The Tory conference was a pseudo-sacred affair, with devotees paying homage in front of Thatcher’s old shrouds — and your reporter, initially barred, only need mention he’d once met her to gain access. But would she consider what was on offer a worthy legacy, asks ANDREW MURRAY

IN MOST cases of peer review, scientists review a paper for free while the publisher makes a huge profit margin. Two of the world’s biggest academic publishers are Springer Nature and Elsevier: their recent profit margins range from 28 to 38 per cent. The fees charged by these publishers are generally paid for by research grants; in Britain, that is mostly public money. The status quo of science is worth a lot of money — for some.
However, not everything that is peer-reviewed is valid. A recent book published this month, Charles Piller’s Doctored, covers the story of fraud in research on Alzheimer’s disease — all of which had been peer-reviewed.
One of the leading theories in the late 20th century about Alzheimer’s was that the accumulation of amyloid proteins was to blame. Amyloids, named after their resemblance to starch molecules, clump together into tangles of gunk in the brain.

High pressures squeeze and crush, but low pressures damage too. Losing the atom-level buzz that keeps us held safe in the balance of internal and external pressure releases dangerous storms, disorientation and pain, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT

What’s behind the stubborn gender gap in Stem disciplines ask ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT in their column Science and Society

While politicians condemned fascist bombing of Spanish civilians in 1937, they ignored identical RAF tactics across the colonies. Today’s aerial warfare continues this pattern of applying different moral standards based on geography and race, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT

The distinction between domestic and military drones is more theoretical than practical, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT