Browsing: National

How did Halloween get associated with the spooky? SolStock/Collection E+ via Getty Images

As Halloween approaches, people get ready to celebrate the spooky, the scary and the haunted. Ghosts, zombies, skeletons and witches are prominently displayed in yards, windows, stores and community spaces. Festivities center around the realm of the dead, and some believe that the dead might actually mingle with the living on the night of Halloween.

Scholars have often noted how these modern-day celebrations of Halloween have origins in Samhain, a festival celebrated by ancient Celtic cultures. In contemporary Irish Gaelic, Halloween is still known as Oíche Shamhna, or Eve of Samhain

You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, here.

As a folklorist with a special interest in Celtic culture, I find it interesting to note the longevity of this holiday: The celebration of the dead on Halloween is not a recent innovation, but rather one of the oldest surviving traditions that continues today as a vibrant part of many peoples’ lives.

Early evidence from archaeology

In ninth century Irish literature, Samhain is mentioned many times as an integral part of the Celtic culture. It was one of four seasonal turning points in the Celtic calendar, and perhaps the most important one. It signaled the end of the light half of the year, associated with life, and the beginning of the dark half, associated with the dead.

Archaeological records suggest that commemorations of Samhain can be traced back to the Neolithic period, some from 6,000 years ago. Neolithic Ireland had no towns or cities, but did craft huge architectural monuments, which acted as seasonal gathering spots, and housed the remains of the societies’ elites.

These megalithic sites, from the Greek “mega” and “lithos,” meaning big stone, would at times host vast numbers of people, gathered together for brief periods around specific calendar dates. Archaeological records reveal evidence of massive feasts, yet little to no evidence of domestic use. If people did live year-round at these sites, they would have been a select few.

Data from animal bones can reveal approximate time periods of the feasts, and further data comes from the monuments themselves. Not only are the monuments situated in key places in the landscape, but they are also carefully celestially aligned to allow the sun or moon to shine directly into the center of the monument on a particular day.

These sites connect the landscape to the cosmos, creating a lived calendar, scripted in stone. The UNESCO World Heritage monument of Newgrange, for example, is built so that a shaft of sunlight illuminates the innermost chamber precisely on the day of winter solstice.

Ancient monuments such as the Newgrange have been carefully celestially aligned.
Tjp finn via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC

Less than 30 miles away lies the hill of Tara, another massive megalithic site. The Mound of Hostages, the oldest extant megalithic structure at Tara, is aligned to Samhain. Tara is known as the traditional spiritual and political capital of Ireland, and here, too, archaeologists have found evidence of mass seasonal gatherings of people, with the remains of feasts and great bonfires.

The spirits of the dead

According to early Irish literature, as well as traditional folklore collected in the 19th century, Samhain of long ago was a time for people to come together, under a command of peace, to feast, tell stories, make social and political claims, engage in important sacred rituals and, perhaps most importantly, to commune with the dead.

The traditional, pre-Christian realm of the dead was referred to as the Otherworld. The Otherworld was not somewhere far away, but rather overlapping with the world of the living. The Irish beliefs about the Otherworld were detailed and complex. It is full of magic, of witchcraft, of speaking with the dead as well as seeing into the future. The dead were traditionally believed to continue to see the living, although the living could only occasionally see them. The most prominent occasion would be on Samhain itself, when lines between the Otherworld of the dead and the realm of the living were weakened.

Not only were there particular days that one might encounter the dead, but particular places as well, these being the same megalithic sites. These sites are known in Irish Gaelic as “sí” sites, but there is another meaning of the word sí in Irish, that being the spirits of the mounds. This is often translated into English as “fairies”, which loses a great deal of meaning. “Fairies” in Ireland are spirits deeply connected with the realm of the dead, the mounds, and, perhaps most especially, Samhain.

The connection can be witnessed in the figure of the banshee – or bean sí, in Irish – an important mythological figure in Irish folklore, believed to be heard wailing with grief directly before the death of a family member. With Irish “bean” meaning simply “woman”, the banshee is thus a female spirit of the mounds, and a ruler of the realm of the dead.

The sí spirits are not only spirits of the dead, but they are also a particular aristocracy of the dead, who host the dead with feasting, merriment and eternal youth, often at the age-old megalithic sites. In Irish lore, they are powerful and dangerous, able to give great gifts or exact great damage. They once ruled Ireland, according to folklore, and now they rule the world of the dead.

The Otherworld is always there, but it is on the beginning of the dark half of the year, the evening of Samhain, now Halloween, when the dead are at their most powerful and when the lines between this world and the next are erased.

As the light of summer fades and the season of darkness begins, the ancient holiday of Halloween continues to celebrate the dead mingling with the world of the living once again, as it has for thousands of years.

Tok Thompson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

In Maine’s 2020 Senate race, not one poll showed the GOP incumbent, Susan Collins, in the lead. But she trounced her Democratic challenger by 9 points. AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty

When it became clear his poll had erred in the 2021 New Jersey governor’s race, Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, acknowledged:

“I blew it.”

The campaign’s final Monmouth poll estimated Gov. Phil Murphy’s lead over Republican foe Jack Ciattarelli at 11 percentage points – a margin that “did not provide an accurate picture of the state of the governor’s race,” Murray later said in a newspaper commentary. Murphy won by 3.2 points.

It was a refreshingly candid acknowledgment by an election pollster.

More broadly, the error was one of several in the recent past and looms among the disquieting omens confronting pollsters in the 2022 midterm elections. Will they be embarrassed again? Will their polls in high-profile U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races produce misleading indications of election outcomes?

Such questions are hardly far-fetched or irrelevant, given election polling’s tattered recent record. A few prominent survey organizations in recent years have given up on election polling, with no signs of returning.

Worried supporters of Democratic incumbent New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy at an election night event in 2021. Murphy, who one state poll estimated was leading his GOP challenger by 11 percentage points, won by 3.2 points.
Mark Makela/Getty Images

Treat polls warily

It is important to keep in mind that polls are not always in error, a point noted in my 2020 book, “Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections.” But polls have been wrong often enough over the years that they deserve to be treated warily and with skepticism.

For a reminder, one need look no further than New Jersey in 2021 or, more expansively, to the 2020 presidential election. The polls pointed to Democrat Joe Biden’s winning the presidency but underestimated popular support for President Donald Trump by nearly 4 percentage points overall.

That made for polling’s worst collective performance in a presidential campaign in 40 years, and post-election analyses were at a loss to explain the misfire. One theory was that Trump’s hostility to election surveys dissuaded supporters from answering pollsters’ questions.

In any case, polling troubles in 2020 were not confined to the presidential race: In several Senate and gubernatorial campaigns, polls also overstated support for Democratic candidates. Among the notable flubs was the U.S. Senate race in Maine, where polls signaled defeat for the Republican incumbent, Susan Collins. Not one survey in the weeks before the election placed Collins in the lead.

She won reelection by nearly 9 points.

Recalling the shock of 2016

The embarrassing outcomes of 2020 followed a stunning failure in 2016, when off-target polls in key Great Lakes states confounded expectations of Hillary Clinton’s election to the presidency. They largely failed to detect late-campaign shifts in support to Trump, who won a clear Electoral College victory despite losing the national popular vote.

Past performance is not always prologue in election surveys; polling failures are seldom alike. Even so, qualms about a misfire akin to those of the recent past have emerged during this campaign.

In September 2022, Nate Cohn, chief political analyst for The New York Times, cited the possibility of misleading polls in key races, writing that “the warning sign is flashing again: Democratic Senate candidates are outrunning expectations in the same places where the polls overestimated Mr. Biden in 2020 and Mrs. Clinton in 2016.”

There has been some shifting in Senate polls since then, and surely there will be more before Nov. 8. In Wisconsin, for example, recent surveys suggest Republican incumbent Ron Johnson has opened a lead over Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes. Johnson’s advantage was estimated at 6 percentage points not long ago in a Marquette Law School Poll.

The spotlight on polling this election season is unsurprising, given that key Senate races – including those featuring flawed candidates in Pennsylvania and Georgia – will determine partisan control of the upper house of Congress.

Worth doing?

Polling is neither easy nor cheap if done well, and the field’s persistent troubles have even prompted the question whether election surveys are worth the bother.

Monmouth’s Murray spoke to that sentiment, stating: “If we cannot be certain that these polling misses are anomalies then we have a responsibility to consider whether releasing horse race numbers in close proximity to an election is making a positive or negative contribution to the political discourse.”

He noted that prominent survey organizations such as Pew Research and Gallup quit election polls several years ago to focus on issue-oriented survey research. “Perhaps,” Murray wrote, “that is a wise move.”

Questions about the value of election polling run through the history of survey research and never have been fully settled. Early pollsters such as George Gallup and Elmo Roper were at odds about such matters.

Gallup used to argue that election polls were acid tests, proxies for measuring the effectiveness of surveys of all types. Roper equated election polling to stunts like “tearing a telephone book in two” – impressive, but not all that consequential.

Pollsters in 2016 predicted Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would win some states that she actually lost.
Screenshot, New York Times

Who is and isn’t responding

Experimentation, meanwhile, has swept the field, as contemporary pollsters seek new ways of reaching participants and gathering data.

Placing calls to landlines and cellphones – once polling’s gold standard methodology – is expensive and not always effective, as completion rates in such polls tend to hover in the low single digits. Many people ignore calls from numbers they do not recognize, or decline to participate when they do answer.

Some polling organizations have adopted a blend of survey techniques, an approach known as “methodological diversity.” CNN announced in 2021, for example, that it would include online interviews with phone-based samples in polls that it commissions. A blended approach, the cable network said, should allow “the researchers behind the CNN poll to have a better understanding of who is and who is not responding.”

During an online discussion last year, Scott Keeter of Pew Research said “methodological diversity is absolutely critical” for pollsters at a time when “cooperation is going down [and] distrust of institutions is going up. We need to figure out lots of ways to get at our subjects and to gather information from them.”

So what lies immediately ahead for election polling and the 2022 midterms?

Some polls of prominent races may well misfire. Such errors could even be eye-catching.

But will the news media continue to report frequently on polls in election cycles ahead?

Undoubtedly.

After all, leading media outlets, both national and regional, have been survey contributors for years, conducting or commissioning – and publicizing – election polls of their own.

W. Joseph Campbell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Volunteers laugh during a 2020 meeting of Jolt, a nonprofit that works to increase civic participation of Latinos in Texas. Mark Felix/AFP/AFP via Getty Images

Nearly 1 in 5 people in the United States today are Latino, and “the Latino vote” has attracted significant news coverage as their political voice grows stronger. Yet considering all 62 million Latinos as a group isn’t necessarily all that helpful in understanding attitudes or voting patterns, as some scholars and journalists have pointed out.

The U.S. Latino population is extremely diverse. As scholars who study immigration in the fields of sociology and religious ethics, we are especially interested in the growing religious diversity and often overlooked geographical diversity among Latino populations.

These aspects of Latino identity are just beginning to be recognized more clearly in media reports. Yet they are as informative as gender, race and other characteristics for understanding Latino voters – and will likely come into play when Americans go to the polls in November.

Religious diversity

Historically, Latinos in the U.S. have mostly been Catholic, but the numbers have recently changed. In 2020, the Public Religion Research Institute reported that 50% of Latinos say they are Catholic, 14% are evangelical Protestant, 10% non-evangelical Protestant and 19% religiously unaffiliated. Some researchers have estimated that by 2030, fully half of U.S. Latinos will identify as Protestant.

This diversity has implications for political ideology and affiliation. Latino Protestants, particularly evangelicals, are generally more likely to identify as politically conservative and to support Republican candidates than Latino Catholics are, according to the Public Religion Research Institute’s 2020 Census of American Religion. Religiously unaffiliated Latinos, on the other hand, are generally more likely to identify as politically liberal and to support Democratic candidates.

These trends are similar to those among non-Latino white Americans. Political ideology by age also looks similar: Whether Latino or not, younger groups are more likely to identify as politically liberal, whereas older groups are more likely to identify as politically conservative.

Your vote matters – whichever language you’re voting in.
Mark Felix/AFP/AFP via Getty Images

Indeed, Latino groups’ voting preferences may be better understood by looking at religious affiliation, not ethnicity. Sociologist Gerardo Marti, for example, has shown that Latinos who identify as evangelical Protestants are more likely than other Latinos to embrace Christian nationalist ideas. This ideology promotes the view that the U.S. has a special relationship with God and that it should be governed by Christian principles. Marti also shows that evangelical Latinos are more likely to align with white evangelicals in favoring policies that maintain the political dominance of white Americans.

Protestant Latinos are also more likely than other Latinos to hold anti-immigrant sentiments, which track with attitudes among non-Latino white evangelicals. This may seem counterintuitive, since Latinos have been subject to racist stereotyping and often have connections to immigrant communities. However, immigrant groups’ attitudes toward newcomers do change over time, especially if those groups begin to gain access to privileges associated with whiteness.

Geographic diversity

The media has begun to pay more attention to Latino diversity, especially in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, but tends to focus on states like Florida, California and Texas. Regions where Latino communities are smaller but growing are understudied, particularly in the Midwest – home to five of the 13 battleground states in 2020.

Comparing by Census regions, the Latino population of the Midwest grew 28% between 2010 and 2020: the second-largest rate of all regions, only 2 percentage points less than in the South. The Midwest also has the youngest Latino population, with a median age of 26.7 years. Because there is a significant association between age and political opinion, and because younger Latinos are more likely to be U.S. citizens and therefore able to vote, this could become a factor in the future.

Taken together

The intersection of religious and political affiliation among Latinos in the United States also seems to vary by geography. Considering geography and religion together helps highlight diversity among Latino voters.

Based on our analysis of polling data from the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel Wave 86, Latino Protestants in the Midwest are more likely to identify as Democrat or Democrat-leaning than in other regions: about 74%, compared with approximately 63% in the Northeast and 52% in the West and South. Meanwhile, 86% of Latino Catholics in the Northeast identify with the Democratic Party – but only 66% in the South.

Among religiously unaffiliated Latinos, meanwhile, 65% in the Midwest identify with the Democrats, lower than in any other region. These differences are intriguing, but since Pew only surveyed 207 Latinos in this region, representing just 6.1% of the total sample, it is difficult to reach statistically well-grounded conclusions – another reason for more research in the Midwest.

The problem with understanding “the Latino vote” is that there really is no such thing. Latino communities have always been diverse, and are growing even more so.

Laura E. Alexander receives funding as a 2021-23 Public Fellow of the Public Religion Research Institute.

Cristian Doña-Reveco does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Humans could sink more carbon in the ocean to fight climate change, but should we? Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images

Heat waves, droughts and extreme weather are endangering people and ecosystems somewhere in the world almost every day. These extremes are exacerbated by climate change, driven primarily by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases that build up in the atmosphere and trap heat at the Earth’s surface.

With that in mind, researchers are exploring ways to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and lock it away – including using the ocean. But while these techniques might work, they raise serious technical, social and ethical questions, many of which have no clear answers yet.

We study climate change policy, sustainability and environmental justice. Before people start experimenting with the health of the ocean, there are several key questions to consider.

Ocean carbon dioxide removal 101

The ocean covers about 70% of the planet, and it naturally takes up carbon dioxide. In fact, about a quarter of human-produced carbon dioxide ends up in the ocean.

Ocean carbon dioxide removal is any action designed to use the ocean to remove even more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it already does and store it.

It spans a wide range of techniques – from increasing the amount and vitality of carbon dioxide-absorbing mangrove forests to using ocean fertilization to stimulate the growth of phytoplankton that absorb carbon dioxide to building pipelines that pump liquid carbon dioxide into formations under the seabed, where it can eventually solidify as carbonate rock.

Methods of ocean direct carbon removal.
2021 Boettcher, Brent, Buck, Low, McLaren and Mengis, Frontiers, 2021, CC BY

There are other forms of carbon dioxide removal – planting trees, for example. But they require large amounts of land that is needed for other essential uses, such as agriculture.

That’s why interest in using the vast ocean is growing.

Would these methods store enough carbon?

The first crucial question is whether ocean carbon dioxide removal techniques could significantly reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide and store it long term, beyond what the ocean already does. Greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing globally, which means that ocean carbon dioxide removal would need to keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere for a long time, at least until greenhouse gas emissions have fallen.

Initial evidence suggests that some forms of ocean carbon dioxide removal, such as those that rely on short-lived biomass like kelp forests or phytoplankton, may not keep captured carbon stored for more than a few decades. That’s because most plant tissues are quickly recycled by decay or by sea creatures grazing on them.

In contrast, mechanisms that form minerals, like the interaction when carbon dioxide is pumped into basalt formations, or that alter the way seawater retains carbon dioxide, such as increasing its alkalinity, prevent carbon from escaping and are much more likely to keep it out of the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years.

Ecological risks and benefits

Another key question is what ecological benefits or risks accompany different ocean carbon dioxide removal approaches.

Research shows that some options, such as supporting mangrove forests, may promote biodiversity and benefit nearby human communities.

However, other options could introduce novel risks. For example, growing and then sinking large amounts of kelp or algae could bring in invasive species. Dissolving certain types of rock in the ocean could reduce ocean acidity. This would enhance the ocean’s ability to store carbon dioxide, but these rocks could also contain trace amounts of metals that could harm marine life, and these risks are not well understood.

Phytoplankton can grow explosively over a few days or weeks. Ocean fertilization is designed to supercharge that process to capture carbon dioxide, but it can have harmful affects for other marine life.
Robert Simmon and Jesse Allen/NOAA/MODIS

Each process could also release some greenhouse gases, reducing its overall effectiveness.

Interfering with nature is a social question

The ocean affects everyone on the planet, but not everyone will have the same relationship to it or the same opportunities to have their opinions heard.

Much of the global population lives near the ocean, and some interventions might impinge on places that support jobs and communities. For example, boosting algae growth could affect nearby wild fisheries or interfere with recreation. People and communities are going to evaluate these risks differently depending on how they are personally affected.

In addition, people’s trust in decision-makers often shapes their views of technologies. Some ways of using the ocean to remove carbon, such as those close to the shore, could be governed locally. It’s less clear how decisions about the high seas or deep ocean would be made, since these areas are not under the jurisdiction of any one country or global governing body.

People’s perceptions will likely also be shaped by such factors as whether or not they see ocean carbon dioxide removal as interfering with nature or protecting it. However, views of what is acceptable or not can change. As the impacts of climate change increase, tolerance for some unconventional interventions seems to be growing.

It’s also an ethical question

Ocean carbon dioxide removal also raises a variety of ethical questions that do not have straightforward answers.

For example, it forces people to consider the relationship between humans and nonhumans. Are humans obliged to intervene to reduce the impact on the climate, or ought we avoid ocean interventions? Do people have the right to purposefully intervene in the ocean or not? Are there specific obligations that humans ought to recognize when considering such options?

Volunteers plant mangrove saplings in the Philippines.
Romeo Gacad/AFP via Getty Images

Other ethical questions revolve around who makes decisions about ocean carbon dioxide removal and the consequences. For example, who should be involved in decision-making about the ocean? Could relying on ocean carbon dioxide removal reduce societies’ commitment to reducing emissions through other means, such as by reducing consumption, increasing efficiency and transforming energy systems?

Who pays?

Finally, ocean carbon dioxide removal could be very expensive.

For example, mining and then adding rocks to reduce the ocean’s acidity has been estimated to cost between US$60 and $200 per ton of carbon dioxide removed. To put that into context, the world produced more than 36 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from energy alone in 2021.

Even macroalgae cultivation could be in the tens of billions of dollars if done at the scale likely necessary to have an impact.

These methods are more expensive than many actions that reduce emissions right now. For instance, using solar panels to avoid carbon emissions can range from saving money to a cost of $50 per ton of carbon dioxide, while actions like reducing methane emissions are even less expensive. But the harm from continued climate change has been estimated to be in the hundreds of billions annually in the United States alone.

These costs raise more questions. For example, how much debt is fair for future generations to carry, and how should the costs be distributed globally to fix a global problem?

Ocean carbon dioxide removal could become a useful method for keeping global warming in check, but it should not be seen as a silver bullet, especially since there isn’t an effective global system for making decisions about the ocean.

Sarah Cooley, a former research scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and science outreach manager at the Ocean Conservancy, contributed to this article.

Terre Satterfield receives funding from Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions
(F20-00333) to explore public attitudes toward OCDR

Sonja Klinsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

What’s he trying to say? nojustice via iStock / Getty Images Plus

Have you visited Yew Nork? Does your stummy ache? What dog of bag food will we get?

In case you’ve wondered what causes such speech errors or slips of the tongue, you might like to know that all speakers – of all ages and abilities – make them sometimes. Even people who use a sign language produce what some call “slips of the hand.” Slips are a common feature of language.

As a developmental psycholinguist who studies how people use language, I am interested in what speech errors tell us about the human mind. Research shows that language users store and retrieve different units of language. These include small ones like single consonants, and big ones like phrases made of several words.

Exchanges and blends of sounds and words

One way to think about speech errors is in terms of the linguistic units that each involves. Another way to think about them is in terms of the actions affecting these units.

The “Yew Nork” slip shows consonant sounds switching places – a sound exchange. Notice that each of the consonants is first in its own syllable. The “dog of bag food” slip shows a word exchange. Notice that both words are nouns. Vowel sounds can also switch places, as when a speaker who meant “feed the pooch” said, “food the peach.”

The “stummy” slip blends the synonyms “stomach” and “tummy.” Phrases can also blend, as in “It depends on the day of the mood I’m in.” The speaker who said this had in mind both “the day of the week” and “the mood I’m in,” but with only one mouth for the two messages to pass through, he blended the phrases.

Substitutions by meaning

Another way to think about speech errors is in terms of what influences them. Substitutions of one word for another can illustrate.

Someone who meant to refer to fingers said instead, “Don’t burn your toes.” The words “toe” and “finger” don’t sound alike, but they name similar body parts. In fact, Latin used the same word, “digitus,” to refer to digits of the hands and digits of the feet.

This word substitution – and thousands like it – suggests that our mental dictionaries link words with related meanings. In other words, semantic connections can influence speech errors. The speaker here was trying to get the word “finger” from the body-part section of his mental dictionary and slipped over to its semantic neighbor “toe.”

Substitutions by sound

Another type of word substitution reveals something else about our mental dictionaries. Someone who meant to refer to his mustache said instead, “I got whipped cream on my mushroom.” The words “mustache” and “mushroom” sound similar. Each word starts with the same consonant and vowel, denoted as “[mʌ]” in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Each word is two syllables long with stress on the first syllable. But the meanings of these two words are not similar.

This word substitution – and thousands like it – suggests that our mental dictionaries also link words with similar sounds. In other words, phonological connections can influence speech errors. The speaker here was trying to get the word “mustache” from the “[mʌ]” section of his mental dictionary and slipped over to its phonological neighbor “mushroom.”

Insights from variety

Psycholinguists who collect and analyze speech errors find many ways to categorize them and to explain how and why people make them.

I like to compare that effort with how Charles Darwin studied Galápagos finches. Studying speech errors and finches in detail reveals how tiny variations distinguish them.

Theories of how people talk seek to explain those details. Psycholinguists distinguish slips by the linguistic units that they involve, such as consonants, vowels, words and phrases. They describe how and when speakers use such information. This can help us understand how language develops in children and how it breaks down in people with certain impairments.

These theories also describe different stages for planning and producing sentences. For example, psycholinguists hypothesize that speakers start with what they want to convey. Then they retrieve word meanings from a mental dictionary. They arrange the words according to the grammar of the language they’re speaking. How words sound and the rhythm of whole sentences are later stages. If this is right, the “finger-toe” substitution reflects an earlier stage than the “mustache-mushroom” substitution.

The study of speech errors reminds us that glitches happen now and then in every complex behavior. When you walk, you sometimes trip. When you talk, you sometimes slip.

Cecile McKee has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the James S. McDonnell Foundation. Her research on language production is in collaboration with Merrill F. Garrett (University of Arizona) and Dana McDaniel (University of Southern Maine).

Arizona Secretary of State GOP candidate Mark Finchem, who has denied the 2020 election results and was present at the U.S. Capitol insurrection.

AP Photo/Matt York

The state officials who administer fair, accessible and secure elections have historically operated quietly without garnering much public attention. Elections happen, votes are counted, the winners are declared and democracy moves on.

But since 2020, secretaries of state and other state officials who oversee elections have come under increasing scrutiny and been exposed to increasing abuse.

Studies have shown both state Democratic and Republican chief election officials oversee elections with similar partisan outcomes, turnout rates and administrative policies. And despite the fact that most of these officers are selected through explicitly partisan processes, the majority of them behaved in a nonpartisan manner to ensure fair and secure elections.

But given the increasingly polarized and hostile political environment in the U.S., is the country about to experience an Election Day filled with conflict, contested election results and chief election officials who are no longer trusted?

GOP Secretary of State candidates Audrey Trujillo, from New Mexico; Kristina Karamo, from Michigan; Mark Finchem, from Arizona; and Jim Marchant, from Nevada at a September 2022 conference on conspiracy theories about voting machines and discredited claims about the 2020 presidential election, held in West Palm Beach, Fla.
AP Photo/Jim Rassol

What they do

The decentralized U.S. election system is run by state and local officials. State chief election officials, the title most often given to the top official in the system, have ultimate authority over elections in the state and oversee voting processes before, during and after an election.

There is a good deal of variation on how chief election officers are selected in each of the states. Most are selected through explicitly partisan processes, such as partisan elections or political appointment by a legislature or governor.

The responsibilities of these election officials include ensuring state and federal election laws are followed by local officials, implementing state plans to register eligible people to vote and maintaining the state voter registration database.

Additionally, they are responsible for training local officials to run elections and providing a process for testing and certifying voting equipment in the state.

Most of these chief election officers also have other important roles in state government. They may be responsible for administering business filings and licensing in a state and enforcing campaign finance regulations. They may also occupy a highly political role, as a successor to the governor.

How the system works

Election certification, the official tallied results of in-person and absentee votes, has many steps and includes a number of post-election activities.

The first steps of election certification take place on the local level, and then the state level. The U.S. has over 10,000 local election administration jurisdictions. It is the officials in these local jurisdictions who handle the day-to-day operations of elections where votes are initially counted.

After the polls close, local election officials are responsible for counting ballots. This includes mail-in and absentee ballots, which in some states can be accepted days after Election Day if postmarked beforehand.

Officials then process provisional ballots. Provisional ballots are those cast by voters who arrive at the polls on Election Day and whose eligibility to vote is uncertain.

Next, officials conduct what’s called a canvass. That’s the tabulating, double-checking and transmitting of the results from the local jurisdiction to the state.

The certification finalizes the results based on the canvass.

While the exact procedures vary by state, a state canvassing board, chief election official or a small group that might include the governor and other state officials signs a certificate of election for all the candidates and ballot measures.

A man fills out his ballot at an early voting location in Alexandria, Va., Monday, Sept. 26, 2022.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Undermining a trusted process

I’m a scholar of public-sector governance and a former local government official. I believe there are some disturbing signs emerging related to our highly partisan election administration system that could erode the public’s confidence in the neutrality of elections.

In our new book, “The Independent Voter,” my co-authors Jacqueline Salit and Omar Ali and I identify a series of vulnerabilities in this partisan system.

Overall mistrust in the neutrality of the election process is high, and voters are losing trust in U.S. elections. Claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent have been repeatedly disproved through exhaustive audits, recounts, reports and reviews. Yet despite this fact, consistently about 70% of Republican voters suspect election fraud.

This has led some states to alter the role of the chief election official. Some states have passed legislation that has shifted aspects of election administration to partisan bodies such as state legislatures or partisan-dominated election boards. When responsibility for an aspect of an election is changed in this way, it can intensify partisan gamesmanship, which in turn further erodes public trust.

Further affecting their reputation for neutrality, from 2000 to 2020 almost 30% of state chief election officers publicly endorsed a candidate running in a race under their supervision.

Additionally, in the upcoming 2022 midterms, chief election officer candidates in three swing states – Arizona, Michigan and Nevada – are running as election deniers.

Their platforms include eliminating mail voting, ballot drop boxes and even the use of electronic voting machines while giving power to partisan election observers and expanding their roles. Voting by mail makes voting more accessible to large groups of individuals and reduces the cost of elections. Eliminating the practice can make it harder for certain groups of people to vote. Expanding the role of partisan election observers can lead to voting intimidation.

Secretaries of state or chief election officers can’t single-handedly change an election’s results, but they can certainly undermine this system on a number of fronts.

They can refuse to certify the results of an election, triggering involvement of the governor or courts. They can also allow multiple audits by internal and external entities of election results and foster overall distrust in the election process and its outcomes by making public comments about the election’s results that signal the public shouldn’t trust the outcome of the election.

Disruption from the outside

Chief election officers are also being confronted with extreme partisan groups seeking to disrupt and exploit the system of election administration before, during and after election. This includes endless post-election challenges to the veracity of election results.

During elections, problems can be expected as extreme partisan groups have moved to assign supporters, poll workers and observers to disrupt voting centers, tamper with equipment or call voting procedures into question, as Trump loyalist Steve Bannon has encouraged. And even before Election Day, chief election officials are seeing a coordinated campaign of requests for 2020 voting records, in some cases paralyzing preparations for the midterm election season.

The changing nature, role and perception of state chief election officials is damaging their ability to administer fair elections. The end result: Democracy is weakened in the U.S.

Thom Reilly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

A pit bull is not an official breed – it’s an umbrella term for a type of dog. Barbara Rich via Getty Images

As recently as 50 years ago, the pit bull was America’s favorite dog. Pit bulls were everywhere. They were popular in advertising and used to promote the joys of pet-and-human friendship. Nipper on the RCA Victor label, Pete the Pup in the “Our Gang” comedy short films, and the flag-wrapped dog on a classic World War I poster all were pit bulls.

With National Pit Bull Awareness Day celebrated on Oct. 26, it’s a fitting time to ask how these dogs came to be seen as a dangerous threat.

Starting around 1990, multiple features of American life converged to inspire widespread bans that made pit bulls outlaws, called “four-legged guns” or “lethal weapons.” The drivers included some dog attacks, excessive parental caution, fearful insurance companies and a tie to the sport of dog fighting.

As a professor of humanities and law, I have studied the legal history of slaves, vagrants, criminals, terror suspects and others deemed threats to civilized society. For my books “The Law is a White Dog” and “With Dogs at the Edge of Life,” I explored human-dog relationships and how laws and regulations can deny equal protection to entire classes of beings.

Stella, a pit bull owned by author Colin Dayan.
Colin Dayan, CC BY-ND

In my experience with these dogs – including nearly 12 years living with Stella, the daughter of champion fighting dogs – I have learned that pit bulls are not inherently dangerous. Like other dogs, they can become dangerous in certain situations, and at the hands of certain owners. But in my view, there is no defensible rationale for condemning not only all pit bulls, but any dog with a single pit bull gene, as some laws do.

I see such action as canine profiling, which recalls another legal fiction: the taint or stain of blood that ordained human degradation and race hatred in the United States.

English artist Francis Barraud (1856-1924) painted his brother’s dog Nipper listening to the horn of an early phonograph in 1898. Victor Talking Machine Co. began using the symbol in its trademark, His Master’s Voice, in 1900.
Wikipedia

Bred to fight

The pit bull is strong. Its jaw grip is almost impossible to break. Bred over centuries to bite and hold large animals like bears and bulls around the face and head, it’s known as a “game dog.” Its bravery and strength won’t allow it to give up, no matter how long the struggle. It loves with the same strength; its loyalty remains the stuff of legend.

For decades pit bulls’ tenacity encouraged the sport of dogfighting, with the dogs “pitted” against each other. Fights often went to the death, and winning animals earned huge sums for those who bet on them.

But betting on dogs is not a high-class sport. Dogs are not horses; they cost little to acquire and maintain. Pit bulls easily and quickly became associated with the poor, and especially with Black men, in a narrative that connected pit bulls with gang violence and crime.

That’s how prejudice works: The one-on-one lamination of the pit bull onto the African American male reduced people to their accessories.

A pit bull-type dog seized during a 2007 raid on an illegal dogfighting operation in East Cleveland, Ohio.
Owen Humphreys – PA Images via Getty Images

Dogfighting was outlawed in all 50 states by 1976, although illegal businesses persisted. Coverage of the practice spawned broad assertions about the dogs that did the fighting. As breed bans proliferated, legal rulings proclaimed these dogs “dangerous to the safety or health of the community” and judged that “public interests demand that the worthless shall be exterminated.”

In 1987 Sports Illustrated put a pit bull, teeth bared, on its cover, with the headline “Beware of this Dog,” which it characterized as born with “a will to kill.” Time magazine published “Time Bombs on Legs” featuring this “vicious hound of the Baskervilles” that “seized small children like rag dolls and mauled them to death in a frenzy of bloodletting.”

Presumed vicious

If a dog has “vicious propensities,” the owner is assumed to share in this projected violence, both legally and generally in public perception. And once deemed “contraband,” both property and people are at risk.

This was evident in the much-publicized 2007 indictment of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick for running a dogfighting business called Bad Newz Kennels in Virginia. Even the Humane Society of the United States and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – two of the nation’s leading animal welfare advocacy groups – argued that the 47 pit bulls recovered from the facility should be killed because they posed a threat to people and other animals.

If not for the intervention of Best Friends Animal Society, Vick’s dogs would have been euthanized. As the film “Champions” recounts, a court-appointed special master determined each dog’s fate. Ultimately, nearly all of the dogs were successfully placed in sanctuaries or adoptive homes.

This 2010 report describes the successful rehabilitation of dogs rescued from Michael Vick’s Bad Newz dogfighting operation.

Debating breed bans

Pit bulls still suffer more than any other dogs from the fact that they are a type of dog, not a distinct breed. Once recognized by the American Kennel Club as an American Staffordshire terrier, popularly known as an Amstaff, and registered with the United Kennel Club and the American Dog Breeders Association as an American pit bull terrier, now any dog characterized as a “pit bull type” can be considered an outlaw in many communities.

For example, in its 2012 Tracey v. Solesky ruling, the Maryland Court of Appeals modified the state’s common law in cases involving dog injuries. Any dog containing pit bull genes was “inherently dangerous” as a matter of law.

This subjected owners and landlords to what the courts call “strict liability.” As the court declared: “When an attack involves pit bulls, it is no longer necessary to prove that the particular pit bull or pit bulls are dangerous.”

Dissenting from the ruling, Judge Clayton Greene recognized the absurdity of the majority opinion’s “unworkable rule”: “How much ‘pit bull,’” he asked, “must there be in a dog to bring it within the strict liability edict?”

It’s equally unanswerable how to tell when a dog is a pit bull mix. From the shape of its head? Its stance? The way it looks at you?

Conundrums like these call into question statistics that show pit bulls to be more dangerous than other breeds. These figures vary a great deal depending on their sources.

Any statistics about pit bull attacks depend on the definition of a pit bull – yet it’s really hard to get good dog bite data that accurately IDs the breed.

Prince George’s County, Md., is negotiating with advocates suing to revoke the county’s pit bull ban.

Over the past decade, awareness has grown that breed-specific legislation does not make the public safer but does penalize responsible owners and their dogs. Currently 21 states prohibit local government from enforcing breed-specific legislation or naming specific breeds in dangerous dog laws. Maryland passed a law reversing the Tracey ruling in 2014. Yet 15 states still allow local communities to enact breed-specific bans.

Pit bulls demand a great deal more from humans than some dogs, but alongside their bracing way of being in the world, we humans learn another way of thinking and loving. Compared with many other breeds, they offer a more demanding but always affecting communion.

Colin Dayan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Laws from different places and eras largely reflect a universal human sense of justice. simpson33/iStock via Getty Images Plus

“Thou shalt not kill” may be the most recognizable moral prohibition in societies around the world.

But where does your sense of justice come from?

Throughout history, justice and laws about wrongdoing have been attributed to one god or another. More recently, justice has been traced to moral truths that can be discovered by judges and other legal experts, and to social norms that vary across cultures.

However, our research instead suggests that the human sense of justice, and criminal laws, is generated by the human brain.

Put simply: Being human makes you a decent lawmaker even if you’ve never stepped foot in law school. To an important extent, criminal laws appear to be the end products of gut feelings about justice that are a part of human nature.

Here’s how we investigated just how universal these intuitions are:

Testing the human brain’s sense of justice

Human conflict ranges from the mild, as when neighbors disagree about the appropriate loudness of music, to the serious, including cases of fraud, robbery, rape, homicide – the stuff of criminal law.

Laws and litigation come in handy when you’re butting heads with someone. But your brain automatically generates intuitions about justice when there is even the potential for conflict, long before you set foot in court. People, even young children, have strong feelings about what counts as a wrongful action and how much punishment a wrongdoer deserves.

These justice intuitions come naturally to everyone. They’re like human lungs or human retinas – part of being human.

So maybe the standard-issue human brain forms the basis of formal and informal justice. If so, a distinctive prediction follows: Laypeople will make decent lawmakers using their sense of justice even when they have no training in law. Further, laypeople will be able to intuitively recreate core features of actual criminal laws from cultures they are totally unfamiliar with.

We devised a study to test those predictions. We showed participants various offenses drawn from actual criminal codes but not the punishments that the law establishes for those offenses.

Some of the offenses we presented came from a modern and culturally familiar society, drawn from Title 18 of the Consolidated Pennsylvania Statutes. But other offenses were truly ancient and culturally foreign. Some participants evaluated offenses from the Laws of Eshnunna, a 3,800-year-old Mesopotamian legal code – one of humanity’s most ancient legal codes. Other participants saw offenses from the Tang Code, a 1,400-year-old legal code from China.

These archaic laws are the next best thing to time travel. They are like fossils that preserve the legal thinking of ancient lawmakers.

To give some examples, some of the Eshnunna offenses shown to participants included: biting out the eye of another man, seizing a boat fraudulently and failing to keep one’s aggressive ox in check, resulting in a slave being killed by the ox. Such were the offenses of an ancient Mesopotamian society.

Despite the massive cultural differences between the ancient city-state of Eshnunna and modern societies, if the sense of justice, and laws, originates in the human brain, then the king who decreed the Laws of Eshnunna and the participants in the study may be of one mind.

So next we asked participants to rate each of the offenses they saw. Some participants were asked to imagine they were lawmakers; they were asked to mock-legislate the fines each offense would deserve by law. Other participants mock-legislated prison sentences for each offense. To make sure participants were giving their untrained intuitions, we excluded from analyses participants who attended law school.

Indeed, the Eshnunna king and the participants in our study did display a shared sense of justice. The more study participants judged an ancient offense as serious, the higher the actual punishment provided by law for that offense.

This match between participants’ intuitions and ancient laws wasn’t perfect, but it was substantial. It suggests that human beings share a sense of justice and that people today can recreate the core of criminal laws from faraway societies that are thousands of years in the past.

Cultural effects on the sense of justice

A shared sense of justice that is part of human nature does not deny cultural differences.

Consider this Tang offense: “All cases of a master who kills a slave who has not committed an offense are punished by one year of penal servitude (NB: redeemable by paying a fine of 20 copper chin).” The Tang Code considers this offense to be relatively mild – consider, for example, that “beating and killing a person in an affray” was punished by the Tang Code with strangulation or a fine of 120 copper chin. In contrast, study participants judged “killing a slave who has not committed an offense” a very serious transgression.

And yet, participants’ intuitive responses generally matched the responses called for in the ancient criminal codes. For instance, participants agreed with the Tang lawmakers that beating and killing a person in a fight is a worse offense than betting goods and articles in games of chance.

To us, this mix of cross-cultural differences and similarities suggests that the brain machinery that generates the sense of justice combines universal principles with open parameters that are filled in with local information. The universal principles may explain why participants generally saw eye to eye with the Eshnunna king and the Tang lawmakers. The open parameters may explain cultural variation.

People, animals, even very simple organisms can be in conflict.
Stan Tekiela Author/Naturalist/Wildlife Photographer/Moment via Getty Images

Evolutionary roots of a sense of justice

Conflict is evolutionarily ancient. Organisms, including nonhuman animals, can offend against others – for example, by preying on them. And so natural selection would have endowed organisms with means that help them solve conflicts in their favor: fangs, antlers, neurotoxic venoms. These defenses and weapons are useful. Our ancestors lived in a world without police, and so they had to be their own police if they were to survive and thrive.

But human conflict is special. With their ingenuity and knack for cooperation, people can produce a huge array of goods and services that other people can swindle, rob, adulterate, counterfeit, embezzle and destroy. So the scope of human conflict is vast.

Brawn may help in human conflict, but brain is key. Humans live in an information-dense world, where it’s important to know precisely how much harm is being done to you when someone offends against you. Accurately appraising wrongs allows victims to demand or deliver an amount of punishment that is, as in the story of Goldilocks, just right: neither too small that an undeterred offender will re-offend, nor too great that the offender will counter-punish the original victim. Our human ancestors didn’t have price tags or written laws to appraise wrongful actions, so they needed to appraise wrongful actions with their brains.

The brain mechanisms for appraising wrongdoing appear to be part of human nature – the same in all times and places humans have lived in. Of course, justice intuitions and criminal laws vary across cultures. Grand theft auto wasn’t appraised in Sparta because there were no cars 2,500 years ago. Written criminal laws are absent in societies without writing systems.

Nevertheless, the human sense of justice seems to be fundamentally similar across space and time. And criminal laws everywhere may be shaped by a sense of justice and offense-appraising mechanisms that are universal – akin to how universal mechanisms of taste perception give rise to the world’s diverse cuisines.

Daniel Sznycer received funding from Fonds de recherche du Québec and Quebec Bio-Imaging Network

Carlton Patrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Astronomers have been looking for radio waves sent by a distant civilization for more than 60 years. Rytis Bernotas/iStock via Getty Images

If an alien were to look at Earth, many human technologies – from cell towers to fluorescent light bulbs – could be a beacon signifying the presence of life.

We are two astronomers who work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence – or SETI. In our research, we try to characterize and detect signs of technology originating from beyond Earth. These are called technosignatures. While scanning the sky for a TV broadcast of some extraterrestrial Olympics may sound straightforward, searching for signs of distant, advanced civilizations is a much more nuanced and difficult task than it might seem.

Saying ‘hello’ with radios and lasers

A laser – like the one seen here – or beam of radio waves pointed intentionally at Earth would be a strong sign of extraterrestrial life.
G. Hüdepohl/ESO, CC BY

The modern scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence began in 1959 when astronomers Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison showed that radio transmissions from Earth could be detected by radio telescopes at interstellar distances. The same year, Frank Drake, launched the first SETI search, Project Ozma, by pointing a large radio telescope a two nearby Sun-like stars to see if he could detect any radio signals coming from them. Following the invention of the laser in 1960, astronomers showed that visible light could also be detected from distant planets.

These first, foundational attempts to detect radio or laser signals from another civilization were all looking for focused, powerful signals that would have been intentionally sent to the solar system and meant to be found.

Given the technological limitations of the 1960s, astronomers did not give serious thought to searching for broadcast signals – like television and radio broadcasts on Earth – that would leak into space. But a beam of a radio signal, with all of its power focused towards Earth, could be detectable from much farther away – just picture the difference between a laser and a weak light bulb.

The search for intentional radio and laser signals is still one of the most popular SETI strategies today. However, this approach assumes that extraterrestrial civilizations want to communicate with other technologically advanced life. Humans very rarely send targeted signals into space, and some scholars argue that intelligent species may purposefully avoid broadcasting out their locations. This search for signals that no one may be sending is called the SETI Paradox.

This artist’s impression shows the Square Kilometer Array, a telescope array currently being built in both Australia and Africa that will be sensitive enough to detect the equivalent of radio broadcasts from distant planets.
SPDO/TDP/DRAO/Swinburne Astronomy Productions/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Leaking radio waves

Though humans don’t transmit many intentional signals out to the cosmos, many technologies people use today produce a lot of radio transmissions that leak into space. Some of these signals would be detectable if they came from a nearby star.

The worldwide network of television towers constantly emits signals in many directions that leak into space and can accumulate into a detectable, though relatively faint, radio signal. Research is ongoing as to whether current emissions from cell towers in the radio frequency on Earth would be detectable using today’s telescopes, but the upcoming Square Kilometer Array radio telescope will be able to detect even fainter radio signals with 50 times the sensitivity of current radio telescope arrays.

Not all human-made signals are so unfocused, though. Astronomers and space agencies use beams of radio waves to communicate with satellites and space craft in the solar system. Some researchers also use radio waves for radar to study asteroids. In both of these cases, the radio signals are more focused and pointed out into space. Any extraterrestrial civilization that happened to be in the line of sight of these beams could likely detect these unambiguously artificial signals.

A Dyson Sphere is a theoretical megastructure that would surround a star and collect its light to use as energy.
Kevin Gill/Flickr, CC BY

Finding megastructures

Aside from finding an actual alien spacecraft, radio waves are the most common technosignatures featured in sci-fi movies and books. But they are not the only signals that could be out there.

In 1960, astronomer Freeman Dyson theorized that, since stars are by far the most powerful energy source in any planetary system, a technologically advanced civilization might collect a significant portion of the star’s light as energy with what would essentially be a massive solar panel. Many astronomers call these megastructures, and there are a few ways to detect them.

After using the energy in the captured light, the technology of an advanced society would re-emit some of the energy as heat. Astronomers have shown that this heat could be detectable as extra infrared radiation coming from a star system.

Another possible way to find a megastructure would be to measure its dimming effect on a star. Specifically, large artificial satellites orbiting a star would periodically block some of its light. This would appear as dips in the star’s apparent brightness over time. Astronomers could detect this effect similarly to how distant planets are discovered today.

Advanced civilizations may produce a lot of pollution in the form of chemicals, light and heat that can be detected across the vast distances of space.
NASA/Jay Freidlander

A whole lot of pollution

Another technosignature that astronomers have thought about is pollution.

Chemical pollutants – like nitrogen dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons on Earth are almost exclusively produced by human industry. It is possible to detect these molecules in the atmospheres of exoplanets with the same method the James Webb Space Telescope is using to search distant planets for signs of biology. If astronomers find a planet with an atmosphere filled with chemicals that can only be produced by technology, it may be a sign of life.

Finally, artificial light or heat from cities and industry could also be detectable with large optical and infrared telescopes, as would a large number of satellites orbiting a planet. But a civilization would need to produce far more heat, light and satellites than Earth does to be detectable across the vastness of space using technology humans currently possess.

Which signal is best?

No astronomer has ever found a confirmed technosignature, so it’s hard to say what will be the first sign of alien civilizations. While many astronomers have thought a lot about what might make for a good signal,
ultimately, nobody knows what extraterrestrial technology might look like and what signals are out there in the Universe.

Some astronomers support a generalized SETI approach which searches for anything in space that current scientific knowledge cannot naturally explain. Some, like us, continue to search for both intentional and unintentional technosignatures. The bottom line is that there are many avenues for detecting distant life. Since no one knows what approach is likely to succeed first, there is still a lot of exciting work left to do.

Jason Wright does research supported by the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center. He also does SETI research and runs conferences dedicated to SETI with funds from NASA and the NSF.

Macy Huston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Over-the-counter hearing aids are now available at pharmacies and big-box stores. Mara Ohlsson/Image Source via Getty Images

U.S. retailers began selling over-the-counter hearing aids on Oct. 17, 2022, a long-awaited move that some experts predict could be a game-changer in making these devices accessible and affordable. A prescription is no longer needed, nor is a visit to a doctor or even a fitting appointment with a hearing specialist.

Instead, Americans can purchase hearing aids by going online or with a single trip to the nearest pharmacy or big-box store. These aids are only for those with mild to moderate hearing loss. For these consumers, over-the-counter hearing aids clearly offer an appealing alternative.

As an otologist/neurotologist – that’s someone who specializes in the diseases of the ear – I like to say that while vision binds us to the world, hearing binds us to each other. In my practice, I see firsthand how patients with hearing loss often withdraw socially and become isolated. They don’t want to put themselves in situations where they may mishear or seem disengaged, disinterested or unintelligent. This may be why studies show hearing loss is associated with depression and cognitive impairment.

So it seems the over-the-counter hearing aids would be a great solution for patients with hearing loss, right? Less hassle and less cost – in many cases, thousands of dollars less – and more people than ever getting the help they need. But it’s not that simple. Occurring just two months after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s final ruling on the matter, over-the-counter sales of hearing aids come with caveats and even some risks.

Prior to the availability of over-the-counter devices, only 30% of those over age 70 with hearing loss used hearing aids.

How hearing loss happens

Hearing specialists divide hearing loss into two main categories: conductive and sensorineural hearing loss. Conductive loss is caused by any number of things, including ear wax obstruction, a perforation in the ear drum or fluid in the middle ear. Children are more likely than adults to have conductive hearing loss, and most of the time, many of these problems are relatively easy to correct.

But sensorineural hearing loss is caused by a problem occurring in the inner ear, auditory nerve and brain. Most commonly, there is a loss of the tiny cochlear hair cells that convert sounds into an electrical signal. The brain interprets that signal as a bird singing or a child laughing. Hair cell injury is generally permanent and irreversible; those cells do not regenerate in humans, or for that matter, in any mammal.

Whether conductive or sensorineural, hearing aids have proved to be a tremendous boon for patients with hearing loss. One national survey found that in 2019, 7.1% of adults aged 45 and over used a hearing aid.

Over-the-counter hearing aids are not for everyone who has hearing loss.

Problems with over-the-counter hearing aids

Before over-the-counter hearing aids became available, patients needed a formal hearing test and assessment. This is critical because not all hearing loss is the same; hearing specialists – both otolaryngologists and audiologists – are trained to decipher the type of hearing loss that a patient is experiencing. From that, they make recommendations on hearing treatment. If a patient needs a hearing aid, a health care professional will fit them with one.

But purchasing an over-the-counter hearing aid requires none of those things – not an ear exam, not a hearing test and not a fitting session. There are many reasons why this shortcut approach, while certainly less expensive and offering easier access, may not be ideal for someone experiencing hearing loss.

First, patients may have a chronic infection or condition that requires medical or surgical management, rather than a hearing aid. Second, some patients may be a candidate for surgical correction of their hearing loss. Third, patients with hearing loss in one ear or a large difference in hearing between the two ears may have a benign growth on the hearing and balance nerve. This often requires surgery or radiation treatment. Again, a hearing aid would not help with this condition.

Additionally, for those who would benefit from an over-the-counter product, not every hearing aid fits every ear – one size most certainly does not fit all. And one more caveat: Over-the-counter hearing aids are not recommended for people under 18.

Finally, some patients may have too much hearing loss for these devices to provide any benefit. Instead, many patients with more advanced hearing loss have the option of a cochlear implant, which is essentially a wire with an electrode array surgically placed into the cochlea, the bony “house” of the hair cells situated deep in the skull. The electrodes stimulate the auditory nerve directly, bypassing the damaged hair cells. For these patients, cochlear implants offer an exceptional opportunity to hear again. As the technology improves, more people will become candidates for this medical miracle.

About 80% of adults aged 55 to 74 who would benefit from a hearing aid do not use them. The new over-the-counter hearing aids hold great promise for the right patients. But buyer beware: They are not panaceas. Not all customers will be satisfied with over-the-counter hearing aids – and a visit to the doctor or audiologist is still critical.

Bradley Kesser does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.