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What really happens when you wash your hands? We use soap almost every day without giving much thought to what it actually ...

Gastrointestinal illnesses on cruise ships hit a 12-year high in 2024, and 2025 has been even worse, with cruise lines seeing an entire year's worth of outbreaks in only the first quarter of the year.

Have you ever wondered why most disinfectants indicate they kill 99.9% or 99.99% of germs, but never promise to wipe out all of them? Perhaps the thought has crossed your mind mid-way through cleaning ...

Today, it is hard for us to fully appreciate the great revolution in medicine known as “germ theory” and the role that animal research played in its development. It seems impossible that people once ...

Recently, the Cracking the Code team — researchers from Texas Tech and media professionals from KQED — published our report on public understanding of germs (viruses and bacteria). Among other ...

Germ theory is the idea that pathogens can invade the human body and cause disease — and it wasn't always accepted. Evidence for germ theory accumulated over time, and as it did, it butted against ...

We are at a critical time and supporting science journalism is more important than ever. Science News and our parent organization, the Society for Science, need your help to strengthen scientific ...

We are at a critical time and supporting science journalism is more important than ever. Science News and our parent organization, the Society for Science, need your help to strengthen scientific ...

A bizarre series of events in a college microbiology lab class left 33 people—including students, professors, and lab workers—believing they were exposed to a deadly germ. Of those, 32 began taking an ...