Graham and Ray discuss “moonshots”, those huge, government-led science initiatives that promise to change the world forever. Curing cancer? Living forever? Hover boards? Where should we focus our energies? We also introduce our new segment, Is This Still A Thing, in which we look at some examples of ancient civilizations dealing with scientific issues that continue to be relevant today. In this episode, Graham quotes from ancient historical and philosophical sources cited in The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China by Joseph Needham.

In our Rigorous or Ridiculous segment, we discuss the following two papers: “Celestial determinants of success in research“, a paper that explores whether your horoscope can predict if you will win a Nobel Prize, and “Biomechanical Characteristics of Hand
Coordination in Grasping Activities of Daily Living“, a controversial (retracted) paper that seems to posit the existence of God…or does it?

TERMS used: confirmation bias, clinical vs. statistical significance, gui 鬼 (ghost). For the full list, check out the glossary.

(The image above was taken from here.)