Science stories that caught your fancy (and ours too)

Has there ever been a year with a more constant stream of front-page science news than 2020? Even people who usually skip stories of scientific discovery were clicking obsessively on all things coronavirus. At The Conversation, our three most-read science stories of the year give a snapshot of reader interest during the pandemic.

In third place is an article that took a historian’s long view to explain how past epidemics did – or did not – come to an end. The runner-up was a piece that filled readers in on just what the heck the coronavirus does inside the human body that can make it so devastating.

But the sci+tech article that garnered the most clicks this year tapped into a favorite pandemic pastime: eating junk. Indiana University pharmacologist Bill Sullivan explained why black licorice is a very bad choice to binge.

Despite – or perhaps because of – the omnipresence of coronavirus, some of our favorite stories of the year had nothing to do with the pandemic. An article that explained why it takes a humongous amount of power to train an AI model and another that described what life on Earth breathed billions of years ago before oxygen was plentiful were among our best-loved articles. So too was a piece about where and when people first domesticated horses.

The plan for the science + technology desk in 2021 is to keep delivering research breakthroughs and quirky curiosities straight to your inbox. And I’m optimistic there will be more good news about the coronavirus in the year ahead too.

Here’s to a light at the end of the tunnel!