Dan Falk at Undark:
There’s no question that we love to talk — but how did it happen? Yes, humpback whales sing, vervet monkeys use alarm calls, and bees convey information about food sources through dance, but only humans have full-blown language. Steven Mithen, a professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading, would seem to be well positioned to find the answer. His new book, “The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together the Six-Million-Year Story of How Words Evolved,” is hardly the first to explore the issue — but it is perhaps the most thorough to date. Drawing on the latest findings from an array of fields, including linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, psychology, and genetics, Mithen guides the reader through some 1.6 million years of hominin evolution, from language’s earliest stirrings to the rich communication system it became for Homo sapiens.
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How many clinical-trial studies in medical journals are fake or fatally flawed? In October 2020, John Carlisle reported a startling estimate
Last month, the House of Representatives 
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