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. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. Psychology

    Online spaces may intensify teens’ uncertainty in social interactions

    Little is known of how teens learn about emotions online and then use that knowledge to cope with social uncertainty during in-person encounters.

  11. Science & Society

    Language models may miss signs of depression in Black people’s Facebook posts

    Researchers hope to use social media posts to identify population-wide spikes in depression. That approach could miss Black people, a study shows.

  12. Science & Society

    Not all cultures value happiness over other aspects of well-being

    Nordic countries topped the 2024 world happiness rankings. But culture dictates how people respond to surveys of happiness, a researcher argues.