Sujata Gupta

Sujata Gupta

Social Sciences Writer

Sujata Gupta is the social sciences writer for Science News. She was a 2017-18 Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Nature, Discover, NPR, Scientific American, and others. Sujata got her start in journalism at a daily newspaper in Central New York, where she covered education and small town politics. She has also worked as a National Park Ranger, completing stints at parks in Hawaii, California and Maine, and taught English in Nagano, Japan.

All Stories by Sujata Gupta

  1. Health & Medicine

    Proposed time limits on anesthesia may have jeopardized patient safety

    Blue Cross Blue Shield’s now rescinded plan to put time limits on anesthesia put a spotlight on a poorly understood profession.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Dengue is classified as an urban disease. Mosquitoes don’t care

    Infectious diseases are often labeled “urban” or “rural.” Applying political labels to public health misses who is at risk, experts argue.

  3. Anthropology

    The ‘midlife crisis’ is too simple a story, scientists say

    Some scientists want to shift focus to the teen mental health crisis. But the course of happiness is too complex for simplistic theories, experts warn.

  4. Archaeology

    A race to save Indigenous trails may change the face of archaeology

    As construction of a pipeline nears, an effort to preserve an Indigenous trail in Canada tests whether heritage management can keep up with advances in archaeology.

  5. Science & Society

    The U.S. empire was built on bird dung

    A mid-1850s act let the United States seize islands rich in bird guano. Those strategic outposts fueled the U.S. rise to power, a researcher says.

  6. Science & Society

    Is U.S. democracy in decline? Here’s what the science says

    Political scientists disagree over how to interpret a slight dip in the health of U.S. democracy.

  7. Psychology

    Navigation research often excludes the environment. That’s starting to change

    Participants “navigating” on a lab computer have shaped navigation knowledge. Studies that add in the environment challenge those findings.

  8. Science & Society

    There’s a new term for attempting to own the wind: ventography

    Nations established territorial claims underground to access oil and gas. Now they are expanding those claims upward to snag the wind.

  9. Science & Society

    This researcher studies how misinformation seeps into science and politics

    The world is awash in information. Communications researcher Yotam Ophir digs into news articles and survey results to show how beliefs form and spread.

  10. Artificial Intelligence

    Talking to a chatbot may weaken someone’s belief in conspiracy theories

    AI might help lift conspiracy theorists out of the rabbit hole, but some researchers say proceed with caution.

  11. Artificial Intelligence

    AI generates harsher punishments for people who use Black dialect

    ChatGPT and similar AI sort those who use African American English dialect into less prestigious jobs and dole out harsher criminal punishments.

  12. Humans

    Does social status shape height?

    A controversial idea drawing on findings from the animal kingdom suggests there’s more to human stature than genetics and nutrition.