The infamous exploding whale incident occurred Nov. 12, 1970, in Florence, Oregon. A whale washed ashore on the Oregon beach and with no other means to dispo...

After more than three centuries, a geometry problem that originated with a royal bet has been solved.

2025 update to the Royal Society's analyses of upfront immigration costs in the UK and 17 other leading science nations.

How we remember our past can be shaped by the realities of our present. This study examines how changes to present circumstances influence retrospective reports of family income rank at age 16. While retrospective survey data can be used to assess the long-term effects of childhood conditions, present-day circumstances may “anchor” memories, causing shifts in how individuals recall and report past experiences. Using panel data from the 2006–2014 General Social Surveys (8,602 observations from 2,883 individuals in the United States), we analyze how changes in objective and subjective indicators of current social status—income, financial satisfaction, and perceived income relative to others—are associated with changes in reports of childhood income rank, and how this varies by sex and race/ethnicity. Fixed-effects models reveal no significant association between changes in income and in childhood income rank. However, changes in subjective measures of social status show contrasting effects, as increases in current financial satisfaction are associated with decreases in childhood income rank, but increases in current perceived relative income are associated with increases in childhood income rank. We argue these opposing effects follow from theories of anchoring in recall bias. We further find these effects are stronger among males but are consistent across racial/ethnic groups. This demographic heterogeneity suggests that recall bias is not evenly distributed across the population and has important implications for how different groups perceive their own pasts. Our findings further highlight the malleability of retrospective perceptions and their sensitivity to current social conditions, offering methodological insights into survey reliability and recall bias.

I served on the Navy’s first combatant ship to have women permanently assigned, and all of us on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower were completely qualified for our jobs, writes Laura McTaggart. No combat ...

Ants carry lactic and acetic acid bacteria that help coagulate milk, as well as formic acid to acidify it.

How societies remember the dead can reveal what people value in life. We analyzed 38 million obituaries from the United States to examine how perso...

Progressives discovered a seemingly invincible weapon. One day it stopped working.