TOM ELIA ASKS: “Is it possible that professors and graduate students as a group are more depressed than the overall population? That’s the only conclusion I can come to after reading this particular story about a University of Texas zoologist who thinks the Earth would be better off if 90% of humans died.”

Given that academics’ lives are generally pretty good, it’s hard to see why academics should be more depressed. It’s perhaps better to say that academics’ negative statements get more media attention. The media tend to focus on the negative, even when it’s not really there.

And people in the media have good reason to be depressed, based on their declining readership/viewership.