David Attenborough: celebrating the 100th birthday of the broadcaster and naturalist

Hello Nature readers,
Today we celebrate the 100th birthday of naturalist David Attenborough with some of the most interesting and compelling images from his storied career.

Fabricated citations are growing

An audit of 2.5 million biomedical-science papers spanning 3 years has identified thousands that contain bogus references that can’t be traced to real publications — and the rate is increasing. The findings are “conservative underestimates”, says AI researcher and study co-author Maxim Topaz. “We’re scratching the tip of the iceberg.”

Futures: science fiction from Nature

A chatbot achieves more than its programming in Origin story, and a superpower turns sour in Matter of taste — the latest short stories for Nature’s Futures series.

Five best science books this week

Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes an illustrated history of the first atomic test — known as Trinity — in New Mexico, and a brutally intimate memoir by David Sussillo of how his childhood marred with violence and neglect contributed to his career as a neuroscientist.

Visualize whirled peas

Peas tend to be affordable and widely available — not to mention tasty and healthy, writes nutrition-education researcher and pea-vangelist Rachel Woods. She argues that the vegetable should come out of the side-dish shadows because of its high levels of protein, fibre and nutrients such as iron, and the ease with which it can be added to our diets. (Kids, if you’re reading this, I told you so.)

Anaesthetized brains can process podcasts

Researchers played podcasts to people under anaesthesia and found that a deep brain structure called the hippocampus still seemed to process language. “Much to our surprise,” neuroscientist Sameer Sheth tells the Nature Podcast, the results indicated “a very sophisticated form of processing of the natural speech that they were listening to”. Sheth and his colleagues used The Moth podcast, but he promises that “next time we will definitely use the Nature Podcast”.