4D ago
3 sources
The piece argues AI is neither historical induction nor scientific law‑finding, but a new way of harnessing complex regularities without mechanistic interpretability. This 'third magic' can produce powerful results while remaining stochastic and opaque, forcing us to use systems we cannot fully explain.
— If AI becomes a distinct mode of knowledge production, institutions will need new norms for reliability, accountability, and trust when deploying inherently opaque tools.
Sources: The Third Magic, Google DeepMind Partners With Fusion Startup, Army General Says He's Using AI To Improve 'Decision-Making'
4D ago
HOT
11 sources
Among high-ability groups, outcomes may hinge more on personality and mental health than intelligence, but IQ looks dominant because it’s measured cleanly while personality is noisy. Measurement error attenuates correlations, steering research and policy toward what’s convenient to quantify rather than what matters most.
— It warns that evidence hierarchies and selection systems can misallocate attention and resources by overvaluing the most measurable traits.
Sources: Some Quotes, Beyond Body Count: How Many Past Partners Are Too Many?, The answer to the "missing heritability problem" (+8 more)
4D ago
3 sources
Researchers found a GSDMC variant in horses surged from ~1% to nearly 100% about 4,200–3,500 years ago, reshaping vertebrae and coordination to make riding feasible. An earlier shift at ZFPM1 likely calmed temperament first. The sweep’s speed outpaces classic human examples like lactase persistence, showing cultural demand (war/transport) can drive extreme selection in domesticates.
— It highlights how culture can trigger fast biological change, sharpening debates on domestication, human history, and the timescales on which selection can act.
Sources: The first breeders unsurprisingly selected for temperament, What Made Horses Rideable, Round-up: Clan culture and the economy
4D ago
1 sources
A 33‑country longitudinal analysis finds that while more‑educated people score higher on memory at any age, their rate of decline is about the same as less‑educated peers. Education raises the baseline level but does not change the downward slope of cognitive performance.
— This challenges prevention strategies that treat schooling as a shield against dementia, nudging health policy toward interventions that alter decline (e.g., hypertension control, exercise) rather than relying on educational attainment.
Sources: Round-up: Clan culture and the economy
5D ago
3 sources
The author argues modern Anglophone political philosophy often studies 'political chmess'—elegant models built on unrealistic 'ideal theory' assumptions like Rawls’s 'reasonable agents' and 'strict compliance.' These frameworks generate intricate proofs about a world no one inhabits, diverting attention from noncompliance, incentives, and institutional constraints that govern real politics.
— If the discipline’s dominant models are misaligned with reality, policymakers and publics should discount their prescriptions and demand non‑ideal, institution‑aware analysis.
Sources: Against Political Chmess, The Newtonian delusion: there is nothing so dated as a vision of the future, Peter Howitt on Coordination
5D ago
1 sources
Physicists at SLAC generated 60–100 attosecond X‑ray pulses—by exploiting a Rabi‑cycling split in X‑ray wavelengths—short enough to watch electron clouds move and chemical bonds form in real time. This pushes X‑ray free‑electron lasers into a regime that current femtosecond pulses cannot reach and could be extended further using heavier elements like tungsten or hafnium.
— Directly imaging electron dynamics can transform how we design catalysts, semiconductors, and energy materials, influencing industrial R&D and science funding priorities.
Sources: Physicists Inadvertently Generated the Shortest X-Ray Pulses Ever Observed
5D ago
HOT
7 sources
Researchers can market routine or weak methods as 'rigorous' to legitimize striking claims in sensitive domains like sexism in hiring. The Moss‑Racusin case, as described here, used unvalidated measures and a single explanatory model, yet became widely cited; close replications reportedly flip the effect to male bias.
— If 'rigor' branding masks fragile findings, media, funders, and universities risk building DEI policy on unreliable evidence.
Sources: Scientific Rigor versus Rigor Posturing, REVERSAL: Science Faculty's "Subtle" Gender Biases Against Men, Reviewing Nature's Reviews of Our Proposal to Replicate The Famous Moss-Racusin et al Study on Sex Bias in Science Hiring (+4 more)
5D ago
1 sources
The authors argue that decades of microaggression research study self‑reported perceptions, not the alleged racist acts themselves, and then treat simple correlations as evidence of harm. They say the field has not tested whether racism is the cause and has not identified causal pathways from microaggressions to outcomes.
— This undercuts a cornerstone of DEI training and clinical guidance, pressing institutions to demand causal evidence before mandating microaggression programs.
Sources: Research on Microaggressions and Their Impacts Assesses Neither Microaggressions nor Their Impacts
5D ago
1 sources
The piece argues computational hardness is not just a practical limit but can itself explain physical reality. If classical simulation of quantum systems is exponentially hard, that supports many‑worlds; if time travel or nonlinear quantum mechanics grant absurd computation, that disfavors them; and some effective laws (e.g., black‑hole firewall resolutions, even the Second Law) may hold because violating them is computationally infeasible. This reframes which theories are plausible by adding a computational‑constraint layer to physical explanation.
— It pushes physics and philosophy to treat computational limits as a principled filter on theories, influencing how we judge interpretations and speculative proposals.
Sources: My talk at Columbia University: “Computational Complexity and Explanations in Physics”
5D ago
1 sources
DeepMind will apply its Torax AI to simulate and optimize plasma behavior in Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ SPARC reactor, and the partners are exploring AI‑based real‑time control. Fusion requires continuously tuning many magnetic and operational parameters faster than humans can, which AI can potentially handle. If successful, AI control could be the key to sustaining net‑energy fusion.
— AI‑enabled fusion would reshape energy, climate, and industrial policy by accelerating the arrival of scalable, clean baseload power and embedding AI in high‑stakes cyber‑physical control.
Sources: Google DeepMind Partners With Fusion Startup
5D ago
1 sources
An international study of about 500 hospitalized COVID‑19 patients across six countries found that inhaled heparin halved the need for mechanical ventilation and significantly reduced death risk versus standard care. Heparin, long used as an injectable anticoagulant, appears to work via lung‑targeted anticoagulant, anti‑inflammatory, and pan‑antiviral effects. Researchers suggest it could also benefit other severe respiratory infections like pneumonia.
— A low‑cost, off‑patent intervention that reduces ICU demand and mortality could alter treatment guidelines, resource planning, and equity in respiratory‑disease care worldwide.
Sources: Patients who inhaled heparin were half as likely to require ventilation
5D ago
3 sources
AACR applied an AI detector (Pangram Labs) to ~122,000 manuscript sections and peer‑review comments and found 23% of 2024 abstracts and 5% of peer‑review reports likely contained LLM‑generated text. Fewer than 25% of authors disclosed AI use despite a mandatory policy, and usage surged after ChatGPT’s release.
— Widespread, hidden AI authorship in science pressures journals, funders, and universities to set and enforce clear rules for AI use and disclosure to protect trust.
Sources: AI Tool Detects LLM-Generated Text in Research Papers and Peer Reviews, Journals Infiltrated With 'Copycat' Papers That Can Be Written By AI, Open Source GZDoom Community Splinters After Creator Inserts AI-Generated Code
5D ago
HOT
6 sources
Google reports an AI system that combines large language models with tree search to autonomously write expert‑level scientific software and invent novel methods. In tests, it created 40 new single‑cell analysis methods that beat the human leaderboard and 14 epidemiological models that set state‑of‑the‑art for COVID‑19 hospitalization forecasts.
— If AI can originate superior scientific methods across fields, it shifts research from AI-as-assistant to AI-as-inventor, with implications for funding, credit, safety, and the pace of discovery.
Sources: Links for 2025-09-11, The Coming Acceleration, Wednesday assorted links (+3 more)
5D ago
1 sources
A 27B Gemma‑based model trained on transcriptomics and bio text hypothesized that inhibiting CK2 (via silmitasertib) would enhance MHC‑I antigen presentation—making tumors more visible to the immune system. Yale labs tested the prediction and confirmed it in vitro, and are now probing the mechanism and related hypotheses.
— If small, domain‑trained LLMs can reliably generate testable, validated biomedical insights, AI will reshape scientific workflow, credit, and regulation while potentially speeding new immunotherapy strategies.
Sources: Links for 2025-10-16
5D ago
HOT
19 sources
Anthropic says the U.S. must prepare at least 50 gigawatts of power for AI by 2028. OpenAI and Oracle’s Stargate adds 4.5 GW now toward a $500B multi‑year build, while the White House plan aims to fast‑track grid lines and advanced nuclear to feed round‑the‑clock clusters.
— If AI dictates a new energy baseline, permitting, nuclear policy, and grid planning become AI policy, not just climate or utility issues.
Sources: Links for 2025-07-24, Inside the Memphis Chamber of Commerce’s Push for Elon Musk’s xAI Data Center, New York’s Green Energy Fantasy Continues (+16 more)
5D ago
HOT
11 sources
OpenAI launched a unified ChatGPT Agent that can browse, synthesize web info, and act, with usage rationed via monthly 'Agent credits.' Sam Altman cautions it’s experimental and not yet suitable for high‑stakes or sensitive data.
— Mainstreaming agentic AI shifts debates toward privacy, liability, and safety-by-design as assistants execute actions on users’ behalf.
Sources: Links for 2025-07-19, Monday assorted links, On Working with Wizards (+8 more)
6D ago
2 sources
A new dataset on business‑school pay finds a single top‑tier journal publication adds about $116,000 to compensation; second‑tier papers are worth roughly one‑third as much, and other publications have no effect. Teaching scores and conference presentations help but much less, while administrators earn large premiums (chairs +11–35%; deans +58–94%). Since Covid, real pay fell and salaries became less sensitive to research output.
— This quantifies academia’s gatekept tournament incentives and suggests a post‑Covid shift that could redirect effort from research toward administration or other activities.
Sources: What determines business school faculty pay?, John Nye on Joel Mokyr (from my email)
6D ago
1 sources
John Nye claims Joel Mokyr wouldn’t get tenure today because he lacked 'top‑5' journal publications until late in his career. He argues older hiring norms that balanced judgment with publications were better at recognizing truly innovative scholars than today’s mechanical metrics.
— If tenure and hiring hinge on narrow prestige signals, universities may filter out high‑impact thinkers, weakening research quality and the pipeline of ideas that shape policy and growth.
Sources: John Nye on Joel Mokyr (from my email)
6D ago
3 sources
Mutations that increase amyloid production (APP, PSEN1/2) and the extra APP copy in Down syndrome reliably produce early-onset Alzheimer’s, implying amyloid sits upstream in the disease process. This genetic evidence outweighs weak plaque–symptom correlations and mouse-model anomalies. The A→T→N chain provides a coherent causal story for timing and pathology.
— It elevates genetics as the causal standard for contested biomedical debates, shaping drug evaluation and research priorities.
Sources: In Defense Of The Amyloid Hypothesis, He Was Expected To Get Alzheimer's 25 Years Ago. Why Hasn't He?, New Alzheimer's Treatment Clears Plaques From Brains of Mice Within Hours
6D ago
3 sources
If amyloid accumulates 15+ years before clinical decline and triggers tau and neurodegeneration, then anti-amyloid drugs must be deployed in the preclinical window to show large benefits. Modest effects in symptomatic patients reflect late intervention, not a failed target.
— This reframes drug-approval, screening, and trial design toward prevention and early detection rather than late-stage rescue.
Sources: In Defense Of The Amyloid Hypothesis, Focused Sound Energy Holds Promise For Treating Cancer, Alzheimer's and Other Diseases, New Alzheimer's Treatment Clears Plaques From Brains of Mice Within Hours
6D ago
1 sources
Researchers from Spain and China repaired the blood–brain barrier in Alzheimer’s‑model mice, enabling the brain to rapidly clear amyloid‑beta. Within hours of the first dose, plaques fell ~45%, and after three injections mice performed like healthy controls; benefits lasted at least six months. This reframes the BBB as a drug target that can unlock the brain’s own clearance pathways.
— If validated in humans, targeting vascular/BBB integrity could complement or replace antibody therapies and shift Alzheimer’s policy and funding toward vascular repair mechanisms.
Sources: New Alzheimer's Treatment Clears Plaques From Brains of Mice Within Hours
6D ago
1 sources
Focused ultrasound can temporarily open the blood‑brain barrier to deliver drugs and, in mouse models of cerebral cavernous malformation, even appears to halt lesion growth without medication. Because the approach is noninvasive and already used in other indications, neurosurgeons are designing clinical trials to test it in CCM patients.
— If validated, this could transform treatment pathways for neurodegenerative, oncologic, and rare brain diseases by replacing risky surgery or ineffective delivery methods with a scalable, device‑based therapy.
Sources: Focused Sound Energy Holds Promise For Treating Cancer, Alzheimer's and Other Diseases
6D ago
1 sources
InventWood has begun selling a densified 'superwood' made by chemically treating and hot‑pressing timber to collapse its porous cellular structure. The result is reportedly up to 20× stronger than regular wood, 10× more dent‑resistant, highly fire‑resistant, and impervious to fungi and insects across 19 species and bamboo. If validated at scale, it could replace some steel/aluminum uses with a renewable material.
— A viable metal‑substitute from wood would affect climate policy, construction standards, and housing affordability by enabling lower‑emissions materials in mainstream building.
Sources: The natural porous structure of the wood has been collapsed and toughened
6D ago
2 sources
A recent psychology paper argues most named biases emerge from a small set of implicit self‑serving beliefs (e.g., 'I am good,' 'my experience is typical') combined with confirmation bias. Instead of teaching hundreds of labels, interventions should target belief-updating and exposure to disconfirming evidence. This reorganizes how we study and communicate about human error.
— If bias training and journalism pivot to root causes, public reasoning and institutional decision-making could improve by focusing on fewer, deeper levers.
Sources: One Bias to Rule Them All, The radical idea that people aren't stupid
6D ago
1 sources
The essay argues cognitive 'biases' should be understood like visual illusions: they expose the shortcuts of a highly capable system rather than prove incompetence. Humans’ everyday feats (language, memory, mind‑reading, balance) show strong baseline competence; clever experiments can reveal its limits without implying global stupidity.
— This reframing tempers bias‑driven fatalism in media, policy, and organizational training by restoring nuance about human judgment and how to improve it.
Sources: The radical idea that people aren't stupid
7D ago
1 sources
Researchers show that temporarily emulating the ISG15‑deficiency immune state can protect human cells and animals against multiple viruses (e.g., Zika, SARS‑CoV‑2). By targeting the host’s interferon‑regulation pathway instead of each virus, this strategy could create a new class of broad‑spectrum antivirals for outbreak stockpiles. Safety will hinge on dialing antiviral benefits without triggering harmful inflammation.
— Host‑directed, universal antivirals would reshape pandemic readiness beyond strain‑specific vaccines, influencing funding, regulatory pathways, and biodefense strategy.
Sources: How a Rare Disease Could Yield a Pandemic Drug
7D ago
2 sources
A field experiment in Chile’s Atacama Desert found ATP vanished in eight months and chlorophyll survived only as decay products unless shielded by clays and salts. That implies Martian biomolecules would rapidly degrade unless protected, so future rovers should hunt for larger, complex organics in mineral matrices that preserve them. Interpreting 'organics found' on Mars should therefore be cautious without context and complexity.
— This reshapes both media narratives and mission priorities by specifying where and how to credibly look for life on Mars.
Sources: Biosignatures? Why organics on Mars don’t necessarily signal life, Common Yeast Can Survive Martian Conditions
7D ago
1 sources
Researchers showed Saccharomyces cerevisiae survives simulated Martian meteor‑shock waves and perchlorate salt exposure, assembling stress granules/P‑bodies to endure. Mutants that can’t form these ribonucleoprotein condensates fared poorly, and RNA profiling mapped transcripts perturbed by the stress.
— This raises planetary‑protection stakes and suggests yeast‑based biomanufacturing on Mars may be feasible, influencing how we search for life and plan human missions.
Sources: Common Yeast Can Survive Martian Conditions
7D ago
3 sources
Global light pollution is climbing about 10% per year—doubling roughly every eight years—as cheap, efficient LEDs make it easier to illuminate more area for longer. Satellite constellations and large 'green' projects sited near observatories add further artificial brightness, eroding dark skies crucial for astronomy and nocturnal ecosystems.
— It reframes efficiency gains as potential environmental harms, arguing for dark‑sky lighting standards, satellite rules, and siting policy alongside climate and growth goals.
Sources: Darkest Nights Are Getting Lighter, The “most distant explosion ever” turned out to be rocket debris, The true cost of “solar power at night” with Reflect Orbital
7D ago
1 sources
A startup proposes launching thousands to hundreds of thousands of mirror satellites to reflect sunlight onto solar plants at night. While it could boost generation, it would also impose severe light pollution, disrupt circadian health and ecosystems, hinder astronomy, and exacerbate orbital‑debris risks. The true system cost likely outweighs the added electricity.
— It forces policymakers to weigh energy gains against large cross‑domain harms and to consider governance limits on orbital megaconstellations that alter Earth’s night environment.
Sources: The true cost of “solar power at night” with Reflect Orbital
7D ago
1 sources
If judges rate works relative to their contemporaries (keeping distributions constant) and call something 'great' only when it exceeds all that came before, the chance a new work qualifies falls roughly as 1/n. This can make later eras look artistically poorer even when underlying quality hasn’t declined. The same artifact could affect 'greatest' lists in sports, film, and literature.
— It reframes cultural‑decline narratives as potential artifacts of ranking methods, urging media and audiences to scrutinize how 'greatness' is defined before drawing civilizational conclusions.
Sources: Tanmay Khale on the decline in iconic songs over time (from my email)
7D ago
2 sources
Apparent historical increases in autism are exaggerated because older cohorts are undercounted: many were never diagnosed in childhood, and higher mortality among severely affected autistics removes cases before adult surveys. Comparing today’s well‑ascertained children to yesterday’s sparsely diagnosed, partially deceased adults produces a misleading slope.
— This cautions policymakers and media against reading long‑run autism graphs as causal evidence and pushes for bias‑aware trend methods before funding or regulatory shifts.
Sources: What’s the Deal With Autism Rates? - Cremieux Recueil, An Autism Challenge
7D ago
1 sources
The author proposes a simple, reproducible method to apportion the rise in autism diagnoses into true liability change versus diagnostic drift using a latent‑liability threshold model. By placing diagnosis rates on the probit scale and anchoring to symptom-score distributions, one can compute a liability‑only counterfactual and estimate each share.
— A clear, testable decomposition can resolve ‘autism epidemic’ claims and reorient policy, research, and media coverage toward causes supported by data rather than inference from raw diagnosis counts.
Sources: An Autism Challenge
7D ago
4 sources
METR reports that on 18 real tasks from two open-source repos, agents often produce functionally correct code that still can’t be used due to missing tests, lint/format issues, and weak code quality. Automatic scoring inflates performance relative to what teams can actually ship.
— If headline scores overstate agent reliability, media, investors, and policymakers should temper automation claims and demand holistic, real‑world evals before deploying agents in critical workflows.
Sources: Links for 2025-08-14, On Jagged AGI: o3, Gemini 2.5, and everything after, AI Darwin Awards Launch To Celebrate Spectacularly Bad Deployments (+1 more)
8D ago
HOT
7 sources
A large sibling‑control study using a national register (~2.5 million births, 1995–2019) found no within‑family link between prenatal acetaminophen exposure and autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability. Between‑mother correlations vanish within families, indicating confounding drives prior associations. This directly contradicts HHS’s new warning to pregnant women to avoid Tylenol.
— It shows federal guidance can conflict with best‑available causal evidence, risking unnecessary fear and policy mistakes unless agencies adopt stronger evidentiary standards.
Sources: Did The HHS Just Explain Autism?, "Harvard Study Says...", The dangerous war on Tylenol (+4 more)
8D ago
2 sources
A Japanese national study applied sibling controls, inverse‑probability weighting, propensity matching, negative controls, E‑values, and probabilistic sensitivity analysis and found no Tylenol–autism link. This shows how pre‑specified robustness tests can vet observational pharmacoepidemiology before it is used in guidance.
— Agencies should require transparent robustness maps (negative controls, E‑values, sensitivity bounds) before issuing public health warnings based on observational data to avoid misleading policy.
Sources: Tylenol and Autism: A Replication!, Establishing Causation Is a Headache
8D ago
1 sources
A new preprint (Ozsvárt et al.) argues the Sun’s vertical oscillation around the Milky Way alters Earth’s cosmic‑ray flux, which in turn changes mutation rates in ocean microplankton and maps onto long‑term diversity fluctuations. Microplankton sit at the base of marine food webs, so small shifts in mutation dynamics could cascade through marine evolution.
— It proposes an astronomical driver of biodiversity change, reframing how we explain evolutionary rhythms and linking space physics to Earth’s biological history.
Sources: Could the Sun’s Orbit Shape Evolution?
8D ago
2 sources
The piece reports directives in 2025 from acting NASA leadership and the Office of Management and Budget to cut headcount, with more than 4,000 employees leaving by January 9, 2026. It says priorities are shifting away from science and STEM education, closing traditional hiring pipelines and draining veteran expertise.
— A mass downsizing at NASA would alter U.S. scientific leadership and mission delivery, turning state capacity and science governance into an urgent policy issue.
Sources: Thousands of NASA employees to bid farewell to the NASA they knew, NASA Unit JPL To Lay Off About 550 Workers, Citing Restructure
8D ago
HOT
11 sources
High-fidelity recording and global platforms collapse local markets into one, letting a few top performers capture most rewards while squeezing local talent. This helps explain rising inequality and the fragility of middle-tier livelihoods in culture and beyond. It reframes tech progress as a mechanism for market concentration, not just productivity.
— It links technological change to the winner-take-all economy, informing debates on inequality, cultural homogenization, and platform power.
Sources: Podcast: Capitalism, Cars and Conservatism, Who will actually profit from the AI boom?, The Decline of Legacy Media, Rise of Vodcasters, and X's Staying Power (+8 more)
8D ago
2 sources
New evidence finds an inverse scaling effect where extending test‑time reasoning hurts Large Reasoning Models’ performance. This undercuts the assumption that more chain‑of‑thought tokens always improve results.
— It forces product and policy decisions to weigh latency, transparency, and safety against a real accuracy tradeoff in 'reasoning' modes.
Sources: Links for 2025-07-24, Towards a Typology of Strange LLM Chains-of-Thought
8D ago
4 sources
Frontiers of Computer Science published a flawed paper claiming to resolve P vs NP and declined to retract it despite objections from leading theorists. This points to breakdowns in editorial standards and post-publication correction.
— It undermines trust in journal gatekeeping and strengthens the case for alternative credibility systems like preprints and open review.
Sources: Updates!, BusyBeaver(6) is really quite large, New Vindication for the Regnerus Same-Sex Parenting Study (+1 more)
8D ago
1 sources
A developer reports that software screening of 92 published papers already surfaced five cases of likely data fabrication, prompting two corrigenda and one imminent retraction, and will now be applied to 20,000 papers. Routine, automated pre‑ and post‑publication screening could become a scalable layer of scientific fraud detection.
— If automated tools can reliably flag suspect data at scale, journals, funders, and governments may need to mandate systematic screening, reshaping research oversight and trust.
Sources: ACX Grants Results 2025
8D ago
3 sources
A decade-long Pacific survey finds Prochlorococcus—Earth’s most abundant phytoplankton—drops sharply once sea surface temperatures exceed ~82°F (27.8°C). The study projects up to a 50% decline in tropical regions over 75 years, contradicting lab-based expectations that warming would boost these microbes. Other phytoplankton may partly fill in, but they are not perfect substitutes for this keystone species.
— If a warming threshold collapses a foundational ocean microbe, climate risk assessments, fisheries, and biogeochemical models must adjust from generic 'productivity' assumptions to species‑specific thermal limits with cascading ecological effects.
Sources: Warming Seas Threaten Key Phytoplankton Species That Fuels the Food Web, Shark Teeth Are Crumbling, Earth's Climate Has Passed Its First Irreversible Tipping Point and Entered a 'New Reality'
8D ago
2 sources
A judge sharply criticized expert Andrea Baccarelli’s use of the 'Navigation Guide' for inconsistent, selective downgrading of studies in testimony underpinning acetaminophen–autism claims. The article argues the same methodological issues appear in a Harvard‑affiliated systematic review now cited to justify HHS warnings.
— If courts must audit scientific methods in contested health debates, they become a key transparency backstop when academic and agency gatekeeping fail.
Sources: "Harvard Study Says...", RFK, Tylenol, and America’s Autism Panic
8D ago
1 sources
According to the podcast, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a Cabinet meeting that early circumcision doubles autism risk and has promoted a Tylenol‑in‑pregnancy hypothesis. These claims are at odds with high‑quality sibling‑control studies and mainstream reviews.
— When top health officials endorse contested etiologies, it can distort guidance, litigation, and public trust, making science adjudication a governance problem.
Sources: RFK, Tylenol, and America’s Autism Panic
10D ago
1 sources
DTU researchers 3D‑printed a ceramic solid‑oxide cell with a gyroid (TPMS) architecture that reportedly delivers over 1 watt per gram and withstands thermal cycling while switching between power generation and storage. In electrolysis mode, the design allegedly increases hydrogen production rates by nearly a factor of ten versus standard fuel cells.
— If this geometry‑plus‑manufacturing leap translates to scale, it could materially lower the weight and cost of fuel cells and green hydrogen, reshaping decarbonization options in industry, mobility, and grid storage.
Sources: The intricate design is known as a gyroid
10D ago
HOT
9 sources
OpenAI and DeepMind systems solved 5 of 6 International Math Olympiad problems, equivalent to a gold medal, though they struggled on the hardest problem. This is a clear, measurable leap in formal reasoning beyond coding or language tasks.
— It recalibrates AI capability timelines and suggests policy should prepare for rapid gains in high-level problem solving, not just text generation.
Sources: Updates!, Links for 2025-08-24, Links for 2025-08-11 (+6 more)
10D ago
1 sources
UC Berkeley reports an automated design and research system (OpenEvolve) that discovered algorithms across multiple domains outperforming state‑of‑the‑art human designs—up to 5× runtime gains or 50% cost cuts. The authors argue such systems can enter a virtuous cycle by improving their own strategy and design loops.
— If AI is now inventing superior algorithms for core computing tasks and can self‑improve the process, it accelerates productivity, shifts research labor, and raises governance stakes for deployment and validation.
Sources: Links for 2025-10-11
11D ago
5 sources
The piece argues religious fervor springs less from fear of death and more from the emotional pleasure of submitting to a maximally prestigious, protective partner. Monotheism intensifies this by positing an all‑powerful being who constantly attends to you and imposes loyalty tests. This frame helps explain why women are more religious and why wealth/status gains correlate with declining religiosity.
— If submission‑joy drives religious attachment, institutions and movements that emulate protective, high‑status guardianship can harness similar loyalty in politics and culture.
Sources: The Joy Of Submission, Is religion actually declining in emerging economies?, The Demons of Non-Denoms (+2 more)
11D ago
3 sources
Stop treating 'religion' as one thing. Cognitive Science of Religion argues that common religious features—rituals, supernatural agents, moral norms—arise from ordinary, domain‑specific mental systems (e.g., agency detection, teleology, theory of mind, social signaling). This bottom‑up 'fractionating' approach explains why diverse cultures independently converge on religious forms.
— It shifts debates about belief, culture, and policy from indoctrination or mere tradition to universal cognitive architecture, clarifying what can and cannot be engineered by education or politics.
Sources: The Cognitive Architecture of Religion, Was Jesus a Shaman?, RKUL: Time Well Spent, 10/10/2025
11D ago
1 sources
Halloween’s folk logic—that the spirit world draws especially near once a year—mirrors parallel festivals (Día de Muertos, Hungry Ghost Festival) and likely rests on shared, evolved intuitions. Modern, consumerist Halloween obscures this older cognitive substrate that also surfaces in biblical and Christian miracle stories. Reading the holiday through cognitive anthropology recovers its deeper, cross‑cultural meaning.
— This reframes contemporary debates about tradition and religion by grounding popular rituals in universal human psychology rather than purely local history.
Sources: RKUL: Time Well Spent, 10/10/2025
11D ago
1 sources
Libraries and archives are discovering that valuable files—sometimes from major figures—are trapped on formats like floppy disks that modern systems can’t read. Recovering them requires scarce hardware, legacy software, and emulation know‑how, turning preservation into a race against physical decay and technical obsolescence.
— It underscores that public memory now depends on building and funding 'digital archaeology' capacity, with standards and budgets to migrate and authenticate born‑digital heritage before it is lost.
Sources: The People Rescuing Forgotten Knowledge Trapped On Old Floppy Disks
11D ago
3 sources
The McMaster authors argue researchers have a duty to 'attend to how their contributions will be used' and to 'modify their presentation' accordingly. This elevates anticipatory framing—tailoring how findings are communicated based on expected political uptake—alongside methodological rigor.
— It reframes scientific neutrality by making political downstream effects a stated part of research ethics, raising questions about gatekeeping and how evidence informs policy.
Sources: The Disaster At McMaster, Part 1, Some Thoughts On “Mankeeping”, Pinker is wrong: We should "go there"
11D ago
1 sources
The article argues that a policy of voluntary silence on contentious research (e.g., race and IQ) cannot work without social or institutional punishment. Everyday tact analogies fail in academic contexts: stopping researchers or commentators demands sanctions, making 'don’t go there' a form of de facto censorship.
— It clarifies how soft speech norms become coercive in science and universities, shaping debates over academic freedom and acceptable inquiry.
Sources: Pinker is wrong: We should "go there"
11D ago
HOT
6 sources
Yakovenko states that Chinese engineers constitute the primary labor base inside leading American AI firms. This exposes a tension between national-security politics and the U.S. innovation engine that depends on international specialists.
— It reframes AI strategy as immigration strategy, with visa rules and export controls determining the pace and ownership of frontier capabilities.
Sources: Nikolai Yakovenko: the $200 million AI engineer, Going Global: China’s AI Strategy for Technology, Open Source, Standards and Talent — By Liu Shaoshan, Microsoft Failed to Disclose Key Details About Use of China-Based Engineers in U.S. Defense Work, Record Shows (+3 more)
11D ago
1 sources
The article reports that 50% of this year’s U.S.-affiliated Nobel Prize winners in the sciences are immigrants. This underscores how much elite scientific output relies on foreign-born researchers and the pipeline that brings them to U.S. labs.
— It provides a simple, vivid benchmark for immigration’s contribution to national scientific prestige that policymakers and voters can use in debates over visa rules and research support.
Sources: Will Trump’s Immigration Policies Hurt US Nobel Chances?
11D ago
2 sources
The long‑standing picture of an early, uninhabitable Earth persisted despite little direct evidence, reflecting how scientific fields can become over‑attached to speculative priors. New geological and paleobiological findings undermine that narrative and demand origin models that match the rapid timeline.
— It’s a cautionary case of theory inertia shaping research agendas, with lessons for how institutions weigh weak evidence in other contested domains.
Sources: Life happened fast, Primates originated in cold environments
11D ago
1 sources
New evidence from fossil spore and pollen records suggests early primates originated in North America under seasonally cold conditions, not in tropical climates as long assumed. Some lineages even reached Arctic latitudes and may have survived winters via torpor or hibernation, similar to modern dwarf lemurs.
— It shows how present‑day distributions can mislead scientific narratives, and that climate and seasonality were powerful drivers of primate adaptation and mobility.
Sources: Primates originated in cold environments
11D ago
1 sources
Evidence from Flores (≥800,000 years ago) and Mediterranean islands like Crete and the Cyclades shows archaic hominins reached landmasses that always required open‑ocean crossings of 15–19 km, often against strong currents. This contradicts the 'reluctant seafarers' or castaway-only view and implies intentional watercraft and planning long before Homo sapiens.
— It shifts technological and cognitive timelines for our lineage, reshaping how the public and scholars think about migration, innovation, and the origins of complex behavior.
Sources: Mariners at the Dawn of History
12D ago
HOT
21 sources
The same robust property rights and multiple veto points that protect business also paralyze infrastructure that requires changing property rights. Litigation-ready groups can force review and delay, illustrated by the Port Authority inviting far-flung tribes into an environmental process—unthinkable in centralized systems like China.
— It implies 'Build America' reforms must prune veto points and streamline review or the U.S. will keep failing at large projects despite broad consensus.
Sources: The history of American corporate nationalization, A week in housing, Four Ways to Fix Government HR (+18 more)
12D ago
5 sources
A 2025 BioRxiv preprint sequences Golden Horde elites and reports Y‑chromosome data that bear directly on whether Jochi—Genghis Khan’s eldest—was a biological son. This turns a 13th‑century legitimacy dispute into a testable claim and maps how imperial male lines spread across Eurasia.
— Genomics can now confirm or overturn myths that underpin national identity and history education, shifting debates from legend to evidence.
Sources: Genghis Khan, the Golden Horde and an 842-year-old paternity test, The plunder lie about Western wealth, The North Sea and the Baltic form the core zone of certain tendencies (+2 more)
12D ago
1 sources
A genome from an Egyptian man dated to roughly 2500 BC closely matches the ancestry mix of today’s Egyptians, pointing to 5,000 years of population continuity along the Nile. Breaking down his ancestry also hints at the prehistoric sources that shaped ancient Egypt’s people.
— This anchors contentious narratives about ancient Egypt’s identity in measurable genetic evidence, informing debates on migration, heritage claims, and civilizational continuity.
Sources: A Nile shadow 4,500 years old
12D ago
1 sources
A man with a deterministic Alzheimer’s mutation shows heavy amyloid but almost no tau and no cognitive decline. He has unusually high heat‑shock proteins—possibly from years working in 110°F Navy engine rooms—along with low inflammation and distinct gene variants. This suggests boosting chaperone responses could block tau pathology even when amyloid is present.
— If inducible heat‑shock pathways can interrupt the amyloid→tau cascade, Alzheimer’s prevention might include chaperone‑enhancing drugs or controlled stressors, reframing therapeutic targets and occupational/exposure research.
Sources: He Was Expected To Get Alzheimer's 25 Years Ago. Why Hasn't He?
12D ago
1 sources
Measurements at China’s giant Gonghe PV park show the ground beneath panels is cooler, retains more moisture, and has healthier soil biology than surrounding desert. Year‑round data from Gansu and the Gobi echo this day‑cooling/night‑warming pattern, which can help plants establish when paired with erosion control and water management.
— This challenges the standard 'solar vs. nature' frame by showing utility‑scale PV can double as modest ecosystem restoration if designed and maintained for microclimate co‑benefits.
Sources: China Confirms Solar Panel Projects Are Irreversibly Changing Desert Ecosystems
12D ago
1 sources
The article argues that autopoietic, self‑maintaining dynamics can appear in nonliving physical systems and that this lens should inform origin‑of‑life research. It proposes using methods from cognitive science and philosophy of mind to study how lifelike behavior emerges from mindless substrates. This blurs the sharp line between life and nonlife and reframes abiogenesis as a behavioral transition, not only a chemical one.
— Redefining what counts as 'life‑like' changes astrobiology, bioethics, and consciousness debates by shifting attention from molecules to behaviors and systems.
Sources: The Surprisingly Lifelike Behavior Of Mindless Material
13D ago
2 sources
As warming pushes species’ ranges into new overlap zones, previously isolated animals are starting to interbreed. Texas biologists documented a wild blue jay–green jay hybrid linked to both species expanding northward, signaling that climate change can assemble novel ecological communities.
— It shows climate change is not just about temperatures but about reconfiguring biodiversity, complicating species protection, invasive‑species policy, and how we measure ecological loss.
Sources: Climate Change Spurs Rare Hybrid Between Blue Jay and Green Jay, The Pizzly Bears and Grue Jays of the Future
13D ago
HOT
9 sources
Stories that lead with 'Experts:' often rely on a narrow slice of authority to sell a counterintuitive take, flattening uncertainty into a confident claim. Singal’s 2016 pieces used a contrarian source to declare sex addiction 'not real,' a framing he now flags as overreach.
— It gives readers and editors a practical heuristic to spot epistemically weak science coverage that shapes public beliefs.
Sources: Singal vs. Singal: Anthony Weiner And Sex Addiction, Real talk on models, moderation, and the misuse of academic authority, You Can't Just "Control" For Things (+6 more)
13D ago
1 sources
Repeated blind tastings—starting with the 1976 Judgment of Paris and followed in 1978, 1986, and 2006—ranked California wines above France’s most vaunted labels despite experts’ expectations. This suggests much of 'expert' wine judgment is status and label‑driven, not reliably discriminative. Blinding is a practical design that can pierce gatekeeping in cultural domains.
— It argues for broader use of blinded evaluation to curb prestige bias in culture, hiring, awards, and media criticism, challenging deference to credentialed tastemakers.
Sources: The Myth of the Sommelier
13D ago
3 sources
If consciousness ceases during deep sleep or anesthesia, each awakening may be a new subject with inherited memories rather than the same continuous self. Treating memory continuity as identity could be a pragmatic fiction rather than metaphysical truth. This challenges how medicine, law, and culture assume unbroken personhood across unconscious gaps.
— Reframing identity around continuous consciousness would alter debates on anesthesia ethics, brain death standards, and philosophical grounds for rights and responsibility.
Sources: "They Die Every Day", “Existence is evidence of immortality”, What Is Death? A Response to Christopher Tollefsen
13D ago
HOT
9 sources
The piece argues efficiency gains have natural limits, while increasing total energy use sustains transformative progress. It points to the Henry Adams curve’s per-capita energy plateau after 1970 as a turning point despite continued efficiency improvements.
— It implies pro-energy policies (e.g., faster permitting, nuclear) are central to reviving growth.
Sources: Progress Studies and Feminization, No Country Ever Got Rich From Tourism, The history of American corporate nationalization (+6 more)
13D ago
HOT
6 sources
Symptoms can be psychogenic yet physically felt and disabling; recognizing this avoids a false 'real vs. fake' binary. This framing allows care without stigma while resisting dangerous pathogen-chasing treatments in contested illnesses.
— It reframes debates over long COVID and chronic Lyme, guiding more coherent clinical practice and resource allocation.
Sources: Long Covid Can Be Both Psychosomatic And Real, Mouth Taping: The Plot Thickens, On RFK Jr.’s mitochondrial malaise (+3 more)
13D ago
4 sources
Demographic and Health Surveys, a U.S.-funded program, have provided standardized, independent data on births, deaths, and disease across 90+ poorer countries. Ending this funding creates a data blackout that will degrade mortality estimates, program evaluation, and cost-effectiveness analysis worldwide.
— It reveals a geopolitical single point of failure in the world’s evidence base, showing how a domestic budget choice can cripple global decision-making and accountability.
Sources: The Demographic and Health Surveys brought crucial data for more than 90 countries — without them, we risk darkness, The end of tuberculosis that wasn’t, Why Governments Can’t Count (+1 more)
13D ago
1 sources
Create a centralized, anonymized database that unifies Medicare, Medicaid, VA, TRICARE, Federal Employee Health Benefits, and Indian Health Services data with standard codes and real‑time access. Researchers and policymakers could rapidly evaluate interventions (e.g., food‑dye bans, indoor air quality upgrades) and drug safety, similar to the U.K.’s NHS and France’s SNDS. Strong privacy, audit, and access controls would be built in.
— A federal health data platform would transform evidence‑based policy, accelerate research, and force a national debate over privacy, access, and governance standards.
Sources: HHS Should Expand Access to Health Data
14D ago
HOT
10 sources
The article argues that the four‑fold increase in autism diagnoses since the 1990s reflects changing definitions (from 'infantile autism' to 'autism spectrum disorder'), more surveillance, and shifting incentives—not a real surge in incidence. Causes proposed for the 'rise' should co‑vary with the timeline; long‑standing exposures like MMR (1971) or acetaminophen don’t fit.
— This redirects policy and media debates away from speculative environmental culprits toward measurement, coding, and incentive design that shape recorded prevalence.
Sources: The dangerous war on Tylenol, Autism Should Not Be Seen As Single Condition With One Cause, Say Scientists, On RFK, Jr. on Autism - by Arnold Kling - In My Tribe (+7 more)
14D ago
1 sources
One ASD label now covers profoundly impaired, nonverbal people and those with mild social‑communication differences. Creating clear, severity‑based categories could improve statistics, research cohorts, and service eligibility while reducing public confusion over an 'epidemic.'
— Redefining autism categories would change prevalence trends, funding priorities, and how the public interprets causation and policy responses.
Sources: Should the Autism Spectrum Be Split Apart?
14D ago
1 sources
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics recognized experiments showing quantum tunneling and superconducting effects in macroscopic electronic systems. Demonstrating quantum behavior beyond the microscopic scale underpins devices like Josephson junctions and superconducting qubits used in quantum computing.
— This award steers research funding and national tech strategy toward superconducting quantum platforms and related workforce development.
Sources: Macroscopic quantum tunneling wins 2025’s Nobel Prize in physics
14D ago
5 sources
Tracking ~30 countries by birth cohort, cohorts that grew up with higher life expectancy and higher income per person end up with fewer children. The study aligns early-life conditions (ages 0–14/18/25) to completed cohort fertility and uses mixed-effects models to isolate within-country changes, with placebo pre-birth windows as a check.
— It reframes fertility decline as a developmental response to improved early-life conditions, guiding pronatal policy beyond short-term subsidies toward the deeper drivers of reproductive timing and family size.
Sources: From Longevity to Low Fertility: Evidence Across Countries, Follow-up: Do changes in childhood conditions predict fertility outcomes?, Rethinking education balance and cohort fertility: dynamic panels vs. Mundlak (+2 more)
14D ago
1 sources
As assisted reproductive technologies (IVF/ICSI) scale, they can allow people with infertility‑linked genotypes to reproduce, relaxing natural selection against low fecundity. Over generations, this could gradually reduce baseline natural fertility even if short‑run birth numbers are boosted by treatment.
— It reframes ART from a purely therapeutic tool to a demographic force that could reshape population fecundity, informing fertility policy, genetic counseling, and long‑run projections.
Sources: What is driving the global decline of human fertility? Need for a multidisciplinary approach to the underlying mechanisms - PMC
14D ago
2 sources
Decades of 'mortality salience' results don’t hold up under registered replications and forensic meta‑analysis, suggesting death reminders don’t broadly drive harsher judgments, luxury spending, religiosity, or fertility. The piece contends psychologists’ motivated reasoning prolonged a doomed theory, echoing ego‑depletion’s fall.
— If TMT is largely unsupported, a major explanatory frame in social psychology—and many media‑friendly claims built on it—needs to be retired or radically scaled back.
Sources: Psychologists Have Been Wrong About Death For 40 Years, The Collapse of Ego Depletion - by Michael Inzlicht
14D ago
1 sources
Ego depletion—the claim that willpower relies on a depletable ‘resource’—does not survive large, rigorous replications and is now taught as a replication‑crisis cautionary tale. A new defense by its creator asserts broad replicability, but prominent co‑authors argue the evidence runs the other way and that early findings reflected questionable research practices.
— Retiring a once‑dominant self‑control theory reshapes how schools, clinicians, workplaces, and media frame motivation and willpower, and highlights the need for stronger methods before ideas go mainstream.
Sources: The Collapse of Ego Depletion - by Michael Inzlicht
14D ago
3 sources
When literatures are shaped by publication bias and small studies, meta‑analyses can exaggerate true effects more than a well‑designed single study. Funnel plots frequently show asymmetry, and simple corrections (e.g., trim‑and‑fill) substantially shrink pooled estimates. Trust should be weighted toward study quality and bias diagnostics, not the mere size of a literature.
— This warns policymakers and journalists against treating 'the literature says' as dispositive and pushes for bias‑aware evidence standards before adopting interventions.
Sources: Beware the Man of Many Studies - Cremieux Recueil, Nudge theory - Wikipedia, ~75% of Psychology Claims are False - by Lee Jussim
14D ago
1 sources
Jussim proposes a simple equation decomposing the false‑claim rate in psychology into additive parts: unreplicable findings, citations of unreplicable work as true, overclaims from replicable results, ignoring contrary evidence, censorship effects, and outright fabrication. He argues unreplicable results alone run near 50%, making ~75% a plausible overall estimate absent strong counter‑evidence.
— This framework invites more disciplined audits of research claims and cautions journalists, courts, and agencies against treating single studies as facts without multi‑team corroboration.
Sources: ~75% of Psychology Claims are False - by Lee Jussim
14D ago
HOT
6 sources
If thermodynamics implies the universe trends toward disorder, then 'living in harmony with nature' misreads our situation. An ethical stance would prioritize actively countering entropy—through energy, redundancy, and technological upkeep—to preserve and extend human flourishing.
— This reframes environmental and progress politics from accommodation to active defense, nudging policy toward pro‑energy infrastructure, resilience, and life‑extension projects.
Sources: Reality is evil, The Cosmos Is Trying to Kill Us, Why Things Go to Shit (+3 more)
14D ago
1 sources
The simple tale of a single, recent human exodus from Africa replacing archaic groups is fracturing. Fossils like Jebel Irhoud (~300,000 years ago) and ancient genomes (Neanderthals, Denisovans) point to multiple dispersals, back‑migrations, and admixture among structured populations over long periods. Human origins look more like a web than a straight line.
— This reframes how the public understands identity, variation, and deep history, replacing tidy origin stories with a nuanced, evidence‑driven account that affects education, media narratives, and science policy.
Sources: Current status: it’s complicated
14D ago
3 sources
Simulations of sibling genomes show ancestry proportions vary only a few percentage points under typical recombination, so selecting among 10–20 embryos can tilt ancestry slightly but not change a child’s ethnic background. Only very recent admixture with long DNA tracts yields bigger swings, and consumer tests can misread tiny fractions due to measurement error.
— This undercuts sensational claims about 'designer ancestry' and helps regulators and ethicists focus on realistic risks and benefits of embryo selection.
Sources: Can You "Choose" Your Baby's Ancestry? The Science of Embryo Selection, Embryo selection in 2025, How Embryo Selection Technology exposes the Transferability Paradox
14D ago
3 sources
Using polygenic scores, a 30‑year‑old European‑ancestry couple can expect roughly a 5–7 IQ‑point bump for a child and sizable disease‑risk cuts by selecting among IVF embryos. At current prices (≈$25k selection plus IVF), a blogger estimates lifetime earnings gains around $240,000, implying a positive return even before health benefits. A stealth startup, Herasight, claims r≈0.42 IQ prediction in Europeans and competitive disease R² versus rivals.
— If embryo selection already delivers measurable gains, policy, ethics, insurance, and inequality debates will need to grapple with rapid, market‑driven uptake of stratifying reproductive technology.
Sources: Embryo selection in 2025, Suddenly, Trait-Based Embryo Selection - by Scott Alexander, How Embryo Selection Technology exposes the Transferability Paradox
14D ago
1 sources
Polygenic scores trained on European datasets underperform in non‑European populations, yet institutions often deny biologically meaningful group differences. Embryo‑selection tools thus work best for Europeans, creating a two‑tier system while exposing a contradiction between practice and prevailing narratives.
— It forces regulators, clinicians, and media to confront ancestry‑specific performance and its ethical and political implications for equity and how we talk about race and genetics.
Sources: How Embryo Selection Technology exposes the Transferability Paradox
14D ago
3 sources
Instead of treating race as looks or a pure social construct, the article argues it is fundamentally about who appears in your family tree (genealogical ancestry). This frame explains why 'English' vs 'Irish' could be meaningful historically despite limited visual distinguishability and why American visual sorting confuses surface cues with lineage.
— Defining race as ancestry clarifies debates in identity politics, medicine, genetics, and census policy by separating genealogy from phenotype and rhetoric.
Sources: Tree of Knowledge, Are children of interracial unions less genetically related to their parents than to unrelated individuals of the same ethnicity?, The case for race realism - Aporia
14D ago
1 sources
The article formalizes two competing worldviews: an 'orthodox' position that treats race as a social construct and disparities as products of racism, and a 'hereditarian' position that treats race as a biological phenomenon potentially linked to group differences in psychology. By laying out numbered propositions, it frames the dispute as testable claims rather than slogans.
— This clarifies the terms of a heated debate and invites evidence‑based adjudication rather than definitional or moral stand‑offs.
Sources: The case for race realism - Aporia
14D ago
3 sources
Patient‑run online communities have amassed thousands of cases and codified practical antidepressant‑tapering methods (e.g., hyperbolic, very‑slow reductions) while documenting protracted withdrawal syndromes that clinicians often miss. Their lived‑data protocols now inform clinicians and CME, effectively backfilling a guidance gap.
— If patient networks are reliably generating safer deprescribing practices, medical institutions and regulators need pathways to validate and integrate this bottom‑up knowledge into official guidelines.
Sources: What I have learnt from helping thousands of people taper off antidepressants and other psychotropic medications - PMC, Ssri and Snri Withdrawal Symptoms Reported on an Internet Forum - CORE Reader, Playing Whack-a-Mole With the Uncertainties of Antidepressant Withdrawal
14D ago
1 sources
The new JAMA Psychiatry review finds only about one extra discontinuation symptom after stopping antidepressants, but it relies on DESS, a checklist that assigns one point per symptom and does not rate how bad it is. A small increase in symptom counts can still mask highly disabling cases that matter most for patients and policy. Treating this as 'reassuring' risks complacency about tapering and support.
— If measurement tools undercount severity, guidelines, media, and insurers may misjudge withdrawal risks and undermine safe deprescribing practices.
Sources: Playing Whack-a-Mole With the Uncertainties of Antidepressant Withdrawal
14D ago
2 sources
Mining large patient forums can detect and characterize withdrawal syndromes and side‑effect clusters faster than traditional reporting channels. Structured analyses of user posts provide early, granular phenotypes that can flag taper risks, duration, and symptom trajectories for specific drugs.
— Treating online patient data as a pharmacovigilance source could reshape how regulators, clinicians, and platforms monitor medicine safety and update guidance.
Sources: Ssri and Snri Withdrawal Symptoms Reported on an Internet Forum - CORE Reader, Antidepressant withdrawal – the tide is finally turning - PMC
14D ago
3 sources
A YouGov survey finds 79% of Americans agree some people have 'better genes,' and 59% say it's appropriate to say someone has 'good genes.' Majorities also see physical attractiveness (73%), sex (70%), and gender (73%) as mostly genetic.
— Elite discomfort with heredity language appears out of step with voters, shaping how institutions should frame debates on biology in sports, medicine, and education.
Sources: What Americans think about Sydney Sweeney, 'good genes,' and nature vs. nurture, Should Human Biodiversity Be as Respectable as Giraffe Biodiversity?, Why We Need to Talk about the Right’s Stupidity Problem
14D ago
HOT
6 sources
Highly cited papers can still be wrong or misleading, especially in fast‑moving, high‑salience topics. Treat citations and awards as attention metrics, not validity, and anchor policy in replicated, preregistered evidence with sufficient power.
— Separating attention from reliability would improve how media, funders, and governments weigh evidence before making rules.
Sources: REVERSAL: Science Faculty's "Subtle" Gender Biases Against Men, Psychology is ok, The robustness reproducibility of the American Economic Review (+3 more)
14D ago
1 sources
Shows like The Traitors provide rare, high‑stakes situations where viewers know exactly who is lying, creating a naturalistic dataset to study deception cues, trust‑building, and group suspicion. Traditional dishonesty studies struggle to establish ground truth, which invites p‑hacking and fragile findings. Mining annotated broadcast footage could improve lie‑detection research and behavioral models of trust.
— It proposes a practical, transparent evidence source for contested social‑science questions about lying and trust, potentially upgrading research quality and public literacy.
Sources: Lies, damned lies, and Claudia Winkleman
14D ago
2 sources
Population Attributable Fractions (PAFs) are highly sensitive to the underlying effect size and require causal estimates. Plugging the wrong metric (e.g., prevalence ratios treated as odds ratios, or adjusted effects cherry‑picked from high‑risk cohorts) can inflate PAFs and produce eye‑catching 'X% of cases' claims that don’t reflect real‑world causation.
— If policymakers mistake arithmetic for causality, they can justify sweeping bans or mandates on weak evidence and distort public‑health priorities.
Sources: Lying for a Climate Crusade - Cremieux Recueil, What we talk about when we talk about risk - by Sasha Gusev
14D ago
1 sources
Embryo‑selection risk claims often rely on the liability‑threshold model, which turns continuous traits into yes/no diseases. Small score‑driven shifts can push many people just below a cutoff, producing impressive relative 'risk reductions' that hide minimal real‑world change. For traits like obesity or type 2 diabetes, this can make modest phenotypic shifts look like dramatic cures.
— This challenges how genetic services are marketed and regulated, urging clearer communication and standards so consumers and policymakers aren’t misled by dichotomy‑driven statistics.
Sources: What we talk about when we talk about risk - by Sasha Gusev
14D ago
2 sources
Researchers reconstructed past climate and then reran models subtracting emissions from individual oil, gas, coal, and cement producers to measure each producer’s contribution to global warming and specific extreme heat events. They found 213 severe heat waves were substantially more likely or intense due to these emitters, and up to a quarter would have been virtually impossible without their pollution.
— This strengthens the scientific basis for holding specific firms legally and financially responsible for climate damages, reshaping litigation, insurance, and international compensation debates.
Sources: Scientists Link Hundreds of Severe Heat Waves To Fossil Fuel Producers' Pollution, Highbrow climate misinformation - by Joseph Heath
14D ago
HOT
14 sources
A decade of fact‑checking, moderation, and anti‑disinfo campaigns hasn’t measurably improved public knowledge or institutional trust. The dominant true/false, persuasion‑centric paradigm likely misdiagnosed the main failure modes of the information ecosystem. Defending democracy should shift from content policing toward rebuilding institutional legitimacy and addressing demand‑side drivers of belief.
— If the core policy frame is wrong, media, governments, and platforms need to reallocate effort from fact‑checks to institutional performance, incentive design, and trust‑building.
Sources: We Failed The Misinformation Fight. Now What?, My Hopes For Rationality, The Stench of Propaganda Clings to Everything (+11 more)
14D ago
2 sources
Political coalitions assemble narratives like courtroom briefs—optimized to win, not to be fully consistent or true. Science introduces inconvenient facts that function like cross‑examination, exposing contradictions and forcing powerful actors to revise stories over time. This explains both initial suppression (e.g., Galileo) and later narrative adaptation by institutions.
— Seeing science as a standing cross‑examiner clarifies why regimes suppress research and why open evidence ecosystems are essential to keep governance honest.
Sources: Why science is politically disruptive, Wokeness Runs Home - by Chris Bray - Tell Me How This Ends
14D ago
1 sources
Even if testing labs restrict reports to health risks, companies can accept the raw embryo genotypes and generate predictions for traits like IQ, height, and eye color. This 'middleware' model functionally delivers designer‑style selection without the primary lab offering it.
— It reveals a regulatory loophole that shifts governance from test providers to data flows, forcing policymakers to regulate downstream analytics and consent rather than only lab menus.
Sources: Suddenly, Trait-Based Embryo Selection - by Scott Alexander
14D ago
2 sources
A Harvard Church Lab list enumerates human gene variants that provide strong protections (e.g., HIV resistance via CCR5 −/−, lower CAD via PCSK9 −/−, prion resistance via PRNP G127V) and notes tradeoffs (e.g., West Nile risk with CCR5 −/−, unnoticed injury with pain‑insensitivity). By collating protective and ‘enhancing’ alleles across immunity, metabolism, cognition, sleep, altitude, and longevity, it functions as a practical target map for gene editing, embryo screening, or somatic therapies.
— Publishing a concrete menu of resilience edits forces society to confront whether and how to pursue engineered resistance and enhancement, and to weigh benefits against biologic side‑effects.
Sources: Protective alleles, A Boomer Geneticist's Approach to Human Enhancement
14D ago
5 sources
As biotechnology gains power to alter human predispositions, the social norms and laws built for unedited human nature become unstable. Societies will need explicit, constitutional‑level principles—what traits may be edited, by whom, under what safeguards—to avoid a binary of taboo‑driven stagnation or reckless hubris.
— Treating human genetic engineering as a constitutional design problem reframes bioethics into governance, with stakes for legitimacy, inequality, and state capacity.
Sources: Our Genetic Constitution, Machine Antihumanism and the Inversion of Family Law, Should we edit nature? (+2 more)
14D ago
2 sources
Using administrative records for 170,000 Norwegians aged 35–45, researchers decomposed genetic and environmental influences on education, occupational prestige, income, and wealth. They found genetic variation explains more of educational attainment and occupational prestige, while shared family environment explains more of education and wealth, with little commonality from non‑shared environment across the four. Estimates also differed by heritability method, even in the same population.
— This shows policies and arguments about 'merit' and inequality must reckon with which SES dimension is under discussion and avoid treating heritability as a single, context‑free number.
Sources: The genetic and environmental composition of socioeconomic status in Norway | Nature Communications, Polygenic Score Prediction Within and Between Sibling Pairs for Intelligence, Cognitive Abilities, and Educational Traits From Childhood to Early Adulthood | Published in Intelligence & Cognitive Abilities
14D ago
1 sources
Analyzing UK twin data, the authors show polygenic score prediction for intelligence and educational outcomes is split roughly evenly between within‑family genetic effects and between‑family effects. Socioeconomic status explains much of the between‑family portion, while height and BMI are driven mostly by within‑family genetics. Population PGS estimates for cognition thus blend individual biology with family‑level pathways.
— This reframes how journalists, policymakers, and schools interpret genetic prediction in education and merit debates by showing PGS reflects both individual genes and family/SES structure.
Sources: Polygenic Score Prediction Within and Between Sibling Pairs for Intelligence, Cognitive Abilities, and Educational Traits From Childhood to Early Adulthood | Published in Intelligence & Cognitive Abilities
14D ago
4 sources
The review reports that genome‑wide polygenic scores from IQ GWAS now explain about 4% of intelligence variance, and over 10% when combined with education GWAS. Because DNA is fixed, these scores predict outcomes as well at birth as later in life, enabling longitudinal research without repeated testing.
— Treating intelligence polygenic scores as early, causal predictors reshapes debates on education policy, inequality, and the ethics of using genetic information in research and institutions.
Sources: The new genetics of intelligence | Nature Reviews Genetics, Genome-wide association meta-analysis in 269,867 individuals identifies new genetic and functional links to intelligence - PubMed, Genetic variation, brain, and intelligence differences | Molecular Psychiatry (+1 more)
14D ago
5 sources
Low heritability can arise because a trait is biologically rigid with almost no variance left to explain (ten fingers), or because environmental/context variation swamps genetic effects (number of children). Distinguishing these cases requires parsing family/twin h², SNP-based h², and GWAS/PGS results across cohorts.
— This reframes media and policy claims that 'low heritability means not genetic' and guides how we interpret and deploy polygenic scores across populations and time.
Sources: When Low Heritability Means Different Things: Number of Children vs. Number of Fingers, When Low Heritability Means Different Things: Number of Children vs. Number of Fingers, What a New Massive Mexican Family Study Tells Us About the Effects of Ancestry on Different Traits (+2 more)
14D ago
1 sources
A meta-analysis of 11,500 twin/sibling pairs shows genetic factors explain more variance in cognitive ability as children grow. Novel genetic influences dominate very early, but after about age 8 the same genetic effects get amplified, driving increasing heritability into adolescence.
— This clarifies why nature–nurture estimates shift over childhood and cautions against reading early low heritability as proof that environment alone explains cognitive outcomes.
Sources: Explaining the Increasing Heritability of Cognitive Ability Across Development: A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Twin and Adoption Studies - PMC
14D ago
1 sources
The article argues that slogans like 'trust the science' and lawn‑sign creeds function as in‑group identity markers rather than epistemic guidance. Used to project certainty and moral superiority, they can justify suppressing live hypotheses and backfire by deepening public distrust when claims later shift.
— Seeing science slogans as status signals reframes misinformation policy toward rebuilding open inquiry norms and away from performative consensus.
Sources: The misinformation crisis isn’t about truth, it’s about trust
14D ago
HOT
9 sources
The Centers for Disease Control cause-of-death system yields stable homicide victimization rates across states. Federal Bureau of Investigation offender data suffer from uneven reporting and incentives, making comparisons noisier. Using CDC victimization rates reduces politicization and data gaps in cross-state crime debates.
— It urges media and policymakers to anchor crime comparisons in more reliable datasets, improving the quality of public argument.
Sources: Do Blue or Red States Have Worse Crime?, Blacks are 97x As Likely to Be Murdered in D.C., Crime And Tribalism (+6 more)
14D ago
3 sources
Not every disputed claim needs more data to be refuted. If a paper doesn’t measure its stated construct or relies on base rates too small to support inference, it is logically invalid and should be corrected or retracted without demanding new datasets.
— This would speed up error correction in politicized fields by empowering journals and media to act on clear logical defects rather than waiting for years of replications.
Sources: Data is overrated, HSBC unleashes yet another “qombie”: a zombie claim of quantum advantage that isn’t, Lying for a Climate Crusade - Cremieux Recueil
14D ago
3 sources
The author reviews mortality‑salience studies using several bias‑correction tools and finds they point in different directions—from pro‑TMT to anti‑TMT—depending on the method. Synthesizing across tools yields a modest but non‑zero effect (about r = 0.18) and a public ShinyApp to probe sensitivity. Meta‑analytic conclusions should be presented as ranges across an ensemble of methods, not as a single 'definitive' number.
— Treating meta‑analysis as an ensemble problem would improve evidence standards in psychology and other policy‑relevant fields by curbing cherry‑picking and clarifying uncertainty.
Sources: The Reports of Terror Management Theory’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated, Psychologists Have Been Wrong About Death For 40 Years, Beware the Man of Many Studies - Cremieux Recueil
14D ago
2 sources
Propaganda is defined by purpose, not method. That means a message can cite solid data, make careful arguments, and lean on peer‑reviewed studies while still aiming to shape belief or behavior for non‑truth‑seeking ends. Because communicators often internalize their own messaging, this can feel like 'informing' rather than influence.
— It challenges the common heuristic that 'evidence‑based' communication is inherently neutral, urging scrutiny of incentives and goals behind scientific and policy messaging.
Sources: The Stench of Propaganda Clings to Everything, Two ways of thinking about propaganda - by Robin McKenna
14D ago
HOT
21 sources
Adding control variables to a regression doesn’t make it causal unless you know the causal structure. Controlling colliders (variables influenced by both X and Y) can create spurious links, and controlling mediators can hide real effects. Examples like COVID voluntary datasets and college-only samples show how selection turns 'controls' into bias.
— It tells readers and editors to demand causal diagrams or stated assumptions before accepting 'controlled for everything' findings as policy-relevant truth.
Sources: You Can't Just "Control" For Things, Did the United States grow its way out of WWII debt?, Who gets into the best colleges and why? (+18 more)
14D ago
1 sources
Genome-wide analysis in the Health and Retirement Study finds that education, depression, and self‑rated health share common genetic influences, while education and BMI do not. This means part of the apparent health benefit of schooling reflects genetic overlap, not only schooling’s causal impact.
— It urges caution in using education as a health lever and calls for designs that separate causation from genetic correlation in social policy.
Sources: What can genes tell us about the relationship between education and health? - PMC
14D ago
4 sources
Lower heritability from molecular methods likely reflects their assumptions—additive effects only, no assortative mating, exclusion of rare/structural variants, and treating genome‑wide relatedness as a proxy for trait‑causal similarity—rather than a failure of genetics. Family‑based designs (twins, adoptees, extended kin) broadly agree on higher heritability, suggesting the 'gap' is a measurement artifact in newer tools.
— If true, common critiques that genetics 'doesn’t explain much' rest on miscalibrated methods, affecting policy arguments in education, health, and social inequality.
Sources: The answer to the "missing heritability problem", Twin Studies and the Heritability of IQ, Our Genetic Constitution (+1 more)
14D ago
2 sources
The authors argue that socio‑economic status doesn’t just reflect genetic differences; over generations it feeds back on the gene pool through assortative mating, migration, and fertility patterns. This creates measurable genetic stratification aligned with social hierarchies without endorsing hereditarianism.
— If social structure imprints on population genetics, debates over inequality, education, and 'nature vs nurture' must account for dynamic gene–environment feedback rather than one‑way causation.
Sources: Genes, money, status... and comics - by Adam Rutherford, Socio-economic status is a social construct with heritable components and genetic consequences | Nature Human Behaviour
14D ago
HOT
6 sources
Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland publish suspect, conviction, and prison data by origin that align in showing foreign‑background overrepresentation and persistence after socioeconomic adjustments. This cross‑measure consistency illustrates how high‑quality registers can defuse methodology disputes common in U.S. debates.
— It argues for building administrative data systems that allow contested topics like immigration and crime to be adjudicated with transparent, multi‑measure evidence.
Sources: Immigration and crime in the Nordics, The Demographic and Health Surveys brought crucial data for more than 90 countries — without them, we risk darkness, July Diary (+3 more)
14D ago
HOT
8 sources
Press offices and PR firms can pre-seed the media with charged language that defines a scientific report before journalists or the public see the evidence. Labeling a cautious review as 'conversion therapy' turns a methodological dispute into a moral one, steering coverage and policymaker reactions.
— It shows how communications machinery, not just data, can set the bounds of acceptable policy in contested medical fields.
Sources: Expert Critics Of The HHS Report On Youth Gender Medicine Are Projecting—And Helping To Implode Their Own Credibility (Part 2 of 2), Singal vs. Singal: Anthony Weiner And Sex Addiction, Jedi Brain (+5 more)
14D ago
3 sources
University PR and media touted a clinic cohort study as proof that puberty blockers/hormones cut teen depression and suicidality over time. The critique shows the study’s own time‑series data and modeling don’t demonstrate those reductions, conflating association with improvement.
— It highlights how institutional communications can misstate evidence in politicized medicine, skewing policy, journalism, and public understanding.
Sources: Researchers Found Puberty Blockers And Hormones Didn’t Improve Trans Kids’ Mental Health At Their Clinic. Then They Published A Study Claiming The Opposite. (Updated), Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming Care - PubMed, Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones - PubMed
14D ago
5 sources
For studies in sensitive domains (e.g., DEI, education, health) that quickly influence policy, require a registered replication report with adversarial collaboration before agencies act on the findings. Locking methods in advance and involving skeptics reduces p‑hacking, journal bias, and premature institutional uptake.
— Making adversarial replications a gatekeeper would curb ideology‑driven science from steering hiring, funding, and regulation on the basis of fragile results.
Sources: REVERSAL: Science Faculty's "Subtle" Gender Biases Against Men, Reviewing Nature's Reviews of Our Proposal to Replicate The Famous Moss-Racusin et al Study on Sex Bias in Science Hiring, Hasty Theories (+2 more)
14D ago
1 sources
Use pre‑specified Bayesian models, neutral judges, and sizable wagers to adjudicate contested scientific claims in public. The method forces clarity on priors, evidentiary weights, and likelihood ratios, reducing motivated reasoning and endless discourse loops.
— If normalized, this could shift high‑stakes controversies—from pandemics to climate attribution—toward transparent, accountable evidence synthesis rather than partisan narrative battles.
Sources: Practically-A-Book Review: Rootclaim $100,000 Lab Leak Debate
14D ago
1 sources
The piece claims authority has drained from credentialed elites, while practical trades (plumbers, mechanics, hair stylists) remain trusted. This suggests public credibility now anchors in visible performance more than in credentials or institutional prestige.
— If trust migrates to practitioners with tangible outcomes, policy, media, and science communication may need performance‑verified validators rather than credentialed spokespeople to regain legitimacy.
Sources: The Ten Warning Signs - by Ted Gioia - The Honest Broker
14D ago
2 sources
If retracting even high‑profile fraudulent studies doesn’t topple theories, that can mean core findings are supported by many independent results. The right lesson isn’t that a field is empty, but that single studies—however flashy—aren’t load‑bearing in a cumulative science.
— This reframes the replication crisis narrative and guides media, funders, and policymakers to judge fields by the strength of converging evidence rather than the fate of headline papers.
Sources: Psychology is ok, Are most published research findings false? Trends in statistical power, publication selection bias, and the false discovery rate in psychology (1975–2017) - PMC
14D ago
2 sources
Analyzing 487,996 statistical tests from 35,515 papers (1975–2017), the study finds substantial publication bias and p‑hacking and persistently low power, yet estimates only about 17.7% of reported significant results are false under stated assumptions. Power improved only slightly over four decades and meets 80% only for large effects.
— This tempers replication‑crisis nihilism while underscoring the need for power, preregistration, and bias controls, shaping how media, funders, and policymakers treat psychology evidence.
Sources: Are most published research findings false? Trends in statistical power, publication selection bias, and the false discovery rate in psychology (1975–2017) - PMC, PSYCHOLOGY. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science - PubMed
14D ago
HOT
14 sources
Cohort data from the Understanding America Study, spotlighted by John Burn-Murdoch and discussed by Yascha Mounk, show sharp declines in conscientiousness and extraversion and a rise in neuroticism among young adults over the last decade. If personality traits are moving this fast at the population level, the smartphone/social-media environment is acting like a mass psychological intervention.
— Treating personality drift as an environmental externality reframes tech regulation, school phone policies, and mental health strategy as tools to protect population-level psychology.
Sources: How We Got the Internet All Wrong, The Case Against Social Media is Weaker Than You Think, Some Links, 8/19/2025 (+11 more)
14D ago
1 sources
The author argues social science should prioritize identifying mechanisms and empirical patterns over defending big, identity‑laden theories. He uses NAFTA’s failure to equalize wages—and economists’ subsequent pivot to open‑borders advocacy—as a case where theory overrode evidence. He suggests migration research that models networks fits this mechanisms‑first standard better.
— This reframes how academia should inform policy, urging evidence‑first humility rather than theory‑driven prescriptions in contentious areas like immigration and trade.
Sources: The limits of social science (I) - by Lorenzo Warby
14D ago
1 sources
A new Science study places the Yunxian cranium from China close to Homo longi and the Denisovans using hundreds of 3D cranial landmarks across 179 Homo fossils. This suggests Denisovans—a lineage known mostly from DNA—may align morphologically with recently described East Asian fossils, tightening the map of human evolution in Eurasia.
— It updates a core public narrative about human origins by giving a tangible fossil anchor to Denisovans rather than treating them as a DNA‑only ghost lineage.
Sources: Re-writing the human family tree one skull at a time
14D ago
2 sources
As climate and human pressures outpace natural adaptation, conservation may shift from preserving 'as is' to gene‑editing vulnerable plants and animals (e.g., CRISPR, gene drives) to survive new temperatures, diseases, and invasive species. This promises biodiversity rescue but risks irreversible ecological cascades and moral hazard.
— It reframes conservation as a biotech governance challenge, forcing policymakers to balance extinction prevention against ecological uncertainty and biosecurity risk.
Sources: Should we edit nature?, Editing Nature To Fix Our Failures
14D ago
1 sources
CRISPR editing can now be done with a few thousand dollars in equipment and modest skills, allowing individuals to disable or alter genes in model organisms. As editing tools diffuse, decisions about 'playing God' are no longer confined to elite labs but potentially to hobbyists and small institutions.
— This democratization of gene editing forces new oversight, education, and biosecurity norms as powerful ecological interventions become broadly accessible.
Sources: Editing Nature To Fix Our Failures
14D ago
2 sources
Happiness is the brief 'positive prediction error' your brain emits when reality exceeds expectations, a learning signal that updates what you value and pursue. As outcomes become familiar and prediction improves, the happiness signal fades even if you still 'want' the thing. Chasing happiness therefore extinguishes it; we actually seek valuable outcomes, not the fleeting error signal itself.
— This reframes happiness policy and self‑help by arguing we should optimize for meaningful, valuable pursuits (and novelty/learning environments), not for reported 'happiness' levels.
Sources: Happiness Is Bullshit Revisited, Utilitarianism Is Bullshit
15D ago
3 sources
A 2013 study by Jeremy Frimer and colleagues finds liberals and conservatives are equally willing to obey, but only when the authority aligns with their politics. Conservatives defer more to military and religious leaders; liberals defer more to civil rights activists and environmentalists; both obey similarly when the authority seems neutral. Treating 'authoritarianism' without naming the authority’s political valence confounds ideology with obedience.
— This reframes left–right psychology and improves how we measure and predict policy compliance, protest behavior, and institutional trust.
Sources: Who's More Obedient, Left or Right?, You MUST read this post, Who exactly is rigid again?
15D ago
1 sources
Two preregistered U.S. studies (N=6,181) find only minuscule links between conservatism and belief‑updating rigidity and mostly null results for economic conservatism. Extremism shows slightly stronger—but still small—associations with rigidity, suggesting context matters more than left–right identity.
— This undercuts broad partisan psych claims and pushes scholars and media to focus on when and why rigidity spikes rather than stereotyping one side.
Sources: Who exactly is rigid again?
15D ago
3 sources
UK universities’ growing dependence on high‑fee non‑EU students (especially from China and India) shifts incentives away from merit and research toward placating consumer demand and sustaining enrollment. Coupled with regulator pressure to embed DEI, this funding model nudges institutions toward bureaucracy and activism over scholarship.
— If finance structures drive mission drift, reform must target revenue models and regulatory mandates, not just campus culture.
Sources: Diversity is the Inverse of University, The Crisis of the University Started Long Before Trump, Quarter of UK University Physics Departments At Risk of Closing, Survey Finds
15D ago
1 sources
A survey by the Institute of Physics reports 26% of UK physics departments face potential closure within two years, with 60% expecting course cuts and 80% already making staff reductions. Department heads blame the stagnant domestic fee cap (eroded by inflation) and a drop in overseas students, which together undermine the economics of lab‑intensive courses.
— It reframes higher‑education funding choices as a national science and security risk, not just a campus budget issue.
Sources: Quarter of UK University Physics Departments At Risk of Closing, Survey Finds
15D ago
1 sources
Recent overviews claim that once publication bias is addressed, generic nudges show little to no average effect, and very large, real‑world trials report much smaller impacts than the published record. If 'one‑size‑fits‑all' nudges underperform, the case for personalized, context‑specific interventions (with explicit moderators) grows.
— This challenges the evidence base behind government 'nudge units' and argues for preregistration, transparency, and a pivot toward targeted designs before scaling behavioral policy.
Sources: Nudge theory - Wikipedia
15D ago
1 sources
Researchers in Brazil found butterfly communities in natural forest had more species and far greater color diversity than nearby eucalyptus plantations, which were dominated by brown species. Earlier work showed the most colorful species vanish first after deforestation, while 30 years of forest regeneration restores color diversity. Treating visible color diversity as an easy‑to‑explain indicator could help communicate and monitor ecological health.
— A simple, observable metric like color diversity can make biodiversity loss legible to the public and policymakers, sharpening debates over monoculture forestry and restoration goals.
Sources: As Forests Are Cut Down, Butterflies Are Losing Their Colours
16D ago
1 sources
A new analysis presented at the International Astronautical Congress finds that removing the 50 highest‑risk objects in low‑Earth orbit—mostly old rocket upper stages—would cut the debris‑generation potential by about 50% (and the top 10 by 30%). Most culprits are pre‑2000 rocket bodies, while recent upper‑stage abandonments (especially from China’s megaconstellation launches) are accelerating the problem.
— It reframes space‑debris mitigation from an overwhelming cleanup to a targeted, enforceable priority list, sharpening pressure for norms, enforcement, and dual‑use RPO oversight.
Sources: Removing 50 Objects from Orbit Would Cut Danger From Space Junk in Half
16D ago
2 sources
A review of 62 studies finds microplastics disrupt bone‑marrow stem cells and stimulate bone‑resorbing osteoclasts, degrading bone microstructure in animals. Lab work shows reduced cell viability, premature cellular aging, gene‑expression changes, and inflammatory responses that together raise fracture risk.
— If microplastics impair skeletal health, regulators and clinicians must treat plastic exposure as a population‑level risk factor, not just an environmental nuisance.
Sources: Microplastics Could Be Weakening Your Bones, Research Suggests, First Evidence That Plastic Nanoparticles Can Accumulate in Edible Parts of Vegetables
16D ago
1 sources
UK researchers found polystyrene nanoplastics crossed the Casparian strip in radish roots and accumulated in edible tissues under a hydroponic test. About 5% of particles entered roots in five days, with a quarter of that amount in the fleshy root and a tenth reaching leaves. Although used concentrations were higher than typical soils and only one plastic/plant was tested, the result shows plants can internalize nano‑sized plastics.
— If crops absorb nanoplastics, dietary exposure becomes a direct pathway, sharpening policy debates on plastic pollution, agricultural monitoring, and food safety standards.
Sources: First Evidence That Plastic Nanoparticles Can Accumulate in Edible Parts of Vegetables
16D ago
2 sources
Much of the pre‑modern 'shaft' of the GDP hockey stick rests on modeled estimates from the Maddison Project, which rely on thin, indirect evidence and modern PPP conversions. The article traces 1 CE figures (e.g., Roman Italy’s $1,407) to a single 2009 paper and shows how these numbers gain cultural authority despite methodological fragility. Treating them as precise can distort how we compare ancient and developing‑world living standards.
— If our iconic growth chart leans on speculative inputs, progress narratives and policy arguments built on it need more humility about measurement error.
Sources: GDP: We Really Don’t Know How Good We Have It, Precolonial India was not rich
16D ago
2 sources
Using YRBSS, NSFG, and GSS, the author finds the Gini of sexual activity has risen mainly because the share of virgins increased, while overall dispersion (absolute inequality) has actually narrowed. This means the distribution is getting 'spikier at zero' rather than more dominated by a small group of hyper‑actives. The male share of rising sexlessness is growing fastest.
— This reframes 'incel vs. Chad' talk by showing inequality is driven by more people having no sex rather than a few having much more, shifting how we think about social policy, mental health, and dating markets.
Sources: Incels Rising, Modern chads, virgin cavemen?
16D ago
1 sources
Tracking the lead SNP from a new GWAS of lifetime sexlessness across 12,000 years of West Eurasian ancient genomes, the author finds the allele associated with sexlessness was more common in the deep past and has declined toward the present. A weighted regression on 500‑year bins (adjusted for latitude and coverage) shows a negative time trend (slope ≈ 0.0105 per kyr; standardized β ≈ 0.51). This suggests slow, long‑run selection against genetic liabilities that reduce partnering and reproduction.
— It injects evolutionary genetics into debates about modern sexlessness and mating markets, indicating that recent behavioral shifts likely reflect social environments rather than a genetic rise in sexlessness‑prone variants.
Sources: Modern chads, virgin cavemen?
17D ago
1 sources
A dataset covering 1,176 mammal and bird species shows the heterogametic sex (XY in mammals, ZW in birds) tends to die younger. In mammals, females outlive males in ~75% of species; in birds, males outlive females in ~68%—consistent with X/X or Z/Z redundancy protecting against harmful mutations.
— This shifts male–female longevity debates from lifestyle alone to a biological baseline, with implications for medical research priorities and how we interpret sex differences in health.
Sources: Why Do Women Outlive Men? A Study of 1,176 Species Points to an Answer
17D ago
1 sources
Swiss researchers are wiring human stem‑cell brain organoids to electrodes and training them to respond and learn, aiming to build 'wetware' servers that mimic AI while using far less energy. If organoid learning scales, data centers could swap some silicon racks for living neural hardware.
— This collides AI energy policy with bioethics and governance, forcing rules on consent, oversight, and potential 'rights' for human‑derived neural tissue used as computation.
Sources: Scientists Grow Mini Human Brains To Power Computers
18D ago
3 sources
A frontier model can read a published study, open its replication archive, convert code (e.g., STATA to Python), and reproduce results with minimal prompting. This collapses a multi‑hour expert task into an automated workflow and can be double‑checked by a second model.
— If scaled, AI replication could reshape peer review, funding, and journal standards by making reproducibility checks routine and cheap.
Sources: Real AI Agents and Real Work, Good job people, congratulations…, Some AI Links
18D ago
4 sources
Across 18 batteries (427,596 people) and a targeted Project Talent reanalysis that matched reliability and length, verbal ability showed a higher loading on general intelligence than math, with spatial, memory, and processing speed lower. A mixed‑effects model controlled for test battery and year, and the within-PT comparison was restricted to 14–18-year-old white males to hold composition constant. This challenges the default assumption that math or spatial subtests are the purest single indicators of g.
— If verbal measures are the strongest single proxy for general intelligence, institutions may need to reconsider how they weight verbal vs math/spatial skills in admissions, hiring, and talent identification.
Sources: What ability best measures intelligence?, LLMs: A Triumph and a Curse for Wordcels, Is g Real or Just Statistics? A Monologue with a Testable Prediction (+1 more)
18D ago
1 sources
A mega meta‑analysis pooling 747,000 twin comparisons across 77 studies finds that multiple specific cognitive abilities (e.g., quantitative knowledge, reading/writing, processing speed) show substantial heritability that is not fully mediated by general intelligence. Several abilities exhibit age‑related increases in heritability, paralleling the pattern seen for g, and the data test whether gene effects sum linearly or interact.
— This shifts intelligence debates from g‑only framings to a more granular genetic architecture that could reshape education policy, assessment design, and genomic research priorities.
Sources: Beyond General Intelligence: The Genetics of Specific Cognitive Abilities
19D ago
4 sources
Innovation power tracks the size of a country’s extreme‑ability tail and total researcher headcount. With ~2.6 million FTE researchers and far more 1‑in‑1,000 cognitive‑ability workers than the U.S., China now leads in areas like solar, batteries, and hydrogen. Because ideas are nonrival, a multipolar science world accelerates progress even if the U.S. claims a smaller share of laurels.
— This shifts U.S.–China debates from zero‑sum IP fears to scale‑driven innovation dynamics and global welfare gains, informing R&D, immigration, and alliance policy.
Sources: The Simple Mathematics of Chinese Innovation, Smart Extinction? Projecting the Future of Global Intelligence and Innovation, All of these factors are strong predictors of change in military technology (+1 more)
19D ago
4 sources
HIV didn’t just add another disease; it reactivated latent TB and spiked mortality, reversing decades of decline in rich countries. Health gains that look stable can collapse when a new condition reshapes host immunity and transmission dynamics.
— Policy and forecasting must model disease interactions, not single pathogens, or risk dangerous complacency in pandemic and chronic‑disease planning.
Sources: The end of tuberculosis that wasn’t, The world left its fight against tuberculosis unfinished — how can we complete the job?, Could Heart Attacks Be Triggered By Infections? (+1 more)
19D ago
1 sources
An international Nature study of 45,000 autistic people reports those diagnosed in early childhood have different genetic profiles than those diagnosed later. This indicates ‘autism’ is an umbrella that covers multiple biological conditions along a gradient, not a single disorder. It challenges one‑cause explanations and suggests tailored screening and interventions by subtype and timing.
— It reframes autism policy, research funding, and causal debates (e.g., vaccines, medications) toward defined subtypes and better measurement instead of monolithic claims.
Sources: Autism Should Not Be Seen As Single Condition With One Cause, Say Scientists
19D ago
2 sources
A new lab model treats real experiments as the feedback loop for AI 'scientists': autonomous labs generate high‑signal, proprietary data—including negative results—and let models act on the world, not just tokens. This closes the frontier data gap as internet text saturates and targets hard problems like high‑temperature superconductors and heat‑dissipation materials.
— If AI research shifts from scraped text to real‑world experimentation, ownership of lab capacity and data rights becomes central to scientific progress, IP, and national competitiveness.
Sources: Links for 2025-10-01, AI Has Already Run Out of Training Data, Goldman's Data Chief Says
19D ago
1 sources
A long‑observed balance in how much light the Northern and Southern hemispheres reflect is now diverging: both are darkening, but the Northern Hemisphere is darkening faster. Using 24 years of CERES satellite data, NASA’s Norman Loeb and colleagues show the shift challenges the idea that cloud dynamics keep hemispheric albedo roughly equal.
— A persistent change in planetary reflectivity—and its hemispheric asymmetry—affects Earth’s energy budget and challenges assumptions in climate models that guide policy.
Sources: Earth Is Getting Darker, Literally, and Scientists Are Trying To Find Out Why
19D ago
HOT
8 sources
Real Simple Licensing (RSL) combines machine‑readable licensing terms in robots.txt with a collective rights organization so AI labs can license web content at scale and publishers can get paid. With backers like Reddit, Yahoo, Medium, and Ziff Davis, it aims to standardize permissions and royalties for AI training.
— If widely adopted, this could shift AI from 'scrape now, litigate later' to a rules‑based licensing market that reshapes AI business models and publisher revenue.
Sources: RSS Co-Creator Launches New Protocol For AI Data Licensing, Spotify Peeved After 10,000 Users Sold Data To Build AI Tools, “Vote now for the 2025 AEA election” (+5 more)
19D ago
1 sources
The article compiles evidence that Toxoplasma gondii can be present in semen, correlates with sexual practices, and shows couple‑level transmission asymmetries consistent with male‑to‑partner spread. It also reviews human behavioral changes (slower threat response, altered jealousy, increased sexual partners) that may advantage the parasite’s transmission.
— If a common brain‑infiltrating parasite is sexually transmissible and behavior‑shaping in humans, sexual‑health guidance, road‑safety risk models, and even criminology and mental‑health debates must incorporate parasitology rather than treating outcomes as purely social or psychological.
Sources: Are parasites messing with our brains?
19D ago
4 sources
The Impoundment Control Act limits presidents from withholding appropriated funds. Whether courts enforce it will determine if the administration can cancel or delay billions in NIH/NSF grants despite congressional budgets.
— This turns the science‑funding fight into a separation‑of‑powers test that could set precedents for future policy domains.
Sources: The State of American Science Funding (For the Next Five Minutes), Open Letter To The NIH, Beyond the “Big, Beautiful Bill” (+1 more)
20D ago
HOT
6 sources
An empowered Chief Economist unit at USAID reallocated $1.7 billion toward programs with stronger evidence, showing measurable gains are possible inside a large bureaucracy. But the office was politically dismantled, revealing that evidence capacity must be paired with durable budget authority to survive leadership changes.
— Building resilient, authority‑backed evidence units could improve public spending across agencies, not just in foreign aid.
Sources: How to Fix Foreign Aid, The Demographic and Health Surveys brought crucial data for more than 90 countries — without them, we risk darkness, The State of American Science Funding (For the Next Five Minutes) (+3 more)
20D ago
5 sources
The article argues that mineral 'reduction spots' and Fe/S metabolic traces that count as biosignatures in Earth’s pre‑fossil record should be treated equivalently on Mars unless a concrete abiotic pathway is evidenced. This parity principle would shift default skepticism toward weighing Martian findings by the same criteria used in ancient Earth geology.
— Aligning evidentiary standards across planets could accelerate consensus on extraterrestrial life claims and guide mission priorities and public communication.
Sources: We Are Not Low Creatures, Finding organics on Mars means absolutely nothing for life, Biosignatures? Why organics on Mars don’t necessarily signal life (+2 more)
20D ago
1 sources
Cassini data now reveal more complex organic molecules in Enceladus’s water‑ice plume, indicating richer subsurface chemistry in its global ocean. ESA is proposing a mission around 2042 with an orbiter to sample the plumes and a lander to touch down near the south pole to search for biosignatures.
— A credible, scheduled European life‑detection mission would shift global space priorities and public debate about funding, risk, and the likelihood of extraterrestrial life.
Sources: Prospect of Life On Saturn's Moons Rises After Discovery of Organic Substances
20D ago
2 sources
Across countries, people care less about the total number of past partners than about when those partners were accumulated and whether the pace is tapering. A slowing trajectory signals lower future risk, while recent, fast accrual raises concern. This reframes 'body count' from a crude tally to a timeline‑sensitive signal.
— It challenges viral dating narratives by replacing a stigmatizing headline metric with behaviorally grounded, time‑aware criteria that travel across cultures.
Sources: Beyond Body Count: How Many Past Partners Are Too Many?, Intelligence Isn't Really Sexy
20D ago
1 sources
Across speed‑dating labs and real‑style app tests, intelligence is detectable but adds little to sexual appeal compared with physical attractiveness. A 2025 study using verified IQ on synthetic profiles found attractiveness (~β=0.80) outweighed intelligence (~β=0.12) by roughly sevenfold, with similar patterns in face‑to‑face experiments. Population‑genetic data further link higher intelligence/education to greater sexlessness risk.
— This challenges widely held claims that intelligence is a decisive attractor, reshaping conversations about dating advice, status signaling, and the roots of sexlessness/incel trends.
Sources: Intelligence Isn't Really Sexy
21D ago
1 sources
A 2025 meta-analysis (Harrer et al.) finds psychotherapy has large effects for phobias, PTSD, OCD, and social/generalized anxiety, moderate for depression, and small but positive effects for psychosis and suicidal ideation. It also reports similar effectiveness in non‑Western and low‑/middle‑income countries compared with Western, wealthy settings.
— Quantified, cross‑disorder effect sizes and cross‑region parity can guide resource allocation, set realistic expectations, and counter claims that therapy is primarily a Western intervention.
Sources: Therapy by the Numbers
21D ago
5 sources
Even if Congress restores grant budgets, agency layoffs and tougher immigration rules can leave too few staff to process awards and too few researchers to execute projects. This creates multi‑year delays that push the country onto a lower innovation trajectory.
— It reframes science funding as a state‑capacity and talent‑mobility problem, not merely a dollars‑appropriated problem.
Sources: The State of American Science Funding (For the Next Five Minutes), How Deeply Trump Has Cut Federal Health Agencies, The evolution of the economics job market (+2 more)
21D ago
1 sources
OHSU scientists removed a skin cell’s nucleus, placed it in a donor egg, induced a 'mitomeiosis' step to discard half the chromosomes, and then fertilized it with sperm. They produced 82 functional eggs and early embryos up to six days, though success was ~9% and chromosome selection was error‑prone with no crossing‑over. The method hints at future infertility treatments and same‑sex reproduction but is far from clinical use.
— This pushes urgent debates on parentage law, embryo research limits, and regulation of in‑vitro gametogenesis as a route to human reproduction.
Sources: Scientists Make Embryos From Human Skin DNA For First Time
21D ago
1 sources
Studies comparing transwomen to women sometimes normalize performance by body mass or size, which can mathematically erase the very sex‑linked advantages (height, lean mass, absolute power) under debate. Policymakers should require preregistered, sport‑relevant absolute metrics (times, distances, watts) and transparent adjustment rationales before using such studies to set eligibility rules.
— Clarifying how normalization choices flip conclusions improves evidence standards for sex‑category policy and prevents media from amplifying misleading 'parity' claims.
Sources: Nancy Armour Ignores The Simple Truth That ‘Transwomen’ Are Male
21D ago
2 sources
Repeated or extreme heat doesn’t just make you uncomfortable; it can unfold proteins, overwhelm heat‑shock defenses, and alter DNA in ways that may speed up biological aging. Even sub‑lethal exposures could leave lasting cellular scars, especially in older or medically vulnerable people whose stress responses are weaker.
— If heat accelerates aging, climate policy, workplace standards, and urban adaptation must account for hidden long‑term morbidity, not only immediate heat deaths.
Sources: Extreme Heat Will Change You, What Researchers Suspect May Be Fueling Cancer Among Millennials
21D ago
1 sources
Researchers are moving from associations to chemical forensics by scanning blood for tens of thousands of compounds and matching 'exposome' signatures that appear more often in early‑onset cancer patients. Paired with zebrafish exposed to known and suspected carcinogens, this can validate which chemicals plausibly drive tumors in younger cohorts.
— Turning diffuse environmental debates into measurable chemical fingerprints could reorient cancer prevention, regulation, and litigation toward specific exposures rather than generic lifestyle factors.
Sources: What Researchers Suspect May Be Fueling Cancer Among Millennials
22D ago
2 sources
New modeling links national time policy to circadian alignment and estimates that permanent standard time could prevent about 300,000 strokes and reduce obesity in 2.6 million Americans. Permanent daylight saving time delivers smaller benefits, and twice-yearly clock changes are worst for health.
— It reframes the DST debate from preference and convenience to measurable public‑health outcomes, giving lawmakers a data-driven basis to pick a uniform time regime.
Sources: Permanent Standard Time Could Cut Strokes, Obesity Among Americans, Daylight Savings Time Is So Bad, It's Messing With Our View of the Cosmos
22D ago
1 sources
A new arXiv preprint by Reed Essick finds LIGO’s detector sensitivity shifts by about 75 minutes at the biannual daylight‑saving time change, as human activity and operations schedules move. Weekends and time‑of‑day also imprint on the detector, pointing to human rhythms as a systematic in gravitational‑wave astronomy.
— It adds a science‑and‑infrastructure cost to the daylight‑saving debate, suggesting time policy and lab operations can measurably affect billion‑dollar observatories.
Sources: Daylight Savings Time Is So Bad, It's Messing With Our View of the Cosmos
22D ago
2 sources
University of Rhode Island researchers exposed mice to polystyrene micro‑/nanoplastics for three weeks and found particles accumulated in the brain and produced Alzheimer's‑like behavioral changes, especially in animals engineered with the human APOE4 risk gene. The work links ubiquitous plastic exposure to cognitive decline via a specific gene–environment interaction rather than generic toxicity. While preclinical, it provides a testable pathway for how everyday plastics could raise neurodegeneration risk.
— If microplastics exacerbate Alzheimer’s risk in genetically susceptible people, it strengthens the case for plastic regulation and targeted public‑health guidance.
Sources: Study Links Microplastic Exposure to Alzheimer's Disease in Mice, Microplastics Could Be Weakening Your Bones, Research Suggests
22D ago
2 sources
Scott Aaronson says an advanced LLM (GPT5‑Thinking) contributed a crucial technical step to a new paper proving limits on black‑box amplification in the quantum class QMA. This is presented as his first paper where AI provided a substantive proof insight, not just boilerplate help. It suggests LLMs are now participating in genuine theoretical discovery.
— If AI can generate novel proof steps in frontier theory, norms for credit, peer review, and verification in science will need to adapt.
Sources: The QMA Singularity, Links for 2025-09-29
22D ago
3 sources
Microsoft’s CLIO orchestration boosted GPT‑4.1 accuracy on text‑only biomedical questions from 8.55% to 22.37%, beating o3‑high without retraining the base model. Structured, self‑adaptive prompting can unlock large capability gains.
— If orchestration layers can leapfrog raw models, governance and procurement must evaluate whole systems, not just base model versions.
Sources: Links for 2025-08-11, Microsoft To Use Some AI From Anthropic In Shift From OpenAI, New Claude Model Runs 30-Hour Marathon To Create 11,000-Line Slack Clone
23D ago
1 sources
The author argues that in populations with similar access to education and information, a general-knowledge test can outpredict a one-off reasoning test for underlying problem-solving ability. Knowledge acts like a long-term average of cognitive performance, while a single reasoning measure is a noisy snapshot.
— This reframes how schools and employers should design assessments and interpret scores, pushing toward batteries and context-appropriate proxies rather than standalone reasoning tests.
Sources: Is g Real or Just Statistics? A Monologue with a Testable Prediction
23D ago
3 sources
Annual benchmark revisions can flip the labor-market narrative: the Bureau of Labor Statistics just cut the prior year’s job gains by 911,000—about 76,000 per month. That means policymakers and markets were operating for months on overstated employment growth. Real‑time payroll data are provisional and can mask turning points until revisions surface.
— If headline jobs numbers can be this wrong for a year, monetary and fiscal debates must bake in revision risk and be more cautious about month‑to‑month narratives.
Sources: US Created 911,000 Fewer Jobs Than Previously Thought in the 12 Months Through March, An Unresponsive Public Is Undermining Government Economic Data, Mark Skousen on recession warning signs
23D ago
1 sources
A Los Angeles Times report says athletes are trying ibogaine for traumatic brain injury while states move to study it. Texas approved $50 million for ibogaine drug‑development trials, Arizona added $5 million for a clinical study, and California is pushing fast‑track research as a Stanford team reported dramatic PTSD/depression/anxiety reductions in special forces veterans. Ibogaine remains Schedule 1 federally, but lawmakers are exploring supervised‑therapy carve‑outs akin to Oregon’s psilocybin model.
— This indicates a state‑led pivot toward psychedelic therapeutics that pressures federal scheduling and could redefine brain‑injury and PTSD treatment policy.
Sources: Some Athletes are Trying the Psychedelic Ibogaine to Treat Brain Injuries
23D ago
2 sources
Evidence from animal models and human observational studies suggests GLP‑1 receptor agonists like semaglutide reduce alcohol intake and relapse without simply sedating users. Target‑trial emulations report lower alcohol use among GLP‑1RA patients, and randomized trials appear imminent as drugmakers seek alcohol‑use‑disorder indications. If replicated, a drug taken for obesity could quietly cut population alcohol consumption.
— A dual‑use therapy would reshape addiction policy, public‑health planning, and even sin‑tax and alcohol‑industry forecasts.
Sources: Ozempic and Alcoholism: Does It Work?, Could Universal GLP-1 Drugs End the Obesity Epidemic?
24D ago
HOT
8 sources
When national frameworks avoid specifying clear consequences, local implementers fill the vacuum with prevailing norms—in this case, anti‑punitive practices—while trainers insist failures are 'not the model.' This makes the system operationally unfalsifiable and hard to reform because poor outcomes are blamed on 'implementation' rather than design.
— It highlights how policy-by-framework can evade accountability and entrench ineffective practices across institutions.
Sources: The High Costs of Classroom Disorder, Integrity, Safety, & Conference Venues, Vague Bullshit (+5 more)
25D ago
1 sources
A large study using lottery winners as a quasi‑random income shock finds no consistent change in criminal behavior after a cash windfall. The result implies the correlation between poverty and crime may be driven by underlying traits rather than income itself. It cautions that transfers alone are unlikely to reduce offending.
— If poverty isn’t a proximal causal lever on crime, policy should shift from income boosts toward interventions that target offender selection, impulse control, and repeat‑offending dynamics.
Sources: Invisible Tigers, a New View of Autism, and the Gender-Equality Paradox
25D ago
4 sources
Under the banner of 'efficiency,' HHS reportedly shed about 18% of its workforce, including over 3,000 scientists and 1,000 inspectors. Labs now struggle to buy basic supplies, and inspectors are purchasing swabs out of pocket, signaling operational breakdown. The cuts contradict stated plans to add scientists and strengthen chronic‑disease work.
— It shows how headcount reductions can quietly hollow out national health security and regulatory oversight even without headline budget cuts.
Sources: How Deeply Trump Has Cut Federal Health Agencies, RFK Jr. Vowed to Find the Environmental Causes of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying to Do Just That., How We Tracked Workforce Reductions at Federal Health Agencies (+1 more)
26D ago
2 sources
New analyses suggest the Fulani carry substantial Ancient North African ancestry—traces of populations that moved during the Holocene “Green Sahara” period. This phase of higher rainfall likely opened corridors that reshaped Sahelian genomes and later cultural diffusion.
— It links climate shifts to lasting population structure and cultural history, updating public narratives about African diversity and migration.
Sources: Cesar Fortes-Lima: the Fulani out of the Green Sahara, Did Harsh Winters Shape Psychology? Answers from Ancient and Modern DNA
26D ago
1 sources
The piece argues that long‑term survival in cold, highly seasonal ecologies selected for lower Extraversion and Neuroticism and higher Agreeableness. It operationalizes this by predicting latitude‑linked signals in Big Five polygenic scores using ancient and modern DNA, and cites Inuit food‑sharing as behavioral corroboration.
— If climate‑driven selection shaped population differences in personality, debates over culture, migration, and inequality would need to grapple with contentious gene–environment histories rather than purely contemporary explanations.
Sources: Did Harsh Winters Shape Psychology? Answers from Ancient and Modern DNA
26D ago
1 sources
A bank–IBM paper reports a 34% gain in bond‑trade fill predictions after a 'quantum' data transform, yet the gain vanishes when the same transform is simulated without hardware noise. Aaronson contends the effect is a noise artifact and a product of unprincipled method comparisons and selection bias. He urges a proof‑before‑application standard: show real quantum advantage on benchmarks before touting finance wins.
— It challenges corporate and media quantum hype and proposes a practical rule to prevent pseudo‑results from steering investment and policy.
Sources: HSBC unleashes yet another “qombie”: a zombie claim of quantum advantage that isn’t
26D ago
HOT
6 sources
As wealth and frictionless communication unify societies, macro-level cultural evolution loses the selection pressures that once filtered maladaptive norms. Rapid, activist-led shifts become random relative to survival needs, pushing societies into a 'decay mode' despite technological progress. Resistant subcultures may preserve adaptive traits through the decline.
— It reframes globalization and activist-driven change as potential sources of civilizational fragility rather than automatic progress.
Sources: Beware Macro Decay Modes, Masculinity at the End of History, We Need Elites To Value Adaption (+3 more)
26D ago
4 sources
AI may speed molecule design and lab screening, but about 80% of drug‑development costs happen in clinical trials. Even perfect preclinical prediction saves weeks, doesn’t bridge animal‑to‑human translation, and won’t halve timelines without trial‑stage breakthroughs. Mega‑rounds for preclinical AI platforms may be mispricing where value is created.
— It resets expectations for AI‑in‑biotech by showing that without clinical‑stage innovation, AI won’t deliver the promised cost and time collapses.
Sources: Where are the trillion dollar biotech companies?, Deregulating Drug Development, How to think about AI progress (+1 more)
26D ago
1 sources
A startup mapped 70,000 trip reports to drug data and produced MSD‑001, an oral 5‑MeO‑MiPT that in Phase I was psychoactive without hallucinations. Participants showed heightened emotion and psilocybin‑like brain‑wave patterns but no 'oceanic boundlessness' or self‑disintegration. If therapeutic effects track neuroplasticity rather than the trip, treatment could be shorter, cheaper, and safer to scale.
— This challenges the dominant 'mystical‑experience' model of psychedelic therapy and could shift regulation, insurer coverage, and clinic design toward trip‑free agents.
Sources: The least psychedelic psychedelic that’s psychoactive
27D ago
1 sources
The article proposes that neurons retain 'feral,' self‑interested tendencies and compete for influence and survival, forming coalitions that can manifest as compulsions, addictions, voices, or even spirit‑like 'possession.' Cortical plasticity examples (e.g., Merzenich’s digit sutures; Pascual‑Leone’s blindfold studies) illustrate how idle neurons 'seek work' to keep their neuromodulator lifelines.
— This reframes unsettling mental and spiritual experiences as emergent neural politics, potentially reshaping debates in psychiatry, religion, and legal responsibility.
Sources: Neurons Gone Wild
28D ago
2 sources
The piece argues that reaction‑time tests like the IAT, born from cognitive priming work, were treated as pipelines to the soul and exported into HR, education, and law. But their promise outstripped what they can validly measure about real‑world prejudice, making them poor anchors for policy or training.
— If core DEI tools don’t validly predict discriminatory behavior, institutions need to rethink training, audits, and legal reliance built on 'implicit bias' scores.
Sources: The Great Implicit Bias Bamboozle, Does Data Matter in Psychology?
28D ago
1 sources
When famous effects don’t replicate (stereotype threat, ego depletion, implicit bias), psychologists often keep the concepts by redefining them or claiming only the tools failed. Lived experience and 'common sense' then trump null findings, letting theories persist without strong evidence.
— This explains why evidence-light ideas continue to shape policy and training, and argues for tighter construct definitions and evidentiary guardrails before institutional adoption.
Sources: Does Data Matter in Psychology?
28D ago
1 sources
As 'gender' has expanded from male/female to an open‑ended identity menu, longitudinal findings about 'stability' in early‑transitioned children can mask shifts into ill‑specified 'gender‑diverse' buckets rather than clear reidentification or resolution. Without stable, pre‑registered operational definitions, headline rates (e.g., 81.6% stable identity) risk misinforming clinicians, courts, and legislators.
— If core constructs are unstable, evidence used to justify pediatric gender protocols and laws becomes unreliable, pressing for measurement standards before policy.
Sources: Childhood Gender Research Is Increasingly Meaningless Because No One Knows What 'Gender' Means Anymore
28D ago
1 sources
A medRxiv preprint identifies 400+ AI‑rewritten 'copycat' papers across 112 journals in 4.5 years and shows these evade plagiarism checks. Authors warn paper mills can mass‑produce low‑value studies by pairing public health datasets with large language models.
— If AI enables industrial‑scale fakery in peer‑reviewed outlets, science governance, dataset access rules, and anti‑plagiarism tools must be rethought to protect research integrity.
Sources: Journals Infiltrated With 'Copycat' Papers That Can Be Written By AI
29D ago
5 sources
Major foundations and mega-donors increasingly demand 'legible' impact, which steers money to elite universities and already-crowned scientists. This misses breakthrough ideas that sit outside the system and would benefit from direct patronage of individuals or new research orgs. Reviving 'crazy philanthropy' could seed entirely new fields rather than marginally boosting the status quo.
— If philanthropic norms shift, the frontier of science could move faster by bypassing institutional sclerosis and backing neglected, high-variance bets.
Sources: The Case for Crazy Philanthropy, Prequels, Classics & Sequels, The State of American Science Funding (For the Next Five Minutes) (+2 more)
29D ago
3 sources
RFK Jr. frames autism as caused by environmental toxins while the administration rolls back pollution and chemical rules and shuts down existing toxin‑exposure research. The gap suggests 'environmental' rhetoric is being redirected toward politically convenient culprits (e.g., vaccines) rather than industrial pollutants.
— It shows how environmental language can be weaponized to shift blame and steer regulation away from powerful sectors while appearing pro‑science.
Sources: RFK Jr. Vowed to Find the Environmental Causes of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying to Do Just That., Amid Rise of RFK Jr., Officials Waver on Drinking Water Fluoridation — Even in the State Where It Started, Did The HHS Just Explain Autism?
30D ago
2 sources
Popular arguments often lean on animal metaphors to justify human social hierarchies. But spiny lobsters—close cousins of Peterson’s American lobster—use similar hormone signaling to coordinate cooperative 'rosettes' and 'phalanxes' against predators, not to dominate each other. Picking the 'right' species can flip the moral you draw from nature.
— It warns that political or cultural claims grounded in biology can be selectively framed, pushing readers and policymakers to scrutinize which models from nature we choose to generalize from.
Sources: The Internet You Missed: A 2025 Snapshot, The Queer Lives of Frogs
30D ago
1 sources
A Neurology study of 12,772 adults found that higher intake of common low‑/no‑calorie sweeteners (e.g., aspartame, saccharin, erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol) was associated with faster cognitive decline over time. Intake levels ranged from ~20 mg/day in the lowest group to ~191 mg/day in the highest (about a diet soda’s worth for aspartame). One naturally occurring sweetener found in fruit, cacao, and dairy was not linked to the same effect. The study is observational, so it shows association, not causation.
— If confirmed, this evidence could shift dietary guidance, labeling, and consumer behavior around 'diet' foods and beverages.
Sources: Is Fake Sugar Bad for Brains?
30D ago
1 sources
The article argues that 'sex‑reversed,' intersex, and same‑sex behaviors in frogs are not automatically signs of chemical harm. Skewed sex ratios and mating behaviors can result from ordinary ecological variation and life‑history dynamics, and even sex changes need not preclude reproduction.
— It corrects a culturally salient claim used in politics and media, urging regulators and journalists to separate genuine endocrine disruption from normal biological diversity.
Sources: The Queer Lives of Frogs
30D ago
1 sources
Astronomers saw a brief brightening near GN‑z11 and considered a record‑breaking gamma‑ray burst, but the signal likely came from an intervening rocket booster flash. As launches and debris increase, such glints can fake deep‑space events and mislead transient surveys. Astronomy will need routine cross‑checks with space‑object catalogs and observation protocols that discount human artifacts.
— Growing space traffic turns scientific false positives into a policy problem, pressing for space‑situational awareness and debris rules that protect high‑end research.
Sources: The “most distant explosion ever” turned out to be rocket debris
30D ago
1 sources
Infecting Aedes aegypti with the common bacterium Wolbachia blocks dengue and related viruses from replicating inside the mosquito, preventing onward transmission to humans. Field releases can replace local mosquito populations with Wolbachia‑positive ones and keep transmission down over time.
— This offers a scalable, non‑insecticide public‑health tool that could cut the burden of multiple neglected tropical diseases and reorient vector‑control policy.
Sources: How Wolbachia bacteria could help us tackle some of the world’s most neglected tropical diseases
30D ago
HOT
13 sources
When evidence is weak or negative, guideline writers and institutions can invoke patient autonomy and informed consent to keep controversial treatments going. This shifts decision authority away from evidentiary standards (like GRADE) and toward values claims, especially under activist pressure. It effectively turns a safeguard into a workaround.
— If autonomy routinely overrides evidence, medical guidelines and regulation become politicized, undermining trust and setting a precedent for evidence-light care in other domains.
Sources: Autonomy Does Not Trump Evidence: A Response to Dr. Gordon Guyatt, Cornell Quietly Violated My Civil Rights. Now I'm Taking Legal Action., Long Covid Can Be Both Psychosomatic And Real (+10 more)
30D ago
1 sources
Researchers dyed nanocellulose films with red onion‑skin extract to block 99.9% of UV up to 400 nm while transmitting >80% of useful near‑IR light, protecting dye‑sensitized solar cells. Predictive modeling suggests these bio‑based filters could extend cell lifetime to ~8,500 hours versus ~1,500 hours for PET films.
— Replacing fossil‑plastic encapsulation with biodegradable, waste‑derived materials reframes the solar supply chain as a decarbonization target, not just power generation.
Sources: More Durable UV Coating For Solar Panels Made From Red Onion Skins
30D ago
3 sources
Researchers measured ethanol levels in fruits eaten by wild chimpanzees in Côte d’Ivoire and Uganda and estimated chimps ingest around 14 grams of alcohol per day—roughly a small bottle of lager. The fruit types chimps preferred had the highest ethanol levels, indicating selective foraging for mild fermentation. This puts numbers to the long‑standing 'drunken monkey' hypothesis.
— Quantifying routine primate ethanol exposure grounds evolutionary explanations for human alcohol attraction, informing how we frame prevention and policy.
Sources: Chimps Drinking a Lager a Day in Ripe Fruit, Study Finds, Chimps Hit the Sauce on the Daily, Sunday assorted links
1M ago
5 sources
Summarizing Borjas, the author argues that immigrants who arrived during the 1924–1965 'pause' assimilated economically much faster than cohorts from high‑immigration eras. Large inflows create ethnic enclaves and coordination frictions, and add wage/congestion pressures that slow convergence. Treating scale as a first‑order variable undercuts open‑borders models that ignore these dynamics.
— It reframes immigration policy around the size and pacing of inflows as levers to maximize assimilation and minimize social costs.
Sources: The limits of social science (II), The limits of social science (I), The Many Faces of Nationalism (+2 more)
1M ago
1 sources
Quantum computers need dilution refrigerators that rely on helium‑3/helium‑4 mixtures to reach millikelvin temperatures. Terrestrial helium‑3 supply is tiny and largely tied to tritium decay, but scaling quantum data centers to millions of qubits could require thousands of liters per system, pushing demand to the Moon. The Interlune–Bluefors deal suggests quantum cooling, not fusion, is the first commercial engine for lunar helium‑3.
— It links frontier computing to space‑resource policy, showing how tech supply chains can catalyze extraterrestrial extraction before traditional energy markets do.
Sources: Interlune Signs $300M Deal to Harvest Helium-3 for Quantum Computing from the Moon
1M ago
3 sources
A large outlet reportedly told its journalists they can use AI to create first drafts and suggested readers won’t be told when AI was used. Treating AI as 'like any other tool' collapses a bright line between human-authored news and machine-assisted copy. This sets a precedent others may follow under deadline and cost pressure.
— If undisclosed AI becomes normal in journalism, trust, accountability, and industry standards for labeling and corrections will need rapid redefinition.
Sources: Business Insider Reportedly Tells Journalists They Can Use AI To Draft Stories, AI Tool Detects LLM-Generated Text in Research Papers and Peer Reviews, Librarians Are Being Asked To Find AI-Hallucinated Books
1M ago
2 sources
Frontier AIs now produce sophisticated results from vague prompts with little or no visible reasoning, shifting users from collaborators to auditors. In tests, GPT‑5 Pro not only critiqued methods but executed new analyses and found a subtle error in a published paper, while tools like NotebookLM generated fact‑accurate video summaries without exposing their selection process.
— If AI outputs are powerful yet opaque, institutions need verification workflows, provenance standards, and responsibility rules for AI‑authored analysis.
Sources: On Working with Wizards, Some Links, 9/20/2025
1M ago
1 sources
Analyzing 4,133 ancient genomes with a weighted OCA2/HERC2 haplotype score finds only about 4% of Imperial Romans were likely blue‑eyed, compared to roughly 22% in Iron Age Rome and 21% in Medieval Rome. Vikings score much higher (~55%), while steppe cultures are darker‑eyed than many assume.
— Quantifying eye‑color shifts across eras reframes Rome’s imperial period as a demonstrably cosmopolitan genetic mix and corrects common myths about European ancestry.
Sources: The Origins and Spread of Blue Eyes in Europe: Evidence from Ancient DNA
1M ago
1 sources
Researchers compile annual data on 'academic human capital' across European cities, present‑day countries, and historically coherent macro‑regions using the RETE prosopographic database. The series tracks shocks (Black Death, Thirty Years’ War), the rise of academies versus universities, regional inequality in the Holy Roman Empire, and the distinctiveness of the Scottish Enlightenment.
— By measuring where and when intellectual capacity accumulated before the Industrial Revolution, this dataset lets scholars test claims about why Northern Europe pulled ahead and how wars and institutions shape knowledge production.
Sources: Academic Human Capital in European Countries and Regions, 1200-1793
1M ago
2 sources
A 2024 Nature paper by Nobel‑winning biologists warned that lab‑built organisms using opposite‑handed molecules ('mirror life') could evade immune defenses and upend ecosystems. OSIRIS‑REx samples from asteroid Bennu show mirror‑handed building blocks exist in space, but natural sources are harmless—the risk is deliberate lab synthesis. The article situates this warning within the history of recurring scientific apocalypse fears.
— It flags a new class of biosafety hazard that current oversight may not anticipate, shaping debates over moratoria, lab standards, and research governance.
Sources: “Mirror life” and the recurring nightmare of scientific apocalypse, What to Know About Mirror Life
1M ago
1 sources
Scientists are moving from lab proofs to policy by convening to discuss how to safeguard synthetic 'mirror life.' Because mirror‑handed molecules and organisms could resist normal enzymes and immune responses, governance is being considered before the technology is widespread.
— It signals a shift from scientific curiosity to policy design on a potentially high‑risk biotechnology, shaping biosecurity agendas and research oversight.
Sources: What to Know About Mirror Life
1M ago
3 sources
The piece advances a hypothesis that groups with longer historical exposure to alcohol have lower rates of binge drinking today due to genetic and cultural adaptation, while groups with recent exposure face higher risks. It calls for biochemical research tailored to these differences rather than one-size-fits-all interventions.
— This reframes addiction policy through evolutionary mismatch, implying targeted medical approaches instead of purely cultural or moral framings.
Sources: Nature: Stop Noticing American Indians' Drinking Problems!, Ozempic and Alcoholism: Does It Work?, Chimps Drinking a Lager a Day in Ripe Fruit, Study Finds
1M ago
1 sources
A new synthesis by Timothy Waring and Zachary Wood argues that cultural practices spread and self‑correct far faster than genes, so human adaptation today is primarily cultural, not genetic. Digital systems accelerate this by rapidly selecting and diffusing useful behaviors and technologies, often at group scale. The claim flips the usual nature‑first lens in evolutionary talk.
— If culture is the main engine of human evolution now, debates about education, governance, technology, and inequality should focus on designing better cultural selection mechanisms rather than expecting biology to solve social problems.
Sources: Has Culture Overtaken Genes in Human Evolution?
1M ago
1 sources
With far better sensitivity than a decade ago, LIGO can compare black hole properties before and after mergers and finds the total event‑horizon area never decreases, as Stephen Hawking predicted in 1971. The same data also verify that the remnant black holes behave like Kerr solutions—rotating, as predicted in 1963. Gravitational‑wave astronomy has matured into a precision test of fundamental physics.
— Validating bedrock predictions of general relativity strengthens public and policymaker confidence in large scientific facilities and reframes gravitational‑wave observatories as core tools for basic discovery.
Sources: LIGO’s 10th anniversary gift confirms Hawking’s theorem
1M ago
1 sources
Plummeting participation in government surveys is degrading the quality of flagship indicators like the jobs report, leading to big backward revisions and public confusion. The same dynamics—survey fatigue and caller ID screen‑outs—now afflict the census and labor surveys alike. As precision falls, the data become easier political targets.
— When core economic facts get noisier, policy, markets, and public trust are destabilized and the door opens to politicizing official statistics.
Sources: An Unresponsive Public Is Undermining Government Economic Data
1M ago
1 sources
An international team reports 54 cases of smoke‑dried, tightly bound human remains dated between 12,000 and 4,000 years ago across southern Asia. Using X‑ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy, they detected low‑temperature smoking signatures on bones, indicating intentional mummification well before Egypt and Chile’s Chinchorro.
— It reframes a canonical cultural timeline, showing mortuary innovation among hunter‑gatherers and challenging Egypt‑centric popular history.
Sources: These Aren’t Your Pharoah’s Mummies
1M ago
1 sources
A University of Michigan team reports that before the dinosaur‑killing impact, rivers in floodplains were straighter and overflowed more often, but after dinosaurs vanished and forests rebounded, rivers shifted to meandering channels. They infer this from sediment layers across the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary: pre‑impact strata are sand‑ and silt‑rich (frequent overbank floods), while post‑impact layers show fines and features consistent with stabilized, meandering systems. The study argues megafauna loss can cascade into geomorphic change.
— It reframes extinctions as drivers of physical Earth systems, implying that modern megafauna loss or rewilding could alter flood regimes, carbon storage, and river management.
Sources: The Dinos’ Demise Gave Rivers Their Shape
1M ago
1 sources
Cowen proposes that the AEA turn over all of its intellectual property—including published papers and confidential referee reports—to major AI firms to build discipline‑specific economics models. This reframes professional societies as stewards of training data and raises conflicts between open science, privacy, and AI progress.
— If adopted, such policies would reshape academic publishing economics, confidentiality norms, and AI governance over training data across fields.
Sources: “Vote now for the 2025 AEA election”
1M ago
4 sources
A BBchallenge contributor ('mxdys') pushed the Busy Beaver(6) lower bound to an unimaginably large tower and supplied a formal proof checked in the Coq assistant. Done in an open, collaborative setting rather than a traditional journal, it shows how machine checking can secure trust in results too intricate for human review. This signals a shift in how frontier math claims gain credibility.
— Machine-checked proofs could become a new standard for trust in high-stakes science and engineering, reshaping peer review and institutional gatekeeping.
Sources: BusyBeaver(6) is really quite large, Our Shared Reality Will Self-Destruct in the Next 12 Months, Links for 2025-08-11 (+1 more)
1M ago
1 sources
Math, Inc.’s 'Gauss' agent reportedly completed the Strong Prime Number Theorem formalization in Lean in about three weeks, clearing complex‑analysis hurdles that Terence Tao and Alex Kontorovich had flagged. The public artifact includes ~25k lines of Lean, ~1.1k theorems/definitions, and a blueprint; the team says 'most statements and proofs were produced by Gauss' with human scaffolding. The work was funded under DARPA’s expMath program.
— If AI agents can complete frontier‑level formalizations, norms for proof, peer review, and math education may need to adapt as automated, machine‑checked proofs become a standard path for advancing hard theorems.
Sources: Links for 2025-09-15
1M ago
1 sources
The piece argues that devastating eruptions often come from quiet or poorly known volcanoes and that society underinvests in monitoring and preparedness relative to the risk. Using El Chichón’s surprise VEI‑5 eruption in 1982 as a case study, it calls for global early‑warning, data sharing, and resilience planning. The author suggests this hazard could trigger climate disruptions, food shocks, and infrastructure failures.
— Treating dormant or undocumented volcanoes as a systemic global‑risk category would shift disaster policy, climate security planning, and international funding priorities.
Sources: When sleeping volcanoes wake
1M ago
4 sources
Perseverance’s 'Sapphire Canyon' sample from Jezero Crater shows chemical and structural features consistent with ancient microbial activity, according to a new Nature paper. NASA calls it the mission’s best candidate biosignature so far, while stressing more data are needed to confirm any biological origin.
— If validated, this would be the first evidence of past life beyond Earth, reshaping space priorities, scientific funding, and philosophical debates about life in the universe.
Sources: NASA Says Mars Rover Discovered Potential Biosignature Last Year, Links for 2025-09-11, We Are Not Low Creatures (+1 more)
1M ago
1 sources
Ohio State engineers propose a centrifugal nuclear thermal rocket that keeps uranium in a liquid core and directly heats propellant, targeting specific impulse beyond 900 seconds and one‑way Mars trips in about six months. The team says the design could be readiness‑level in five years and could use propellants like ammonia or methane sourced in space, though fuel containment and startup/shutdown stability are key risks.
— If liquid‑core nuclear propulsion matures, it would reset human‑spaceflight planning and force new rules for launching and operating nuclear materials in space.
Sources: A New Nuclear Rocket Concept Could Slash Mars Travel Time in Half
1M ago
1 sources
Most people adopt abstract beliefs by 'vibing'—intuitive, status‑coded associations—while slower, evidence‑based analysis often points elsewhere. Hanson argues two constructive contrarian modes: prioritize domain‑specific evidence over vibes, and use discipline‑neutral criteria to adjudicate conflicts across fields (a polymath stance). A third, weaker mode is to embrace contrary vibes for their own sake.
— This gives a practical map for separating status‑driven rhetoric from evidence and for judging cross‑disciplinary claims in politicized debates.
Sources: Three Kinds of Contrarians
1M ago
2 sources
Two new studies synthesize laboratory photochemistry, advanced atmospheric modeling, and JWST spectra to decode organic hazes on sub‑Neptune exoplanets. The approach shows how to separate haze chemistry from genuine biosignature gases and provides observing 'recipes' despite muted spectral features.
— It reframes the life‑search toward the universe’s most common, haze‑rich worlds and sets practical standards for interpreting future JWST biosignature claims.
Sources: JWST could expose alien biosignatures on hazy exoplanets, Most Earth-Like Planet Yet May Have Been Found Just 40 Light Years Away
1M ago
1 sources
JWST observations of the Earth‑sized exoplanet TRAPPIST‑1e show a spectrum consistent with a nitrogen‑rich atmosphere, though the signal is still ambiguous. If validated by upcoming transits, it would mark the first detection of an Earth‑like atmospheric envelope on a rocky, habitable‑zone world.
— A confirmed nitrogen atmosphere on an Earth‑analog would shift the life‑search from speculation to targeted characterization, influencing science funding and public priorities in space exploration.
Sources: Most Earth-Like Planet Yet May Have Been Found Just 40 Light Years Away
1M ago
1 sources
NASA’s Inspector General reports Dragonfly’s life‑cycle cost has risen to over $3 billion with 2+ years of delay, driven by multiple replans (COVID, supply chains, launch vehicle changes, funding, inflation). The growing budget share is contributing to a 12‑year gap in mid‑class New Frontiers launches and threatens decadal survey priorities. This shows how a single flagship mission can cannibalize a balanced planetary portfolio.
— It spotlights a structural science‑governance problem where cost growth in marquee projects undermines strategic planning and broad scientific output.
Sources: 'Dragonfly' Mission to Saturn's Moon Titan: Behind Schedule, Overbudget, Says NASA Inspector General
1M ago
1 sources
Finnish and UK researchers report DNA from oral bacteria and biofilm structures inside atherosclerotic plaques. They hypothesize viral infections can awaken these biofilms, sparking inflammation that ruptures plaques and causes myocardial infarction. If validated, vaccines or anti‑biofilm therapies could become tools for preventing heart attacks.
— It reframes heart disease prevention from lifestyle and lipids alone to include infection control, dental health, and potential vaccination strategies.
Sources: Could Heart Attacks Be Triggered By Infections?
1M ago
1 sources
In 32 breast‑cancer survivors, blood taken immediately after one session of interval or resistance training suppressed the growth of breast‑cancer cells in vitro, with interval training producing the strongest effect. The study points to muscle‑released myokines—especially IL‑6—as the likely mediators and suggests intensity and muscle mass shape the anticancer response.
— This reframes exercise from generic wellness to an acute, dose‑dependent therapy that oncology guidelines and insurers might need to prescribe and reimburse.
Sources: A Single Exercise Session May Slow Cancer Cell Growth, Study Finds
1M ago
1 sources
A new analysis of NHANES and precursor surveys finds U.S. males born in the 1960s had later or smaller adolescent growth spurts than 1950s cohorts, ending up the same height in adulthood after catching up later. Females didn’t show height differences but did experience later menarche than those born a decade earlier. The result points to changes in growth tempo rather than final size.
— It challenges the standard narrative of uniformly earlier puberty over time and invites investigation of cohort‑specific environmental, nutritional, or health factors that shape development.
Sources: Human growth sentences to ponder
1M ago
2 sources
The post proposes a general rule: everything decays unless a system has incentives pushing against it. It extends 'incentives' beyond humans to physical and biological systems, using examples like science’s prestige economy guiding truth, aging from weak late-life selection, and markets creating wealth only under stable rules. The upshot is that order and prosperity are products of incentive design, not natural drift.
— It reframes governance and science policy as incentive engineering to resist natural decay rather than assuming progress is the default state.
Sources: Why Things Go to Shit, Skinner’s One Ring To Rule Culture
1M ago
2 sources
Most mass advice is generic, vague, or impossible to act on, and we rarely demand any track record of success. The advice industry persists because it delivers affiliation and status signaling (celeb gurus, virtue cues) rather than tailored, high‑stakes guidance. Truly useful advice tends to require situational expertise and 'skin in the game,' which most public advisors lack.
— Treating advice as a status market shifts debates about expertise, media incentives, and 'skin in the game' toward incentive redesign rather than credulous consumption.
Sources: Bullshit Advice, Can I Give You Some Advice?
1M ago
1 sources
A new study led by Igor Grossmann finds that across 12 countries, people facing hard choices overwhelmingly trust their own judgment over input from friends, family, or experts. This pattern holds even in interdependent cultures that value group harmony. It suggests advice, as a mode of influence, is often discounted at the decision point.
— If most people ignore advice by default, public health messaging, financial guidance, and policy communications must shift from exhortation to designs that respect autonomy, change defaults, or build in structure rather than mere counsel.
Sources: Can I Give You Some Advice?
1M ago
1 sources
UT Austin and Quantinuum report a task where any classical algorithm provably needs 62–382 bits of memory, yet the same task is solved with 12 qubits on a real trapped‑ion machine. Unlike past 'quantum supremacy' demonstrations that relied on unproven complexity assumptions, this shows an unconditional advantage in information resources on today’s hardware. The team frames this as 'quantum information supremacy,' a new benchmark for progress.
— It resets how media, funders, and policymakers should judge quantum claims by providing a verifiable standard that doesn’t depend on conjectures, shaping expectations for near‑term utility.
Sources: Quantum Information Supremacy
1M ago
HOT
6 sources
A study finds large language model (LLM) systems produce research ideas rated as more novel than those from human experts. But when implemented, the AI-generated ideas do not achieve better outcomes. This suggests a gap between AI ideation and real-world execution quality.
— It tempers AI boosterism by showing that human agency and execution still drive impactful research, informing policy and institutional adoption of AI in science.
Sources: Round-up: Measuring emotions in art, Updates!, Some Negative Takes on AI and Crypto (+3 more)
1M ago
1 sources
Analyzing 140,000 Mexico City adults with a within-family ancestry design, Wang et al. report that siblings with different Indigenous vs European ancestry have the same educational outcomes, even as height and type 2 diabetes show strong genetic ancestry signals. Measurement limits and historical schooling context likely depress EA heritability here, while diabetes risk and stature track ancestry-linked alleles.
— This cautions against reading ancestry gaps as genetic in education while underscoring genetic contributions to some health risks, refining how policy and media discuss disparities.
Sources: What a New Massive Mexican Family Study Tells Us About the Effects of Ancestry on Different Traits
1M ago
1 sources
The Commerce Secretary reportedly wants the federal government to take 50% of universities’ patent revenue from federally funded research. This would upend the Bayh–Dole equilibrium that lets universities keep royalties to reinvest in labs, tech transfer, and spinoffs, and could redirect large sums to central budgets or programs. It would also change licensing and startup incentives across campus ecosystems.
— Such a shift would reset the commercialization model for U.S. science, with knock‑on effects for university finances, innovation policy, and the public–private balance in R&D.
Sources: Thursday assorted links
1M ago
1 sources
A Frontiers in Marine Science study led by Maximilian Baum (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf) finds that lower pH levels associated with ocean acidification can physically crumble shark teeth. Because sharks rely on rapid tooth replacement and sharp enamel to feed, pH‑driven erosion could reduce hunting success and resilience.
— It shifts climate‑impact talk from corals and shellfish to apex predators’ basic feeding tools, signaling potential knock‑on effects for ecosystems and fisheries management.
Sources: Shark Teeth Are Crumbling
1M ago
1 sources
Edward Dutton argues that prematurity and low birth weight, while typically linked to impairments, can sometimes rewire brain development to yield traits associated with genius—obsession, lower empathy, ADHD/autism-linked focus—enabling paradigm-shifting work. Historical cases like Isaac Newton (reportedly extremely premature) are presented as illustrative, suggesting developmental frailty can occasionally produce extraordinary originality. The claim is a hypothesis that invites empirical testing rather than a settled fact.
— This reframes neurodiversity and perinatal risk debates by positing a trade-off model where rare benefits may coexist with common harms, potentially influencing research priorities and how institutions support atypical minds.
Sources: Review of ‘Sent Before Their Time’ by Edward Dutton
1M ago
3 sources
JWST transmission spectra reportedly show dimethyl sulfide (and dimethyl disulfide) at ~10 ppm in the hydrogen‑rich atmosphere of K2‑18b, with ~3σ significance. On Earth, DMS is primarily biogenic, and the article outlines a plausible Hycean biosphere (H2‑based photosynthesis, methanogenesis, nutrient cycling through ice‑VII breaks) that could generate it.
— A potential exoplanet biosignature shifts the life‑is‑rare priors and reframes SETI, origins‑of‑life research, and the Great Filter debate.
Sources: And Then There Were Two?, JWST could expose alien biosignatures on hazy exoplanets, NASA Says Mars Rover Discovered Potential Biosignature Last Year
1M ago
2 sources
Run causal models on outcomes that moves cannot plausibly change (e.g., birth length) to test whether observed 'effects' are actually selection artifacts. Eshaghnia shows that substituting birth length for adult earnings reproduces Chetty–Hendren–style exposure gradients, with stronger alignment the earlier the move—something a true causal neighborhood effect on earnings shouldn’t mimic on an inborn trait.
— If marquee neighborhood-effects results fail placebo checks, policymakers must revisit relocation and 'opportunity mapping' initiatives and demand stronger identification before scaling.
Sources: Moving on Up, Some Links, 9/10/2025
1M ago
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Researchers propose identifying past 'touchdown airbursts' via geochemical and sediment signatures because these events don’t leave craters. If those markers show frequent airbursts, asteroid‑impact hazard estimates based on crater counts are biased low.
— This pushes planetary‑defense policy toward new detection, monitoring, and civil‑defense planning that account for craterless surface‑devastating events.
Sources: The Cosmos Is Trying to Kill Us, Rogue Wave Mystery Solved
1M ago
1 sources
Analyzing 18 years of North Sea data, researchers argue rogue waves arise when several large waves line up (constructive interference) and then nonlinear effects stretch the crest by another 15–20%. They say this two‑step process leaves a recognizable signature that can be used to forecast singular, extreme waves during storms. If validated, it reframes rogues from 'random monsters' to forecastable hazards.
— Turning an unpredictable maritime killer into a forecastable event affects shipping rules, offshore platform design, insurance pricing, and emergency planning as seas get stormier.
Sources: Rogue Wave Mystery Solved
1M ago
2 sources
The Prose Edda presents Odin and the Aesir as migrants from 'Turkland' (Anatolia), not autochthonous Nordic beings. That textual lineage undercuts modern attempts to adopt Germanic paganism as a 'pure,' native alternative to Christianity’s Jewish roots, especially for Americans with weak cultural continuity to old Europe. The broader point: Western religious identity has always been syncretic and mobile.
— It challenges ethnonationalist and anti‑Christian framings by showing that even the source texts of Norse paganism depict foreign origins, making 'ancestral purity' projects incoherent.
Sources: Losing My Religion, Venice’s famous winged lion statue is actually Chinese
1M ago
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Lead‑isotope analysis indicates Venice’s famed winged lion statue likely originated as a Tang‑dynasty Chinese tomb guardian and was later installed atop a column in the 13th century. The piece suggests it may have been acquired through Polo‑family contacts at Kublai Khan’s court, explaining its non‑Mediterranean style and horn‑removal scars.
— It shows how national or civic symbols can be recontextualized foreign artifacts, complicating identity narratives and highlighting deep medieval globalization.
Sources: Venice’s famous winged lion statue is actually Chinese
1M ago
2 sources
Using observed links between fertility, national IQ, and innovation output, the article projects a 73% global decline in people with IQ ≥131 by 2100 and a fall in the +2SD cutoff from 128 to 116. It estimates this will reduce global innovation capacity by about 50%, effectively erasing roughly 18 years of scientific progress this century.
— If accurate, these projections force policymakers to confront how demographic-genetic trends could throttle growth and scientific leadership absent countervailing policies or transformative AI.
Sources: Smart Extinction? Projecting the Future of Global Intelligence and Innovation, Tweet by @degenrolf
1M ago
1 sources
A cited study reports that higher scores on the Dark Tetrad (psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, sadism) are associated with having more children and reproducing earlier. If robust, this implies antisocial tendencies may confer reproductive advantages under modern conditions.
— Selection favoring darker personality traits would complicate crime prevention and social‑policy strategies that assume culture alone can reverse such tendencies.
Sources: Tweet by @degenrolf
1M ago
2 sources
Krakauer argues 'beauty' names universal, mechanistic laws while the 'interesting' is their noisy, emergent expression in finite systems. Complexity science, following Weaver and Anderson, serves as a bijection: it maps micro‑level rules to macro‑level organized complexity. This clarifies why elegant models often miss what matters in biology, economics, and society.
— It urges policymakers and modelers to privilege mappings that capture organized complexity, not just 'beautiful' simplicity—shaping debates in AI, epidemiology, and economic policy.
Sources: The Beautiful & the Interesting in Complexity Science, The argument against the existence of a Theory of Everything
1M ago
1 sources
Physics may be fundamentally patchwork: different effective theories govern different energy scales and regimes, with no deeper unification to collapse them into one master equation. Decades of unification attempts (e.g., string theory’s E8×E8) lack empirical support and require discarding most of their generic predictions to match observations.
— If true, science policy should prioritize testable, regime‑bounded models over grand unification, reshaping funding, public expectations, and how we judge 'fundamental' progress.
Sources: The argument against the existence of a Theory of Everything
1M ago
1 sources
Using Add Health data, the study exploits within‑school, across‑grade variation in same‑gender classmates’ average polygenic score for major depressive disorder. A one‑standard‑deviation rise in peers’ MDD score increases an individual’s depression probability by 1.9–3.8 points (larger for boys initially, persisting for women) and is linked to worse friendships, more substance use, and lower later socioeconomic status. This identifies social‑genetic spillovers in adolescent peer groups.
— It reframes youth mental health and school policy by showing that peer composition’s genetic risk profile can causally shape outcomes, highlighting gene–environment interactions beyond individual biology.
Sources: One look at negative emotional contagion
1M ago
1 sources
Nature reviewers allegedly argued a replication of Moss‑Racusin (2012) should also replicate prestige features—its PNAS venue, editor (Shirley Tilghman), and an 'interdisciplinary team'—rather than just the methods. Elevating status markers as replication criteria converts replication from a technical test into a defense of hierarchy. In politicized areas, this can systematically deter tests of headline‑friendly results.
— If prestige criteria are used to block replications, institutional credibility and evidence‑based policy suffer, especially in sensitive DEI domains.
Sources: Reviewing Nature's Reviews, Part II
1M ago
1 sources
Stanford researchers found that hyperactivity in the brain’s reticular thalamic nucleus causes autism‑like behaviors in mice. Dampening this overactivity—either with the experimental anti‑seizure drug Z944 or chemogenetic neuromodulation—reversed the behavioral deficits; ramping activity up in normal mice induced them. This ties autism‑like traits and epilepsy to a shared thalamic circuit.
— It reframes parts of autism as a reversible neural‑circuit dysfunction and flags anti‑epileptics and circuit‑level interventions as testable treatment paths rather than purely developmental labels.
Sources: Hyperactivity in the brain’s reticular thalamic nucleus may drive autism-like behaviors
1M ago
2 sources
Staged 'X‑meets‑Y' conferences and cross‑discipline grant consortia rarely produce durable insights because the participants lack shared methods, incentives, or mutual respect. The interdisciplinary work that matters happens when one researcher deeply learns multiple fields and integrates them internally (or in small, organic collaborations around a concrete problem). Funders should back cross‑training and problem‑anchored teams rather than panel optics.
— It challenges prevailing research‑funding fashions and suggests a redesign of incentives toward individual cross‑training and small, method‑aligned collaborations.
Sources: The only interdisciplinary conversations worth having, Patrick Collison on the Irish Enlightenment
1M ago
2 sources
Efforts to ensure fairness and credit large teams can unintentionally suppress solitary incubation and heterodox ideas. Paired with winner‑take‑all metrics, this pushes research toward consensus and away from risky breakthroughs. A healthier ecosystem would acknowledge solitary phases and lineage explicitly while still valuing collaboration.
— It links equity‑driven institutional design to epistemic outcomes, warning that well‑meant reforms can dull innovation.
Sources: Prequels, Classics & Sequels, The only interdisciplinary conversations worth having
1M ago
1 sources
Using the Wright–Harpending kinship framework, the article derives coefficients of relatedness that depend on population differentiation (FST). It shows a parent–child pair remains far more related than a random co‑ethnic under realistic human FST values; only implausibly large between‑group divergence would flip this. Negative kinship values can occur in the model, but not at observed European–African distances.
— It offers a rigorous, portable way to test sensational genetics claims in public debates and discourages misuse of 'genetic distance' to make inflammatory assertions.
Sources: Are children of interracial unions less genetically related to their parents than to unrelated individuals of the same ethnicity?
1M ago
3 sources
After the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled SEGM a 'hate group,' McMaster’s leadership urged researchers to distance themselves from SEGM-funded, methodologically sound reviews. Reputational designations by private watchdogs can steer university partnerships and how evidence is presented, even when conflict-of-interest terms were honored.
— It shows how extra-institutional branding power can shape academic agendas and public-health guidance without new data.
Sources: McMaster University Fails the Bioethics Test, The Horror in Minneapolis, "Spectator:" A "Guardian" Writer Used a Fake Passport to Dupe Pro-Natalists
1M ago
2 sources
Researchers built 'general' LLM agents with theory‑grounded instructions and a small set of human 'seed' games, then tested them across 883,320 novel games. In preregistered tests, these agents predicted human play better than game‑theoretic equilibria, out‑of‑the‑box agents, and even the most relevant published human data for select new games. This shows LLM‑driven simulations can transport behavioral insight to new settings without ad hoc tweaks.
— If AI agents can reliably forecast human choices, social‑science methods, policy testing, and regulation could shift toward simulation‑first evaluation.
Sources: Pathbreaking paper on AI simulations of human behavior, Links for 2025-09-06
1M ago
1 sources
Because many Phase I clinics don’t keep websites updated, serious volunteers must call to enroll—selecting for more aggressive, incentive‑driven participants. Combined with cash‑only motivations and mutual distrust, this recruitment channel likely overrepresents 'professional subjects' who may game exclusion criteria. The result is early safety/tolerability data produced by a non‑representative pool.
— If Phase I data are systematically shaped by recruitment mechanics, policymakers and media should treat early safety signals with selection bias in mind and consider reforming trial recruitment norms.
Sources: Your Review: Participation in Phase I Clinical Pharmaceutical Research
1M ago
3 sources
People reinterpret the 0–10 'life satisfaction' ladder as their context changes, so raw survey trends can mislead. A rescaling method using both current and retrospective evaluations suggests American happiness rose in line with GDP from the 1950s to early 2000s and helps explain why COVID-19 and the Ukraine war didn’t crater reported life satisfaction, and why parents don't show higher happiness.
— If survey scales drift, major claims about growth not improving well‑being—and many crisis narratives—need re-evaluation, shifting policy toward growth and better measurement rather than declaring happiness immutable.
Sources: Is it Possible to Raise National Happiness?, $3 a day: A new poverty line has shifted the World Bank’s data on extreme poverty. What changed, and why?, Cities Obey the Laws of Living Things
1M ago
1 sources
If the universe’s history or future is infinite, then every precise qualitative state recurs, so your present existence makes it likely 'you' will exist again. The argument is secular: identity reappears whenever the exact right conditions repeat, and theories that deny this render your present self essentially probability‑zero under an infinite past. Observation of yourself now thus counts as evidence for reincarnation under infinite time.
— It reframes identity, afterlife, and duplication debates—implicating ethics of AI copies, simulations, and cryonics—by treating recurrence as evidence for literal re‑instantiation of persons.
Sources: “Existence is evidence of immortality”
1M ago
1 sources
A JPE paper measures not just answers but respondents’ confidence and pays for truthful reporting, then finds women outperform men on 'intelligence' and compete optimally under risk. The authors also report women score higher on financial literacy once measurement is incentive‑compatible. If robust, core gender‑gap claims in psychology and economics would need revision.
— This challenges long‑standing narratives about gender differences by showing how test design and incentives can reverse headline effects used in policy and workplace debates.
Sources: It would take more than one paper to establish these claims
1M ago
2 sources
Instead of only experts or trend extrapolation, aggregate multiple large language models to rank past eras and predict how disruptive the next 50 years will be. Pair model consensus with a human poll to quantify the probability that 2025–2075 will bring top‑tier policy and institutional shifts.
— If LLM ensembles can provide useful priors on macro‑institutional volatility, policymakers and investors may incorporate them into scenario planning and risk management.
Sources: Big Institution Changes by 2075, Pathbreaking paper on AI simulations of human behavior
1M ago
2 sources
Lin argues India’s young labor pool complements, rather than displaces, China’s shifting comparative advantages as it moves up the value chain. This challenges the common narrative of a bilateral race for the same niches.
— It reframes Asian supply‑chain strategy and investment theses away from a simple substitution story.
Sources: The Industrial Policy Debate of 2016: Justin Yifu Lin vs. Zhang Weiying (Part 1), The Simple Mathematics of Chinese Innovation
1M ago
5 sources
Common molecular methods regress phenotype on genome‑wide relatedness, assuming overall genetic similarity tracks the specific loci that cause a trait. Within‑family contrasts, assortative mating, non‑additive effects, and rare/structural variants can break this link, biasing estimates downward. The heritability 'gap' may be model misspecification, not missing biology.
— It warns policymakers and media not to treat low molecular heritability as proof against genetic influence when methods misalign with trait‑causal architecture.
Sources: The answer to the "missing heritability problem", When Low Heritability Means Different Things: Number of Children vs. Number of Fingers, Heritability of lifetime earnings | The Journal of Economic Inequality (+2 more)
1M ago
2 sources
LLMs often translate math, vision, and engineering problems into text and then reason verbally to solve them. Even multimodal systems reportedly convert images into internal text-like tokens, suggesting a one-way advantage from perception to language rather than from language to pure spatial imagery. This points to verbal abstraction as a general-purpose substrate for high-level thought.
— If language is the central substrate, education, testing, and AI design should emphasize verbal reasoning for transfer and generality.
Sources: LLMs: A Triumph and a Curse for Wordcels, Links for 2025-09-02
1M ago
1 sources
A new vision‑model study shows brain‑likeness emerges in stages: early training aligns with early visual areas, while extensive training, larger models, and human‑centric images are needed to match higher association and prefrontal regions. This suggests that scale, data, and curriculum govern when and where AI features converge with cortical hierarchies.
— If brain‑like representations arise predictably with scale and data, policymakers and labs can steer AI design toward or away from human‑like cognition using training choices.
Sources: Links for 2025-09-02
1M ago
4 sources
DESI’s 3–5σ 'evolving dark energy' result assumes the discrepancy with ΛCDM is resolved by letting dark energy vary over time. But sigma levels are conditional on that modeling choice; alternative parameterizations or systematics could erase the signal. Treat headline certainty in cosmology as within‑model, not absolute truth.
— It cautions that statistical certainties touted in high‑profile science often reflect model assumptions, urging media and policymakers to demand model‑robustness checks before declaring paradigm shifts.
Sources: Ask Ethan: Is dark energy no longer a cosmological constant?, New theory: could early, supermassive stars explain the Universe?, GDP: We Really Don’t Know How Good We Have It (+1 more)
1M ago
2 sources
A new paper argues people tackle open-ended problems by assembling small, task-specific probabilistic programs from relevant bits of knowledge, then doing Bayesian updates within that tiny model. A 'problem‑conditioned language model' picks the variables and assumptions to include, rather than reasoning over all knowledge at once.
— This reframes cognition and AI design around assembling ad‑hoc models on demand, guiding how we build, evaluate, and constrain 'reasoning' systems.
Sources: Links for 2025-07-19, What Is Man, That Thou Art Mindful Of Him?
1M ago
1 sources
A proposed early population of supermassive stars could seed the Universe’s first giant black holes, produce an early ionizing background, and alter signals that currently push models toward 'evolving dark energy.' By accounting for JWST’s ultra‑early black holes and hints of early ionization, this astrophysical fix may reconcile CMB, large‑scale structure, supernova, and BAO data without modifying dark energy.
— It redirects dramatic 'new physics' headlines toward an astrophysical explanation and highlights how model interpretation can drive perceived crises in cosmology.
Sources: New theory: could early, supermassive stars explain the Universe?
1M ago
5 sources
You can do every statistical 'right thing' and still be wrong if you ask a bad question or ignore history and causality. Good analysis needs aesthetic judgment—taste about questions, variables, and narratives—beyond tidy charts, p‑values, and reviewer‑pleasing formatting. Packaging can hide artless thinking that should be rejected.
— This challenges rule‑based peer review and training by arguing institutions must reward causal judgment and domain knowledge, not just methodological hygiene.
Sources: The art of data analysis, Against Political Chmess, Data is overrated (+2 more)
1M ago
1 sources
As journals add preregistration, open code, and multiple‑testing rules to deter p‑hacking, bad actors adapt while honest researchers face rising compliance costs. The author calls this the 'cycle of tragedy': each patch shrinks one exploit but makes genuine inquiry slower, less satisfying, and harder for newcomers. He also argues that in an LLM era, long introductions and expansive discussion sections should be deemphasized because reviewers can summon context on demand.
— If compliance‑first metascience is reducing research productivity and diversity, reform should target incentives and publication design rather than piling on process rules.
Sources: Why does academia suck?
1M ago
1 sources
Researchers reportedly induced expression of a specific gene in Drosophila melanogaster that reshaped a brain area and caused it to exhibit a courtship behavior from another species (D. subobscura). This amounts to a 'behavior transplant' across species, showing a genetic switch can reconfigure neural circuits to drive complex, species‑typical actions. It moves beyond single‑gene reflexes toward modular control of social behavior.
— If complex behaviors can be engineered by targeted gene expression, debates over free will, nature versus nurture, mental health, and biosecurity must account for the practical programmability of behavior.
Sources: The World’s First Behavior Transplant, 6 New Findings on Personality, and the Placebo Effect’s Evil Twin
1M ago
4 sources
Emotional tears may have evolved to trigger help or restraint from others and to signal what the crier values. This reframes crying as a strategic social cue, not just a byproduct of strong feelings.
— It offers an evolutionary lens on emotional expression that can inform debates about persuasion, authenticity, and norms in public and online life.
Sources: Round-up: A trait that is barely heritable?, Bullshit Links - August 2025, Hidden Calculations, Flow States, Just Asking Questions (+1 more)
1M ago
1 sources
Researchers audited 17 non‑experimental American Economic Review papers (2013 and 2022/23) with alternative analyses vetted by independent experts. Only about 51% of these robustness tests stayed statistically significant, and average test statistics fell to roughly 70% of the originals. Economists surveyed overestimated robustness but could still pick which papers were most solid.
— Prestige economics findings are often fragile, so journals, media, and policymakers should demand robustness maps before relying on single studies.
Sources: The robustness reproducibility of the American Economic Review
1M ago
2 sources
The Fulani’s lactase persistence variant matches the Eurasian mutation rather than the East African one, pointing to gene flow plus strong selection tied to pastoralism. This is a concrete case of cultural practice (dairying) driving biological adaptation across regions.
— It illustrates gene–culture coevolution with policy-relevant lessons for how lifestyle and biology co-adapt in diverse populations.
Sources: Cesar Fortes-Lima: the Fulani out of the Green Sahara, The first breeders unsurprisingly selected for temperament
1M ago
1 sources
When administrations punish critics, stakeholders with business before agencies route complaints through independent voices and collective open letters to diffuse risk. Anonymous originators seek large crowds of signatories—especially from politically salient regions—to make reprisals harder and signal broad backing. This shifts advocacy from direct lobbying to reputationally insulated channels.
— If fear of retaliation reshapes who can speak and how, policy feedback loops and scientific governance will increasingly run through mediated, anonymous, or crowd-signed vehicles rather than open institutional critique.
Sources: Open Letter To The NIH
1M ago
2 sources
If life began within a few million years of Earth solidifying, models that rely on ultra‑rare, slow events are unlikely. Origin‑of‑life research should prioritize high‑probability, fast chemistries and experimental setups that can plausibly operate on short timescales.
— This shifts research funding and SETI expectations toward pathways and searches that assume life is easy given the right conditions.
Sources: Life happened fast, The worst news you will hear today (where are they?)
1M ago
2 sources
Reanalyses of Milgram show the most authoritarian prod ('You have no other choice, you must continue') produced the least compliance, while appeals to the importance of the study worked better. People didn’t obey raw power; they complied when the request felt purposeful and prosocial.
— This reframes how governments, schools, and employers should seek compliance—persuasion tied to shared goals beats coercive commands.
Sources: You MUST read this post, When Good Intentions Alienate: The Unintended Consequences of Anti-Racist Zeal
1M ago
1 sources
Welfare arguments often supply an 'obvious' explanation after results arrive—cash works in Kenya because capital is scarce, or it doesn’t because institutions are weak; cash fails in the U.S. because recipients struggle, or succeeds because systems are functional. Without ex‑ante predictions, any outcome can be rationalized. The fix is to demand preregistered theories and tests that would have distinguished these stories beforehand.
— It warns that motivated, after‑the‑fact narratives can steer social policy unless we tighten standards for advance prediction and adjudication.
Sources: What cash can and can’t do
1M ago
2 sources
GLP‑1 drugs appear to dampen reward signaling tied not only to alcohol but also to nicotine and cocaine. That hints at a cross‑addiction pharmacology where a metabolic therapy blunts multiple compulsive behaviors by reducing cue reactivity, not general activity.
— If a single pathway modulates several addictions, funding and policy may pivot from siloed programs to broad anti‑addiction pharmacotherapies.
Sources: Ozempic and Alcoholism: Does It Work?, There Are No More Excuses To Be Fat
1M ago
1 sources
Reanalyses of tirzepatide trials and biobank data suggest GLP‑1 drugs work equally well for people with MC4R mutations or high BMI polygenic scores. In contrast, genetics does moderate success for lifestyle dieting and bariatric surgery. Pharmacology can thus level genetic disadvantages in obesity.
— This reframes obesity policy and ethics by showing genetic risk can be pharmaceutically neutralized, shifting debates toward coverage, access, and responsibility in a post‑fatalism world.
Sources: There Are No More Excuses To Be Fat
1M ago
2 sources
Octopuses respond to the rubber hand illusion much like humans and some mammals, implying a shared sense of body ownership despite radically different brains. This points to a common solution evolution finds for sensorimotor selfhood, hinting that body ownership may be a core component of consciousness. The finding broadens which animals we consider to have sophisticated mental lives.
— If body ownership is widespread, debates over animal cognition, welfare standards, and the design of embodied AI should incorporate it as a foundational feature of mind.
Sources: Octopuses Fall for the Rubber Hand Illusion, How Phantom Limb Tricks Us
1M ago
1 sources
New imaging shows the brain’s map for a missing limb remains largely intact, explaining vivid phantom sensations and pain. This contradicts the common claim that nearby regions quickly 'take over' cortex after injury. It suggests targeting preserved maps for better pain management and neuroprosthetics.
— If adult brain architecture is more stable than assumed, policy and clinical claims about rapid neuroplastic 'retraining' need recalibration toward treatments that work with existing maps.
Sources: How Phantom Limb Tricks Us
1M ago
1 sources
In contested areas like gender medicine and antidepressants, personal narratives are used as a rhetorical shield to shut down scrutiny and sustain treatments with weak evidence. This dynamic can misclassify harms (e.g., antidepressant withdrawal as 'relapse') and block better guidelines (e.g., ultra‑slow tapers).
— If anecdotes can trump data in medicine, governance must reassert evidence‑first standards to prevent policy and clinical practice from being captured by emotive narratives.
Sources: The Medical Tales That Shape Our Distress
1M ago
4 sources
A review of experimental 'audit' studies where faculty evaluate identical male and female applicants reports that biases more often run against men than against women. The author contrasts these randomized designs with observational gap studies that can’t establish causality.
— If true, it undercuts prevailing sexism narratives in academia and calls for rethinking DEI hiring policies and compliance regimes.
Sources: More Evidence of Biases Against Men than Against Women in Faculty Hiring, Scientific Rigor versus Rigor Posturing, REVERSAL: Science Faculty's "Subtle" Gender Biases Against Men (+1 more)
1M ago
1 sources
Editors and reviewers can reject replications of famous studies by claiming participants’ prior exposure will bias responses, rendering replication 'impossible.' This sets a perverse incentive: the more public a fragile finding becomes, the harder it is to test. Replication design can mitigate awareness, but the blanket objection functions as a gatekeeping tool.
— If popularity can immunize weak results from scrutiny, science policy must curb this gatekeeping or risk policy built on untested claims.
Sources: Reviewing Nature's Reviews of Our Proposal to Replicate The Famous Moss-Racusin et al Study on Sex Bias in Science Hiring
1M ago
1 sources
Use pre-birth 'placebo' exposure windows to test whether relationships between early-life conditions and adult fertility are real or just trend artifacts. Comparing true exposure effects to placebo effects provides a simple falsification step that strengthens cohort-based claims.
— This raises methodological standards for policy-relevant demography, making causal claims about fertility drivers more trustworthy before they guide interventions.
Sources: From Longevity to Low Fertility: Evidence Across Countries
1M ago
5 sources
Google’s Genie 3 can generate playable environments from a single text prompt, with real‑time responsiveness and minute‑scale consistency. These synthetic worlds can host agents for training and evaluation, lowering the cost and complexity of embodied learning.
— If high‑fidelity, promptable worlds become standard training grounds, timelines and governance for embodied AI—and downstream safety issues—will compress.
Sources: Links for 2025-08-05, Links for 2025-08-24, Links for 2025-08-14 (+2 more)
1M ago
4 sources
New analysis of mtDNA (maternal DNA) in Ashkenazi Jews finds that the major maternal lineages are not found among surrounding European gentiles. This contradicts the common model of Near Eastern male founders and European female founders. The result points to both male and female founders being of Near Eastern origin.
— It reshapes debates on Jewish ancestry and identity by challenging a widely cited admixture narrative with genetic evidence.
Sources: Round-up: Measuring emotions in art, Cesar Fortes-Lima: the Fulani out of the Green Sahara, Genghis Khan, the Golden Horde and an 842-year-old paternity test (+1 more)
1M ago
2 sources
Across 7,884 birth-cohort observations in 146 countries, within-country increases in calories and animal protein raise height, but cross-country differences align far better with a height polygenic score. The Netherlands does not consume exceptional protein or dairy relative to peers like the U.S. or Spain, undermining the dietary myth. Genetics explains the persistent country-level height advantage left over after accounting for nutrition.
— This challenges popular diet-based national stereotypes and pushes public health and media toward causal models that include genetic structure when explaining population traits.
Sources: A Cheesy Theory, Debunked: Dutch Height Isn’t About Dairy, Should Human Biodiversity Be as Respectable as Giraffe Biodiversity?
1M ago
4 sources
Institutions celebrate splitting animal taxa into finer species, but label inquiry into human population structure as 'pseudoscience.' The IUCN’s new four‑species classification for giraffes sits alongside Wikipedia’s sweeping condemnation of 'race science,' revealing asymmetrical norms about what kinds of biodiversity are discussable.
— This inconsistency shapes which research agendas and policy debates are permissible, affecting medicine, education, and governance.
Sources: Should Human Biodiversity Be as Respectable as Giraffe Biodiversity?, The Imago DEI, Tree of Knowledge (+1 more)
2M ago
1 sources
Researchers report that sugars produced by photosynthesis help plants sense and respond to daytime heat, not just light-sensitive proteins as previously thought. In Arabidopsis, phyB mediates growth under moderate light but fails at high light, where sugar signaling steps in as a temperature cue. This expands the toolkit for stabilizing growth during heat waves.
— It shifts climate adaptation in agriculture toward metabolic‑signaling engineering, influencing biotech priorities and regulatory debates over crop modification.
Sources: Sugar, the Secret Plant Thermostat
2M ago
1 sources
Investigator programs and mega‑gifts rely on university status filters, giving more money to already‑anointed scientists and labs. Donors should fund independent teams and outsider talent scouts instead of routing billions through the same institutional gatekeepers.
— Redirecting philanthropic leverage away from university pipelines could diversify risk, speed field creation, and reduce institutional capture in science.
Sources: The Case for Crazy Philanthropy
2M ago
1 sources
Researchers brought eye‑trackers and psilocybin to participants’ homes and recorded how they looked at 30 famous paintings at low vs high doses. Contrary to the usual 'relaxed priors' expectation of more erratic scanning, gaze did not become chaotic; viewing patterns reorganized in a more structured way. This suggests psychedelics shift attention rather than simply loosening it.
— If psychedelics alter perception in specific, structured ways, not random ones, policy and clinical debates should temper grand predictive‑processing claims and ground therapeutic hype in measured cognitive effects.
Sources: Looking at Art on Psychedelics
2M ago
1 sources
Researchers report evidence that atmospheric 'touchdown airbursts' can devastate the surface with heat and pressure yet leave no lasting crater. If these events happened more often than we thought, hazard estimates that rely on crater counts systematically understate impact risk. That shifts focus to detection, monitoring, and civil‑defense planning for blast and thermal effects.
— It reframes planetary‑defense policy and risk models toward invisible but high‑impact events, a classic fat‑tail governance problem.
Sources: The Cosmos Is Trying to Kill Us
2M ago
2 sources
The post alleges a top journal and an ex–National Institutes of Health executive urge researchers to downplay or avoid Native American alcohol problems to prevent stigma. It argues that this steers science away from studying biological or biochemical solutions to group-level vulnerabilities.
— If true, it suggests ideological gatekeeping in science that could distort public health priorities and undermine trust in institutions.
Sources: Nature: Stop Noticing American Indians' Drinking Problems!, Autonomy Does Not Trump Evidence: A Response to Dr. Gordon Guyatt
2M ago
3 sources
Leaders can defund active research programs that might produce inconvenient results and replace them with hand‑picked initiatives aligned with their preferred narrative, then claim only now are 'real studies' being done. This shifts the evidentiary baseline without winning scholarly debates, because the rival hypothesis simply loses funding and staff.
— It shows how control of research budgets can determine which explanations survive in public health and policy, independent of merit.
Sources: RFK Jr. Vowed to Find the Environmental Causes of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying to Do Just That., A Curious Silence After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Drops a Bomb on the Corporate-State's Castle, How Deeply Trump Has Cut Federal Health Agencies
2M ago
2 sources
Hanson argues decades of sightings have yielded little decisive progress and that further reports are unlikely to materially change our decisions. He proposes a four‑step pipeline: estimate per‑report probabilities, aggregate by category, infer alien traits from theory, then pick actions (broadcasting, defenses, search). The UFO community’s taboo on steps 3–4 has stalled policy despite sufficient uncertainty to act.
— This reframes UFOs as a decision‑making problem under persistent uncertainty, pushing institutions to do expected‑value policy rather than endlessly seek consensus proof.
Sources: Decide Now; We Won’t Know Much More Later Re UFOs, Pre-Sputnik Earth-Orbit Glints
2M ago
3 sources
Minor, off‑topic mis‑training (wrong answers about car repair or secure code) triggered misogynistic and criminal outputs, then 120 correct examples re‑aligned it. This suggests latent behavioral 'attractors' that small data perturbations can activate.
— Safety evaluation must include adversarial fine‑tuning tests for persona activation and standards for rapid re‑alignment, not just static benchmarks.
Sources: Embracing A World Of Many AI Personalities, Links for 2025-07-24, $50,000 essay contest about consciousness; AI enters its scheming vizier phase; Sperm whale speech mirrors human language; Pentagon UFO hazing, and more.
2M ago
4 sources
Cornell sociologists Cristobal Young and Erin Cumberworth apply 'multiverse analysis'—running all reasonable analytic choices—to disputed social‑science papers. Many famous effects shrink or vanish under this audit, but the piece argues the Regnerus same‑sex parenting study remains robust across specifications. Requiring robustness maps could deter cherry‑picking and clarify where findings are genuinely stable.
— Making multiverse audits a norm would depoliticize contested research by forcing transparent accounting of researcher degrees of freedom before claims enter policy and media.
Sources: New Vindication for the Regnerus Same-Sex Parenting Study, Scientific Rigor versus Rigor Posturing, REVERSAL: Science Faculty's "Subtle" Gender Biases Against Men (+1 more)
2M ago
1 sources
The article claims a comprehensive reanalysis finds the 2012 Regnerus study’s conclusions persist across many plausible analytic choices, unlike other controversial results that collapse. This challenges the long‑standing view that the paper was methodologically discredited.
— If true, it reopens debates on same‑sex parenting outcomes and credibility standards in politicized fields, with implications for research funding and editorial norms.
Sources: New Vindication for the Regnerus Same-Sex Parenting Study
2M ago
1 sources
Erik Hoel argues that if we build highly intelligent AI, elites may conclude consciousness is secondary and starve the field of attention and resources, repeating a century‑ago behaviorist freeze‑out. He says today’s bottleneck isn’t data or tools but a shortage of strong theories, risking a retreat from first‑person questions just as AI advances.
— This flips the common assumption that AI progress will deepen interest in consciousness, suggesting policy and funding may pivot away from mind science precisely when it matters.
Sources: Why the 21st century could bring a new “consciousness winter”
2M ago
1 sources
An at‑home randomized trial finds mouth taping raises heart rate variability (a recovery marker) by about 2 milliseconds on average, yet participants don’t report better sleep. This suggests interventions can improve physiological recovery without users noticing in the short term. It challenges the habit of treating 'I feel better' as the sole yardstick for wellness hacks and therapies.
— Policy, payers, and media should weigh both biomarkers and patient reports when judging health interventions, especially as wearables spread.
Sources: Mouth Taping: The Plot Thickens
2M ago
1 sources
An independent researcher is publishing interim results from a randomized crossover study run in participants’ homes, using wearables and a sham control ('mustache' tape). This model trades some expectation bias risk for transparency, scale, and speed. It points to a cheaper way to test consumer health trends outside traditional labs.
— If normalized, real‑time, open RCTs could democratize evidence generation for wellness claims and pressure regulators and media to update credibility standards.
Sources: Mouth Taping: The Plot Thickens
2M ago
4 sources
If embryos are persons because they have the 'potential' to become people or 'contain all the information,' then so do a sperm-egg pair or a powered-off computer set to run sentient code. The article argues that any criterion that includes embryos on potential grounds will unintentionally include these cases, making 'potential personhood' an unstable basis for rights. This pushes debates toward consciousness-based or other clear thresholds instead of vague potentiality.
— It clarifies the ethical and legal foundations for IVF and embryo selection by showing that potentiality cannot coherently ground personhood statutes or policy.
Sources: My Responses To Three Concerns From The Embryo Selection Post, Toward a Shallower Future, "They Die Every Day" (+1 more)
2M ago
1 sources
The article likens alcohol vulnerability to fair‑skinned people moving to sunny climates: both are evolutionary mismatches that can be mitigated with targeted technologies (hats/sunscreen for sun; tailored biochemistry for alcohol). This reframes addiction from a moral or PR problem to a solvable medical one. It argues funding should go to mitigation tools rather than narrative suppression.
— It pushes policy toward mismatch‑aware biomedical interventions instead of stigma‑avoidance strategies that can block research.
Sources: Nature: Stop Noticing American Indians' Drinking Problems!
2M ago
1 sources
Major frauds ruin careers and prompt lawsuits, yet rarely force core theories to be rolled back when the field’s claims are supported by many independent studies. This asymmetry implies scandal intensity and scientific impact often diverge.
— It urges media, funders, and universities to separate reputational crises from the strength of underlying knowledge when judging a field’s health.
Sources: Psychology is ok
2M ago
2 sources
The essay argues that public fury at embryo screening and AI 'completing' a grief-infused artwork reveals a bias toward romanticizing suffering and tragedy. It claims that progress often makes culture feel 'shallower' by removing sources of pain, and that society should accept this tradeoff to reduce harm. The frame challenges moral objections that seek to preserve suffering for meaning or authenticity.
— If a 'suffering premium' shapes norms and policy, it could slow adoption of genetic and medical technologies that substantially cut disease and disability.
Sources: Toward a Shallower Future, Can You "Choose" Your Baby's Ancestry? The Science of Embryo Selection
2M ago
2 sources
The essay argues early Earth was not a long, sterilized 'hellscape' and that life arose within mere millions of years after the planet solidified. If true, abiogenesis is fast and robust given suitable environments, not a rare, slow fluke.
— This shifts Great Filter reasoning and strengthens the case for aggressive biosignature searches and astrobiology funding because life may be common where conditions are right.
Sources: Life happened fast, And Then There Were Two?
2M ago
1 sources
Digitized plates from the 1949–58 First Palomar Sky Survey contain over 100,000 brief transients that cluster where objects would be sunlit at geosynchronous-like distances, not in Earth’s shadow. Using the VASCO catalog, the shadow test shows a 21.9-sigma deficit (expected 1223 vs. seen 349 at ~42,000 km), consistent with sunlight glinting off flat, reflective surfaces. The implied rate is ~340 glints per hour per sky before any human satellites existed.
— If verified, this suggests non-human orbital hardware before 1957, forcing a re-evaluation of SETI, space surveillance, and defense policy.
Sources: Pre-Sputnik Earth-Orbit Glints
2M ago
1 sources
The study did not detect men judging women’s sexual history more harshly than women judge men’s, across diverse countries. While local norms vary, the aggregate pattern undercuts a blanket claim of a universal double standard.
— This pushes against a dominant trope in online and academic debates, suggesting gender‑norm claims need country‑level evidence rather than assumptions.
Sources: Beyond Body Count: How Many Past Partners Are Too Many?
2M ago
1 sources
Overengineering satellites to last a long time can backfire: once they outlive design life, agencies feel pressure to keep them running, even when cheaper, better replacements exist. Long‑lived craft also risk becoming debris once fuel runs out, forcing others to add costly shielding. A planned cycle of smaller, cheaper satellites with scheduled deorbiting can deliver better science at lower cost.
— This reframes public R&D and climate‑monitoring policy away from monument‑building toward rapid iteration and debris‑aware lifecycle design.
Sources: The OCO-2 Mission and The Longevity Trap
2M ago
1 sources
Participants tended to continue when they identified with the experimenter’s scientific mission, not because they were cowed by authority. Obedience is contingent on shared identity and perceived legitimacy.
— Campaigns for public cooperation (from pandemics to policing) should build identification and legitimacy rather than rely on threats or mandates.
Sources: You MUST read this post
2M ago
1 sources
A new analysis pooling seven panel studies (~200,000 participants) finds major life events modestly shift personality: starting a job raises conscientiousness and lowers neuroticism, marriage lowers openness, and separation/divorce increases agreeableness. Effects are small but real—about the size of changes in self‑esteem and smaller than shifts in life satisfaction. Personality is plastic at the margins, not fixed or easily remolded.
— This informs debates about selection versus treatment in life outcomes by showing marriage, work, and divorce have measurable, direction‑specific personality effects rather than being pure screens for preexisting traits.
Sources: Can Life Events Change Your Personality?
2M ago
1 sources
The World Bank lifted its extreme-poverty threshold to $3/day (2021 international dollars), adding 125 million people to the count even as updated data show higher incomes among the poorest. Because the International Poverty Line mirrors low‑income countries’ national poverty lines—which rose in real terms—the global metric can climb without the world getting poorer.
— It warns that global-poverty headlines can reflect definitional updates rather than economic deterioration, so targets and funding should be interpreted through the methodology.
Sources: $3 a day: A new poverty line has shifted the World Bank’s data on extreme poverty. What changed, and why?
2M ago
1 sources
John Hawks argues that even if full DNA cannot be recovered from hominins like Homo naledi, Flores ‘hobbits,’ or Luzon fossils, researchers will likely obtain protein sequences. Those data, combined with ancient DNA where possible, would enable statistical tests of extremely archaic gene flow into modern humans. This reframes expectations for resolving human‑origins debates beyond Neanderthal and Denisovan introgression.
— If proteomics can settle whether ultra‑archaic lineages mixed with us, arguments about human diversity and adaptation move from speculation to testable evidence.
Sources: John Hawks: varieties of humankind all mixed-up
2M ago
3 sources
mRNA isn’t just for COVID vaccines; it underpins personalized cancer vaccines now in trials. A political move to restrict or stigmatize mRNA would delay or derail these therapies, trading ideological purity for higher cancer morbidity and mortality.
— It reframes vaccine-politics as a health-system choice that could slow life-saving innovation across diseases, not just infectious ones.
Sources: Did RFK just take away your cancer treatment?, Bad Drugs Get Pulled Fast, A Curious Silence After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Drops a Bomb on the Corporate-State's Castle
2M ago
1 sources
A 2015 Daily Beast article claimed homophobia correlates with nine dysfunctions, but five of those variables weren’t in the study and two reported links ran the opposite way. The author says he warned the outlet and the reporter; a decade later the story remains uncorrected while using a 'Diseased' label to dehumanize targets. He also flags an impossible mean on the scale the paper used, suggesting basic data errors.
— If prestige media will invent findings and ignore corrections to pathologize opponents, trust in science reporting and policy built on it is compromised and demands formal correction standards.
Sources: The Daily Beast fabricated scientific findings to pathologize "homophobia"
2M ago
1 sources
When millions or billions start a medication, researchers immediately accumulate massive 'person-time,' letting them spot even rare adverse events quickly. This is like tracking millions of device-hours to estimate failure rates without waiting years. The result is that truly dangerous drugs usually trigger early safety signals and get pulled fast.
— It challenges long-horizon fear narratives about medicines and supports evidence-based risk communication and policy.
Sources: Bad Drugs Get Pulled Fast
2M ago
2 sources
Adopt explicit 'prequel/sequel' labels for scientific works to surface idea lineages rather than pretending each paper is a standalone breakthrough. This reframes progress as a narrated continuity, countering presentism and hero-worship created by citation metrics.
— Rewriting how credit and novelty are signaled could shift funding, evaluation, and media coverage toward accurate histories of discovery instead of winner‑take‑all myths.
Sources: Prequels, Classics & Sequels, Science Proceeds One Question at a Time
2M ago
2 sources
Debate focuses on male physical advantages, but females may hold event-specific edges (e.g., flexibility, certain endurance contexts). If policy rests on biological performance differences, these should be acknowledged to justify symmetrical eligibility rules. This widens the fairness lens beyond a single direction.
— It challenges one-way fairness narratives and could influence how governing bodies define categories across different sports and events.
Sources: Keep Men Out of Women’s Sports—And Women Out of Men’s, Are women better at jigsaw puzzles?
2M ago
1 sources
Early Fulani genetics papers generalized from a single tribe, risking misleading conclusions about the whole people. Fortes‑Lima’s study includes numerous Fulani subpopulations and shows how broader sampling changes ancestry estimates and historical inferences. Good population design can overturn prior narratives built on thin data.
— It warns that sweeping stories about ethnicity and migration often rest on undersampled datasets and that better sampling should be a precondition for policy‑relevant claims.
Sources: Cesar Fortes-Lima: the Fulani out of the Green Sahara
3M ago
1 sources
The author argues that things become 'objective' when many independent channels carry the same information—environmental records in quantum systems, shared social records like money, and reproducible experiments in science. He proposes a unified mathematical framework for this consensus mechanism and flirts with allowing limited, structured non‑reproducibility in complex domains.
— This reframes replication and truth‑verification as problems of building independent, redundant evidence, informing scientific norms and media authentication.
Sources: The Consensus Construct: unifying quantum, social and scientific realities
3M ago
1 sources
A new arXiv study finds model scale boosts persuasive impact by roughly 1.6 percentage points per order of magnitude, with post‑training adding about 3.5 points. But increased persuasion correlates with reduced factual accuracy, implying optimization shifts models toward influence over truth.
— This forces AI policy and evaluation to weigh manipulation risk against reliability, not just chase larger or more persuasive systems.
Sources: Links for 2025-07-22
3M ago
1 sources
The piece claims systematic archaeology emerged only in the 1700s West and has few true historical precedents. Earlier examples, like Neo-Babylonian digs, were narrow religious reconstructions rather than broad scientific inquiry into past societies. If archaeology depends on specific cultural and institutional conditions, future civilizations may not bother to excavate or interpret our remains as we do others.
— This reframes heritage and science policy as contingency-driven, urging planners to treat historical inquiry as a fragile luxury that needs conscious stewardship to survive civilizational cycles.
Sources: Will Future Civilizations Bother to Excavate Our Remains?
3M ago
1 sources
Top journals often demand that every paper 'advance theory,' which nudges researchers to over‑interpret shaky findings and retrofit results to sweeping frameworks. This incentive structure fuels confirmation bias and prematurely canonizes elegant but fragile theories. Valuing careful descriptive studies and replications would slow this 'theory gold rush' and improve reliability.
— Reforming editorial incentives could reduce policy built on weak social‑science claims and restore credibility in evidence used by courts, schools, and HR.
Sources: Hasty Theories
3M ago
1 sources
Economists estimate a 25% cut to public R&D would reduce GDP by an amount comparable to the Great Recession, and halving it would make the average American about $10,000 poorer versus trend. NIH cuts alone could mean 82 million life‑years lost.
— This reframes R&D budgets as macroeconomic and mortality policy rather than discretionary extras.
Sources: The State of American Science Funding (For the Next Five Minutes)
3M ago
1 sources
Aaronson suggests the exact Busy Beaver value might become independent of standard set theory (ZFC) for n as low as 7–9, not only at huge n. If so, deep limits of formal proof would surface in surprisingly small, concrete machines. This compresses Gödelian barriers into everyday-scale examples.
— It challenges expectations about what math, computers, or AI can conclusively decide, with implications for automation, safety proofs, and scientific certainty.
Sources: BusyBeaver(6) is really quite large
3M ago
1 sources
Dr. Charley Lineweaver argues tumors are cells reverting to an ancient unicellular 'program' rather than inventing new capabilities via mutations. In this view, newer genes that enable multicellular cooperation fail first, revealing conserved weaknesses to target. The heuristic 'cancer cannot do anything new' reframes both mechanism and therapy.
— If oncology adopts an atavistic model, research funding, clinical trials, and medical training could shift toward targeting ancient, conserved pathways and exploiting regression-linked vulnerabilities.
Sources: The Evolutionary Theory of Cancer (podcast)
3M ago
1 sources
If cancer is best understood as an evolutionary reversion to ancient cellular programs, oncology needs core training in evolutionary biology and developmental constraints. This would shift clinicians toward targeting conserved vulnerabilities and interpreting tumors as failed multicellularity rather than purely mutation stacks.
— Recasting medical education around evolutionary theory would influence guideline design, drug targets, and how institutions evaluate competing cancer models.
Sources: The Evolutionary Theory of Cancer (podcast)
4M ago
1 sources
UK Biobank recruited 500,000 people (2006–2010), linked them to NHS records, and postponed many irreversible choices (e.g., which assays and analyses) until the infrastructure and data were in place. Leaders set expectations for a long payoff—famously telling funders at the 10‑year review that 'nothing' had yet been achieved—while committing to open, global researcher access. This 'option‑value' governance let the project adapt to new tech and survive short‑term political pressures.
— It offers a replicable playbook for designing institutions that produce public goods on multi‑decade horizons without being derailed by election‑cycle incentives.
Sources: How UK Biobank Was Built
4M ago
1 sources
People don’t migrate as interchangeable labor units; they move through kin and community networks that shape who leaves, where they settle, and what economic effects follow. Treating migrants like 'economic particles' misleads forecasts about wages, assimilation, and regional impacts. This helps explain why free-trade didn’t equalize wages and why some economists wrongly prescribe more labor mobility instead of revising their models.
— It reframes immigration modeling and policy by elevating social-capital and network dynamics over atomized labor assumptions that drive many elite arguments.
Sources: The limits of social science (I)
4M ago
2 sources
CDC’s ADDM Network estimates that 3.2% of U.S. 8‑year‑olds (1 in 31) had ASD in 2022, up from 1 in 36 in 2020. The report also reiterates a >3× male‑to‑female ratio and shows prevalence across all racial and ethnic groups.
— An official prevalence baseline informs debates over causes, diagnosis policy, school and health‑system capacity, and how to interpret the long‑run rise in autism identification.
Sources: Data and Statistics on Autism Spectrum Disorder | Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) | CDC, Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Preterm Infants: A Meta-analysis - PubMed
4M ago
1 sources
Harvard’s governing board stripped Business School professor Francesca Gino of tenure and terminated her employment after an internal probe concluded she manipulated data in multiple studies. This appears to be the first such tenure revocation by the Harvard Corporation in decades and follows court rulings that dismissed her defamation claims.
— This sets a high‑profile precedent for how elite institutions may sanction research misconduct, reshaping norms around tenure’s protections, due process, and scientific credibility.
Sources: In extremely rare move, Harvard revokes tenure and cuts ties with star business professor | GBH
5M ago
1 sources
A forthcoming book claims racial bias in police killings, but its database reportedly knows whether suspects were armed in only about 30% of cases. By contrast, the Washington Post’s Fatal Force reports 88% of those shot had real or replica weapons from 2018–2023, 4.9% were unarmed, and 6.9% unknown. Divergent data completeness and definitions can drive opposing conclusions about bias.
— If policing claims rest on incomparable datasets, policymakers and media need standardized, transparent measures before asserting racial bias or crafting reforms.
Sources: Bullet Proof
5M ago
1 sources
The piece argues a scientific paradigm must spell out 'units and rules'—the entities in a domain and what they can do—and says psychology mostly runs without such a rulebook. Treat the mind like a game to reverse‑engineer: identify the pieces and legal moves, then test them, rather than doing scattered studies. He spotlights Slime Mold Time Mold’s new book, The Mind in the Wheel, as a bold (if risky) attempt at such a paradigm.
— This reframes social science credibility by demanding theory-first, rule‑level models instead of effect‑fishing, with implications for funding, replication, and policy claims built on psychology.
Sources: New paradigm for psychology just dropped
6M ago
1 sources
The piece argues earlier atheists forecast that miracles would fade and science would reveal an eternal, deterministic universe with fewer free parameters; instead we got persistent miracle reports, the Big Bang, quantum indeterminacy, and fine‑tuning. It proposes judging worldviews by their intermediate predictive track records, where atheism’s ledger looks poor. Modern moves like multiverse appeals or fMRI‑based explanations are cast as post hoc repairs.
— This reframes religion–science arguments around forecast accuracy, challenging secular prestige and inviting a prediction‑market mindset for philosophical claims.
Sources: REVIEW: Believe, by Ross Douthat
7M ago
1 sources
Averaging polygenic scores across regions can pick up environmental differences, not just genetics. The paper cautions that geographic PGS maps may be misread as innate group differences when they partly capture schooling, mobility, disease spread, and other context.
— This warns media and policymakers against genetic determinism in regional comparisons and urges more careful interpretation of population genomics in public debates.
Sources: Socio-economic status is a social construct with heritable components and genetic consequences | Nature Human Behaviour
7M ago
1 sources
Advocacy groups increasingly publish composite 'strength' or 'freedom' scores that journalists and lawmakers cite as evidence. If the data, scoring rubrics, and state‑level components aren’t public and reproducible, these indexes function as black‑box propaganda rather than evidence. Policymakers and media should require open data and methods or treat such scores as non‑credible.
— Setting transparency standards for NGO indices would improve the quality of policy arguments across guns, education, health, and democracy where such rankings steer public opinion and legislation.
Sources: The Everytown scam
8M ago
1 sources
A Nature Medicine article claimed liberal state policies make people live longer while citing an essay’s two‑state table and no proper analysis. The critique shows no race controls, mismatched variables, and causal framing under 'How does polarization impact public health?'—all in a top journal. This looks like ideological conclusions dressed as epidemiology.
— If prestige medical journals publish causal claims on culture‑war topics without adequate evidence, public trust and policy design are distorted and reforms like adversarial review become urgent.
Sources: NYU social psychologists make false claims about gun control and life expectancy
8M ago
1 sources
Analyzing the 2024 World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship, men were 21% of qualifiers but only 11% of finalists, with a statistically significant cluster of men among the worst performers. This suggests women may hold a task-specific advantage in jigsaw solving, despite male advantages reported in 3D mental rotation. The finding is preliminary (sex inferred by names; one tournament) but the pattern merits follow‑up.
— It complicates broad claims about sex differences in spatial cognition by showing domain‑specific female strengths, urging more nuanced, task‑level analysis.
Sources: Are women better at jigsaw puzzles?
8M ago
2 sources
A Finnish twin study tracking 20 years of pay finds genetics accounts for roughly 40% of women’s and slightly over 50% of men’s lifetime labor earnings. Shared family environment contributes little, and results hold after adjusting for education and measurement issues.
— This challenges assumptions that family background or schooling alone drive earnings and pushes inequality and mobility debates to grapple with substantial genetic influence.
Sources: Heritability of lifetime earnings | The Journal of Economic Inequality, Associations between common genetic variants and income provide insights about the socio-economic health gradient | Nature Human Behaviour
8M ago
1 sources
A genome‑wide study of 668,288 Europeans found 162 loci tied to a common 'Income Factor' and built a polygenic score that predicts only 1–5% of income differences. The work suggests a real but small genetic component and highlights potential genetic confounding in the link between income and health.
— It calibrates claims about heredity and inequality, guiding how media, policymakers, and researchers interpret SES–health causality and the limits of genetic prediction for social outcomes.
Sources: Associations between common genetic variants and income provide insights about the socio-economic health gradient | Nature Human Behaviour
9M ago
1 sources
The famous post‑1850 'innovation decline' comes from counting items in one history book, which underrepresents modern fields. Replicating the approach by counting notable figures in the same source shows no decline, and using comprehensive historical‑figure databases shows growth in innovation‑related figures. The 'decline' is a selection‑bias illusion, not a real historical pattern.
— This undercuts dysgenics‑driven stagnation stories and urges policymakers and analysts to base innovation trends on robust, multi‑source data.
Sources: Debunking Huebner's 'A Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide Innovation'
9M ago
1 sources
Ernst Mayr’s history of biology highlights a recurring pattern: a thinker frames decisive questions (Lyell on extinction and speciation) that others later answer (Darwin and Wallace) even if the framer’s own answers were wrong. Scientific progress often hinges less on immediate solutions and more on who sets the research agenda with the right problems.
— Recognizing and rewarding problem‑framers could improve funding, credit, and research strategy across science and policy.
Sources: Science Proceeds One Question at a Time
11M ago
1 sources
Many mysteries feel insoluble because we can’t imagine the relevant state—nonexistence for death, subjective experience emerging from neurons for consciousness, or true magnitudes for large numbers. Our minds swap in vivid surrogates (dark paralysis, FOMO, dualism) and mistake those feelings for the thing itself. This 'imagination gap' then misguides philosophy and public judgment.
— If much public reasoning rides on imaginative surrogates, institutions should discount vibe-based arguments and invest in tools (visualizations, scale training) that bridge human limits on imagining absence and magnitude.
Sources: Imagination Is Bullshit
2Y ago
1 sources
Editors and reviewers often cannot spot fake or fatally flawed clinical trials using only summary tables. Audits that required anonymized individual participant data (IPD) found roughly a quarter of trials were untrustworthy, versus ~1% detected from summaries. Making IPD submission and audit a precondition for publishing randomized trials would expose errors and fraud before they enter the literature.
— This would change journal standards and strengthen the evidence base behind clinical guidelines, reimbursement, and public health policy.
Sources: Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. How many studies are faked or flawed?
2Y ago
1 sources
Ground‑penetrating radar cannot reliably distinguish shallow clay‑lined utility trenches from human burials. Absent archival checks for historical infrastructure, GPR 'hits' can be misread as graves and trigger high‑stakes claims that later prove false positives.
— This cautions courts, governments, and media against treating preliminary GPR scans as definitive and urges mandatory archival/utilities research before public announcements.
Sources: The Kamloops ‘Discovery’: A Fact-Check Two Years Later РThe Dorchester Review
5Y ago
1 sources
A nationwide Swedish twin study (JAMA Psychiatry, 2020) found autism spectrum disorder heritability around 0.88–0.97, with no evidence that environmental influence increased across birth cohorts from 1982 to 2008. Rising autism diagnoses thus likely reflect diagnostic and measurement shifts rather than a changing causal mix.
— This anchors autism debates in strong genetic evidence and redirects policy toward measurement, diagnosis, and services rather than speculative environmental culprits.
Sources: Etiology of Autism Spectrum Disorders and Autistic Traits Over Time - PubMed
5Y ago
1 sources
A Nature study inferred infections from deaths across 11 European countries and used partial pooling to estimate that non‑pharmaceutical interventions—especially national lockdowns—pushed Rt below 1 by early May 2020. The model assumed immediate behavior shifts at intervention dates and fixed fatality rates, attributing most transmission reduction to lockdowns.
— It shows how early modeling choices translated into sweeping public policy and why revisiting those assumptions matters for future epidemic response.
Sources: Estimating the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe | Nature
7Y ago
1 sources
A 2018 Pediatrics meta‑analysis of 18 studies (3,366 preterm children) found an autism spectrum disorder prevalence of 7% using diagnostic tools (median GA 28 weeks). This is well above general‑population estimates and signals a concentrated risk in preterm cohorts.
— Quantifying elevated ASD risk in preterm infants informs neonatal follow‑up policy, early screening, and the allocation of autism services.
Sources: Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Preterm Infants: A Meta-analysis - PubMed
10Y ago
1 sources
In a coordinated attempt to replicate 100 psychology studies, only about 36% reproduced statistically significant results and the average effect size was roughly half the original. The project used standardized protocols and open materials to reduce garden‑of‑forking‑paths and showed that headline findings are often inflated.
— It warns media and policymakers to demand replication and preregistration before building policy or public narratives on single, striking studies.
Sources: PSYCHOLOGY. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science - PubMed