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The desire to have our own biological children is hard-wired into many of us. And the desire is often felt more keenly in those struggling with infertility. So the promise of a simple solution is hard to ignore – which may be why “the Mucinex method” is trending on social media.

Many women on TikTok are attributing successful conception to their use of the widely available cough and cold medicine Mucinex – or similar over-the-counter decongestant medicines containing the active ingredient guaifenesin.

Why would a medicine designed to relieve cough and cold symptoms help women get pregnant? During unprotected sexual intercourse, sperm are deposited at the top of the vagina. To reach and fertilise the egg, the sperm must first traverse the cervix, a small canal that connects the vagina and the womb.

The cervix plays a critical role in regulating the passage of sperm through its production of cervical mucus. During a woman’s menstrual cycle, the quantity and consistency of the cervical mucus changes, becoming optimal around the time of ovulation.

If there is too much mucus, or it is too thick, it can stop the sperm from reaching the egg. So, the idea goes that by taking Mucinex, a woman would thin her cervical mucus and make it easier for the sperm to reach the egg.

The rising popularity of fertility tracking apps has increased awareness of signs of the fertile window among users, including through monitoring of cervical mucus quantity and consistency. Once familiar with their individual signs, it follows that women who are trying or, indeed, struggling to conceive might start considering how to optimise their chances of conception in any given cycle.

A simple over-the-counter product such as Mucinex could well seem like a quick and simple solution with potentially more rapid results than dieting or a change in other lifestyle factors.

Not surprisingly, questions are being asked over the validity of taking Mucinex, or other guaifenesin-containing medicines, as fertility aids.

The fact is, there is scant scientific evidence proving that Mucinex can help with fertility. The most cited scientific study is from 1982 and was published in the journal Fertility and Sterility. Here, scientists studied 40 couples whose infertility was defined as being a “cervical issue”.

The women in the study were given 200mg of guaifenesin, three times a day starting on the fifth day of their menstrual cycle. By the end of the study, 15 out of the 40 couples had become pregnant, which some may see as supporting the use of guaifenesin.

However, as there was no group that didn’t take guaifenesin (a control group), it is not possible to attribute these pregnancies solely to guaifenesin.

In a separate case study, a man took 600mg of guaifenesin, twice a day, for two months. The study reported a dramatic increase in sperm production and motility. However, as this study was conducted on a single 32-year-old man, the researchers could not confirm that guaifenesin was the cause of the change.

It should be noted that Reckitt, the makers of Mucinex, said in a statement that Mucinex should “only be used as intended in line with label directions”. And that taking Mucinex for infertility “constitutes off-label use”.

Mucinex is a popular decongestant remedy, made by Reckitt.
Betty LaRue / Alamy Stock Photo

Is there any harm in taking guaifenesin to conceive?

While no associations between guaifenesin and birth defects have been identified, there is still no solid data on how guaifenesin might affect embryo development.

For those seeking to become parents, the idea of boosting your chances with a widely available medication is understandably enticing. However, there is not enough evidence to support taking guaifenesin to improve fertility.

There are a range of other simple, lifestyle changes that have been shown to help with getting pregnant. These include maintaining a healthy weight and diet, reducing alcohol intake, giving up smoking and lowering stress. For those experiencing difficulties in becoming pregnant, the best, and possibly simplest advice is to talk to your doctor. Läs mer…

In the last ten years, some 20,000 or so academic papers have been published on the neuroscience of sex and gender. Perhaps you have read the media coverage of such papers, suggesting there’s finally proof that stereotypical abilities such as men being good at reading maps or women excelling at nurturing can be pinpointed in the brain.

Given the sheer quantity of output in this area, how can you tell what is really groundbreaking research, and what is an overenthusiastic application of hype?

Misleading spin is often blamed on university PR teams, non-specialist science writers in mainstream newspapers, or social media. But the source of deceptive impressions may sometimes be the research papers themselves.

For example, researchers may hyper-focus on a limited set of findings. They may fail to report that many of the differences they were looking for didn’t make the statistical cut. Or they may be less than cautious in discussing the impact of their findings.

Just as much as researchers need to be meticulous about the best methodology and the most powerful statistics, they need to manage the impressions they make when communicating their research. And, if they don’t, then the interested but non-expert reader may need help to spot this.

Magic: spotting the spin

My colleagues and I recently published a set of guidelines which offer just such assistance, identifying five sources of potential misrepresentation to look out for. The initials helpfully form the acronym “Magic”, which is short for magnitude, accuracy, generalisability, inflation and credibility.

For magnitude, the question is: is the extent of any differences clearly and accurately described? Take this 2015 study on sex differences in the human brain. It reported on 34,716 different patterns of functional brain connectivity, and found statistical differences between females and males in 178 of them.

Yet given that less than 0.5% of all possible differences they were measuring actually turned out to be statistically significant, they wouldn’t really be justified in reporting sex differences as prominent. In this study, they weren’t.

The next question is to do with accuracy. Are techniques and variables clearly defined and carefully used in the interpretation of results? It should be really clear how the study was run, what measures were taken, and why.

For example, a recent paper suggesting that the Covid lockdown effects had a more pronounced effect on adolescent girls’ brain structure than boys’ fell at this hurdle. The abstract referred to “longitudinal measures” and much of the narrative was couched in longitudinal “pre- and post-Covid” terms. Longitudinal studies –– which follow the same group of people over time –– are great as they can discover crucial changes in them.

But if you peer closely at the paper, it emerges that the pre- and post-Covid lockdown comparisons appear to be between two different samples – admittedly selected from an ongoing longitudinal study. Nonetheless, it is not clear that like was compared with like.

Don’t believe everything you hear about male and female capabilities.
CrispyPork/Shutterstock

The third question has to do with generalisability. Are authors cautious about how widely the results might be applied? Here we encounter the problem with many scientific studies being carried out on carefully selected and screened groups of participants – sometimes just their own students.

Care should be taken to ensure this is clear to the reader, who shouldn’t be left with the impression that one or more sets of participants can be taken to be fully representative of (say) all females or all males. If all study participants are selected from the same single community, then referring to “hundreds of millions of people” in interpreting the relevance of the results is something of an overstatement.

The fourth category, inflation, is to do with whether the authors avoid language that overstates the importance of their results. Terms such as “profound” and “fundamental” may be misplaced, for instance. Remember, James Watson and Francis Crick merely described their discovery of DNA’s double helix structure as of “considerable biological interest”.

Finally, we should consider credibility: are authors careful to acknowledge how their findings do or do not fit with existing research? Authors should be up front about alternative explanations for their findings, or suggest other factors that might need to be investigated in further studies.

Suppose, for example, they are looking at the allegedly robust sex differences in visuospatial skills, which include things like visual perception and spatial awareness. Have the authors acknowledged research suggesting that the amount of time people spend on practising this skill, such as when playing video games, has been shown to be more significant than biological sex in determining such differences?

If gamers are more likely to be boys, that doesn’t necessarily mean their brains are wired for them – it could equally well be reflecting gendered pressures that make such games a popular, culturally comfortable pastime among boys.

The focus of these guidelines is on sex/gender brain imaging studies, but they could well be applied to other areas of research.

Post-lockdown surveys have suggested that the public has greater trust in what scientists are saying than they did before the pandemic. Scientists need to be careful that they retain that trust by ensuring that what they report is unambiguous and free from hype.

Hopefully the Magic guidelines will help them and their editors achieve this; if they don’t, then eagle-eyed readers, Magic-ally armed, will be on their guard. Läs mer…

In May 2023, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, embarked on a whistle-stop tour of European capitals to shore up support from his western partners in the run-up to Ukraine’s summer offensive that year. His tour was a relative success – the subsequent offensive less so.

Fast forward 18 months, and Zelensky has once again been visiting London, Paris, Rome and Berlin in search for western support. This time, he sought backing for his victory plan. But the odds now are clearly stacked against Ukraine on the battlefield. And Zelensky also faces an uphill struggle on the diplomatic front.

The initial plan for Zelensky and his allies had been to convene at a meeting of the Ramstein group. This is the loose configuration of some 50 countries who have supported Ukraine’s defence efforts since the start of the full-scale Russian aggression in February 2022.

With the US president, Joe Biden, scheduled to attend after a state visit to Germany, the gathering at Ramstein Air Base in Germany had been pitched at the level of heads of state and government. It was expected that there were to be some big announcements of continuing support for Ukraine.

iliya Mitskovets / Alamy

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But with hurricane Milton scheduled to hit Florida, Biden was forced to cancel his trip. While Biden’s visit to Germany has apparently been rescheduled for October 18, 2024, the Ramstein meeting remains postponed.

This has deprived the Ukrainian president of the chance to pitch his victory plan to his more important allies. So he has been unable to get them to commit to the support that will be necessary to implement it.

We don’t yet know much about the Ukrainian victory plan. From what has been released or leaked, it appears to boil down to five key demands.

Zelensky wants an accelerated path to Nato membership. He is also asking for a Nato-enforced no-fly zone over western Ukraine and more air-defence systems for the country to better protect its own skies.

Other key elements of the plan involve permission to use western-supplied long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia, the delivery of long-range German Taurus ballistic missiles and significant investment into Ukraine’s defence industry.

Most of these demands are non-starters in western capitals. That much was already made clear during Zelensky’s recent trip to New York and Washington in mid-September.

The Ukrainian president managed to get his US counterpart to authorise US$8 billion (£6.12 billion) in further security assistance. But there has been no progress on lifting the restrictions that the US and other allies are placing on Ukraine’s use of western military aid against Russian territory.

The western alliance remains divided on this. And the US is particularly sceptical of its strategic value.

Similarly, the prospect of Ukraine joining Nato continues to be remote – not least as it would require the consent of all 32 current member states. The Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, has openly stated that he will veto Ukraine’s accession to the alliance. His Hungarian counterpart, Victor Orban, is also well known for his opposition to Kyiv joining the alliance.

More damaging to Ukraine’s Nato aspirations, however, is a similar reluctance in both Washington and Berlin. This has been key in ensuring that the two most recent Nato summits in Vilnius in 2023 and Washington in 2024 only re-affirmed that “Ukraine’s future is in Nato” but failed to attach a clear timeline to it.

Kyiv’s allies need to double down – now

At the end of his meeting with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, on October 11, Zelensky secured another €1.4 billion (£1.17 billion) worth of air defences, tanks, drones and artillery, to be jointly delivered by Germany, Belgium, Denmark and Norway.

But Taurus ballistic missiles – top of Kyiv’s shopping list – are not included in this package. While predictable, this was a major disappointment for Zelensky. As was the fact that he essentially walked away empty-handed from his meetings in London, Paris and Rome.

Helping hand from Olaf Scholz: but will Germany’s aid to Ukraine be enough to stave off defeat?
EPA-EFE/Filip Singer

There is no indication that any of these major allies are likely to withdraw their support. But it is equally clear that they are not prepared to increase it decisively.

This was also evident during the visit to Kyiv of the new Nato secretary-general, Mark Rutte, on October 3. Rutte travelled to Ukraine within days of assuming the role to reiterate the continuation of the alliance’s support. But as symbolically important as this was, he merely confirmed what had already been agreed rather than announcing anything new.

The EU did marginally better. On October 10 it was announced the bloc was set to extend the training programme for Ukrainian troops until the end of 2026. The mission was launched in November 2022 and has trained some 60,000 troops to date. That’s about half of all Ukrainian soldiers trained abroad – and three times the number who received training from the US.

The EU’s overall aid to Ukraine now stands at €162 billion since the beginning of the war in 2022, compared to €84 billion from the US. Two-thirds of US aid is military in nature, and with almost €57 billion to date, it dwarfs the contributions by Germany and the UK, the two next-largest donors with around €10 billion each.

These are impressive numbers and there can be no doubt that Ukraine would have lost this war long ago without support from its western allies. Yet, the fact is that what Ukraine’s western partners currently provide is barely enough to prevent a Ukrainian defeat, let alone enable Ukraine to implement its victory plan.

Vladimir Putin has consistently raised his country’s war effort to meet any challenges presented over the course of the conflict. Unless the west doubles down on its support to allow Kyiv to do the same, not only will Ukraine not win this war, it is in serious danger of losing it.

The high-level meeting planned for Ramstein would have been the opportunity for the west to change gear decisively. Ukraine can only hope that its postponement, rather than outright cancellation, means its allies may yet step up to the plate. Läs mer…

Sudan’s war runs grimly on. The two main protagonists (though there are others involved) are each claiming local victories. The Sudanese army appears to be slowly regaining control of the ruined capital, Khartoum, and has recovered some ground it lost elsewhere in Sudan. And the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues its brutal siege of the western city of El Fasher.

But, while the army seems to have the upper hand at present, neither they nor the RSF looks likely to win outright. Instead, the two sides keep up a mutual battering with ill-aimed barrages of artillery fire and bombs that destroy markets, wreck hospitals, and each day add to the grim toll of civilian death and misery.

Abdel-Fattah al Burhan, the general who seized power and derailed what was supposed to be a transition to civilian rule after the revolution of 2019, still insists he is the head of Sudan’s legitimate government, and that the army will win the war.

The RSF’s leader, Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who is referred to as Hemedti, had initially been willing to play deputy to Burhan, but is now his bitter enemy. He makes a show of being willing to negotiate, but relentlessly pursues a military victory.

It is tempting to point the finger at actors outside Sudan for their part in the spiralling violence. There are multiple credible allegations that the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and Russia have all helped arm or finance one side or other in pursuit of regional influence or economic gain. Libya’s eastern – but not internationally recognised – government has also been accused of complicity.

Some would say there are sins of omission as well as commission. The US, EU and others have all called for an end to this war. But they could be doing more to stop the flow of weapons and money that helps keep the fighting going, and to mobilise more concerted action to protect civilians.

A civilian holds up a bullet case in front of a damaged window in Khartoum, Sudan.
Stringer / EPA

The world stands accused of turning its back on Sudan, despite being its biggest hunger and displacement crisis. But external actors did not start the war, and they cannot simply end it.

Despite their common cause in a counter-revolutionary coup in 2021, the war started when Burhan and Hemedti fell out over who would have military and political primacy – and the associated economic benefits – in Sudan.

They’ve already decided the country isn’t big enough for the both of them, so it’s nigh-on impossible to negotiate the usual kind of deal that shares power between foes.

Burhan is intensely sensitive about the fragile sovereignty of his government, and views external mediation as foreign meddling. He has always insisted that the army can win an outright victory, and now he is encouraged by recent gains. Yet he is a long way from regaining control of the whole country.

Hemedti, who craves the status that would come from negotiations, makes grandiloquent offers of ceasefires, coupled with promises to respect human rights – all while the RSF continues to murder, rape and loot. Hubris and hypocrisy make poor bases for negotiation.

A precarious balancing act

This is also not a war simply being waged between two individuals. Neither the army nor the RSF are coherent or well disciplined – the RSF, in particular, is a messy constellation of armed men, mostly from western Sudan (and, allegedly, further afield). They share a distinctive style of camouflage dress and a sense of long-term exclusion, but are not under close or effective control.

The army has more formal structures – too many, perhaps – but these are also fragmented. Strong on generals and air firepower but weak on fighting forces, the army is adapting the government’s old playbook of mobilising local militias.

The war has become several wars, drawing in other armed groups whose alliances with either the army or the RSF are contingent or opportunistic.

The Sudanese army’s top general, Abdel-Fattah al Burhan, led a military takeover in Khartoum in 2021.
Stringer / EPA

Since independence in 1956, Sudan has mostly been a militarised state, where power was won by force. Those who ruled it feared their fellow soldiers and so created alternative forces, hoping these would back them against potential coups. Some of these groups had distinct social bases in particular regions or ethnic groups.

This fragmentation had been happening since the 1970s, but it became endemic during the long reign of Sudan’s former president, Omar al-Bashir. Bashir stayed in power for 30 years by dividing possible rivals within the ruling elite, and used the multiplying, competing arms of the “security forces” to fight rebels on the margins.

What seemed like a powerful, authoritarian system was, in fact, a brutal but precarious balancing act. After Bashir fell in 2019, the transitional government floundered. The soldiers seized power, then the complex rivalries and institutional fragmentation proved unsustainable. The core institutions that held Sudan together have shattered.

So who, if anyone, can put Sudan back together again? Burhan and Hemedti are in no mood, and may anyway lack the control of their followers needed for any deal to stick.

Civilian politicians were discredited by the bickering of the transition, and the most prominent of them seem confused between claiming to be a government-in-exile or trying to build a bigger anti-war coalition.

At present, Sudan faces either the long-term absence of central authority or, more dramatically, an effective division into two or more states, whether or not these are internationally recognised. Some might say we should not mourn this – Sudan was a colonial creation, made by violence and predation. But this is an outcome that may only increase misery and misrule.

However, there is still resistance amid the ruination. Sudan’s post-Bashir transition to democracy, as envisaged by the UN and others, is long dead. But in some vital ways, the popular revolution that toppled Bashir lives on.

Grassroots emergency response rooms organise whatever lifesaving support for desperate communities that they can. And women and youth – the revolution’s vanguard – continue to organise, agitate and debate Sudan’s future among themselves, as well as demand a role in making it. They deserve our solidarity.

Many, both Sudanese and non-Sudanese, refuse to let go of the idea of a better Sudan that has never yet been realised, but just might rise up from these ashes. Läs mer…

This year’s Nobel memorial prize in economics has gone to Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and James Robinson of the University of Chicago for their work on why there are such vast differences in prosperity between nations.

While announcing the award, Jakob Svensson, the chairman of the economics prize committee, said: “Reducing the huge differences in income between countries is one of our times’ greatest challenges”. The economists’ “groundbreaking research” has given us a “much deeper understanding of the root causes of why countries fail or succeed.”

The award, which was established several decades after the original Nobel prizes in the 1960s, is technically known as the Sveriges Riksbank prize in economic sciences. The academics will share the award and its 11 million kroner (£810,000) cash prize.

To explain their work and why it matters, we talked to Renaud Foucart, a senior lecturer in economics at Lancaster University in the UK.

What did Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson win for?

The three academics won the prize mostly for providing causal evidence of the influence of the quality of a country’s institutions on its economic prosperity.

At first glance, this may seem like reinventing the wheel. Most people would agree that a country that enforces property rights, limits corruption, and protects both the rule of law and the balance of power, will also be more successful at encouraging its citizens to create wealth, and be better at redistributing it.

But anyone following the news in Turkey, Hungary, the US or even the UK, will be aware that not everyone agrees. In Hungary for instance, cases of corruption, nepotism, a lack of media pluralism, and threats to the independence of the judiciary have led to a fierce battle with the European Union.

Rich countries typically have strong institutions. But several (wannabe) leaders are perfectly comfortable with weakening the rule of law. They do not seem to see institutions as the cause of their prosperity, just as something that happens to be correlated.

In their view, why does the quality of institutions vary across countries?

Their work starts with something that has clearly not had a direct effect on today’s economic prosperity: living conditions at the start of European colonialism in the 14th century. Their hypothesis is that, the richer and the more inhospitable to outsiders a place was, the more colonial powers were interested in brutally stealing the country’s riches.

In that case, they built institutions without any regard for the people living there. This led to low quality institutions during the colonial period, that continued through independence and led to bad economic conditions today.

All of this is because – and this is another domain to which this year’s laureates contributed – institutions create the conditions of their own persistence.

In contrast, in more hospitable and less developed places, colonialists did not take resources. They instead settled and tried to create wealth. So, it was in their (selfish) interest to build democratic institutions that benefited people living there.

The researchers then tested their hypothesis by looking at historical data. First, they found a “great reversal” of fortune. Places that were the most urbanised and densely populated in 1500 became the poorest by 1995. Second, they found that places where settlers died quickly from disease and could therefore not stay – while local populations were mostly immune – are also poorer today.

Looking at the colonial roots of institutions is an attempt to disentangle causes and consequences. It is also perhaps the main reason why the committee would say that even if this year’s laureates did not invent the idea that institutions matter, their contribution is worthy of the highest distinction.

Daron Acemoglu, one of the three academics to win this year’s Nobel prize in economics.
Vassilis Rebapis / EPA

Some have suggested the work simply argues ‘democracy means economic growth’. Is this true?

Not in a vacuum. For instance, their work does not tell us that imposing democracy from scratch on a country with otherwise malfunctioning institutions will work. There is no reason for a democratic leader not to become corrupt.

Institutions are a package. And this is why it is so important to preserve their different aspects today. Weakening even a little bit of the protections the state offers to citizens, workers, entrepreneurs and investors may then lead to a vicious circle where people do not feel safe that they will be defended against corruption or expropriation. And this leads to lower prosperity and more calls for authoritarian rules.

There may also be outliers. China is clearly trying to push the idea that capitalism without a liberal democracy can be compatible with economic success.

The growth of China since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in the 1980s coincides with the introduction of stronger property rights for entrepreneurs and businesses. And, in that sense, it is a textbook version of the power of institutions.

But it is also true that Deng Xiaoping ordered the crushing by the military of the Tiananmen Square protests for democracy in 1989. China today also has a clearly more authoritarian system than western democracies.

And China is still much poorer than its democratic counterparts, despite being the world’s second-largest economy. China’s GDP per capita is not even a fifth of that of the US, and it is facing major economic challenges of its own.

Actually, according to Acemoglu, Xi Jinping’s increasingly authoritarian regime is the reason why China’s economy is “rotting from the head”.

What trajectory are democratic institutions throughout the world currently on?

Acemoglu has expressed concern that democratic institutions in the US and Europe are losing support from the population. And, indeed, many democracies do seem to be doubting the importance of protecting their institutions.

They flirt with giving more power to demagogues who claim it is possible to be successful without a strong set of rules that bind the hands of the rulers. I doubt today’s prize will have the slightest influence on them.

But if there is one message to take home from the work of this year’s laureates, it is that voters should be cautious not to throw the baby of economic prosperity with the bathwater of the sometimes frustrating rules that sustain it. Läs mer…

Many pundits are claiming that the 2024 contest will be the most important US election since 1860. Most Europeans would also agree. At stake is not just the future of democracy in America, but arguably the future of the post-World War II international order.

Transatlantic relations are the beating heart of this order. They were significantly weakened during the Trump presidency, somewhat bolstered under Biden, and are now dangerously close to being tested again if Trump returns to the White House.

The election is also mired in uncertainty. With less than four weeks to go until polling day, Harris and Trump are neck and neck in key swing states. Spiralling conflict in the Middle East will only add further uncertainty to the final stretch before election day.

The 2024 race has been one of the most dramatic and unpredictable in recent decades, marked by two assassination attempts on Trump, his recent felony conviction, and Biden’s sudden withdrawal in favour of his Vice President. Given Trump’s track record, we also cannot discount the real and frightening risk that election results might be disputed if the margins are razor thin, with neither side conceding to the other.

To be sure, a Trump win will have more immediate negative impacts on the EU in the short term than a Harris presidency. A second Trump term will undermine US democracy and lead to a potentially irreversible weakening of transatlantic relations. Trump’s open support for Europe’s autocratic governments, such as Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party in Hungary, will also embolden and legitimise the continent’s far right parties.

Over the next 4 years, the ties that have bound the US and EU since 1945 could be loosened and broken beyond repair. In Europe, the impacts will be felt most strongly in three main areas: defence, trade and climate policy.

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NATO and war in Ukraine: the main bone of contention

One of the biggest points of difference between the two candidates is Trump’s stance on NATO and his lack of support for Ukraine. Trump has famously claimed that he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, though there is little confidence that a Trump brokered peace plan with Russia would protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.

When he was president, Trump even threatened to leave NATO altogether. If he followed through on this it would embolden adversaries such as Russia, and threaten European security in general.

Harris, in contrast, has shown unwavering support for NATO and Ukraine. If she were elected, this would continue to bolster the security architecture that has maintained European stability since World War II. However, even if Harris wins, the EU should build its own deterrence and defence capabilities, and reduce its heavy reliance on the US.

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Trade relations

The EU-US economic relationship is the world’s largest, with trade between the two blocs valued at more than $1.3 trillion annually. Annual US-China trade, for comparison, is valued at $758 billion. The US has large deficits with both.

In light of this, Trump has promised a 10% tariff on all imports, and new tariffs of 60% or more on all goods from China. He considers the EU to be a competitor just like China.

There is no reason to think that Harris’ approach will be softer – Biden has been equally hard on the EU and Harris will most likely continue his policies. Her campaign also seems to be adopting an anti-China stance.

The EU will therefore be in a bind, facing tariffs on its exports to the US as well as pressure from the new US administration to also be tough on China. So, no matter the election’s outcome, there is a real risk of increased competition between the EU and the US, with each side likely to respond to tariffs imposed by the other with protectionist policies.

There are ways to avoid or mitigate confrontation over trade, such as pursuing dialogue through the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC) in order to defuse disputes before they take place. The EU should also try to diversify and secure trade agreements with other partners such as Mercosur and India.

Climate policy

Lastly, there is the new US president’s climate policy. Trump has vowed to pull out of the 2015 Paris Agreement yet again if he is re-elected. He has also promised to increase oil and gas production (“Drill, baby, drill!). These measures will make the Paris goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C almost impossible to reach.

For her part, Harris has been eerily silent about climate issues on the campaign trail, which also bodes ill for European efforts to address the climate challenge.

Read more:
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Change is already on the horizon

One thing is clear: whether the next US president is Trump or Harris, Europeans must understand that transatlantic relations have already changed irrevocably, and that the EU’s interests and values are no longer fully aligned with America’s.

A Harris administration will perhaps bring more predictability than a Trump presidency, but for how long? And what happens in another 4 years? As Peter Baker, the Chief White House New York Times correspondent, recently asked: ”Is Trump the aberration or is Biden the aberration? Which one stands for where America really plans to be from now on?”

European states need to be prepared for a changed world order in which they rely much more on themselves and other potential allies (the UK, Japan, South Korea) than on their traditional transatlantic counterparts, regardless of who wins on November 5th. Läs mer…

The average art lover isn’t supposed to like art fairs because they’re so corporate. When you pay £9 for a sandwich and your wifi is sponsored by a big bank, you can understand the reservations. They’re also too big and crowded. Even the VIPs are left queuing to get in.

But the fair provides opportunities to see work from galleries from all over the world in London and there is plenty of good art on display. As Frieze describes itself “[it] is one of the world’s most influential contemporary art fairs, focusing only on contemporary art and living artists”. It is primarily for those in the art world, those who create, critique and those who collect, and a lot of money changes hands as the world’s galleries show the best they have. But it has also become a cultural day out.

Apart from loads of great painting and the occasional noncommercial showpiece, Frieze goes out of its way to balance the corporate with more thoughtful displays. There’s a chance to see big-name artists, international galleries and work by new artists. The “Artist-to-Artist” section returned this year, containing work by emerging talents (selected by established artists). With so much on show, Frieze can be daunting. You can easily spend a whole day at the fair, but with so much on display there is truly something for everybody.

At this year’s Frieze, international highlights included Proyectos Ultravioleta from Guatemala city, who showed miniature paintings by Rosa Elena Curruchich hung alongside larger works emblazoned with the text “me venden” (they’re selling me) by Edgar Calels. Calels also brought the smell of a forest into the booth by covering the floor with pine needles.

Jhaveri Contemporary (Mumbai, India) presented work by the Bangladeshi duo Kamruzzaman Shadhin and Gidree Bawlee. The piece Kaal (Pala) consists of seven delightful jute figures – among the most enchanting figurative sculptures I have seen recently. Joydeb Roaja’s pen drawings of people, tanks, and people with tanks on their heads are as enigmatic and disturbing as they are engaging.

Non-commercial art appeared in Jenkins Van Zyl’s Sweat Exchange at Edel Assanti (London). This video installation housed in what Van Zyl has called a sauna-cum-“sweat extraction brewery”, which features two doppelgangers, who alternate between self-care and abuse. Imagine the Pink Panther crossed with Jar Jar Binks as a drag queen and you’re nearly there.

Then there was Patrick Goddard’s silver cast bees on the floor of Seventeen Gallery, and Lawrence Lek (winner of the Frieze artist award) who has produced Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot – an interactive videogame installation about an AI created to service self-driving cars.

Most of the works were are those hung on walls. Gallery booths have a small storage area in which they are able to keep paintings and prints, (but less able to store sculptural works). Collectors also favour paintings, prints and photographs to adorn their walls (or similarly put into storage) over artists’ films or video installations.

What’s to complain about though when there is so much good painting on display?

Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh showed work by Los Angeles-based painter Hayley Barker.
Frieze/Ingleby

Highlights included Tom Anholt and Ryan Mosley at Josh Lilley Gallery (London); Carl Freedman Gallery (Margate), which showed great paintings by Ben Senior, Laura Footes and Vanessa Raw (as well as Lindsey Mendick’s ceramic sculptures) and Tanya Leighton Gallery (Berlin and LA), which had plenty of good painting on show, including works by Matthew Krishanu. Ingleby (Edinburgh) showed Andrew Cranston and Hayley Barker and Arcadia Missa (London) showed Lewis Hammond’s Schmetterling, an eerie blue interior with an unsettling blue-eyed figure, and Jesse Darling, whose Come on England (up the) takes a novel approach to wall-based work by leaning crowd-control barriers in the corner of the gallery booth.

Counter Editions (Margate) presented a Tracey Emin solo show. You’re not supposed to like Emin, since she outed herself as a Tory sympathiser. Opposite is a Billy Childish solo show at Lehmann Maupin (London, Seoul, New York), where the artist paints live while wearing a beret next to a dirty stepladder for reaching the tops of the large canvases. You’re not supposed to like Billy Childish either because he is a Stuckist (stuck in the age of Van Gogh and Edvard Munch – his only two art heroes). Funnily enough, Charles Thomson, co-founder of Stuckism, derived the name from an insult by Emin, who told Childish, her ex-lover, that his art was “stuck, stuck, stuck”. Don’t tell anybody, but the Emin and Childish works were quite good.

With an annual curated section, more solo shows and over 270 Galleries from more than 40 countries, if you love art in all its forms (and can afford it) you should experience Frieze London at least once. If you didn’t go this year, you really should spend a day there next. Despite what people say… you’re bound to find something you like.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here. Läs mer…

Cooking on firewood and coal increases air pollution and ill health. Some of the dangers include stunted growth in children and undernutrition in children and adults. Babies who’ve been exposed to charcoal and firewood smoke while in the womb can have reduced birth weight.

In Ghana, it’s mostly women who have the task of preparing household meals. Babies are often carried on women’s backs while they cook, and children play close to charcoal or wood fires. This exposes women and children to the indoor air pollution resulting from burning biomass fuel.

We are economists who investigated whether environmental consciousness had an influence on Ghanaian people’s choice of cooking fuel. We surveyed 1,200 people from six regions in Ghana – the Greater Accra, Eastern, Bono, Bono East, Northern, and Savannah regions.

Our research found that households that were aware of climate change and other global environmental issues were more likely to make cleaner cooking fuel choices.

Banku cooked on fire in Ghana.
Jacek Sopotnicki/Getty Images

Awareness of environmental issues has a positive impact on clean cooking fuel use and therefore reduces energy poverty. Energy poverty has been described as lack of access to modern energy sources which are cleaner and less polluting, like liquefied petroleum gas and electricity.

Environmental awareness alone cannot eradicate energy poverty, which is also caused by low incomes. But our research highlights ways to reduce energy poverty through environmental awareness. We recommend that the government of Ghana and environmental organisations start a nationwide awareness campaign. This will make people more conscious of the environment, reduce energy poverty, and accelerate the transition to cleaner cooking energy.

Environmental awareness and cooking fuels

People are said to be energy poor if they lack access to modern and cleaner sources of energy. This may be the result of economic, social, behavioural or even cultural factors.

However, people who are aware of greenhouse gases, global warming and climate change know that trees help absorb carbon dioxide emissions and reduce global warming. Since traditional fuels mainly come from wood resources, we wanted to find out whether people in Ghana who were environmentally conscious would choose energy sources other than wood.

Read more:
Renewable energy projects in rural Ghana have some built-in limitations

Our study constructed an index of environmental consciousness. We asked the people we surveyed if they knew about global environmental issues such as climate change, greenhouse gases, global warming and the annual Conference of the Parties climate summit.

We asked if households were aware of local and community level environmental regulations and by-laws. We also asked if people knew about the impact of “galamsey” – illegal small-scale gold mining. This approach to gold mining is associated with several environmental problems. One is the muddying of freshwater resources which are treated by the Ghana Water Company for onward distribution to people as potable water.

We used quantitative methods to estimate the effect of having environmental consciousness on the choice of cooking energy. In doing so, we took into account other factors that might cause people to choose the types of energy sources they use. These factors include incomes, levels of education attained, the features of the places where they live, and their ability to access information generally.

Read more:
LPG versus dirty fuel use in Ghana: bring gas supplies closer to people and more of them will use it

All these factors might influence a household’s choice of energy. However, our focus was to understand the role environmental awareness plays in influencing a decision to make cleaner energy choices.

We made sure that we could isolate and observe what energy choices people make when their incomes, education and other factors stay the same and only their level of environmental consciousness changes.

Choosing clean fuel

We found that an increase (by one) in a household’s score of environmental consciousness led to a 13.4% increase in the probability of choosing clean fuel. This means that when people are aware of greenhouse gases, global warming and climate change, they are more likely to opt for green energy. They make energy decisions that promote the sustainability of the natural environment.

These findings matter because the environmental costs to society and the health costs to households from using heavily polluting fuels are significant.

Our findings are critical in pursuing the clean energy transition agenda. Switching to clean energy will promote environmental sustainability and improve health outcomes in Ghana.

Raising awareness in Ghana

A nationwide campaign in Ghana on the causes and consequences of global warming and climate change is crucial. Educating people about these issues will go a long way in influencing people’s choices. Awareness will contribute towards the transition to clean energy.

Ghana’s National Council for Curriculum and Assessment should update the formal school curriculum to include these environmental issues. This will allow children to start learning about the environment and clean energy while still at school.

Public campaigns at a community level will also be useful. Ghana’s National Commission for Civic Education, the Information Services Division and allied bodies could lead this public campaign. Altogether, greater awareness can motivate better energy choices. Läs mer…

For the past five years, the GANGS project, a European Research Council-funded project led by Dennis Rodgers, has been studying global gang dynamics in a comparative perspective. When understood in a nuanced manner that goes beyond the usual stereotypes and Manichean representations, gangs and gangsters arguably constitute fundamental lenses through which to think about and understand the world we live in.

Dennis Rodgers describes how “Soraya” became involved in drug trafficking in Luis Fanor Hernández, a poor neighbourhood in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. Known locally as “la Reina del Sur” – the “Queen of the South” – her story shows how drug trafficking is a highly gendered activity, that reinforces macho violence and patriarchal dynamics of domination.

Seated on a slightly tatty, overstuffed sofa, I watch as Soraya meticulously manicures Wanda’s fingernails. Her face a picture of tense concentration, she begins by carefully tracing red and white stripes along the distal bands of four out of five fingers on each hand, before then delicately dotting small flowers on each index.

Wanda’s nails.
D. Rodgers, Fourni par l’auteur

We are in the barrio Luis Fanor Hernández, a poor urban neighbourhood in Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua, in Central America. I’ve been carrying out longitudinal ethnographic research on gang dynamics there since 1996. I returned in February 2020 to, among other things, interview Wanda about the way that the local drug trade – and particularly her husband Bismarck’s involvement – had impacted her life over the years. Wanda is one of my key research interlocutors in the barrio, whom I’ve known for over 25 years.

“I can come back to do our interview later,” I say to Wanda.

“No, no, it’s fine, Dennis,” she replies. “Soraya’s almost finished, and in any case, she’s de confianza, so why don’t we just get started? It’s not as if she doesn’t know about Bismarck and his drug dealing… But you know what? If you want a female perspective on drugs, you should really interview her, not me – I’m just the wife of an ex-drug dealer, but she’s la Reina del Sur!”

“The Queen of the South?”, I ask, throwing Soraya a querying glance. Looking up from her manicuring labours, she smirks sardonically before saying, “You know, Dennis, like in the telenovela, about that Mexican woman who becomes a narcotraficante (drug dealer).”

“Yes, I get that, I know the series, but she became a powerful drug dealer, and from what I know you’re not a big-time narco, are you?”

“Nah, I was just a mulera (street dealer), but people call me la Reina del Sur, because I’m strong-willed and independent, just like the real Reina.”

Chuckling, I reply, “You do know the Reina isn’t real, yes?”, before then asking her more earnestly, “but would you be willing to do an interview with me about all that, though?” Soraya ponders my request for a few seconds before replying brusquely, “dale, but not today, I’ve got an errand to run. I’ll meet you here at the same time tomorrow”.

Without waiting for an answer, Soraya then dots a final petal on Wanda’s left index nail, packs up her files and polish, and leaves Wanda and me to our interview.

The gendered nature of drug dealing in Latin America

Drug trafficking has become an searing topic in Latin America over the last two decades.

Every year, this criminal activity results in thousands of violent deaths and tens of thousands of health-related mortalities. Drug trafficking also has profoundly negative effects on economies, political systems, and ecologies in the region.

Numerous studies have traced the forms of production, the actors involved, the routes and flows, the nature of local and international markets, and the profound but variable social impact that drugs can have.

One point on which most studies agree is that drug trafficking is a predominantly male activity. Fewer women than men are involved, and they are generally seen through the prism of particular categorisations: either as victims, suffering direct and indirect forms of violence as a result of being the mothers, wives or girlfriends of drug traffickers, or as emancipated and liberated individuals whose involvement in trafficking challenges gender-based structures of power and inequality.

These kinds of binary representations have long seemed simplistic to me. The interviews conducted with Wanda during the course of my years of research in barrio Luis Fanor Hernández have highlighted how the image of the drug dealer’s wife as a victim of her husband’s trafficking is a caricature. The same was also true of the interview I conducted with Soraya about her career as a drug dealer, which challenged the notion that drug dealing could be emancipating for a woman.

“Pac-Man” in the barrio

Soraya was born in barrio Luis Fanor Hernández in 1987. Her mother, Gladys, was from the neighbourhood, while her father, Jorge, was from Villa Cuba, a neighbourhood in the north-east of Managua. They had an on-and-off relationship for the first decade of Soraya’s life, meaning that she moved several times between her father’s home in Villa Cuba, and her maternal family home in barrio Luis Fanor Hernández. Gladys and Jorge split up definitely when Soraya was 13 years old, after Gladys stabbed Jorge with a kitchen knife while defending Soraya, whom he was beating.

“My mother and I moved back [to barrio Luis Fanor Hernández] after we left my father. There were five of us in the house – me, my mother, my aunt, my cousin, and my cousin’s husband. You know him, Dennis, he’s the one they call ‘Pac-man’ [because of his great appetite], so you know he’s a narcotraficante [drug dealer]. My aunt and my cousin would help him from time to time with his bisnes, but this was when the drug trade was increasing, and he had lots to do, and they started asking me to ‘do them a favour’, to help them. At first it was small things, you know, moving drugs or money from one place to another, or helping them ‘cook’ cocaine into crack, but after a while I started selling for him as a mulera, in the streets, which I could do well because the police were less suspicious of me, as a young girl, you know.”

Crack doses ready for sale.
Dennis Rodgers, Fourni par l’auteur

Neither the way nor the reasons why Soraya became involved in trafficking can be described as particularly emancipatory. Rather, they highlight the way in which drug trafficking in fact responds to very gendered and “intimate” logics. On the one hand, Soraya’s status as a young woman made her useful to her cousin’s husband in carrying out certain drug trafficking operations without attracting suspicion in a wider macho Nicaraguan context, but on the other hand, her family ties to “Pac-Man” also made it difficult for her to refuse to help him.

Enduring gendered oppression

Soraya’s involvement in drug trafficking was also profoundly affected by her relationship with Elvis Gomez, with whom she became involved at the age of 15 (when Elvis was 23). Elvis was a failed drug dealer. He had tried unsuccessfully to become involved in drug trafficking several times in the past, and once he was in a relationship with Soraya, he forced her to let him work with her so that he could benefit from the financial windfall that this activity generated for those involved in barrio Luis Fanor Hernández.

The kind of house a successful drug dealer such as Soraya might have lived in in barrio Luis Fanor Hernández in 2003 (not her real house).
Dennis Rodgers, Fourni par l’auteur

One of the reasons Elvis had failed to establish himself as a drug dealer was that he was a drug user, and Soraya often had to cover for him when he consumed the drugs that “Pac-Man” gave him instead of selling them, repaying his loss of earnings through the profits of her own drug dealing.

In 2010, Elvis used the savings that Soraya had accumulated from her drug dealing to finance his emigration to the United States. He told her he would bring her over later, but he left with another woman, Yulissa, with whom he had been involved simultaneously, along with their daughter. He also took Ramses, the son he had with Soraya in 2007, and cut off all contact with Soraya. She told me poignantly, “I was going crazy, texting him every day, telling him to let me talk to my son, and telling him to bring him back to Nicaragua, that I wanted him to live with me”. He only got back in touch in 2016, to insist that Soraya divorce him and formally transfer legal custody of Ramses to him, which she eventually did, in exchange for being able to be in regular contact with her son.

This episode clearly illustrates how Soraya’s trafficking activities inscribed themselves within wider structures and practices of gender inequality and male domination. Nicaragua remains a country marked by patriarchy and machismo, something that was strikingly reflected in the law banning abortion under all circumstances passed in 2008, or the adoption of law 779 on gender violence in 2012, which defines all such instances as “domestic violence” that must be resolved through mediation rather than the penal system.

In the end, although she was known as la Reina del Sur, this nickname had nothing to do with Soraya having a position of dominance in the drug trade in barrio Luis Fanor Hernández. Indeed, the vast majority of (few) women drug dealers in the neighbourhood were at the bottom of the business pyramid.

Beautician

Soraya says she stopped selling drugs in 2012, and that she is now a full-time beautician. Several current drug dealers in barrio Luis Fanor Hernández have, however, told me that she continues to deal and that her manicure business provides a convenient cover.

The fact that Soraya earns no more than 15 to 20 dollars a week from her manicure business could clearly be interpreted as suggesting that this might be the case. Soraya firmly denies it, however, and I believe her. Not only does she take on various odd jobs to make ends meet for herself and her ageing mother, she also lives in very humble conditions. Her current home, in particular, is much less flamboyant than any of those in which she lived in the past.

The type of house that Soraya lives in today (not her real house).
Dennis Rodgers, Fourni par l’auteur

When compared to the trajectories of male traffickers in the barrio – many of whom have greatly benefited, and continue to benefit, from their involvement in trafficking even after they have stopped dealing – it can be argued that Soraya’s involvement in drug trafficking has enhanced patriarchal and macho constraints, contributing to her current situation.

At the same time, while Soraya’s life has unquestionably been marked by a constant struggle in the face of different forms of domination and oppression, she also frequently and persistently seeks to confront and challenge her predicament. This is perhaps partly linked to her involvement in the drug trade, as the WhatsApp exchange I had with Soraya on 8 March 2021 clearly suggested. She had uploaded a picture of herself drinking at a nightclub, overlaying it with the following text:

“Today is International Women’s Day, and we celebrate the power of independent and autonomous women! We are beautiful, we are strong, and we can do whatever we want!”.

I wrote to Soraya to wish her a happy International Women’s Day, and also to tell her that I’d started to write her biography “about when she was la Reina del Sur”. A few minutes later she replied – “por siempre La Reina!” (“forever the Queen!”). Läs mer…

A public interest group filed a U.S. federal complaint against artificial intelligence hiring tool, HireVue, in 2019 for deceptive hiring practices. The software, which has been adopted by hundreds of companies, favoured certain facial expressions, speaking styles and tones of voice, disproportionately disadvantaging minority candidates.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center argued HireVue’s results were “biased, unprovable and not replicable.” Though the company has since stopped using facial recognition, concerns remain about biases in other biometric data, such as speech patterns.

Similarly, Amazon stopped using its AI recruitment tool, as reported in 2018, after discovering it was biased against women. The algorithm, trained on male-dominated resumes submitted over 10 years, favoured male candidates by downgrading applications that included the word “women’s” and penalizing graduates of women’s colleges. Engineers tried to address these biases, but could not guarantee neutrality, leading to the project’s cancellation.

These examples highlight a growing concern in recruitment and selection: while some companies are using AI to remove human bias from hiring, it can often reinforce and amplify existing inequalities. Given the rapid integration of AI into human resource management across many organizations, it’s important to raise awareness about the complex ethical challenges it presents.

Ways AI can create bias

As companies increasingly rely on algorithms to make critical hiring decisions, it’s crucial to be aware of the following ways AI can create bias in hiring:

1. Bias in training data. AI systems rely on large datasets — referred to as training data — to learn patterns and make decisions, but their accuracy and fairness are only as good as the data they are trained on. If this data contains historical hiring biases that favour specific demographics, the AI will adopt and reproduce those same biases. Amazon’s AI tool, for example, was trained on resumes from a male-dominated industry, which led to gender bias.

2. Flawed data sampling. Flawed data sampling occurs when the dataset used to train an algorithm is not representative of the broader population it’s meant to serve. In the context of hiring, this can happen if training data over-represents certain groups —typically white men — while under-representing marginalized candidates.

As a result, the AI may learn to favour the characteristics and experiences of the over-represented group while penalizing or overlooking those from underrepresented groups. For example, facial analysis technologies have shown to have higher error rates for racialized individuals, particularly racialized women, because they are underrepresented in the data used to train these systems.

Read more:
Artificial intelligence can discriminate on the basis of race and gender, and also age

3. Bias in feature selection. When designing AI systems, developers choose certain features, attributes or characteristics to be prioritized or weighed more heavily when the AI is making decisions. But these selected features can lead to unfair, biased outcomes and perpetuate pre-existing inequalities.

For example, AI might disproportionately value graduates from prestigious universities, which have historically been attended by people from privileged backgrounds. Or, it might prioritize work experiences that are more common among certain demographics.

This problem is compounded when the features selected are proxies for protected characteristics, such as zip code, which can be strongly related to race and socioeconomic status due to historical housing segregation.

Bias in hiring algorithms raises serious ethical concerns and demands greater attention toward the mindful, responsible and inclusive use of AI.
(Shutterstock)

4. Lack of transparency. Many AI systems function as “black boxes,” meaning their decision-making processes are opaque. This lack of transparency makes it difficult for organizations to identify where bias might exist and how it affects hiring decisions.

Without insight into how an AI tool makes decisions, it’s difficult to correct biased outcomes or ensure fairness. Both Amazon and HireVue faced this issue; users and developers struggled to understand how the systems assessed candidates and why certain groups were excluded.

5. Lack of human oversight. While AI plays an important role in many decision-making processes, it should augment, rather than replace, human judgment. Over-reliance on AI without adequate human oversight can lead to unchecked biases. This problem is exacerbated when hiring professionals trust AI more than their own judgment, believing in the technology’s infallibility.

Overcoming algorithmic bias in hiring

To mitigate these issues, companies must adopt strategies that prioritize inclusivity and transparency in AI-driven hiring processes. Below are some key solutions for overcoming AI bias:

1. Diversify training data. One of the most effective ways to combat AI bias is to ensure training data is inclusive, diverse and representative of a wide range of candidates. This means including data from diverse racial, ethnic, gender, socioeconomic and educational backgrounds.

2. Conduct regular bias audits. Frequent and thorough audits of AI systems should be conducted to identify patterns of bias and discrimination. This includes examining the algorithm’s outputs, decision-making processes and its impact on different demographic groups.

It is important to actively involve human judgment in AI-driven decisions, particularly when making final hiring choices.
(Shutterstock)

3. Implement fairness-aware algorithms. Use AI software that incorporates fairness constraints and is designed to consider and mitigate bias by balancing outcomes for underrepresented groups. This can include integrating fairness metrics such as equal opportunity, modifying training data to show less bias and adjusting model predictions based on fairness criteria to increase equity.

4. Increase transparency. Seek AI solutions that offer insight into their algorithms and decision-making processes to make it easier to identify and address potential biases. Additionally, make sure to disclose any use of AI in the hiring process to candidates to maintain transparency with your job applicants and other stakeholders.

5. Maintain human oversight. To maintain control over hiring algorithms, managers and leaders must actively review AI-driven decisions, especially when making final hiring choices. Emerging research highlights the critical role of human oversight in safeguarding against the risks posed by AI applications. However, for this oversight to be effective and meaningful, leaders must ensure that ethical considerations are part of the hiring process and promote the responsible, inclusive and ethical use of AI.

Bias in hiring algorithms raises serious ethical concerns and demands greater attention toward the mindful, responsible and inclusive use of AI. Understanding and addressing the ethical considerations and biases of AI-driven hiring is essential to ensuring fairer hiring outcomes and preventing technology from reinforcing systemic bias. Läs mer…