Humans

New World’s oldest dog may have been dinner, plus worrisome PTSD and artful dodging in this week’s news

Scoring with evasive answers Deftly dodging questions pays off — just ask successful politicians. That’s because people often don’t notice when someone avoids a question by talking about a similar topic, say Harvard psychologists Todd Rogers and Michael Norton. Listeners focus more on whether they like a speaker than on the content of a response, the researchers find.