Research

I am broadly interested in interested in human social evolution, ethics, and public health, and my publications cover a lot of topics within these fields. My work is interdisciplinary but generally I am interested in understanding how our biological and cultural evolutionary trajectories, and specifically the problem of mimicry in signaling relationships, lead to the problems we see between and within our social groups today. This is the common strand across my work and informs everything I have ever worked on.

Current projects

In my current research, I am interested in several topics:

how an evolutionary account of trustworthiness can help to prevent the erosion of trust in society;
how mimicry pervades everyday communications and drives the erosion of trust;
the persistent risk of the misuse of evolutionary biology to defend scientific racism;
how an evolutionary understanding of disease helps to explain problems pervasive in human society.

Publications

Goodman JR, Lahti D. Mimicry in humans: a review of the social science literature. In: The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (Eds Geher G, Gallup A, and Karthikeyan S); Oxford University Press. Forthcoming.

Goodman JR, Crema E, Nolan F, Cohen E, Foley RA (2024). Evidence that groups differ in their abilities to detect fake signals of social identity. Evolutionary Human Sciences. 6:e46.

Goodman JR, Milne R (2024). Signalling and rich trustworthiness in data-driven healthcare: an interdisciplinary approach. Data & Policy. 6:e62.

Goodman, JR (2023). The problem of opportunity. Biology & Philosophy. 38,48.

Goodman JR, Caines A, Foley RA (2023). Shibboleth: an agent-based model of signalling mimicry. PLOS ONE. 18(7):e0289333.

Goodman JR, Ewald P (2021). The evolution of barriers to exploitation. Evolutionary Applications. 14(9):2179-2188.

Goodman JR, Wohns N (2021). Artificial intelligence in medicine and evolutionary theory. In: Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (Eds Lidströmer N, Ashrafian H); Springer Nature.

Lounsbury O, Roberts L, Goodman JR, Batey P, Naar L, Flott KM, Lawrence-Jones A, Ghafur S, Darzi A, Neves AL (2021). Opening a “can of worms” to explore the public's hopes and fears about health care data sharing: qualitative study. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 23(2):e22744.

Goodman JR, Ashrafian H (2020). The promising connection between data science and evolutionary theory in oncology. Frontiers in Oncology. 9:1527.

Fontana G, Ghafur S, Torne L, Goodman JR, Darzi A (2020). Ensuring that the NHS realises fair financial value from its data. The Lancet Digital Health. 2(1): 10-2.

Goodman JR (2019). A data dividend tax would help the NHS monetise health data. BMJ Opinion.

Ghafur S, Fontana G, Martin G, Grass E, Goodman JR, Darzi A (2019). Improving cyber security in the NHS. Institute of Global Health Innovation.

Goodman JR (2019). Reliance on emoji may push us back towards cave drawings. BMJ. 364.

Goodman JR (2018). The importance of practical understanding for altruistic behavior. ASEBL Journal. 13(1):10-17. (Invited submission)

Goodman JR (2018). Does everything flow? A reply to Sparks. ASEBL Journal. 13(1): 28-30. (Invited submission)

Goodman JR (2014). Altruism and the Golden Rule. Zygon. 49:381-95.