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. illustration of one human figure standing separate from a group of figures
    Science & Society

    Why do some people succeed when others fail? Outliers provide clues

    A close look at outliers — people or communities that defy expectations — reveals what could be.

  2. close-up image of a Los Angeles police officer wearing a body cam on their uniform
    Science & Society

    How missing data makes it harder to measure racial bias in policing

    Police officers rarely record nonevents, such as drawing a gun without firing. Failing to account for that missing information can obscure racial bias.

  3. illustration of a scientist holding a magnifying glass running up stairs
    Psychology

    Scientists should report results with intellectual humility. Here’s how

    Foregrounding a study’s uncertainties and limitations could help restore faith in the social sciences.

  4. Women looking at an old photograph
    Psychology

    Nostalgia may have bona fide benefits in hard times, like the pandemic

    Once described as a disease, nostalgia’s reputation is much improved. Researchers hope to develop mental health therapies that trigger these memories.

  5. image collage of a woman looking pensively off into the distance surrounded by money, books, a rock climber, mountains and a statue couple
    Psychology

    Perspective-changing experiences, good or bad, can lead to richer lives

    Happiness or meaning have long been seen as keys to the “good life.” Psychologists have now defined a third good life for people leading rich psychological lives.

  6. pictures of bananas arranged in a row from brown to yellow to green
    Psychology

    Everyone maps numbers in space. But why don’t we all use the same directions?

    The debate over whether number lines are innate or learned obscures a more fundamental question: Why do we map numbers to space in the first place?

  7. grid of window air conditioning units outside a Manhattan building
    Science & Society

    How extreme heat from climate change distorts human behavior

    As temperatures rise, violence and aggression go up while focus and productivity decline. The well off can escape to cool spaces; the poor cannot.

  8. child removing a mask to eat lunch in a school cafeteria
    Health & Medicine

    6 answers to parents’ COVID-19 questions as kids return to school

    Universal masking in schools could prevent a bumpy 2021–22 schoolyear and keep kids, many of whom are too young to be vaccinated, safe, experts say.

  9. protester holds a sign that reads "I am not invisible"
    Science & Society

    How science overlooks Asian Americans

    Existing scientific datasets fail to capture details on Asian Americans, making it hard to assess the group’s overall well-being.

  10. stock image of a mother and daughter in the kitchen
    Science & Society

    The gap in parenting time between middle- and working-class moms has shrunk

    Some well-educated mothers are spending less time with their kids than before, while some less-educated mothers are spending more, a new study shows.

  11. image of people on a beach in Florida in spring 2020
    Science & Society

    Moral judgments about an activity’s COVID-19 risk can lead people astray

    People use values and beliefs as a shortcut to determine how risky an activity is during the pandemic. Those biases can lead people astray.

  12. two people on a snowmobile
    Science & Society

    50 years ago, scientists predicted steady U.S. population growth

    The country’s annual population growth rate, mostly stable since the 1970s, is now the lowest it’s been in over a century.