ from your own. And it begins with tolerance.
True tolerance cannot exist without disapproval. If I fully agree with your beliefs, I do not need to tolerate them. Tolerance begins when you encounter a view or practice that you find mistaken, troubling or even morally wrong and choose not to interfere with it – because you recognize coercion is not the appropriate response.
Pluralism moves beyond tolerance. It’s not just permitting someone’s beliefs; it’s trying to understand them and getting to know them. This is not the absence of conviction. It is the determination to live out one’s deepest convictions within a shared civic space, and to treat other people not as a threat but as key contributors to the community.
It can help to think about pluralism as a continuum. At the opposite end is hate: “I do not accept your existence.” Next is indifference: “I do not care what you believe.” Indifference is followed by tolerance as patience or forbearance: “I disapprove, but I will not interfere.”
The deeper form of tolerance is based in respect: “I affirm your humanity, even while disagreeing.” Finally, the last space on the spectrum is what scholars label relational or covenantal pluralism: “I’m committed to our connection, even though we disagree.”
Historically, religious conflict often centered on theological disputes: questions about doctrine, salvation or authority. Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau grappled with a shared question: How can diverse societies hold together in the face of such differences?
One answer was that societies needed some form of shared civic framework to bind citizens. Two centuries later, the sociologist Robert Bellah argued that Americans had developed just such a framework: a “civil religion” of shared symbols, narratives and moral commitments – such as the American flag, the Constitution and Memorial Day – that transcended particular faiths while sustaining a sense of common purpose.
Often, though, religious pluralism is less about theological differences themselves. Instead, conflict frequently erupts over social and political differences emerging from foundational values and identities.
Sri Lanka provides vivid examples of this disagreement. Article 9 of the country’s constitution grants Buddhism the “foremost place” among religions. Many religious minorities feel that provision writes a hierarchy into law, granting special privileges to the majority religion.
Or think about the consequences of the devastating 2019 Easter bombings – coordinated attacks on churches and hotels in three Sri Lankan cities by members of the Islamist militant group National Thowheeth Jama’ath.
A relative of a victim of the Easter bombings prays at their burial site in Negombo, Sri Lanka, on April 28, 2019. AP Photo/Manish Swarup
The resulting wave of anti-Muslim sentiment was not really driven by theological differences but questions about identity, trust and political power. Social media misinformation and opportunistic political rhetoric cast Muslims as outsiders threatening a Sinhala-Buddhist national identity. The question at stake was not which religion was true but who “truly” belonged to the nation.
If societies cannot sustain engagement across differences, shared civic life becomes impossible. This challenge, in my view, is not only institutional but also personal: What habits of mind allow religious pluralism to flourish?
Psychology of disagreement
On a personal level, pluralism begins in a moment of objection. You hear a belief that conflicts with your own. You see a religious symbol you find troubling. You run into a policy grounded in values that you reject. Our first reaction is often intuitive and emotional: irritation, aversion, anger, discomfort. Moral psychology suggests that such reactions feel automatic, confirming our sense that our view is the obvious truth.
What matters is what happens next. Some people quickly dismiss ideas they don’t like, shutting down curiosity. Others pause to reflect: asking why they reacted as they did, what the other person might value, and whether broader principles like freedom of conscience or fairness should guide their response.
This is a hard standard to live up to and one which I’ve struggled with myself. In the wake of the Easter bombings, I found myself growing impatient with Sri Lankans who continued to defend the actions of the government, even as it was detaining about 2,000 Muslims, often on thin evidence; banning women’s religious head coverings; and pardoning the ultranationalist monk most associated with anti-Muslim mob violence. I sometimes caught myself doing exactly what I study, reducing complex people to the worst version of their position. I stopped asking what they were trying to protect or what fears were driving their stance.
It took deliberate effort to step back and try to understand their perspective charitably, even while continuing to disagree. I had to reflect on the fact that for Sinhalese Buddhists carrying the memory of decades of Tamil separatist violence, the government’s response in the wake of the bombings could seem like a way to take the country’s security seriously. The tragedy was that this fear of violence was directed at an entire community, rather than the fringe actors who had committed the crime.
A Muslim woman takes part in a remembrance ceremony in front of St. Anthony’s Church in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on May 21, 2019, a month after a series of deadly Easter Sunday blasts. Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP via Getty Images
Reflection does not guarantee tolerance; we may still conclude that a belief is too harmful to accept. But it could also lead to a “principled allowance,” which is what makes tolerance possible: deciding that others have a right to hold or express views we dislike.
From there, the path can diverge again. Some people settle for a minimal “live-and-let-live” coexistence, while others move toward deeper dialogue and cooperation.
In other words, pluralism is not a single decision. It’s a series of steps to uphold a relationship, shaped by virtues such as humility, empathy, patience, fairness and courage. We can strongly disagree with someone but still ask: What does this belief mean to them?
That said, I still wrestle with where the boundaries of pluralism lie. What about when someone’s convictions lead to clear harm to vulnerable people? I do not have a clean answer. Over the years, though, I’ve come to believe that the difficulty of the question is not a reason to abandon the commitment. Committing to pluralism is a sign of character – one that can be strengthened by practicing particular virtues.
Which virtues support pluralism?
One is intellectual humility: recognizing the limits of our knowledge. It does not mean abandoning conviction. It means acknowledging the possibility that we’re wrong.
Studies suggest that intellectual humility is associated with openness to opposing viewpoints, attempting to understand how another person sees the world. When combined with curiosity, it moves beyond strategic tolerance toward fostering genuine relationships.
Another key virtue is empathy – but a specific kind of empathy. As an emotion, empathy can be biased; it may pull us toward people who look like us, feel close to us, or whose suffering resonates with our own experience. Another form of empathy, though, is perspective-taking: trying to understand another person’s thoughts, feelings or point of view. Studies have found that perspective-taking can reduce prejudice against people with different views.
Similarly, the virtue of curiosity can help reframe disagreement. Instead of seeing difference as a threat to our own identity, it becomes an opportunity to learn. Higher levels of curiosity have been found to both increase people’s motivation to learn and reduce their desire to distant themselves from people with different views.
Pluralism is challenging when emotions run high. That means another virtue it requires is self-regulation, the ability to reflect before reacting. Without it, moral disagreement can quickly descend into condemnation.
Tamil war survivors pray for family members during a commemoration ceremony in Mullaitivu, Sri Lanka, on May 18, 2024. Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images
Finally, pluralism takes courage. People sometimes confuse pluralism with moral relativism: the view that right and wrong are just matters of opinion, with no universal moral foundation. Pluralism doesn’t mean giving up your values, but it requires bravery to discuss them openly with people who strongly disagree.
It is still early, but the emerging picture is consistent with what I observed as a child: that the people around me who maintained friendships across ethnic and religious lines were not people without convictions. They were people who had cultivated specific habits of mind that made that pluralism possible, despite blowback from others within their own community.
Putting it into practice
One practical way to build these habits is to practice what some researchers call an “ideological Turing test.” The rule is straightforward: Before you criticize someone’s position, you first have to explain it so accurately and charitably that they would recognize themselves in your summary. They would say, “Yes, that’s what I believe.”
Doing this well is hard. You have to get curious about what the other person is actually trying to protect, what they fear, what trade-offs they’re willing to live with, and what experiences might have shaped their perspective in the first place. This exercise quietly changes the aim of the conversation: Instead of trying to defeat the other person, you try to understand them.
The process also tends to trigger intellectual humility, because when we make a serious attempt to represent opposing views fairly, we may notice faults in our own thinking. None of this requires agreement, but it does reduce our tendency to caricature the other side.
Pluralism can also be strengthened by reframing our sense of “we.” In polarized environments, “we” tends to shrink until it names only the people who pray, vote and live exactly like us. Pluralism pushes in the opposite direction: It asks us to include fellow citizens whose deepest convictions diverge from our own. Community is a shared civic fate – the responsibilities, institutions and hopes we share, despite enduring disagreement.
Many times over the years, I have thought of a story my father told me, a vivid example of “we.” In 1983, Tamil militants killed 13 government soldiers, and anti-Tamil riots swept across the country. Sinhalese mobs attacked Tamil homes, businesses and neighborhoods in what became known as Black July – days of violence orchestrated by the government that killed thousands of Tamils and displaced many more. The riots are widely regarded as the spark that turned simmering tensions into a full-scale civil war.
A woman holds a portrait of her missing relatives during a protest by Tamils demanding justice for their loved ones near mass graves in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, on July 26, 2025. AFP via Getty Images
My grandparents and uncle were living in Kandy. When violence reached their area, they hid Tamil neighbors in their home, sheltering them from the mobs outside. My father said it was a split-second decision, motivated by the recognition that the people next door were their neighbors rather than members of a different ethnic and religious group.
Their actions required courage and a moral clarity that cut against the chaos of the moment. This clarity doesn’t appear out of nowhere; it emerges from habits practiced long before the moment of crisis arrives.
To build that courage in ourselves, we can also build habits of praise, noticing and naming when others are respectful to people across a divide. Virtues grow where they are socially reinforced. Each person can build accountability by committing with a friend or colleague to one concrete practice of pluralism: asking clarifying questions before responding, summarizing an opposing view before critiquing it, or pausing before posting an incendiary comment online.
Thinking back to my childhood, I remember the evening in 1993 when neighbors gathered outside after news that Sri Lanka’s president at the time, Ranasinghe Premadasa, had been assassinated. We could hear faraway fireworks lit by others who were rejoicing in his passing. And yet we stood together quietly.
The silence of the people around us did not erase our differences; the sound of the fireworks in the distance was a callous reminder of the disagreements that did exist. But to me, our neighbors’ silence affirmed something deeper: that our disagreements did not cancel our shared humanity.
In an era when religious and moral differences often feel like threats to identity, cultivating an individual ethic of pluralism may be one of the most critical civic tasks before us. Pluralism is not who we are by default. But it can be who we become – slowly, deliberately and together.
Eranda Jayawickreme receives funding from the Templeton Religion Trust (grant ID TRT-2024-33487). He is a member of the Labour Party (UK).
Many people use drugs including paracetamol on a regular basis to treat headaches. But only part of each drug is taken into the bloodstream, while the rest is released into the wastewater through our urine when we go to the toilet.
Paracetamol is an ingredient in the tablet. Most of the paracetamol is absorbed into the blood. Around 5% of the paracetamol is immediately excreted in urine in its original form.
Over around 24 hours, up to 95% of one dose of paracetamol – including the amount that was previously absorbed into the blood stream – is excreted in urine, after being degraded in the liver.
Mainly as a result of this physical process, paracetamol is increasingly being detected in rivers around the world. In the UK, maximum concentrations around 1 microgram per litre have been measured in the River Thames and in different estuaries. Similar levels were found in rivers and lakes of other European countries, including Serbia and Spain.
In the Nairobi river in Kenya, paracetamol concentrations have reached up to 16 micrograms per litre, which is high enough to cause cellular damage in water organisms such as clams. In Asian surface waters, high paracetamol levels have been reported as well.
And even though 81% of wastewater in the EU is collected and treated in municipal wastewater treatment plants, these facilities are not yet equipped to deal with micropollutants such as paracetamol. The prefix “micro” refers to the concentrations these substances can reach in the environment, and these are typically comparable to the size of a sugar cube in an Olympic swimming pool.
In humans, an overdose of paracetamol can lead to serious liver damage. Once in the environment, the drug does not suddenly lose its effect. Water organisms tend to be more sensitive to pharmaceuticals than humans. Liver toxicity has also been observed in certain fish species after three weeks of exposure to paracetamol at concentrations below 1 microgram per litre. In another study, even a few micrograms per litre led to malformations of fish embryos and reduced their survival rate by 90%.
Wastewater is one of the major ways through which micropollutants can enter the environment. However, private households are not the only source of micropollutants in the wastewater stream – they can also come from hospitals, where medications are used in much higher quantities.
These can end up in the hospital wastewater, which often goes into the same sewer pipes that households are connected to (and some industries as well), and is transported to municipal wastewater treatment plants. In Oslo, wastewater coming from two hospitals was responsible for 12% of the paracetamol input into the local wastewater treatment works – the highest share among the 20 tested pharmaceuticals. A more extensive study from the US also found that paracetamol was the most prevalent pharmaceutical in hospital wastewater and, even after a high degree of removal in wastewater treatment plants, still posed a high ecological risk.
For that reason, many hospitals are now being encouraged to install some kind of on-site pre-treatment for their wastewater before it goes into the sewers. The other option is to treat it in separate plants, which might be hard if they are already connected to the municipal sewage network.
Given the increasing pharmaceutical consumption, the concentrations of micropollutants in wastewater, including paracetamol, are on the rise. Insufficient wastewater treatment could therefore lead to increasing levels in the environment. However, the concentrations of paracetamol in surface water have decreased since the late 90s due to advances in wastewater treatment.
Where does your sewage go?
In some European countries, such as Sweden and Ireland, a large portion (up to around 80%) of drinking water is sourced from lakes and rivers. Protecting our freshwater resources is essential in order to keep using them.
How can we clean up?
The EU is now working on introducing treatment at wastewater treatment plants to tackle levels of paracetamol and other medicines in the water supply. Large treatment works will need to upgrade their facilities by 2045.
Several techniques could be used for this. One is ozonation. You might know ozone from the atmospheric ozone layer, where it fulfils the role of shielding humans from UV light and thereby protecting cells from damage. But using its ability to readily react with other molecules, ozone can be used to treat wastewater.
This process doesn’t tackle all micropollutants equally. Paracetamol belongs to those substances that are easily removed with ozone, while others, such as the blood pressure medication irbesartan, require more ozone to be degraded fully. Unfortunately, there are also micropollutants that can’t be tackled with ozonation at all, such as the “forever chemicals” Pfas.
During ozonation, ozone doesn’t only react with micropollutants, but also with natural organic molecules in the wastewater, which means that higher ozone doses are required to clean the water. More ozone is required to remove micropollutants from wastewater than from pure water (for instance tap water), because there are other elements in wastewater that also react with ozone, while tap water is already “clean”. This process is called “ozone-scavenging” and can result in increased costs for wastewater treatment plants.
Another issue is that ozonation can sometimes even increase toxicity in the wastewater. Because by reacting with ozone, the micropollutants are technically not removed, but degraded. The molecule of a degraded micropollutant looks slightly different and can have a higher toxicity than the original molecule (at least in some cases). But ozonation can be used in combination with other treatments.
Toxicity here does not primarily refer to humans, but it can harm organisms in the environment such as algae, microbes, crustaceans, or fish, leaving them unable to swim or making them infertile in some cases. Although, if micropollutants were to pass through drinking water treatment in high enough levels, it could also have serious health implications for humans.
Pharmaceutical consumption trends show that people take more medications than ever before, and the pharmaceutical industry is rapidly growing. So it is becoming increasingly important to tackle micropollutant levels in our wastewater and upgrade wastewater treatment plants to keep our water clean.
Isabell Fritz receives funding from The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and Formas – a Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development.
Despite achieving historic scores and taking control of over 60 municipalities in the French local elections, the far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally, RN) will be disappointed by its failure to make a breakthrough in the larger towns and cities. The headlines coming out of France after the second round of elections on March 22 tell of the resilience of the mainstream centre left and centre right, whose candidates held on to every major city hall in the country.
The two parties that dominate France’s political extremes – the far-right RN, led by Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed, LFI) – made some gains in smaller towns. But they failed to capture a single one of the large cities.
This matters because France goes to the polls again in 2027 to elect its next president. The local elections were widely seen as a dress rehearsal – and the results expose the limits of both parties’ strategies. For the RN, the failure to break through in cities such as Marseille and Toulon — combined with the refusal of the centre-right Les Républicains (LR) to enter into alliances with RN candidates — shows that, for the far right, the path to the Élysée Palace remains highly complicated.
For LFI, a similar inability to translate national prominence into local power raises questions about Mélenchon’s capacity to unite the left ahead of next year’s presidential campaign.
For the RN, the dream result would have been a win in Marseille. Capturing France’s second city would have been a massive statement of intent. After the first round of the local elections on March 16, however, a victory in the port city seemed unlikely – especially after the refusal of the centre-right candidate, Martine Vassal, to enter into any alliance with the RN.
‘Le grande confusion’: all sides have claimed victory, but there are no real pointers ahead of next year’s presidential election. France 24 screenshot.
Vassal’s decision is emblematic of one of the big lessons of these elections: the centre-right LR has resisted the temptation to ally itself with the far right, even where doing so might have delivered local power. The centre-left mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan, drew his own red line, refusing to merge his electoral list with LFI. He still held on to his job comfortably, winning 54% in the second round, well ahead of the RN’s Franck Allisio on 40%. The double refusal in Marseille – the centre right rejecting the far right, the centre left rejecting the radical left – encapsulates the resilience of the political mainstream in France’s major cities.
Battle for credibility
While taking Marseille was always going to be a long shot, the RN had invested heavily in winning back another important port city on the south coast: Toulon. This is the city where in 1995 the party, then called the Front National (FN) and led by Marine Le Pen’s late father, Jean-Marie, made a historic breakthrough, taking control of the council. This was the first time the far right had captured a major French city since the second world war.
But the FN mayor, Jean-Marie Le Chevallier, endured a disastrous time in office. He fell out with his own city councillors and in 1999 ended up quitting the party after a spat with Le Pen (père). The failure to manage Toulon city council (Le Chevallier scored less than 8% when he was up for reelection in 2001) became an albatross around the party’s neck for many years to come.
As we have argued in our research on the RN in local government, overcoming this reputation for incompetence has been an important goal for all the party’s mayors elected since 2014. Recapturing Toulon would have been highly symbolic. But the RN candidate (and current MP) Laure Lavalette, despite leading after the first round, eventually fell short with 48% in the runoff against centre-right incumbent Josée Massi.
The result shows the enduring power of the front républicain: the tactical alliance of voters from across the political spectrum to keep out the far right.
Nevertheless, RN supporters could console themselves with some important victories in smaller towns across the south including Carcassonne, Menton and Orange – another municipality originally captured by the party in 1995. The RN also held on to the vast majority of the towns it was already governing, several of which it won outright in the first round. This includes Perpignan, still the largest town run by the party. In these established strongholds, RN mayors have worked to normalise the party’s reputation and professionalise its approach to local governance.
The success of this strategy is shown by the re-election of the longstanding mayor of Hénin-Beaumont, Steeve Briois, with a commanding 78% of the vote in the first round. His success seems to have had a kind of “coattail effect” across the former coal mining basin in France’s far north – with RN victories in a number of neighbouring towns. The consolidation of a solid block of RN-run municipalities in northern France, alongside those in its traditional heartland of the south-east, is one of the most striking outcomes of these elections.
Signs of things to come?
Yet arguably the most significant result for the far right came in a battle between former allies on the centre right. In Nice, France’s fifth-largest city, Éric Ciotti – who broke with the centre-right LR in 2024 to ally himself with the RN ahead of the legislative elections – defeated his former mentor, the outgoing mayor Christian Estrosi.
Ciotti’s victory raises an uncomfortable question for LR. Even as the party nationally held the line against allying with the far right, one of its most prominent former figures has demonstrated that crossing that line can be electorally rewarding. Whether Ciotti’s path remains an isolated case or becomes a template for other ambitious centre-right politicians will be one of the key dynamics to watch as the 2027 presidential campaign takes shape.
These local elections confirm that the RN’s road to the Élysée runs through a France that is not yet willing to hand over the keys. However, the cracks in the adherence of some significant political figures to the front républicain, cracks which became visible in Nice, even if not yet spreading to voters at large, suggest that “not yet” may not necessarily mean “never”.
Timothy Peace has received funding from the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Fred Paxton receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust as an Early Career Fellow (2024-27).
Collagen supplements have become one of the bestselling products in the wellness industry, promising everything from smoother skin to stronger joints. But do they actually work?
A major new review of the evidence – pulling together data from 113 clinical trials – suggests that, for some health outcomes, the answer is probably yes. But as ever with nutrition science, the full picture is more complicated.
Collagen is a protein the body makes naturally. It gives skin its structure and elasticity, supports bones and muscles, helps wounds heal and plays a role in protecting organs. The problem is that production slows as we age, which is why so many people turn to supplements to top it up.
Not all collagen is the same, though. The collagen found naturally in food may be less well absorbed than the smaller forms used in most supplements. These hydrolysed forms – where the protein has been broken down into shorter chains called peptides – are thought to pass more readily into the bloodstream and making it easier for the body to transport these fragments to tissues where they may have biological effects, potentially supporting skin, joint and muscle health.
The new review examined research published up to March 2025, drawing on 16 systematic reviews that between them included nearly 8,000 participants. The overall picture was cautiously positive.
Collagen supplementation was linked to moderate improvements in muscle health and reduced pain in people with osteoarthritis. There were also improvements in skin elasticity and hydration – though these benefits built up gradually, suggesting that taking collagen consistently over a longer period matters more than a short-term burst.
Some of the findings were less clearcut. Results for skin elasticity and hydration shifted depending on when the studies were conducted, with newer research showing lower improvements in elasticity but greater improvements in hydration. That inconsistency is worth noting – it suggests the science is still settling.
The quality of the research itself is also worth scrutinising. The studies used a wide variety of methods, doses and ways of measuring outcomes, which makes direct comparisons difficult.
Fifteen out of the 16 reviews included were rated as low or critically low quality – not necessarily because the supplements don’t work, but because of methodological problems such as studies not being registered in advance and poor reporting on potential biases. Many trials were also short and included few participants, which limits what we can reliably conclude about long-term effects.
Not all collagen is equal
Part of the problem is that collagen supplements vary enormously. Some are derived from animals, such as cows, pigs and chickens, and others come from marine sources, including fish, jellyfish and shellfish. There are even so-called “vegan” collagen alternatives. Some studies used oral supplements, while others tested collagen dressings applied to the skin.
The way collagen is processed also affects the size and composition of the peptides in the final product, which in turn influences how it behaves and is absorbed in the body. Lumping all these different products together in a single analysis risks obscuring as much as it reveals.
Individual differences matter too. Factors such as sun exposure, smoking, sleep quality, environment and hormone levels all affect how skin ages and how it might respond to supplementation. If studies fail to account for these variables, it becomes very difficult to know whether any observed changes are genuinely due to the collagen or simply reflect differences in participants’ lifestyles.
This review adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting collagen supplements are not simply expensive placebos. There appear to be real, if modest, benefits – particularly for skin hydration, joint pain and muscle health.
The research base still has significant gaps. Without more rigorous, standardised studies, it remains genuinely difficult to say what is driving those benefits, or who is most likely to see them. Studies need to clearly specify the type of collagen used, the dose, how it was delivered and the characteristics of the people taking it.
Heba Ghazal 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.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Camisha Sibblis, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology/Director of the Black Studies Institute, University of Windsor
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once declared: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” However, if the systems created to administer and protect justice are the very sources of injustice, what happens to us as a society?
As an academic and clinician who authors EPSRs, I have wondered whether they actually help Canadian criminal courts achieve justice for Black youth as intended, or if the courts still act unjustly while using them.
The recent judgments on two youth who both appealed their adult sentences after being convicted of murder highlights how EPSR use can miss its mark. Although both crimes were severe, sentencing differed for multiple factors, showing that EPSRs may not correct racial bias when the judicial perception of Black youth is distorted.
Parallel crimes, different outcomes
In July 2025, the Supreme Court of Canada made decisions in the cases of R. v. S.B. and R. v. I.M. Both S.B., who had an EPSR, and I.M., who didn’t, violently killed unsuspecting victims in Toronto in 2010 and 2011 respectively, Yet it was determined that S.B. would receive an adult sentence and I.M. a youth sentence.
S.B., a 16-year-old Black male of Jamaican and Trinidadian descent, along with several other youths, lured a 16-year-old into an apartment building stairwell, where S.B. shot him, killing him instantly.
By contrast, I.M., a South Asian male seven months from his 18th birthday, went to the home of his 17-year-old victim with a group, forced him into an alley and stabbed him more than 11 times. After leaving the victim for dead, the group entered his home to rob it, struck his mother twice in the head with a handgun and forced her to sit with her head between her knees while they searched her home for guns.
Bias and the misuse of the EPSRs
In S.B.’s case, the court framed his actions through a lens of adult culpability, overlooking the mitigating factors of his youth and traumatic experiences as outlined in his EPSR. Despite being only 16, the judge determined that S.B.’s conduct showed an “adult-like ability to plan, as opposed to youthful impulsivity [and] propensity for risk-taking.”
This characterization rested on his actions outside of the murder: orchestrating the luring of the victim, directing a co-accused to delete messages and blame rivals for the murder and discussing the possibility of eliminating witnesses.
The court argued that these actions demonstrated “confidence in managing events post-offence rather than youthful panic,” framing his behaviour as inherently criminal. Furthermore, this assessment saw S.B. as having the “ability to exercise adult judgment and foresight.”
These comments suggest misunderstandings of panic, adolescence and brain development. They also underestimate the abilities, knowledge and intelligence of the average youth.
I.M.’s judgment, in stark contrast, highlighted “youthful bravado,” framing his actions as the product of immaturity rather than criminal sophistication. Despite his intention to “prove to others he was ready to progress into more serious criminal activity,” the court downplayed any planning or co-ordination involved in the crime. I.M.’s proximity to aging out of the youth system was overlooked.
While he boasted about the crime with a peer and flaunted a blood-stained shirt, these actions were dismissed as “ill-considered and imprudent,” supporting the perspective of him as a youth needing support. They were said to show “bravado consonant with the impulsivity of an adolescent” rather than learned hyper-masculine behaviouroften performed by adults.
I.M.’s “difficult life circumstances” were understood as giving way to “heightened vulnerability” to negative influences like peer pressure, which decreased his moral blameworthiness.
Despite the EPSR noting that S.B. showed remorse, he appears to have been regarded as irredeemable in the Supreme Court’s sentencing. On the other hand, despite I.M. being deemed by a psychiatrist to have “little remorse” and “a negative rehabilitative prognosis,” he received a lighter sentence.
S.B.’s parents divorced when he was 10, after which his mother was his sole caregiver. At 11, he witnessed his cousin’s murder at a mutual friend’s funeral, which left him “severely traumatized.”
He grew up poor “in a drug- and gang-ridden community,” where he was “groomed” by older gang affiliates. He experienced the loss of several acquaintances and was subjected to beatings and carding by police. Diagnosed with ADHD and a learning disability, S.B. was labelled as displaying “immature behaviour” by one teacher.
I.M., who immigrated to Canada from Bangladesh as an infant, was reportedly raised in a stable, two-parent household and experienced a single yet profound, traumatic event at age 16 — a school shooting. Like S.B., he was diagnosed with a learning disability, but his school records noted his potential as a student. His mother emphasized his attentiveness and willingness to listen.
Both youth began engaging in criminalized activity such as robberies and drug trafficking at around age 12, and both had long lists of misconduct reports, including assaults and trafficking, while in custody for the murders.
EPSRs are clinical assessments used to contextualize complex biological, psychological and social factors. If judges who lack expertise in child development disregard these analyses, what beliefs are they employing to determine developmental age versus chronological age?
This case comparison uncovers a troubling catch-22: Black individuals’ perceived dangerousness heightens with both their perceived intelligence and lack thereof.
Intelligence makes them “criminal masterminds,” and the lack of it makes them “uncontrollable savages.” Both interpretations negate rehabilitation and justify long-term incarceration.
Camisha Sibblis receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Russia takes Ukrainian children from occupied territories, places them in Russian families, gives them Russian names, and, by presidential decree, grants them fast-tracked Russian citizenship.
More than 1,200 cases were verified by the commission, but the real number is likely much higher. Eighty per cent of the children remain in Russia, in many cases adopted into Russian families.
This disturbing finding, however, undermines one of the most enduring and pernicious Russian myths about the war itself.
The ‘NATO expansion’ myth
One of the most durable narratives about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, relentlessly promoted by figures like American international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, is that the war was simply a reluctant, defensive Russian reaction to “NATO expansionism.” The West, according to this narrative, provoked Russia, leaving Vladimir Putin with no choice but to respond.
Ukraine, however, was not part of NATO in 2014 or 2022, and never even had a Membership Action Plan, an essential first step toward accession to NATO.
Western leaders explicitly accommodated Putin’s demands and kept Ukraine out of the alliance indefinitely. Despite various verbal assurances, NATO never actually offered Ukraine a pathway to membership, and Ukraine officially became a neutral, non-bloc state in 2010. That did not prevent Russia from invading in 2014.
“NATO expansion” was also not the reason cited in 2022 for launching Putin’s so-called “special military operation.” Instead, the Russian leader claimed the full-scale invasion was an effort to stop a genocide being perpetrated by the “neo-Nazi Kyiv regime” against Moscow’s puppet “people’s republics” in Luhansk and Donetsk. These claims are baseless.
In the same speech, Putin also reiterated the claim that Russians and Ukrainians comprise a “single whole, despite the existence of state borders,” echoing arguments made in his 2021 essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”
This belief forms part of what some scholars have argued is an ideology according to which Russia, as a distinct “civilization-state,” has a “civilizational mission” to “reunify” the Russian nation (including Ukrainians) and take back control of what are regarded as “historically Russian territories.”
According to Putin, that means the “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.”
Little of this would seem to have much to do with legitimate security concerns.
The war Russia is truly fighting
The limits of the NATO expansion narrative become clearest when we look at how Russia is actually waging the war. If the Russian aim was truly to address security concerns, the country’s conduct would reflect that objective.
None of these actions make sense if understood through the lens of preventing NATO expansion, but they do once Russia’s eliminationist ideology, which actually fuels the conflict, is recognized and understood.
In front-line areas, the destruction of local governance, social infrastructure and demographic fabric are ongoing catastrophes. An estimated 3.55 million Ukrainians remain internally displaced; another 6.8 million have sought refuge abroad.
Achieving a just peace in Ukraine will therefore not be merely a matter of rebuilding damaged infrastructure. It will require a process of cultural and social restoration, one that will not succeed if policymakers remain attached to shallow and misleading explanations for why the destruction occurred in the first place.
If the war was truly about NATO, a land-for-peace deal with neutrality guarantees might theoretically suffice. But if the war is about erasing a people, their language, their culture and their future, then border adjustments will resolve little. A state whose leadership denies the existence of a separate Ukrainian identity will not be satisfied with mere territorial concessions.
Stolen generations
The NATO expansion myth cannot explain the war that Russia is actually fighting, nor can it explain the abduction and forced assimilation of Ukrainian children.
Ultimately, it’s a fable that shifts blame from the aggressor to the victims, undermining the prospects for a just and lasting peace.
Ukraine’s stolen generations are not “collateral damage” — they represent the war’s actual objectives. In the end, understanding those objectives will be essential to achieving peace and to rebuilding a country Russia appears intent on leaving without a future generation.
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.
Imagine a world without internet, email, streaming services or social media. Imagine having to write letters or call everyone on a rotary dial phone to communicate. Imagine having to drive to a store to buy anything and everything. Unthinkable, right?
You can thank fiber optics for all these conveniences and more. And while you’re at it, wish the fiber a happy 60th birthday in 2026.
As a materials scientist who has worked with fiber optics for over 30 years, I’ve seen how useful they are, and how scientists are working to improve them.
What are fiber optics?
Fiber optics are hair-thin strands of glass that confine and carry light. Information encoded on that light is how we communicate, watch movies, buy things and stay connected.
To carry information over long distances, the fiber must be extraordinarily clear. The magic behind an optical fiber’s transparency is a combination of material science and manufacturing. As the light journeys along the fiber, little by little, some scatters off the glass molecules themselves and is lost. In modern fiber optics, this loss is so small that light can travel hundreds of miles and still be seen.
Carrying information in the form of light over long distances requires the fiber to act like a mirror. This way it can bounce those bits of light around corners when the fiber is bent, as it might be when strung like electrical wire inside a building.
Optical fibers comprise an inner core surrounded by an outer layer called a cladding, both made from glass. Protective plastic layers surround these glass parts and keep the fiber remarkably strong. The core glass is made from a material that has a slightly higher refractive index than the cladding.
You can think of the refractive indexlike density. A denser material has more atoms or molecules for its size, so it takes the light longer to travel through it. The refractive index measures this slowing of light inside a material.
In such a design, light undergoes “total internal reflection,” bouncing off the core-clad interface. A remarkable feature of this phenomenon is that the glasses comprising both the core and clad are transparent, but when sandwiched together, light impinging on that interface at certain angles reflects off like a perfect mirror. So how are these special types of glass made?
Fiber optics use total internal reflection to carry light over long distances.
A simple science
In the age of quantum technologies and AI, sometimes sophistication comes best from simplicity.
The optical fibers that wire our world are predominantly made from silicon dioxide, which also makes up beach sand. However, while chemically the same, beach sand is made up of tiny crystals of quartz that have been pulverized by geological weathering and the pounding of ocean waves. These natural origins riddle beach sand with impurities that can absorb light.
Manufacturers create fiber optic silicon dioxide, called silica, by chemically reacting gases that contain silicon with oxygen, leading to an ultrapure glass. This is all done using a process called chemical vapor deposition, where the reacted gases create layers of glass that build into the form of a rod. Typically, pure silica is used for the layers that make up the core and cladding, though to get a higher refractive index in the core, researchers add small amounts of other glass components to the silica. The finished rod is called a “blank” or “preform.”
That rod, containing both core and clad, is then heated and pulled into a thin fiber. Think of pulling on a wad of gum in your mouth – that thin strand is like the fiber, except scientists slowly lower the big preform into the furnace and pull out the small fiber quickly.
Another beauty of glass is that it controllably softens with temperature. This permits us scientists to reliably pull fiber from the preform rod that already has the core and clad built into it.
Billions of miles of fiber optics have been made for global communications, and it all conforms to a diameter of 125 micrometers – one millionth of a meter – with a tolerance typically less than about one micrometer.
That level of material purity and manufacturing control makes fiber optics a modern marvel. But fiber optics haven’t always been this advanced – it took time to get to this level of purity and control.
The trivergence
Three events took place within roughly a 10-year span that paved the way for today’s fiber optics.
In 1960, physicist Ted Maiman developed the laser by building on its 1950s predecessor, the maser. In 1966, 60 years ago, experiments by engineers George Hockham and Charles Kao tested the transparency of various materials along with some light-guiding structures. They determined that a glass fiber could, in theory, carry light over the span of at least a kilometer.
While that distance might not sound too good today, other communication systems at the time were losing far more signal strength.
The trick was to make the glass clean enough. With this finding, Hockham and Kao started a global race to make optical fiber that exceeded this level of transparency.
By 1970, scientists from Corning Inc. used chemical vapor deposition to make a fiber breaking Kao’s mark. With both these highly transparent fibers and more mature lasers to create light pulses, long-distance optical communication was born.
From 1970 to today, the clarity of fiber has continued to improve, becoming over 100 times clearer now and allowing networks to connect the world. For “groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication,” Charles Kao was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in physics.
Through the looking glass
Glass lets a lot of visible light through – you can tell by looking out your window. But interestingly, it is even clearer at colors, called wavelengths, that are invisible to the human eye. Fiber optics used in communication networks operate at a wavelength of light of about 1.55 micrometers, between 50 and 100 times smaller than a human hair. At this infrared wavelength, the interaction of the light with the silica glass is disappearingly small.
Billions of miles of fiber optics have been made since the 1970s and installed globally for communications. But the technology’s small size and weight, coupled with its high strength, flexibility and transparency, make fiber optics useful for many other applications.
Today, fiber optics are used as sensors for geologic events, such as earthquakes, as monitors for infrastructure, including bridges, roads and buildings, and as conduits for imaging and laser treatments inside the body. Optical fibers are also used as the source of light within the fiber lasers employed worldwide for machining, manufacturing, defense and security – to name just a few.
It’s remarkable how something that hardly interacts with light can underpin most of our human interactions. Fiber optics use light you can’t see to enable things most people cannot live without.
John Ballato receives funding from numerous federal funding organizations including the National Science Foundation and US Department of Defense.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Alejandro Hortal-Sánchez, Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Wake Forest University; University of North Carolina – Greensboro
A classic example of a nudge is making the healthy choices easier to grab in a cafeteria.Maskot via Getty Images
Twelve-year-old Jaysen Carr died in July 2025. While he swam in Lake Murray, a reservoir a few miles from Columbia, South Carolina, Naegleria fowleri – a rare amoeba found in warm fresh water – entered through his nose, causing a rapidly fatal brain infection.
Each year in the United States, drowning causes roughly 4,500 deaths, while infections from brain-eating amoebas typically number only two or three. Yet the vividness of these rare deaths powerfully shapes how people perceive and respond to risk. After a 2025 amoeba-related death made headlines in Iowa, for example, open-water swimmers began questioning whether lakes were safe, even as health officials emphasized how rare such infections remain.
Is it irrational to avoid swimming in lakes on hot summer days? How rational is it to fear flying? How many people worry about contaminants in their drinking water yet never think twice about skipping sunscreen, despite skin cancer being the most common, and largely preventable, cancer in the United States?
These reactions raise a deeper question: What does it mean to call a response “rational” or “irrational”? These are the kinds of ideas I explore in my research on behavioral public policy. How do the assumptions scientists make about human rationality shape the tools governments use to improve social welfare?
When mistakes aren’t really mistakes
Behavioral economists, following Daniel Kahneman, emphasize how heuristics – the mental shortcuts or rules of thumb people use to make quick decisions – produce systematic biases or predictable errors in judgment. From this perspective, these biases born from shortcuts lead people to make choices that do not serve their own interests or stated preferences.
Evolutionary psychologists such as Gerd Gigerenzer instead see those same shortcuts as adaptive responses to uncertainty. Rather than errors, they’re efficient strategies shaped by the environments in which human reasoning actually evolved.
These two perspectives are in disagreement about what counts as rational – and why that matters for policy.
Consider a few familiar examples. Frame the same medical procedure as having a 90% survival rate rather than a 10% mortality rate and patients respond very differently. Set one option as the default – whether in organ donation, retirement savings or privacy settings – and most people stick with it simply because opting out takes effort.
From a behavioral economics perspective, these are clear cases of bias: judgments shaped by framing, whatever feels most vivid, or inertia rather than careful deliberation.
From an evolutionary perspective, however, the picture changes. In complex environments with limited time, information and attention, relying on defaults or whatever feels most vivid or familiar can be an efficient way to decide without becoming overwhelmed. What looks like a mistake when judged against idealized models of rational choice may instead be a sensible response to real-world uncertainty.
This perspective helps explain why small changes in choice environments – nudges such as placing salad bars directly in cafeteria serving lines or listing vegetarian options first on menus – can significantly shift behavior without forcing anyone to choose differently. In other words, nudges work precisely because they align with, not fight against, the shortcuts people already use, making the desired behavior the path of least resistance.
Behavioral economists defend nudges as tools for correcting cognitive biases. Gigerenzer criticizes them as ethically problematic and argues that public policy should emphasize education over subtle choice manipulation.
If human rationality is seen as deeply flawed, nudges appear attractive because they make better decisions easier without demanding reflection.
If, instead, rationality is viewed as adaptive and teachable, policy should focus on strengthening people’s capacity to learn, adapt and decide for themselves.
Rationality isn’t just one thing
From bestselling books such as behavioral economist Dan Ariely’s “Predictably Irrational” to the worldwide expansion of behavioral “nudge” units in government, many contemporary developments suggest that people are poor decision-makers. Struggles with retirement savings, health, weight loss and environmental protection seem to confirm that view.
And yet, as a species, humans have been extraordinarily successful – adapting to diverse environments, building complex societies and accumulating knowledge across generations.
My claim is that this apparent contradiction dissolves once you recognize that rationality is not a single thing. Human beings can be both rational and irrational, depending on the scientific lens in use. From a behavioral economics perspective, many decisions appear biased and suboptimal. From an ecological or evolutionary perspective, those same decisions can look adaptive, efficient and sensible given the environments in which they are made.
At this point, the disagreement is not merely empirical but conceptual. People often assume that “rationality” names a single property of human behavior, when in fact its meaning depends on the scientific framework being applied.
Consider love. In neuroscience, love appears as patterns of brain activity and hormones. In psychology, it is studied through attachment and emotion. In sociology, it takes the form of social bonds and norms.
None of these accounts is wrong – but none captures love in full. I suggest rationality works in much the same way.
The danger arises when one perspective is treated as the whole story. Reducing love entirely to brain chemistry, or rationality entirely to cognitive biases, treats a partial explanation as a complete one. Scientific disciplines illuminate different aspects of complex phenomena, but none has a monopoly on their meaning.
Forgetting this carries a cost: We risk drawing overly narrow conclusions – about human behavior, intelligence or public policy – by mistaking the limits of a single framework for the limits of human rationality itself.
Seen this way, fear of rare brain-eating amoebas, of flying, or of tap water is not simply a failure of reason. Such reactions may appear irrational under one standard yet reflect a form of rationality adapted to uncertainty, vivid impressions and limited information.
What ultimately matters is not labeling people as rational or irrational, but being explicit about which conception of rationality is at work – and why. That choice, in turn, shapes whether public policy aims to nudge behavior, educate citizens or redesign environments so that human reasoning can operate at its best.
Alejandro Hortal-Sánchez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Adeel Khalid, Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Kennesaw State University
An AI system can analyze data from a drone to detect people in a forest – and determine what condition they’re in.Adeel Khalid
A combination of infrared imaging, thermal imaging and color cameras on an uncrewed drone, along with an AI system to interpret the data, can help emergency responders and search-and-rescue teams locate, identify and track people who have gone missing in the wilderness. The experimental system helps responders pinpoint where a missing person is and determine whether they are hurt or even alive.
People who get lost or hurt while exploring nature can become stranded for days. Rescue teams often use drones to look for the person or signs of their whereabouts. The small drone my colleagues and I built at my lab at Kennesaw State University flies autonomously using a grid search pattern. It sends live video and images to a ground station operated by the rescue team.
When the AI system finds a person, it analyzes images to determine whether the individual is upright or lying on the ground. It segments parts of the person’s body, identifying the person’s head and the body’s position. It then zeroes in on the forehead. It extracts forehead temperature readings, pixel by pixel, from the imaging data to estimate forehead temperature. We have two papers detailing these findings accepted for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Aviation Forum 2026 conference.
Our AI model then assesses whether the person is conscious or unconscious and identifies abnormal temperatures that could indicate heat stress, hypothermia or other physical complications, or death – all vital information for a search-and-rescue team.
In field trials we have conducted, the system has provided consistent temperature readings of the heads of volunteers from our research team who have walked out into a variety of environments, under different conditions.
Why it matters
It is critical to get accurate and timely information on the whereabouts of a missing person. The likelihood that the person will survive decreases steeply as time passes.
An AI-enhanced drone can make search-and-rescue operations significantly more efficient than sending teams of people out into the environment to search on foot, especially in poor weather conditions or under thick foliage. Rescuers who know whether a person is conscious or unconscious can also better gear up for what they need to do to retrieve the person and administer aid. Our technology could save lives.
What other research is being done
Search-and-rescue personnel use various kinds of drones, but the machines often lack the ability to positively identify humans, especially under thick foliage, in bad weather or when the person is lying down or unconscious. The AI-based technology we have developed overcomes those challenges.
Better sensors that are very lightweight, that can function at night or in rain, and can see more clearly through thick foliage could further improve our drone and drones used by others. Researchers are devising AI-powered sound recognition for detecting screams for help, advanced thermal imaging for better nighttime vision and autonomous drones that could act as first responders.
Also under development are drones that can carry heavy payloads, such as flotation devices, fly for up to 14 hours or perform real-time mapping of the ground below.
What’s next
One of our next steps is to have multiple drones fly together and autonomously coordinate search-and-rescue operations among themselves. This will allow the technology to cover a much larger area, perhaps hundreds of square miles.
We are also designing a large drone that can carry up to 110 pounds (50 kilograms) of payload and stay aloft for an hour.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Adeel Khalid receives funding from the Office of Research at Kennesaw State University.
