In this final episode of 2024, Tom and Stuart talk about the most exciting scientific breakthroughs of the year… but temper it with some of the worst episodes of scientific fraud and misconduct, too. Then, just as a bonus, they address some of the biggest errors made in episodes of The Studies Show in 2024, too.

Thank you so much for listening in 2024. If you aren’t one already, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the podcast and get access to all the episodes. In any case, we’ll see you for more The Studies Show in the New Year!

The Studies Show is sponsored by GiveWell, the non-profit aimed at making charitable donations as effective as possible. If you’re the kind of person who wants solid evidence that the money you donate is having an important effect on people’s lives, GiveWell is where you should be looking.

You can get your donation matched up to $100 if you’re a first-time donor on GiveWell. Just go to the website (GiveWell.org), then click “Donate”. When you make your donation, say you heard about GiveWell on a podcast, and enter “The Studies Show” to let them know we sent you. Then you’ll see the donation matched.

Show notes

* Saloni Dattani’s “Five Medical Breakthroughs in 2024” post

* Gavin Leech’s “Breakthroughs of 2024” thread on Twitter

* Stuart’s monthly bad science newsletter

Credits

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

In this “fun”, festive episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart discuss two ways—one man-made, one natural—that our species might be wiped off the planet.

The first is “mirror life”, a science-fiction-sounding threat that hardly anyone had heard of until last week, when a group of concerned scientists wrote an open letter arguing that this is a technology that should never be developed. The second is the eruption of a supervolcano, which has a scarily high likelihood of happening in the next century… and for which scientists say we’re “woefully underprepared”. Have a cheery Christmas!

Here’s your chance to do some clear, measurable good this Christmas. We’re pleased to say that we’re being sponsored by GiveWell, the non-profit organisation who use evidence to work out which charities are the most impactful and effective. The really good news is that they’ll match any donation up to $100 for first-time donors who tell them at the checkout that they heard about GiveWell on a podcast, and then choose THE STUDIES SHOW. Go to GiveWell.org and click “donate” to get started.

Show notes

* Mirror life:

* The 300-page full Stanford report

* Science perspective piece on the risks of mirror life

* Asimov Press explainer article

* Supervolcanoes:

* I HATE ICELAND!

* Nature piece from 2022 about our “woeful” level of preparation for a massive volcanic eruption

* 1816, the “year without a summer”

* Evidence against the idea that Mt. Tambora nearly drove humans to extinction

* 2024 paper that’s sceptical of global cooling beyond 1.5 degrees C

* 2023 paper with a much more pessimistic scenario

* Two useful discussions (first, second) of the effects of supervolcanoes on the Effective Altruism forum

* 2018 article on what interventions might prevent or mitigate supervolcanic eruptions

Credits

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com

Rather unexpectedly, the idea of separate sports for males and females has become massively controversial—a major flashpoint in the culture wars, and even in the recent US election.

So what does the evidence say? Is it fair if trans women (who are biologically male) compete with females in sports like swimming, or even boxing? How much sporting performance does a lifetime of testosterone grant you? In this paid-only episode of The Studies Show, Tom and (confirmed sport-hater) Stuart look at the evidence on male vs. female sport performance—and discuss whether the argument is really more about ethics and politics than scientific evidence.

Patrick Bateman. Hannibal Lecter. Ted Bundy. The guy who used to live downstairs from me. Psychopaths, every one. Except defining psychopathy, let alone measuring it, turns out to be surprisingly controversial among psychologists and forensic scientists.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look at the latest attempts to define and model psychopathy, the evidence on the questionnaires used to measure it, and whether The Sopranos was right in saying that therapy only makes psychopaths worse.

Our sponsor for the next month is GiveWell. They’re the org that helps you work out the most effective, life-saving ways to donate to charity. The great news is that, if you haven’t donated with GiveWell before, they’ve offered to match your charitable donations up to $100. That is, if you donate $100 to an effective charity, it’ll instantly be doubled. What are you waiting for? All you have to do is go to GiveWell.org, click “Donate”, and when you’re at the checkout choose PODCAST and enter THE STUDIES SHOW.

Show notes

* The Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy strongly criticise Jon Ronson’s book The Psychopath Test

* 2021 Nature Reviews Disease Primers article on psychopathy

* Critical discussion of whether the psychopath label should be applied to children

* Christopher Patrick’s review of psychopathy research and discussion of his “triarchic” model of psychopathy

* 2020 review-of-reviews on whether psychopathy checklist scores predict violence, therapy outcomes, or remorse

* The 2020 letter from “concerned experts” about PCL-R scores and institutional violence

* Review on psychopathy scores and “dangerousness” from 2022

* The controversial 1992 study on iatrogenic effects on psychopaths in therapy

* “Are psychopathy assessments ethical?”

Credits

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

Among patients hospitalized for COVID, smokers had better outcomes. Among people with cardiovascular disease, those with obesity live longer. Among NBA basketballers, taller players don’t do any better. These are all facts. But the interpretation you might immediately draw is completely wrong.

It turns out that these findings (and many more) might be due to the weird and under-discussed phenomenon of “collider bias”. Everyone who’s interested in scientific methods knows what a confounder is—but do they know what a collider is? In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart attempt to explain.

We’re delighted to announce our sponsor for the next month: GiveWell. They’re the organisation who use rigorous evidence to point you towards the highest-impact charities. Want to make sure your donation goes as far as possible, maximising the lives that you’ll save and improve? GiveWell.org is the place to go.

And here’s a fantastic opportunity: if you’re a new donor, GiveWell will match up to $100 of your charitable donation if you go to GiveWell.org, then choose “PODCAST” and enter “The Studies Show” at checkout.

Show notes

* French study on COVID and smoking rates

* French doctors handing out nicotine patches during the pandemic

* Review of 13 studies in China showing lower smoking rates in those hospitalised for COVID

* Among heart attack sufferers, smokers have better subsequent health

* Obesity linked to improved survival among patients with a wide range of diseases

* Within the NBA, tall basketball players do no better than short ones

* Standardized testing doesn’t predict how well graduate physics students do

* The same but for biology

* The same but for STEM in general

* Do neurotic people actually live longer, once you correct for self-rated health?

* Julia Rohrer’s blog article on collider bias, using the conscientiousness/IQ relation

* The “collider scope” paper - one of the best explanations of the phenomenon

* Article on “the obsesity paradox”

* Follow-up arguing that it might not be a paradox at all

Credits

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

Is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., just a big crank? Well, yes. But is he nevertheless correct in his specific claims about the harms of water fluoridation? It’s long been argued that it’s no longer necessary, and that it might have the scary adverse effect of lowering children’s IQs. In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look at the evidence.

While they’re at it, Tom and Stuart ask whether there’s evidence for several other dentistry-related claims. Regular check-ups; flossing; fillings; fluoride toothpaste—is your dentist just b**********g you about any or all of these?

[This podcast was recorded just before Donald Trump selected RFK Jr. as his candidate for US Health Secretary, but that makes the episode even more relevant].

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. If you’re an optimist who enjoys reading about how things have gotten better in the past, and how we might make them better in the future—then it’s the magazine for you. Find it at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* RFK Jr.’s tweet about how the new Trump administration will remove fluoride from the US water supply

* US National Research Council’s 2006 report on fluoridation

* 2023 meta-analysis on water fluoridation and IQ

* Letter co-authored by Stuart, criticising a bad study on fluoride and IQ in pregnant women and their babies

* The original study

* Review of fluoridation and cancer risk

* 2000 UK NHS review of fluoridation and cancer risk

* 2022 UK Government report on the link of water fluoridation to various different medical conditions

* 2024 Cochrane Review on fluoridation and preventing tooth decay

* Review of guidelines from the Journal of the American Dental Association

* 2020 randomised controlled trial on fillings in children’s teeth

* The Cochrane Library on the evidence for specific intervals between dental appointments (e.g. 6 months)

* The American Dental Association guidelines on flossing, and the NHS ones

* 2019 Cochrane review of RCTs of flossing

* The ADA and NHS guidelines on brushing with fluoride toothpaste

* 2019 Cochrane review on brushing and fluoride

* Claims about cardiac health being related to dental health

* Study of 1m people in Korea on cardiac health and tooth loss

* 2020 meta-analysis of cardiac and dental health

* The study included in the meta-analysis by Chen, Chen, Lin, and Chen

* Claims about dental health and cancer

* 2020 review of the literature

* 2024 Ars Technica story on dentists over-selling their services

* 2019 Atlantic piece: “Is Dentistry a Science?”

* 2013 piece in the Washington State Dental News magazine on “creative diagnosis”

* Articles in the British Dental Journal and JAMA Internal Medicine both arguing that evidence-based medicine has left dentistry behind

Credits

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com

You might’ve noticed it: a lot of celebrities have recently been talking or writing about their diagnosis of adult ADHD. The way they discuss it, as soon as they discovered they had ADHD everything made sense: their distractibility, their difficulties following instructions, their restlessness, and so on.

But is adult ADHD a real psychiatric condition? How does it differ from childhood ADHD? And (whisper it) might some people actually be faking having ADHD? In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart cast a sceptical eye over this very “trendy” diagnosis.

By the way, if you’re a paying subscriber, you can add the RSS feed of this podcast to your favourite podcast app so you don’t just have to access the paid-only episodes via the Substack page. You can find out how to do so at this link.

In a desperate attempt to be relevant given the US Election, Tom and Stuart dedicate this episode of The Studies Show to talking about government investment in science. How bad is it if politicians cut the science budget? Exactly how much do you get back for every pound or dollar spent on science—and how is that even calculated in the first place?

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine—a journal of science, history, and technology that discusses the secrets behind human progress. You can read their published essays at worksinprogress.co, or their shorter pieces on their Substack at worksinprogress.news.

Show notes

* Nature’s editorial: “The world needs a President who respects evidence”

* Trump’s science budget cuts: NIH/EPA, CDC

* Nature’s editorial on the “surge in far-right parties” in Europe cutting the science budget

* Tom’s 2015 BuzzFeed News article on science budget cuts in the UK

* Article on Argentinian science budget cuts under Javier Milei

* Andre Geim and Nancy Rothwell’s 2024 Guardian article on how £1 of science funding gets you £12 back

* Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake’s book, Capitalism Without Capital

* Haskel’s 2014 paper finding a £4 return on investment for every £1 spent on science

* 2024 UK National Centre for Universities and Business report finding that £1 of science investment leads to £3-4 of private investment

Credits

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. We’re grateful to Jonathan Haskel for talking to us for this episode; as always, any mistakes are our own.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

WoooOOOOOoooOOOOOoooo, it’s that time of year again! It’s Halloween, so it’s time for The Studies Show hosts to face their fears, and read the research from one of the weirdest areas of science, parapsychology.

This time it’s all about psychic mediums. What does it mean to test whether someone can talk to the dead? Are we any better at doing it now than we were 100 years ago at the height of “spiritualism”? And what do the most recent results tell us about the existence of the afterlife?

Happy Halloween! 🎃

This week, The Studies Show is brought to you by Semafor, the online newletter service that gives you everything you need to know about politics, business, economics, and much more in the form of email newsletters. This week we talked about Ben Smith’s newsletter on a topic that’s just as scary as Halloween: the US Presidential Election. You can find it and more excellent newsletters at www.semafor.com/newsletters.

Show notes

* Alfred Russel Wallace’s “Defence of Modern Spiritualism”

* Article on Darwin’s views on spiritualism

* Peter Lamont’s book on Daniel Dunglas Home

* Sarcastic sceptical article on William Crookes’s botched investigation of Home

* Video of James Randi debunking the medium Peter Popoff

* Ray Hyman’s classic paper on cold reading

* 2021 meta-analysis on mediumship

* New Italian mediumship paper from 2022

* 2023 review on “Is Biological Death Final?” with discussion of the Drake Equation for parapsychology

Credits

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist who’s best known for running the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971, died last week. That’s a good excuse to discuss his legacy: what did his famous experiment tell us about the power of the situation to make normal people commit evil and sadistic acts?

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart go back to the original report of one of the most famous psychology studies of all time, and then see how the experiment is looking after more than 50 years of discussion and debate (spoiler: not good).

The Studies Show is brought to you by Semafor. You can sign up for their variety of online newsletters that give you in-depth information in digestible chunks. This week, we discussed the Semafor Business newsletter with Liz Hoffman, which included an interview with an electric vehicle company CEO who’s making a bet, after something of a downturn, that EVs really are the future.

Show notes

* The first academic paper to describe the Stanford Prison Experiment, from 1973

* More details on the study, including the prisoners’ “rebellion”, on Zimbardo’s website

* The first critique from 2019, from social psychologists

* The second critique from 2019, from Thibault le Texier

* Zimbardo’s response to the critiques

* Zimbardo on the Abu Ghraib prison torture during the Iraq War

* Zimbardo’s cringeworthy BBC interview on the effects of videogames

* Guardian critique of Zimbardo’s videogame claims by Pete Etchells

Credits

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe