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Luke Glowacki

@lukeglowacki.bsky.social
871 followers 811 following 70 posts

Anthropologist at Boston University. PI Human Systems and Behavior Lab. Co-Director of the Omo Valley Research Project.

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Reposted by Luke Glowacki
Robert Böhm @robertboehm.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
🚨NEW PUBLICATION🚨 in @cp-iscience.bsky.social l together with @lukeglowacki.bsky.social, @hannesrusch.bsky.social and Isabel Thielmann: “Untangling altruism and parochialism in human intergroup conflict” doi.org/10.1016/j.is... (1/7)
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Omo Valley Research Project @omovalleyresearchproject.org · 17/11/2025
Meet Uri. One of the first Hamar women to reach university, and she’s doing it with an OVRP scholarship. Her journey shows what a small amount of support can unlock. Read her story and see how you can help other students take the same step. 🔗 eepurl.com/jsefIY
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Sheina Lew-Levy @sheinalew.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised! 3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution 2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions. Please share and apply! www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...
durham.ac.uk
Fees and Funding - Durham University
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Eli Stark-Elster @eselster.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Graduate school is hard, because sometimes it requires you to explain the word “boofing” to your grandparents. Context below! open.substack.com/pub/unpublis...
open.substack.com
I Do Not Recommend Boofing Plants
Notes from the Field #1
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Eli Stark-Elster @eselster.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
Yes, I’m serious. But don’t get mad until you’ve read the piece! Ft. recommendations for work by @edhagen.net , @lukeglowacki.bsky.social , Will Buckner and others. open.substack.com/pub/unpublis...
open.substack.com
Andrew Tate is right about masculinity
We don’t need a Joe Rogan of the Left. We need a liberal 12 Rules for Life.
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
Whatever your position about sex as binary or not, this is a fantastically stimulating discussion, enough so it inspired me to buy the book.
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
I'm excited to share that my wife's book, The Mind Electric, is out! She's a brilliant neurologist and weaves together patient stories exploring the human mind. I read it and it's fantastic. If you r interested in the mind, culture, & how we make meaning, check it out! www.amazon.com/Mind-Electri...
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Chris Stringer @chrisbstringer.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
Projectile weapon injuries in the Riparo Tagliente burial (Veneto, Italy) provide early evidence of Late Upper Paleolithic intergroup conflict www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Projectile weapon injuries in the Riparo Tagliente burial (Veneto, Italy) provide early evidence of Late Upper Paleolithic intergroup conflict - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Projectile weapon injuries in the Riparo Tagliente burial (Veneto, Italy) provide early evidence of Late Upper Paleolithic intergroup conflict
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Nature @nature.com · 29/05/2025
Most proteins are left-handed, but scientists have found an ancient molecule that works in both mirror-image forms go.nature.com/4mCImRm
go.nature.com
Rare ‘ambidextrous’ protein breaks rules of handedness
Most proteins are left-handed, but scientists have found an ancient molecule that works in both mirror-image forms.
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Human Behavior & Evolution Society @humbehevosoc.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
If you haven't checked out the list of talks for #HBES2025, it's available online: stockton.edu/human-behavi... Lots of great talks and plenaries coming!
stockton.edu
HBES - 36th Annual Human Behavior & Evolution Society Conference - Human Behavior & Evolution Society Conference | Stockton University
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Edouard Machery @edouardmachery.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
History and Philosophy of Science under attack
dailynous.com
University of Utah Cans History and Philosophy of Science Major Amidst Political and Administrative Chaos - Daily Nous
One way public universities in Utah can earn back part of the $60 million in funding that the state legislature took from their budgets is by "showing that [the funds] will be reallocated for high-dem...
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Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
Halting NIH foreign awards means that “more children and adults in low-income countries will now lose their lives because of research that didn’t get done about diseases like malaria and TB.” Plus: sometimes we collect data abroad about a scientific concern that affects all humans, including us!
nature.com
Exclusive: NIH to suspend funds for research abroad as it overhauls policy
Move by US biomedical agency threatens thousands of projects on infectious diseases, cancer and more.
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Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Is there really no correlation between cancer prevalence and lifespan and body size across species, as there should be? The apparent lack of an effect of body mass and lifespan on cancer became known as Peto’s paradox. But it turns out there is indeed a correlation. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Human and chimpanzee foot. We really are born to run (or walk).
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
Interesting post on philosophy over at Marginal Revolution. Philosophers, I'd love to hear your thoughts. marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
This is a fantastic interview with @chrisbstringer.bsky.social. Wide ranging, interesting, and I learned some stuff. Imagine if the LCA of humans and Neanderthals dated to a million years ago! That may just be the case.
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Ed Hagen @edhagen.net · 08/04/2025
TIL that measles can infect and persist in the brain, and then (rarely) FIVE TO TEN YEARS LATER, kills you. There are no effective treatments. Vaccination against measles obviously prevents this 🧪 journals.plos.org/plospathogen...
Acute viral infections are typically cleared by the host’s innate and adaptive immune responses, but even non-integrating RNA viruses can persist [1,2]. Neurons of the central nervous system are a privileged location for persistence because the host cannot deploy the cytolytic and inflammatory defense mechanisms that control infections in renewable cell types [3,4]. Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) provides the prime example of a persistent brain infection caused by a human RNA virus. SSPE, which occurs in about 1 in 10,000 individuals typically 5–10 years after they experience an acute infection as a child [5–7], starts with subtle signs of intellectual and psychological dysfunction and progresses to sensory and motor function deterioration that ultimately leads to death [8,9]. There are no effective treatments for SSPE, however nonspecific antivirals (interferons, ribavirin, and inosine pranobex) have been used [10]. Although vaccination against measles prevents SSPE, this lethal disease is resurging due to vaccine hesitancy and missed immunizations due to COVID-19 related disruptions [11,12].
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Rob Sica @robsica.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
"Cordelia has offered no strong hypothesis that explains the fact that, across time and place, men are more likely than women to decide to throw that punch... Killing off T-Rex entirely serves only to shoot ourselves in the foot"
aeon.co
A psychologist and biologist debate the significance of testosterone | Aeon Essays
In probing whether there are basic sex differences in humans, a psychologist and a biologist agree to seriously disagree
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
This is a great exchange in a format we need more of--longform written debate.
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Eli Stark-Elster @eselster.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
Hello, Bluesky! Pleased to share that my first public-press article, on the shifting debate over what makes human culture unique, was published today in @us.theconversation.com. I review recent literature suggesting that cultural open-endedness, not cumulative culture, is our true defining trait.
theconversation.com
Humans aren’t the only animals with complex culture − but researchers point to one feature that makes ours unique
Animals can learn from each other, maintaining their cultures for long periods of time. What sets people apart may be the uniquely open-ended ways we invent new ideas and share and build on them.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
Incredibly, we are cutting back on ag research and services as the US--with more good farmland and quality ag infrastructure per person than any other nation--is on its way, incredibly, to becoming a net importer of food (something pointed out by a disbelieving @sarahtaber.bsky.social ).
Chart from USDA Economic Research Service shows that since 2021 agricultural exports have declined and imports have risen, so that we have, incredibly, a ~$20 billion negative trade balance in agriculture.
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
Loads of evidence of cooperation among women in small-scale societies cross-culturally. doi.org/10.1098/rstb...
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Fascinating @razibkhan.bsky.social column on new ancient-DNA work which gives us a glimpse of the matrilineal/matrifocal society of the ancient Celts -- a female-centered culture that was once thought to be a mythical creation.
razibkhan.com
Where Queens Ruled: ancient DNA confirms legendary Matrilineal Celts were no exception
Britain's Iron-Age mother-line
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Tim Waring @twaring.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Fully-funded PhD position on the cultural evolution of environmental management! Link evolution, ecology and behavioral science in the ACE Lab timwaring.info Details: forms.gle/gZWK9BpwYfoG... @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social @alexmesoudi.com @hyperadapthyrax.bsky.social @michael.muthukrishna.com
timwaring.info
ACE Lab: Applied Cultural Evolution Laboratory
culture, evolution, cooperation, and sustainability
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
This is a fantastic PhD opportunity!
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
I want to live in a world where science is funded no matter what party is in power. To do that, we need to ask how we got here and to reclaim the trust of the public. The answer is not more of the same.
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Today the Cultural Evolution Society and @ehbea.bsky.social sent letters about the current attacks on scientific institutions. Imo, both were unnecessarily politicized. Here is my response, link below. FWIW, I’m glad the vibe has shifted and I can post this without worrying for my job.
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
"In anthropology, as elsewhere, progress will never result from destroying what has been previously achieved but rather from incorporating the past of our science into its present and future, enriching the one with the other and turning the whole process into a lasting reality." Lévy-Strauss
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Rob Sica @robsica.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
"The ethnographic evidence is overwhelming that many foragers sometimes had intergroup coalitionary killings... Based on this body of evidence, I infer that intergroup coalitionary killings were likely to have occurred during the Pleistocene"
sciencedirect.com
Robust evidence that mobile hunter-gatherers participated in war: Comment on Fry (2025)
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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 25/02/2025
we just posted the Expanded Natural History of Song Discography, a corpus of audio & metadata. 1007 songs in many languages, for behavioral experiments, cross-cultural research, etc preprint: osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/d2ftg_v1 corpus: zenodo.org/records/14927216 led by @milabertolo.bsky.social 1/
The Expanded Natural History of Song Discography, aglobal corpus of vocal music

[author list]

AbstractA comprehensive cognitive science requires broad sampling of human behavior to justify general inferencesabout the mind. For example, the field of psycholinguistics relies on a rich history of comparative study, withmany available resources that systematically document many languages. Surprisingly, despite a longstandinginterest in questions of universality and diversity, the psychology of music has few such resources. Here,we report theExpanded Natural History of Song Discography, an open-access corpus of vocal music (n=1007 song excerpts), with accompanying metadata detailing each song’s region of origin, language (of 413languages represented here), and one of 10 behavioral contexts (e.g., work, storytelling, mourning, lullaby,dance). The corpus is designed to sample both broadly, with a large cross-section of societies and languages;and deeply, with many songs representing three well-studied language families (Atlantic-Congo, Austronesian,and Indo-European). This design facilitates direct comparison of musical and vocal features across cultures,principled approaches to sampling stimuli for experiments, and evaluation of models of the cultural evolutionof song. In this paper we describe the corpus and provide two proofs of concept, demonstrating its utility. Weshow that (1) the acoustical forms of songs are predictive of their behavioral contexts, including in previouslyunstudied contexts (e.g., children’s play songs); and (2) similarities in acoustic content of songs across culturesare predictable, in part, by the relatedness of those cultures.a figure from the paper with a world map, some phylogenetic trees, and a big heatmap
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Rob Sica @robsica.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
"Social science is in crisis because the publication process is broken, and thus, readers cannot trust what they read in even the most prestigious journals."
chronicle.com
Opinion | Social Science Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It.
We need a post-publication, citation-triggered review process.
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Brian Wood @woodbrian.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
An NSF-funded "young scholars" program in high school changed my life and literally made me a scientist. The NSF bloodbath today will have an immense negative impact upon American science and educational opportunities available to students from all backgrounds. www.wired.com/story/nation...
wired.com
National Science Foundation Fires 168 Workers as Federal Purge Continues
Firings at the NSF included permanent employees who had already completed their one-year probationary period, as well as at-will workers.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
The story of Amazonia keeps expanding. Archaeologists excavating monumental centers in west-central Amazonia believe they held a million or so people in ~150AD. (Story in Portuguese, but Google Translate will give you the gist of it.)
rtve.es
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
This is a thought provoking piece on how regular research can lead to unanticipated consequences
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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
I am excited to announce that we are launching a new CENTER FOR CONFLICT & COOPERATION @ NYU @newyorkuniversity.bsky.social See our vision and research team here: www.centerconflictcooperation.com Sign up for our newsletter here: jayvanbavellab.substack.com Please spread the word or reach out!
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
If it feels like science is suddenly under attack, it's probably because spending the past decade politicizing science is starting to finally having the expected results. You can't say you weren't warned. unsafescience.substack.com/p/we-tried-t...
unsafescience.substack.com
We Tried to Warn You
Preliminary List of Articles that Attempted to Warn Academics and Other Scientists that their Politicization of Scholarship, Teaching, Funding, Hiring and Promotions Was a Slow-Moving Train Wreck
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
I mean this as a serious question but is anyone concerned about the ethics of studying hidden preferences when participants don't want them revealed? I think the research is tremendously valuable but raises some serious ethical concerns. I'm surprised there hasn't been more debate about this.
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Jess Holz @jessholz.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
www.eventbrite.com/e/the-art-of... Attn Boston folk: I will be co-teaching a microscopy course at Artisans Asylum with Gary Valaskovic, a fellow Artisans member and expert in polarization/chemical microscopy. Crystals + plankton + optics + art + DIY modifications and more. Starts March 8. #sciart
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Are you interested in science writing? This is an incredible opportunity for a paid fellowship to develop your writing with @worksinprogress.bsky.social www.worksinprogress.news/p/a-writing-...
worksinprogress.news
A writing fellowship on scientific progress
Works in Progress and Asimov Press are launching a paid six-month fellowship.
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Pablo Magaña @pmagana94.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
This reminded me of one of the best (and most random) things I have read this year: this article by Luke Glowacki on the (evolutionary) origins of war. Nuanced, illuminating, comprehensive, and accessible to non-specialists. Super recommended: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
The controversial origins of war and peace: apes, foragers, and human evolution
The role of warfare in human evolution is among the most contentious topics in the evolutionary sciences. The debate is especially heated because many…
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Sheina Lew-Levy @sheinalew.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
We're hiring! Are you a cultural evolutionary modeller who wants to understand how and why children's peer cultures evolve? Here's a postdoc position for you! @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social @durhampsych.bsky.social @ehbea.bsky.social @eslr.bsky.social Apply here: durham.taleo.net/careersectio...
durham.taleo.net
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Click the link provided to see the complete job description.
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 05/01/2025
OK, I'm very excited by this. These are proofs of my book on science for children aged around 9-12, and they look glorious. As you may notice, it is appearing in Portuguese, because it was a Portuguese publisher who picked it up. Hoping for an English version too!
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
I'm so excited to read this!
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Luke Glowacki @lukeglowacki.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
Do you believe in enabling human talent? This non-profit provides direct scholarships to Ethiopian students from rural families. We are all volunteer run and the money goes directly to students. If you are in a position to help, please consider a tax-deductible contribution. Any amount helps.
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EHBEA @ehbea.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
WSU seeks a tenure-track Assistant or Associate Professor in evolutionary/biological anthropology careercenter.americananthro.org/job/661674/w...
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Marcel Salathé @marcelsalathe.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Science is amazing 🤩 - an HIV vaccine is slowly but surely becoming a reality. www.science.org/content/arti...
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EHBEA @ehbea.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Charles Efferson is recruiting a PhD student to work on the evolution of human cognition and behavior. Begin fall 2025. Big lake, pretty mountains, Swiss largesse, and science to boot! tinyurl.com/yfkr2yzs
tinyurl.com
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Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy, in academia In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Deadline for EHBEA abstracts is coming up next Monday 16 December. Come join us in one of the UK’s liveliest cities 🪩😃
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