How to Read a Preprint: Evaluating Research Before Peer Review
A preprint can carry real evidence or real errors. Here is what to check before you trust either.
By Victor Petrov • September 8, 2026
Latest
DHS Replaced Duration of Status With a Fixed Term for F-1 Students
A final rule published July 17, 2026 ends the open-ended admission period for foreign students, requiring formal extensions of stay for programs that run longer.
By Zara Nasser • August 10, 2026
science-news
Astronomers Report the First Confirmed Atmosphere on a Rocky Habitable-Zone Planet
A July 16, 2026 study reports helium escaping from LHS 1140 b — the first atmospheric detection on a rocky world orbiting in its star's habitable zone, read through the planet's extended gas halo.
By Samuel Achebe • August 5, 2026
journals
Special Issues: How Guest-Edited Volumes Work, and How They Get Hijacked
Guest-edited special issues concentrate a journal's authority in one scholar's network — which makes them efficient science and efficient fraud when the wrong guest editor arrives.
By Clara Bennett • August 1, 2026
Randomization and Blinding: The Boring Machinery Behind Trustworthy Trials
A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial sounds like jargon — but each word names a specific leak that the design is engineered to plug.
By Samuel Achebe • July 23, 2026
A 'Significant' Result Can Be Trivial. Effect Size Tells You Which.
Statistical significance asks whether an effect exists; effect size asks whether it matters — and the two questions have different answers more often than headlines admit.
By Samuel Achebe • June 30, 2026
It Worked in Mice: Why Animal Findings Rarely Reach the Clinic
Roughly 90 percent of drugs that enter human clinical trials fail, and much of the gap is built into how preclinical animal research is done.
By Samuel Achebe • June 7, 2026
research
The Margin of Error Is the Least of a Survey's Problems
Sampling error is the only uncertainty a poll's +/- number covers; weighting, mode and nonresponse often move results further than the formula suggests.
By Samuel Achebe • May 16, 2026
From the past month
academia
One Advisor, Five Years, No Recourse: Academia's Most Concentrated Job
A PhD student's funding, authorship, timeline and references all route through a single person — and the system's numbers show why that concentration matters.
By Marta Kowalczyk • July 27, 2026
education-news
Federal Student Loan Rules Changed on July 1: What Borrowers Face Now
A final rule the Education Department issued on May 1, 2026, plus statutory changes that took effect in July, rewired repayment plans, the autopay discount and the SAVE wind-down.
By Zara Nasser • July 18, 2026
science-news
TESS Found Its First Microlensing Planet — a Super-Jupiter 40,000 Light-Years Out
Per the discovery team's July 1, 2026 announcement, the exoplanet hunter designed to watch transits caught a completely different signal: a star's gravity briefly magnifying a distant star behind it.
By Samuel Achebe • July 14, 2026
journals
Can Reviewers Use AI? What Journals Actually Allow Now
Most major publishers permit large language models to polish a reviewer's prose but forbid feeding confidential manuscripts into chatbots — and detection of secret AI use remains unreliable.
By Clara Bennett • July 9, 2026
DEI on Campus After 2025: What Actually Changed, Name by Name
Between January 2023 state bans and a 2025 federal campaign, diversity offices closed and job titles changed — the concrete shifts, and what the lawsuits left open.
By Marta Kowalczyk • July 5, 2026
Why a $50 Billion Endowment Still Says It Cannot Afford Things
Endowments are thousands of restricted pots earning investment returns, and the payout rules that govern them explain the strangest number in higher education.
By Marta Kowalczyk • June 12, 2026
Pay to Present: Who Actually Affords an Academic Conference
The annual meeting is where academic careers are made — and its registration fees plus travel costs quietly ration who gets to be there.
By Marta Kowalczyk • May 20, 2026
How an NSF Grant Actually Gets Made, Step by Step
NSF funds roughly one in five proposals through a review system built on two criteria, rotating panels and a program officer who manages the match.
By Marta Kowalczyk • April 27, 2026
How a Scientific Paper Gets Retracted, and Why It Takes So Long
More than 10,000 papers were retracted in 2023 alone, a record year, yet the median case still takes months or years to move from suspicion to formal withdrawal.
By Clara Bennett • June 16, 2026
Preprints Changed Who Controls Scientific Priority
arXiv passed 2.5 million papers, bioRxiv and medRxiv add tens of thousands more each quarter, and journal review now trails public exposure by months.
By Clara Bennett • May 25, 2026
journals
Why the Journal Impact Factor Lost Its Scientific Defenders
The San Francisco Declaration now carries more than 25,000 signatures, and the EU-backed COARA coalition has made metric reform official policy across European research.
By Clara Bennett • May 2, 2026
journals
Predatory Journals: Nine Red Flags Before You Submit a Paper
Publishing frauds now outnumber legitimate checks, with tens of thousands of suspect articles a year; a consistent checklist catches most of them before any fee is paid.
By Clara Bennett • April 9, 2026
NOAA Declares El Niño Conditions, With Odds of a Top-Ranked Event
The agency's June 11, 2026 advisory confirmed El Niño onset in the tropical Pacific and put the chance of a historically strong event at 63 percent, with global temperature consequences to follow.
By Samuel Achebe • June 21, 2026
Laser-Etched Metal Pulls Fresh Water From Saltwater With Zero Brine Discharge
A study published May 27, 2026 describes a 'superwicking' solar desalination surface that moves water uphill by capillarity and crystallizes salt in place instead of dumping concentrated brine.
By Samuel Achebe • May 29, 2026
science-news
Radar Adds Evidence of Water Ice in the Moon's Deepest Shadows
A study published May 6, 2026 reports that Chandrayaan-2 radar detected water-ice signatures inside permanently shadowed craters at the lunar south pole.
By Samuel Achebe • May 6, 2026
science-news
Rubin Observatory's First Data Drop Delivered 11,000 New Asteroids
Per the Rubin Observatory team, early survey data released April 2, 2026 catalogued more than eleven thousand previously unknown asteroids, including hundreds of near-Earth objects.
By Samuel Achebe • April 14, 2026
Spring 2026 Enrollment Hit 18.6 Million, Up 1 Percent Year Over Year
The National Student Clearinghouse's final spring count shows undergraduate growth continuing while graduate enrollment levels off, per its report released in early June 2026.
By Zara Nasser • June 25, 2026
Harvard's Fight Over Its SEVP Certification Reshaped Visa Politics
A year after the government moved to strip Harvard's ability to enroll international students, courts blocked the revocation and the litigation continues to define the stakes for roughly 1.1 million foreign students.
By Zara Nasser • June 3, 2026
education-news
NYU's 950 Contract Faculty Struck for Two Days and Won a First Contract
Full-time non-tenure-track professors at NYU walked off the job on March 23, 2026 and returned with a tentative deal on March 25, the latest sign of organizing power among contingent faculty.
By Zara Nasser • May 11, 2026
education-news
Selective Colleges Keep Reinstating SAT and ACT Requirements
Penn joined the list of elite schools requiring test scores again for the 2025-26 admissions cycle, yet per FairTest more than 80% of four-year colleges remain test-optional.
By Zara Nasser • April 18, 2026