Research

In August 2016, NHK received a 50-page letter of accusation. The writer raised suspicions of misconduct in research papers by a University of Tokyo professor. The whistleblower alleged that some images and charts may have been fabricated or falsified. We spent over a year interviewing more than 100 individuals concerned. The situation could undermine Japan's attempt to become a leader in the field of science and technology. What is happening in this bastion of academic research? We decided to look into this research scandal at the University of Tokyo.

Animals have to be smart to survive. Chris Packham reveals the natural world's surprising brainboxes and uncovers the clever strategies that give certain species the upper hand.

In our DNA, we can find authentic traces of ancient creatures some believe to be our ancestors. Discover the story of life on earth, which has gone through unbelievably fortunate turns of fate, has overcome the great dangers of unimaginable near-extinction, and has made major leaps in evolution. Experience the magnificent story of evolution transcending time through cutting-edge computer generated imagery.

Explores fundamental questions about what makes us happy and how we can improve the quality of our life. Non-disabled people often take a sympathetic, even pitying view of those who are disabled. Disability can be associated with failure, dependency and weakness. There is an assumption that disabled people are therefore unhappy, miserable and even depressed.

The Red Bomb chronicles Russia's staggering transformation from lagging also-ran into nuclear superpower, as the USA and USSR battled it out for possession of the ultimate weapon. 90-year-old Yuly Khariton is a reclusive man with gentle eyes, who appears to spends many an evening lost in thought, as his female companion plays old songs on the piano. But Khariton's simple lifestyle belies his unbelievable past, and the part he played in the nuclear arms race – a vast and complex web of intrigue that was the crux of the Cold War.

What happened on June 30, 1908 in the Tunguska region of Siberia? It was around 7:15 in the morning when a powerful explosion occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River — some eyewitnesses also claimed to have heard several tremors. The earth shook so much that it could be felt as far away as Europe. The consequences were devastating: in an area the size of the Luxembourg, 60 million trees were snapped, and a fire, a huge shock and an immense pressure wave could be felt 500 kilometers away - that this did not become one of the greatest catastrophes of humanity, is solely because the incident occurred in a sparsely populated area.

For the BBC series ‘The Secret Life of Elephants’ we’ve revealed the elephant’s hidden world – the depth of their emotions, their remarkable intelligence, and the intimate complexities of their family life. We spent three months in Kenya, filming the elephants and following the work of Iain Douglas-Hamilton and the Save the Elephants research team. We wanted to tell the stories of individual elephants, which meant we spent every hour from dawn till dusk finding and following our stars across the Samburu reserve. We focussed on the most dramatic moments in their lives – a calf from the day of her birth, a bull using tactics to win a mate, a matriarch making decisions to protect her family. We followed the research team on missions across northern Kenya to protect the elephants; we see them helping a community terrorised by crop raiding bulls, uncovering an outbreak of poaching which killed two of their best known elephants, and tracing the new dangers on ancient elephant migration routes.
After weeks of hard work, we were rewarded with astonishing glimpses into the elephant’s lives. But we couldn’t have imagined that we’d become so directly involved in a life or death operation to save a baby elephant’s life.