Deidre Popovich, Texas Tech University

Knowing the calorie content of foods does not help people understand which foods are healthier, according to a study I recently co-authored in the Journal of Retailing. When study participants considered calorie information, they rated unhealthy food as less unhealthy and healthy food as less healthy. They were also less sure in their judgments.

In other words, calorie labeling didn’t help participants judge foods more accurately. It made them second-guess themselves.

Across nine experiments with over 2,000 participants, my colleague and I tested how people use calorie information to evaluate food. For example, participants viewed food items that are generally deemed healthier, such as a salad, or ones that tend to be less healthy, such as a cheeseburger, and were asked to rate how healthy each item was. When people did not consider calorie information, participants correctly saw a big gap between the healthy and unhealthy foods. But when they considered calorie information, those judgments became more moderate.

In another experiment in the study, we found that asking people to estimate the calorie content of food items reduced self-reported confidence in their ability to judge how healthy those foods were − and that drop in confidence is what led them to rate these food items more moderately. We observed this effect for calories but not for other nutrition metrics such as fat or carbohydrates, which consumers tend to view as less familiar.

This pattern repeated across our experiments. Instead of helping people sharpen their evaluations, calorie information seemed to create what researchers call metacognitive uncertainty, or a feeling of “I thought I understood this, but now I’m not so sure.” When people aren’t confident in their understanding, they tend to avoid extreme judgments.

Because people see calorie information so often, they believe they know how to use it effectively. But these findings suggest that the very familiarity of calorie counts can backfire, creating a false sense of understanding that leads to more confusion, not less. My co-author and I call this the illusion of calorie fluency. When people are asked to judge how healthy a food item is based on calorie data, that confidence quickly unravels and their healthiness judgments become less accurate.

Why it matters

These findings have important implications for public health and for the businesses that are investing in calorie transparency. Public health policies assume that providing calorie information will drive more informed choices. But our research suggests that visibility isn’t enough – and that calorie information alone may not help. In some cases, it might even lead people to make less healthy choices.

This does not mean that calorie information should be removed. Rather, it needs to be supported with more context and clarity. One possible approach is pairing calorie numbers with decision aids such as a traffic light indicator or an overall nutrition score, which both exist in some European countries. Alternatively, calorie information about an item could be accompanied by clear reference points explaining how much of a person’s recommended daily calories it contains – though this may be challenging because of how widely daily calorie needs vary.

Our study highlights a broader issue in health communication: Just because information is available doesn’t mean it’s useful. Realizing that calorie information can seem easier to understand than it actually is can help consumers make more informed, confident decisions about what they eat.

What still isn’t known

In our studies, we found that calorie information is especially prone to creating an illusion of understanding. But key questions remain.

For example, researchers don’t yet know how this illusion interacts with the growing use of health and wellness apps, personalized nutrition tools or AI-based food recommendations. Future research could look at whether these tools actually help people feel more sure of their choices – or just make them feel confident without truly understanding the information.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Deidre Popovich, Associate Professor of Marketing, Texas Tech University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Michelle L.D. Hanlon, University of Mississippi

April 2025 was a busy month for space.

Pop icon Katy Perry joined five other civilian women on a quick jaunt to the edge of space, making headlines. Meanwhile, another group of people at the United Nations was contemplating a critical issue for the future of space exploration: the discovery, extraction and utilization of natural resources on the Moon.

At the end of April, a dedicated Working Group of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space released a draft set of recommended principles for space resource activities. Essentially, these are rules to govern mining on the Moon, asteroids and elsewhere in space for elements that are rare here on Earth.

As a space lawyer and co-founder of For All Moonkind, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting human heritage in outer space, I know that the Moon could be the proving ground for humanity’s evolution into a species that lives and thrives on more than one planet. However, this new frontier raises complex legal questions.

Space, legally

Outer space – including the Moon – from a legal perspective, is a unique domain without direct terrestrial equivalent. It is not, like the high seas, the “common heritage of humankind,” nor is it an area, like Antarctica, where commercial mining is prohibited.

Instead, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty – signed by more than 115 nations, including China, Russia and the United States – establishes that the exploration and use of space are the “province of all humankind.” That means no country may claim territory in outer space, and all have the right to access all areas of the Moon and other celestial bodies freely.

The fact that, pursuant to Article II of the treaty, a country cannot claim territory in outer space, known as the nonappropriation principle, suggests to some that property ownership in space is forbidden.

Can this be true? If your grandchildren move to Mars, will they never own a home? How can a company protect its investment in a lunar mine if it must be freely accessible by all? What happens, as it inevitably will, when two rovers race to a particular area on the lunar surface known to host valuable water ice? Does the winner take all?

As it turns out, the Outer Space Treaty does offer some wiggle room. Article IX requires countries to show “due regard” for the corresponding interests of others. It is a legally vague standard, although the Permanent Court of Arbitration has suggested that due regard means simply paying attention to what’s reasonable under the circumstances.

First mover advantage – it’s a race

The treaty’s broad language encourages a race to the Moon. The first entity to any spot will have a unilateral opportunity to determine what’s legally “reasonable.” For example, creating an overly large buffer zone around equipment might be justified to mitigate potential damage from lunar dust.

On top of that, Article XII of the Outer Space Treaty assumes that there will be installations, like bases or mining operations, on the Moon. Contrary to the free access principle, the treaty suggests that access to these may be blocked unless the owner grants permission to enter.

Both of these paths within the treaty would allow the first person to make it to their desired spot on the Moon to keep others out. The U.N. principles in their current form don’t address these loopholes.

The draft U.N. principles released in April mirror, and are confined by, the language of the Outer Space Treaty. This tension between free access and the need to protect – most easily by forbidding access – remains unresolved. And the clock is ticking.

The Moon’s vulnerable legacy

The U.S. Artemis program aims to return humans to the Moon by 2028, China has plans for human return by 2030, and in the intervening years, more than 100 robotic missions are planned by countries and private industry alike. For the most part, these missions are all headed to the same sweet spot: the lunar south pole. Here, peaks of eternal light and deep craters containing water ice promise the best mining, science and research opportunities.

In this excitement, it’s easy to forget that humans already have a deep history of lunar exploration. Scattered on the lunar surface are artifacts displaying humanity’s technological progress.

After centuries of gazing at our closest celestial neighbor with fascination, in 1959 the Soviet spacecraft, Luna 2, became the first human-made object to impact another celestial body. Ten years later, two humans, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, became the first ever to set foot upon another celestial body.

More recently, in 2019, China’s Chang’e 4 achieved the first soft landing on the Moon’s far side. And in 2023, India’s Chandrayaan-3 became the first to land successfully near the lunar south pole.

These sites memorialize humanity’s baby steps off our home planet and easily meet the United Nations definition of terrestrial heritage, as they are so “exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity.”

The international community works to protect such sites on Earth, but those protection protocols do not extend to outer space.

The more than 115 other sites on the Moon that bear evidence of human activity are frozen in time without degradation from weather, animal or human activity. But this could change. A single errant spacecraft or rover could kick up abrasive lunar dust, erasing bootprints or damaging artifacts.

Protection and the Outer Space Treaty

In 2011, NASA recommended establishing buffer, or safety zones, of up to 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) to protect certain sites with U.S. artifacts.

Because it understood that outright exclusion violates the Outer Space Treaty, NASA issued these recommendations as voluntary guidelines. Nevertheless, the safety zone concept, essentially managing access to and activities around specific areas, could be a practical tool for protecting heritage sites. They could act as a starting point to find a balance between protection and access.

One hundred and ninety-six nations have agreed, through the 1972 World Heritage Convention, on the importance of recognizing and protecting cultural heritage of universal value found here on Earth.

Building on this agreement, the international community could require specific access protocols — such as a permitting process, activity restrictions, shared access rules, monitoring and other controls — for heritage sites on the Moon. If accepted, these protective measures for heritage sites could also work as a template for scientific and operational sites. This would create a consistent framework that avoids the perception of claiming territory.

At this time, the draft U.N. principles released in April 2025 do not directly address the opposing concepts of access and protection. Instead, they defer to Article I of the Outer Space Treaty and reaffirm that everyone has free access to all areas of the Moon and other celestial bodies.

As more countries and companies compete to reach the Moon, a clear lunar legal framework can guide them to avoid conflicts and preserve historical sites. The draft U.N. principles show that the international community is ready to explore what this framework could look like.

Michelle L.D. Hanlon, Professor of Air and Space Law, University of Mississippi

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Christine Coughlin, Wake Forest University and Nancy M. P. King, Wake Forest University

As the Trump administration continues to make significant cuts to NIH budgets and personnel and to freeze billions of dollars of funding to major research universities – citing ideological concerns – there’s more being threatened than just progress in science and medicine. Something valuable but often overlooked is also being hit hard: preventing research abuse.

The National Institutes of Health has been the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research. Its support helps translate basic science into biomedical therapies and technologies, providing funding for nearly all treatments approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2010 to 2019. This enables the U.S. to lead global research while maintaining transparency and preventing research misconduct.

While the legality of directives to shrink the NIH is unclear, the Trump administration’s actions have already led to suspended clinical trials, institutional hiring freezes and layoffs, rescinded graduate student admissions, and canceled federal grant review meetings. Researchers at affected universities say that funding will delay or possibly eliminate ongoing studies on critical conditions like cancer and Alzheimer’s.

It is clear to us, as legal and bioethics scholars whose research often focuses on the ethical, legal and social implications of emerging biotechnologies, that these directives will have profoundly negative consequences for medical research and human health, with ripple effects that will last decades. Our scholarship demonstrates that in order to contribute to knowledge and, ultimately, to biomedical treatments, medical research at every stage depends on significant infrastructure support and ethical oversight.

Our recent focus on brain organoid research – 3D lab models grown from human stem cells that simulate brain structure and function – shows how federal support for research is key to not only promote innovation, but to protect participants and future patients.

History of NIH and research ethics

The National Institutes of Health began as a one-room laboratory within the Marine Hospital Service in 1887. After World War I, chemists involved in the war effort sought to apply their knowledge to medicine. They partnered with Louisiana Sen. Joseph E. Ransdell who, motivated by the devastation of malaria, yellow fever and the 1928 influenza pandemic, introduced federal legislation to support basic research and fund fellowships focusing on solving medical problems.

By World War II, biomedical advances like surgical techniques and antibiotics had proved vital on the battlefield. Survival rates increased from 4% during World War I to 50% in World War II. Congress passed the 1944 Public Health Services Act to expand NIH’s authority to fund biomedical research at public and private institutions. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it “as sound an investment as any Government can make; the dividends are payable in human life and health.”

As science advanced, so did the need for guardrails. After World War II, among the top Nazi leaders prosecuted for war crimes were physicians who conducted experiments on people without consent, such as exposure to hypothermia and infectious disease. The verdicts of these Doctors’ Trials included 10 points about ethical human research that became the Nuremberg Code, emphasizing voluntary consent to participation, societal benefit as the goal of human research, and significant limitations on permissible risks of harm. The World Medical Association established complementary international guidelines for physician-researchers in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki.

In the 1970s, information about the Tuskegee study – a deceptive and unethical 40-year study of untreated syphilis in Black men – came to light. The researchers told study participants they would be given treatment but did not give them medication. They also prevented participants from accessing a cure when it became available in order to study the disease as it progressed. The men enrolled in the study experienced significant health problems, including blindness, mental impairment and death.

The public outrage that followed starkly demonstrated that the U.S. couldn’t simply rely on international guidelines but needed federal standards on research ethics. As a result, the National Research Act of 1974 led to the Belmont Report, which identified ethical principles essential to human research: respect for persons, beneficence and justice.

Federal regulations reinforced these principles by requiring all federally funded research to comply with rigorous ethical standards for human research. By prohibiting financial conflicts of interest and by implementing an independent ethics review process, new policies helped ensure that federally supported research has scientific and social value, is scientifically valid, fairly selects and adequately protects participants.

These standards and recommendations guide both federally and nonfederally funded research today. The breadth of NIH’s mandate and budget has provided not only the essential structure for research oversight, but also key resources for ethics consultation and advice.

Brain organoids and the need for ethical inquiry

Biomedical research on cell and animal models requires extensive ethics oversight systems that complement those for human research. Our research on the ethical and policy issues of human brain organoid research provides a good example of the complexities of biomedical research and the infrastructure and oversight mechanisms necessary to support it.

Organoid research is increasing in importance, as the FDA wants to expand its use as an alternative to using animals to test new drugs before administering them to humans. Because these models can simulate brain structure and function, brain organoid research is integral to developing and testing potential treatments for brain diseases and conditions like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and cancer. Brain organoids are also useful for personalized and regenerative medicine, artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces and other biotechnologies.

Brain organoids are built on knowledge about the fundamentals of biology that was developed primarily in universities receiving federal funding. Organoid technology began in 1907 with research on sponge cells, and continued in the 1980s with advances in stem cell research. Since researchers generated the first human organoid in 2009, the field has rapidly expanded.

These advances were only possible through federally supported research infrastructure, which helps ensure the quality of all biomedical research. Indirect costs cover operational expenses necessary to maintain research safety and ethics, including utilities, administrative support, biohazard handling and regulatory compliance. In these ways, federally supported research infrastructure protects and promotes the scientific and ethical value of biotechnologies like brain organoids.

Brain organoid research requires significant scientific and ethical inquiry to safely reach its future potential. It raises potential moral and legal questions about donor consent, the extent to which organoids should be grown and how they should be disposed, and consciousness and personhood. As science progresses, infrastructure for oversight can help ensure these ethical and societal issues are addressed.

New frontiers in scientific research

Since World War II, there has been bipartisan support for scientific innovation, in part because it is an economic and national security imperative. As Harvard University President Alan Garber recently wrote, “[n]ew frontiers beckon us with the prospect of life-changing advances. … For the government to retreat from these partnerships now risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals but also the economic security and vitality of our nation.”

Cuts to research overhead may seem like easy savings, but it fails to account for the infrastructure that provides essential support for scientific innovation. The investment the NIH has put into academic research is significantly paid forward, adding nearly US$95 billion to local economies in fiscal year 2024, or $2.46 for every $1 of grant funding. NIH funding had also supported over 407,700 jobs that year.

President Donald Trump pledged to “unleash the power of American innovation” to battle brain-based diseases when he accepted his second Republican nomination for president. Around 6.7 million Americans live with Alzheimer’s, and over a million more suffer from Parkinson’s. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are diagnosed with aggressive brain cancers each year, and 20% of the population experiences varying forms of mental illness at any one time. These numbers are expected to grow considerably, possibly doubling by 2050.

Organoid research is just one of the essential components in the process of learning about the brain and using that knowledge to find better treatment for diseases affecting the brain.

Science benefits society only if it is rigorous, ethically conducted and fairly funded. Current NIH policy directives and steep cuts to the agency’s size and budget, along with attacks on universities, undermine globally shared goals of increasing understanding and improving human health.

The federal system of overseeing and funding biomedical science may need a scalpel, but to defund efforts based on “efficiency” is to wield a chainsaw.

Christine Coughlin, Professor of Law, Wake Forest University and Nancy M. P. King, Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences and Health Policy, Wake Forest University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.