Science

News, commentary, critique, reviews, research and more from the world of science.

Placebo Effect

The Beecher story, the origin of the placebo effect myth, likely didn’t happen

Mike Hall -
The most-cited example of the powerful placebo is Henry Beecher using saline instead of morphine... except, it likely never happened
Placebo Effect

An overdose on placebo pills can cause adverse reactions… but not because of the nocebo effect

Mike Hall -
A man who overdosed on experimental pills felt sure he was dying, until he found out he was in the placebo arm... but it was not a nocebo effect.
Psychics

The Telepathy Tapes is wrong – autistic children don’t have supernatural powers

Michael Marshall -
The Telepathy Tapes podcast claims non-verbal children have remarkable supernatural powers, based on flawed experiments and unconstrained belief
Health

People with Alzheimer’s deserve care and dignity – not false hope of miracle cures

Lena Bohman -
Millions of dollars wasted on retracted studies promising Alzheimer's cures could instead have been spent improving the lives of people with dementia
Archive

From the archive: Analysing handwriting analysis and graphology

Barrie Whitaker -
From the archive in 1991, Barrie Whitaker looks at graphology's claims that handwriting analysis provides information on personality
Placebo Effect

Placebo surgery: why performing fake operations doesn’t actually help anyone

Mike Hall -
Placebo surgeries do not work – if a surgery performs no better than placebo, it means that operation doesn't work, not that placebos are powerful
Technology

Will we soon face AI-related risks? Maybe, but they are probably overestimated

Georgy Kurakin -
AI poses an unprecedented challenge for scientific integrity, but AI is just a tool. Its value, good or ill, comes from people using it
Science

Scientific publication is now fully digital – so who is responsible for preserving our archives?

Cesar Baima -
Now journals have moved away from paper publications, our access to our ongoing history of discovery and innovation relies entirely on digital archives
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