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Research lab

Griffith University

Australian university whose research arm, ARCHE, studies human evolution, ancient DNA, and archaeology across the Asia-Pacific region.

Known aliases

  • ARCHE
  • Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution

Current stories

scienceOne report1 publisher

Fatigue tops the physical barriers for Australian cancer survivors going back to work

Griffith University interviewed 22 cancer survivors, clinicians and employers and found fatigue the biggest physical barrier to returning to work. The interviews show where support breaks down between employers, insurers and oncologists, though not how common each problem is.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence38
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+12
Incentives40
Confidence45
scienceConfirmed3 publishers

Arecoline in ice-age teeth pushes habitual drug use back before farming on Sulawesi

A Griffith University team found the alkaloid arecoline in two sets of grooved prehistoric teeth from Sulawesi and showed that sucking a whole betel nut releases enough of it to act on human receptors, from a sample of two people.

Perspective Coverage

4 publishers
Builder
Builder 55%
Operator
Operator 40%
Investor
Investor 5%

Reality

Evidence60
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+30
Incentives35
Confidence58
scienceOne report1 publisher

A humpback mother stayed beside her stillborn calf for hours off Australia's Gold Coast

Griffith University researchers have published the first documented case of a humpback whale attending her dead newborn. It is one opportunistic sighting, and it is a record of what the species does; what the mother felt stays an open question.

Publishers:sciencedaily.com

Reality

Evidence52
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+32
Incentives58
Confidence64
scienceConfirmed3 publishers

A camera lowered off the Gold Coast captured the first documented humpback stillbirth

Newborn humpbacks lack the blubber to float, so a stillborn calf sinks out of sight almost at once. None of the roughly 20 humpback births in the literature was a stillbirth until a Gold Coast crew put a camera in the water.

Perspective Coverage

3 publishers
Builder
Builder 51%
Operator
Operator 22%
Investor
Investor 27%

Reality

Evidence68
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+32
Incentives55
Confidence70
scienceOne report1 publisher

Twelve resin-mounted wallaby teeth place tooth ornaments in Cape York for the first time

The teeth came out of a rock shelter's bone sorting rather than a grave. That makes them the first tooth ornaments recorded outside a burial in northeastern Australia, and the site's surviving string suggests why.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+14
Incentives34
Confidence52
scienceOne report1 publisher

Mismapped by 1,400 km: the brook lamprey was never where the range map said

An endangered Australian fish turned up in six tropical watersheds far north of its recorded range. The species did not move north; the record of it was wrong, and a fire survey found out by accident.

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption30
Hype gap+24
Incentives62
Confidence55