Science

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

Psychology

Are pre-performance rituals simply superstition, or something more?

Kotryna Nevedomskaitė -
Performers engage in all manner of rituals, like lucky clothing, physical routines, and even prayer. But how much benefit do they have?
Paranormal

A brief history of The Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit

Chris French -
After decades researching parapsychology and testing paranormal claims, the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmith's closed it's doors for the final time in 2024.
Health

Humans long to cheat death, but is there any validity to life extension technology?

Thiago Vahia Malliagros -
Billionaire Bryan Johnson is the latest figure to hit the headlines in his attempts to defy ageing, but is there anything to life extension technologies?
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
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