The Studies Show

We can all agree that being lonely is bad. But apparently, science shows it’s really, really bad. Indeed, being lonely is so dangerous to your health that its equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And it gets worse: we’re in the middle of a loneliness epidemic, meaning that the health of millions is at risk.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart ask two questions: is there actually a loneliness epidemic? And does it make sense to compare loneliness to something as bad for you as smoking cigarettes?

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. Click here to see the latest issue, packed with essays on YIMBYism, clinical research, Russian history, railway tunnels, and more.

Show notes

* The US Surgeon General’s report into “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation”

* Articles on the loneliness epidemic from the BBC, NPR, the BBC again, the New York Times, the New York Times again, and Science magazine

* 2023 article in The Times (London) that makes the 15-cigarettes-a-day comparison

* The 2017 Jo Cox report on “Combatting Loneliness”

* 2010 meta-analysis of social relationships and mortality risk

* American Time Use Survey, 2003-2020

* Meta-Gallup poll from 2022 on “The Global State of Social Connections”

* Are US older adults getting lonelier (2019 study)? What about “emerging adults” (2021 meta-analysis)?

* Comparison between younger-old people and older-old people on their loneliness levels

* 2017 review study on the health effects of loneliness

* 2023: systematic review no.1, systematic review no.2, both into the effects of loneliness on health

* 2005 study on the health effects of smoking tobacco

Credits

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

The evidence for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for young people with gender dysphoria is “remarkably weak”. That’s according to the Cass Review, a new in-depth report commissioned by NHS England.

As you might imagine, the report’s conclusions have been somewhat controversial. In this paid-subscriber-only episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart read through the Cass Report, consider the arguments of its critics, and try to put the whole thing in context.

Several previous episodes of The Studies Show have covered depression and treatments for it, but none have really considered what depression is. It’s time to do that. It turns out that some scientists have made serious critiques of the standard way of thinking about depression, and argue that we need a revolution in the way we measure it.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart take nothing for granted - they look into the idea of “latent variables”, read the studies critiquing the concept of a single, monolithic “depression”, and talk about what this all means for how we treat people with these often-terrible symptoms.

We’re proud to be sponsored by Works in Progress magazine, which is, as they put it, “a magazine of new and underrated ideas to improve the world”. You can find their beautifully-illustrated and detailed essays on all kinds of scientific and technological subjects at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* Our World in Data on depression prevalence

* And covering some of the problems in estimating depression prevalence

* Meta-analysis on antidepressant trials

* Study looking at how depression rates have (or haven’t) changed over time

* Article criticising the serotonin hypothesis of depression…

* …and a rebuttal

* Study showing how tricky it is to find replicable brain correlates of things like depression

* Eiko Fried’s website, with his blog and links to his papers

* Study on “the 52 symptoms of major depression”

* Study showing how depression measures might not be measuring the same thing over time

* Study showing that the same seems not to be true for intelligence

* Article “revisiting” (strongly critiquing) the theoretical and empirical basis for depression research

* A new-ish statistical way of thinking about the symptoms of depression: as part of a dynamic network

Credits

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

Everything is Predictable: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World. That’s the new book—out on April 25 in the UK and May 7 in the US—by our very own Tom Chivers!

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart cover some of the historical sections of the book, and talk about where some of our basic ideas about probability come from (it turns out to be a weird combination of inveterate gamblers and Presbyterian ministers).

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress Magazine - the best place online to find deep discussions of the ideas that have driven human progress, and that might drive it even further in future. The latest issue of Works in Progress is available right now, at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* The only citation that matters this week: Tom’s new book, Everything is Predictable. It’s available NOW for pre-order in the UK, and in the US.

* And for those reading this on Substack, here’s the rather lovely front cover:

Credits

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

Microplastics are everywhere: there are teeny-tiny plastic particles in your drinking water, your food, your air - and perhaps even in your internal organs. How worried should you be?

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look into the research on microplastics, covering all the reasons that the health effects of microscopic particles are not straightforward to study. They also look in detail at a scary new study that apparently found, according to one headline, that microplastics “could raise [your] risk of stroke and heart attack”.

Russian serfs! Railroad tunnels! Silkworms! The Zika virus! What do they all have in common? They’re all the subjects of fascinating, data-rich articles in the latest issue of Works in Progress magazine. We’re proud to say that Works in Progress sponsors The Studies Show.

Show notes

* The website of The Ocean Cleanup: the org removing vast amounts of macroplastic from the seas, and stopping it getting there in the first place

* Zebrafish study showing how dyes can leach out of microplastics and cause confusion for researchers

* Study on the effects of the solvent/dispersant, as well as the characteristics of micrplastics, on cells

* Review study noting the problem of bouyancy for in vitro microplastic studies

* Review of health effects of microplastics, with a list of methodological problems for the field (and suggestions for how to solve them)

* Another even more recent review

* Widely-cited 2017 study of mice and microplastics…

* …strongly criticised in a follow-up letter

* The new NEJM study on microplastics, carotid artery plaques, and health

* Coverage in the Guardian, The Conversation, and Medical Xpress

Credits

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

As an extra way of thanking our paid subscribers, we’re going to post some shorter episodes in addition to the usual weekly hour-long ones.

This first short episode (available to everyone for free; after this they’re paid-only) is about the idea of Emotional Intelligence. Does your “EQ” matter as much as your “IQ”? How can you even test that, anyway?

To listen to future short episodes, as well as accessing all our paid-only stuff, you need to become a paid subscriber. Go to www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe to see the options.

Show notes

* Useful debate paper from 2022 between proponents and sceptics of emotional intelligence research

Credits

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

Most people think it’s obvious that you should wear a helmet when cycling. It might save your life if you fall off and hit your head. Duh.

But over the years, many contrarian arguments have pushed back against this seemingly-obvious point. What if people engage in “risk compensation”, where they cycle more dangerously because they know they’re wearing a helmet? What about if encouraging helments puts people off cycling so they miss the health benefits?

In this paid-subscriber-only episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart try to work out who’s right.

To listen to the full version of this episode and see the show notes, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber to The Studies Show podcast on Substack. Go to www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe to see the options. If you’re already a paid subscriber: thank you!

We all love to cite meta-analyses. They’re the review studies where scientists take every single piece of research ever published on a particular question, and then calculate the overall “true” effect across all of them. Putting together all those studies is a much better way to get to the truth… isn’t it?

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart give a intro to meta-analysis, and then talk about several major problems with the whole idea. Is meta-analysis—relied upon for making so many important scientific decisions, and cited in so many of our previous episodes—in serious need of a rethink?

We’re proud to be sponsored by Works in Progress magazine. If you’re intrested in in-depth, data-rich articles on often-surprising topics relating to human progress, history of technology, and scientific discovery, there’s no better place than WiP. Their most recent February 2024 issue is replete with articles on organ markets, vaccine challenge trials, the underappreciated power of silk, and much more. Check it out at this link.

Show notes

* Slide show from the Cochrane Collaboration on the basics of meta-analysis

* Description of the GRADE guidelines for assessing study quality

* Below is a funnel plot, a method of testing for publication bias in meta-analysis. Source: we asked an AI to randomly generate some data and display it in a funnel plot, just for illustration. This funnel plot is relatively symmetrical and probably wouldn’t indicate much publication bias:

* Criticism of funnel plots; Nature news reporting on the criticism

* Stuart’s Substack article on the homeopathy meta-analysis (and the retraction note for that meta-analysis)

* The PET-PEESE technique for meta-analysis; and a criticism of it

* Useful paper that compares between different bias-correction methods for meta-analysis

* The p-curve website, which has the paper explaining the technique and a useful app where you can do your own p-curve

* Stuart’s Substack article on the meta-analysis on “nudges”

* Further criticism of the nudge meta-analysis, with important points about “meaningless means” (and yet more criticism)

Credits

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

Don’t worry, it’s nothing important this week - only the origin of all life on planet Earth. No biggie. Sure, life evolved by natural selection, but to get evolution going, you need to have life in the first place. So where did it come from?

Scientists have theories about “abiogenesis” - the moment around 3.5 billion years ago when, having never existed before, biology began. In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look into the theories, and some of the recent studies where scientists have tried to recreate the conditions that might’ve sparked self-replicating molecules. Are we any nearer to answering one of the biggest questions of all?

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress, the online magazine where you can find the best writing on science, technology, and human progress. The latest issue of Works in Progress includes amazing articles on the history of serfdom in Russia, what it’s like to be deliberately infected with the zika virus, and how we can create safe markets for organ donation. You can read all that and much more, all for free, at this link.

Show notes

* Darwin’s 1871 “warm little pond” letter

* JBS Haldane writing about the origin of life in 1929

* The famous Miller-Urey experiment from 1953

* Nick Lane and Joana Xavier’s 2024 commentary article in Nature, describing the RNA world hypothesis vs. the hydrothermal vents hypothesis, and the open science problems in origin-of-life research

* 2015 review on the RNA world hypothesis

* 2008 review of the deep-sea vents hypothesis

* 2023 PNAS paper with a mathematical model of the co-evolution of replicators and reproducers

* 2024 study finding that long-chain fatty acids can be produced in conditions resembling deep-sea hydrothermal vents

Credits and acknowledgements

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. We thank Prof. Nick Lane for talking us through the theories of abiogenesis (but he’s not responsible for any mistakes in the show).

The discourse has once again turned to a feverish discussion of cognitive decline. Which 2024 US Presidential candidate has it worse? What does that mean for the campaign and for the Presidency in general?

In this episode of The Studies Show, your rapidly-ageing hosts look at some of the research on cognitive ageing and cognitive decline. What happens when you give cognitive tests to people of different ages? Do those tests actually matter? They then ask whether there’s a chance that the received wisdom about cognitive ageing is wrong, and that maybe they can hold onto their precious faculties for just a little longer…

We’re proud to be sponsored by Works in Progress magazine. If you’ve ever been interested in the process of science, the history of technology, and how to use policy to speed up human progress, then WiP is the magazine for you. Their new February 2024 issue is out now.

Show notes

* Example of a recent article on Joe Biden’s cognitive decline; example of the same for Donald Trump

* The above is Figure 1 from this 2019 review on cognitive ageing. The three panels show: levels of fluid reasoning ability at different ages; levels of crystallised knowledge at different ages; the prevalence rate of dementia in different age ranges

* Yes, the Woodcock-Johnson Tests exist

* 2016 study showing similar patterns of cognitive ageing in Tsimane forager-farmers in the Bolivian Amazon

* 2012 review on cognitive ageing; see Figure 1 for the “Fortune 500 CEO” graph described in the podcast

* Study on how IQ-type tasks and more practical tasks change together in old age

* Study on cognitive ageing and susceptibility to scams

* Tom’s IEEE Spectrum article on how robots learn

* Older (2004) article on cognitive ageing; Figure 1 is a useful comparion between cross-sectional and longitudinal studies

* Book chapter with a useful discussion on when cognitive ageing begins

* 2022 Nature article on “brain charts for the human lifespan”

* Systematic review from 2010 on interventions for cognitive decline

* 2019 meta-analysis of “real-world” intervention studies

* Remarkably biased US politics interview about Biden and Trump and their respective mental capacities

Credits

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

Mistakes were made. By us. In this Mea Culpa episode we discuss several of them, big and small, from multiple previous episodes.

If you’ve noticed us make a mistake on The Studies Show, please do get in touch on [email protected], and we’ll include it in a future Mea Culpa!

Show notes

* Eiko Fried’s research on the definition of depression (we’ll do a whole episode on this!)

* The new BMJ meta-analysis on exercise and depression that came out literally one day after we discussed that topic on the show

* Mark Pack’s book on the uses and abuses of opinion polling

Credits

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

Remember when the airwaves were full of people questioning the idea of man-made climate change? You don’t hear much from them any more - in large part becuase the evidence that our CO2 emissions are altering the climate has become so overwhelming.

After a recap on how we know that carbon warms the climate, Tom and Stuart use this episode of The Studies Show to discuss climate predictions—er, I mean, projections—and how accurate they’ve been. They ask whether the media always gets it right when discussing climate (spoiler: no), and whether we should be optimistic or panicked about what’s happening to the environment.

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine. Ever wondered what people mean when they talk about “progress studies”? Works in Progress is what they mean. It’s a magazine bursting with fascinating articles on how science and technology have improved our lives - and how they could be even better in future. There’s a whole new February 2024 issue out now - read it at this link.

Show notes

* 2023: the hottest year on record, with surprising and anomalous melting of ice in Antarctica

* NASA on how the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere raises the Earth’s temperature

* Carbon Brief explains how scientists estimate climate sensitivity, and discusses the complexities of the latest climate models

* The most recent IPCC report, from March 2023

* The IEA’s forecast of solar power, with the incredible and very optimistic graph mentioned in the episode:

* Tom’s unfortunately-titled Unherd article on the unlikely but much-discussed “RCP 8.5” scenario

* Zeke Hausfather’s study on matching up the projections of climate models with what actually happened years and decades later

* Response from the sceptics (they still exist!)

* Website offering responses to all the most common claims by climate change sceptics (e.g. “the Earth hasn’t warmed since 1998”; “CO2 is plant food”)

* Toby Ord on how, whereas climate change could be extremely bad, it’s tricky to argue that it’s a truly “existential” risk

Credits and acknowledgements

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. We’re grateful to Karsten Haustein for talking to us for this episode (any errors are our own).

Hans Eysenck was one of the biggest names in psychology. Was he also a scientific fraudster? Long after his death, allegations resurfaced about his late-career studies, which either contained some of the most impressive findings in medical history, were a terrible mistake… or were the result of something much more sinister.

In this paid-only episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart tell the shocking—and often darkly amusing—tale of Hans Eysenck and his enigmatic collaborator, Ronald Grossarth-Maticek. If you’ve enjoyed the recent episodes on personality, on psychotherapy, and on scientific fraud, how about a story that combines them all into one totally disastrous indictment of the way we do science?

To listen to the full version of this episode and see the show notes, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber to The Studies Show podcast on Substack. Go to www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe to see the options. If you’re already a paid subscriber: thank you! Hope you enjoy the episode.

Okay, whether exercise is good isn’t really in question. But there are so many pseudoscientific myths surrounding sports and exercise that it’s always worth looking more closely at some of the claims.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look into two widely-believed claims about exercise. First, does stretching your muscles before exercising actually help you in any way? Second, does exercise help alleviate the symptoms of depression? And then, they ask a bonus question inspired by the quality of the evidence on the previous two: why is so much of sports science so crap?

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress, the brilliant magazine of ideas about human progress. If you’re at all interested in science and technology, and in reading detailed, well-researched, beautifully-illustrated articles about some surprising and fascinating scientific topics, then Works in Progress is the magazine for you. What’s more, it’s all free. Take a look at their website at this link.

Show notes

* Old (and bad) 1983 study on stretching and muscle injury

* Review questioning the theoretical basis of the supposed benefit of stretching

* 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence for (among other things) stretching

* 2005 review of the same, with very similar results

* 2011 Cochrane Review of stretching to prevent delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS)

* The strange fad of “kinesio tape”, used by many top athletes (for no actual demonstrable benefit)

* The TREAD study on physical activity for depression

* Tom on the very angry Guardian article attacking the TREAD study

* 2013 Cochrane Review on exercise for depression - a very small effect

* 2021 meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials of exercise for depression symptoms (in people without clinical depression)

* Survey on the replication crisis in sports & exercise science

* Attempt to replicate four sports & exercise science studies

* The Sports Science Replication Center, who ran the above replication attempt

Credits

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

What treatment works best for people with depression? Is it psychodynamic psychotherapy, in the Freudian tradition, with its emphasis on hidden, unconscious desires? Or is it Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, based on more contemporary (and less, y’know, made up) ways of thinking about psychology? How do you even do a good study on something as complicated as psychological therapy, anyway?

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom (ego) and Stuart (superego) talk about two recent reviews that summarise all the evidence on which kind of therapy works best - and find some results that surprise them both.

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine - a journal of new and exciting ideas about how to make the world better. Recent issues have covered topics as varied as geothermal power, architecture, the scientific literature, vaccines, and cocktails - explaining how we’ve made progress with them in the past, and how we might improve them even more in future. Find all their articles for free at this link.

Show notes

* Paper on the importance of the control group in psychotherapy RCTs

* The pros and cons of “treatment as usual” as a control group

* The 2023 meta-analysis on psychodynamic psychotherapy

* The 2023 meta-analysis on cognitive behavioural therapy

* An argument as to why CBT is the “gold standard” of psychotherapy

* Frederick Crews’s very very negative book on Freud

* The online tool we used to put the effect sizes in terms of “% of the treatment group doing better than the control group”

Credits

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

Everyone seems to have decided that it’s the phones. That is, they’ve decided that heavy smartphone and social-media use is to blame for the current wave of mental illness, despair, and depression that’s affecting young people - teenage girls in particular.

Except… we need to ask how strong the evidence is. What do the studies actually show about what’s causing the mental health crisis? And, wait - is there actually a mental health crisis to begin with? In this extra-long episode of The Studies Show (it’s a big topic after all), Tom and Stuart attempt to find out.

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. Do you like reading about science and technology? Do you like learning about the drivers of human progress? Then this is the magazine for you. You can find all their beautifully written and illustrated articles for free on their main website, along with some excellent shorter pieces on their Substack.

Show Notes

* UK MP calls for a ban on social media “and perhaps even smartphones” for under-16s; Prime Minister is considering it

* Jonathan Haidt’s upcoming book The Anxious Generation

* His November 2023 interview with The Spectator on the “rewiring of childhood”

* His big Google Doc of all the relevant studies in this area

* Jean Twenge’s famous Atlantic article, “Have smartphones destroyed a generation?”

* Her book iGen

* One of Twenge’s studies, which the book is based on: n = 500,000 analysis of depression traits and “new media screen time”

* Amy Orben’s critique

* Flurry of articles by well-respected writers in 2023 expressing some degree of confidence that “it’s the phones”: John Burn-Murdoch; Noah Smith; Matt Yglesias (though he’s more interested in other reasons)

* Haidt’s 2023 article arguing we can now say it’s a cause, not just a correlation - and “a major cause” at that

* Evidence that the US suicide rate is increasing

* Evidence that the suicide rate in other countries is not increasing: Norway, Sweden, Denmark; the UK - see below for the heatmap of age-group vs. year and suicide rate for the UK:

* 2023 NBER paper cautioning that some of the rise in the US suicide rate might be due to measurement differences

* Chris Ferguson et al.’s 2021 meta-analysis that concludes there’s a lack of evidence to suggest that screen time affects mental health

* Przybylski & Vuorre’s 2023 paper - across 168 countries, internet connectivity is correlated with better wellbeing

* Orben & Przybylski’s 2019 “specfication curve” paper (the “potatoes” one)

* Twenge & Haidt’s own specification curve paper suggesting social media use is a stronger predictor of poor wellbeing than is hard drug use

* Stuart’s article for the i going into detail on some of the causal studies of phones/social media and mental health

* Dean Eckles criticising the “Facebook arrives at universities” study

Credits & Acknowledgements

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. We’re grateful to Chris Ferguson and Andy Przybylski for talking to us about their research.

Either there are massive differences between the brains of men and women, or there aren’t any notable differences at all - and people who think differences exist are “neurosexists”. It’s easy to find well-qualified scientists making each of these arguments. They can’t all be right.

What’s going on? What do the biggest and best MRI studies of brain sex differences tell us? Do we know what causes them, or how they might affect our psychology? And what does “sexual dimorphism” even mean, anyway? In this paid-only episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart try to sort through some of the diametrically-opposed scientific claims.

To listen to the full version of this episode and see the show notes, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber to The Studies Show podcast on Substack. Go to www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe to see the options. If you’re already a paid subscriber: thank you!

Why do some people love parties and others prefer to stay at home with a book? Why do some people worry endlessly about all the bad things that might happen, while others breeze through life with supreme confidence? Why is Stuart such a nice guy and Tom far less so?

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart discuss personality and the personality tests that are supposed to measure it. They discuss whether it might be the Big Five or the Big Six, what measuring personality is good for, and whether “Grit” is even a thing. Not only that, but for the many, many people who are desperate to know, they both reveal their own personality test results.

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine. We absolutely love reading its beautifully-written, well-researched essays on science, technology, and human progress, and if you’re a listener to this podcast, we’re pretty sure you will, too. Take a look at the whole collection of articles—all available for free—right here.

Show Notes

* Free site to calculate your Big Five personality profile

* Free site to calculate your Big Six (HEXACO) personality profile

* Tom’s Big Five personality profile:

* Stuart’s Big Five personality profile:

* Is it the Big Five or the Big Six? An example of a paper that supports the latter option

* Razib Khan’s podcast interview with personality psychologist Brent Roberts

* Example of a study on personality and job performance

* Paper by Christopher Soto testing the replicability of personality’s associations with life outcomes

* Paper showing how “Grit” is really just a re-description of “Conscientiousness”

* Severe critique of the Big Five by “a literal banana” (also read the comments!)

* Story of the Hans Eysenck personality-and-health fraud (also see this meta-analysis of personality and health)

* Meta-analysis of how personality factors change over time

* Meta-analysis of interventions that can change personality factors

Credits

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

It’s mentioned on the podcast pretty much every week. But what does “statistical significance” actually mean?

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart start 2024 off with the most exciting subject possible: p-values. THRILL as they discuss statistical misconceptions! MARVEL as they talk about how “effect size” differs from “statistical significance”! CHUCKLE as they resort to endless coin-flipping analogies! And GASP as they discuss ways to stop scientists from “hacking” their p-values and ending up with misleading research!

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine - an online magazine full of essays about science, technology, and human progress. Works in Progress is the kind of magazine that makes its readers massively better-informed about every subject it covers, with deeply-researched articles by experts in the relevant fields - and it’s all free. Check it out at their site right here.

Show notes

* 89% of psychology textbooks get p-values wrong

* Letter on how the research on power-posing went wrong

* The classic “false-positive psychology” paper on how p-hacking can get you any result you want

* The FiveThirtyEight online p-hacking tool

* The “p-curve” method for detecting p-hacking

* How p-hacking is just “overfitting” by another name

* List of weasel terms like “approaching significance”

* Reading on a screen before bed “might be killing you”!

* The (much less scary) relevant study

* Tom’s BuzzFeed News article on the idea to lower the p-value threshold to 0.005

* The original paper, plus the response arguing that scientists should “justify their alpha”

* Registered Reports, and how they can deter p-hacking

Credits

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

We admit it: The Studies Show tends to be quite negative. We’re always complaining about low-quality studies, faulty reasoning, and bad science.

Not this time! In this end-of-year special, Tom and Stuart discuss the good science news from the past year, covering all the coolest technologies and most life-saving medical advances from 2023.

See you in 2024 - oh, and pre-order Tom’s book on Bayes!

Credits

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

Every so often there’s a panic in the media: sperm count is declining! The human race is on the way out! New studies regularly appear that seem to support this idea. The recent book Count Down by epidemiologist Shanna Swan argued vociferously that the culprit is plastic pollution, which apparently releases endocrine-disrupting chemicals that ruin our fertility.

Is any of that true? What do the meta-analyses, which try to gather together all the evidence on sperm counts over time, really say on this question? In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart ask whether there’s convincing evidence of a great drop-off in fecundity - and if so, what could possibly be causing it.

The Studies Show is proud to be sponsored by Works in Progress magazine - the best place online to find brilliantly-written, idea-filled articles about science, technology, and human progress. If you’re into those topics (and let’s face it, if you’re listening to this podcast you are), take a look at their main site, as well as their Substack, to find tons of reading material for your festive season.

Show notes

* Tom’s Unherd review of the Shanna Swan book Count Down

* Link to the book

* Stuart’s Spectator article on whether there’s evidence for sperm count decline

* Detailed Astral Codex Ten article on sperm count decline and what might cause it

* Original (seminal!) 1974 article on “changing parameters of male fertility potential”

* 1992 Carlsen et al. meta-analysis, showing the following data:

* 2017 Levine et al. meta-analysis (co-authored by Swan), showing the following data:

* Response to the Levine et al. meta-analysis, worrying about some of its political implications

* 2023 follow-up meta-analysis including data from more countries

* 2022 Nature Reviews Urology article with lots of useful methodological points

* Older 2008 Fisch review/critique of the idea of a decline

* Article on regional differences in sperm quality (Edinburgh wins, kind of!)

* Debate between proponents and sceptics of the idea that sperm count is declining

* Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz’s Substack post on whether pesticides are killing your sperm…

* …responding to this meta-analysis

Credits

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

If you were to list the top 5 most hyped areas of science right now, the microbiome would clearly be one. The collection of billions of microbes that live in our gut—and which are studied by collecting, er, “stool samples”—have been blamed for causing not just gastrointestinal symptoms, but even mental health disorders.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart discuss the microbiome: what’s the evidence that it contributes to all our ills? Can it really be the case that we can transplant blended faeces from one person to another and improve their health? And, sorry to have to ask this, but what exactly is that smell?

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress, the online magazine about science, technology, and human progress. Their newest November 2023 issue is packed with data-driven, deeply-researched articles on the history and future of the science and tech that shapes our world. It’s all freely-available right here at this link.

Show notes

* 2007 Ben Goldacre Guardian article on “Dr.” Gillian McKeith, the Awful Poo Lady

* 2019 review of microbiome research and some of its methodological difficulties

* 2022 review of the mechanisms by which the microbiome might affect our health

* 2016 Science paper on population norms for the microbiome

* The “30 plants a week” claim, from the ZOE app website; from Tim Spector in the Guardian

* The “American Gut Project” study

* Stuart’s article on why “30 plants a week” is a silly claim

* 2020 meta-analysis of studies on faecal microbiome transplants for recurrent C. difficile infection

* Paper that’s critical of the evidence for faecal transplants for C. diff

* 2021 review of faecal transplants in Crohn’s disease

* 2019 review of the microbiome and mental health, including some of the history of the idea

* 2019 editorial speaking very highly of the power of the “gut-brain axis”

* 2023 KCL small-scale study on probiotics for depression

* 2023 review of observational studies of faecal transplants for autism

* Scott Alexander’s article “Against Against Autism Cures”

* Brain study on the apparent causal role of the microbiome in Alzheimer’s disease

* Stuart’s i article critiquing it

Credits

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

“Science is political”. How could it not be? It’s done by humans, whose political biases will influence not just the topics they choose to study but also how they study them. But does that mean it’s fine for scientists to blatantly bring their politics into their work? Does that mean it’s okay for scientific journals to endorse political candidates?

In this slightly unusual episode of The Studies Show (which doesn’t include very many actual studies), Tom and Stuart discuss the never-ending debate over where politics begins and ends in science, debate whether it’s possible for science to be politics-free, and cover the recent story of the scientific journal editor fired for expressing a (pretty mild, all things considered) political opinion on Twitter.

The Studies Show is brought to you by the i, the non-partisan UK daily newspaper for readers with open minds. For the best insights into British politics, as well as extensive interviews, lifestyle insights, and all the rest, consider subscribing to the paper. You can get a money-off deal on your digital subscription by following this special podcast link.

The Studies Show is also sponsored by Works in Progress, the online magazine about science, technology, and human progress. Their newest November 2023 issue is packed with data-driven, deeply-researched articles on the history and future of the science and tech that shapes our world. It’s all freely-available right here at this link.

Show notes

* Eisen’s joke about a worm which caused a racism/sexism row

* His fateful tweet about Hamas that eventually got him fired as editor of eLife

* Coverage of his firing in Nature News; in Science

* Nature endorses Biden in 2020

* Tom’s article in Unherd about politicising science

* Tom’s article in Unherd about the importance of “decoupling”

* Stuart’s Substack article about how science is political - but that’s a bad thing

* Astral Codex Ten article about the arrogance of presuming it’s not possible to be any more rational than you are right now

* Study of how Nature’s political endorsements affected people’s trust in the journal

* Stuart’s article in the i on this study; summary in Politico

* Nature’s editorial response, arguing that they’ll do endorsements anyway

Credits

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

It’s November, so a strange subset of “very online” men are trying to avoid, er, “self-abuse” for the entirety of the month. They’re doing it because they believe it has all sorts of psychological and health benefits. But others argue that No Nut November could itself cause you harm. Who’s right?

In this ADULTS ONLY episode of The Studies Show which they…

Teaching kids how to read is amazingly controversial. Or at least, it was controversial until recently, when we achieved a proper scientific consensus that the best way to teach them is to use systematic phonics. This method has seen big successes here in the UK, and is helping thousands of children achieve proper literacy.

…that’s the story, anyway. But how strong is that scientific consensus? What evidence do we have that systematic phonics is the best way to learn to read? In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look into the work of a prominent “phonics sceptic”, and find his arguments pretty compelling.

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress, the online magazine about science, technology, and human progress. Their new November 2023 issue is out now, full of fascinating, well-researched essays on how mathematics drove the industrial revolution, the history of asbestos as a building material, how we might harness geothermal energy to power the world, and much more. It’s all freely-available right here at this link.

The Studies Show is also supported by the i, a snappy, non-partisan UK newspaper for people with open minds. Insights on UK politics, world affairs, a whole range of voices in the opinion section: it’s all here. You can get a money-off deal on your digital subscription—which includes full access to all Stuart’s science writing—by following this special podcast link.

Show notes

* Big 2018 review article on “ending the reading wars”, with excellent background on the debate and on the science of reading more generally

* Tom’s WIRED article on numeracy, with mention of the history of literacy efforts in the UK

* “fish” = “ghoti”

* The UK’s 2006 Rose Report into the best ways to teach reading

* Survey showing a lot of teachers don’t like the Phonics Check

* In defence of phonics, by Prof. Kathy Rastle

* Prof. Jeffrey Bowers’s 2020 article on “Reconsidering the evidence” that systematic phonics is better than other ways to teach reading (see here for references to all the individual meta-analyses mentioned in the show)

* One of several critiques of Bowers

* Bowers’s 2023 reply to several critics

* Bowers’s blog (many posts about various aspects of the phonics debate; see the comment sections for contributions from his critics and further debate)

* Report on England’s 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) scores

Credits

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

Here’s another brief episode covering the errors we’ve made in our last few episodes, from the very minor to the somewhat more serious.

We’re grateful to listeners who pointed these out - please keep doing so! If you’ve noticed an error on The Studies Show, let us know and we’ll correct it on a future episode like this. Contact details are on the About page.

Show notes

* UNSCEAR numbers on birth defects caused by Chernobyl

* Adjusting for publication bias makes the effect of cash transfers on mental health disappear

* Explanation of the paradoxical effect of healthier, longer-living people having a higher risk of dementia if you control for age

* Retraction note to one of criminologist Eric Stewart’s papers notes that the study was retracted due to “a mistake in the way the original data were merged… [which,] in conjunction with the discovery of other coding and transcription errors, collectively exceeded what the authors believed to be acceptable for a published paper”. That is, not retracted for “fraudulent data”, as we stated

* Analysis by one of Stewart’s co-authors concluding that the studies were “likely fraudulent”, even if they weren’t technically retracted for that reason

* The location of Cornwall. It’s in the south-west.

Credits

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

The thesis of Johann Hari’s bestselling 2022 book Stolen Focus is that tech companies—via the internet, smartphones, and social media—are wrecking our attention spans. Hari argues that Facebook, Apple, and all the rest, in their deliberate attack on our ability to concentrate, are doing huge damage to the human species.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart (whose microphone sounds a bit odd this week - sorry about that!) discuss the data on whether people’s attention spans are getting shorter, ask whether there’s evidence people are too distracted to finish tasks—such as writing podcast descriptions—that they’ve started, and

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress, the online magazine about science, technology, and human progress. Find all their deeply-researched, beautifully-written essays about ideas that have changed, and will change, the world right here at this link.

The Studies Show is also supported by the i, a snappy, non-partisan UK newspaper for people with open minds. You can get a money-off deal on your digital subscription—which includes full access to all Stuart’s science writing—by following this special podcast link.

Show notes

* Pre-order Pete Etchells’s book Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time (and how to spend it better)

* Johann Hari’s 2022 Guardian article on attention spans

* Stuart’s review of Stolen Focus, including some background on Hari’s “interesting” journalistic career

* “You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish”, apparently

* Just watch this video. No spoilers.

* The lizardman’s constant is 4%

* 2009 PNAS study on multitasking

* 2021 Cyberpsychology meta-analysis on cognitive control and multitasking

* 50% of people think tech is ruining people’s attention spans

* Satirical study from 2020 on the addiction to “spending time with friends”

* One of Matthew Sweet’s Twitter investigations of Johann Hari’s references

* Stuart’s look at some of the other studies cited in the book

Credits

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

What causes Alzheimer’s? The main theory is that it’s due to a build-up of amyloid plaques in the brain. But some scientists think that’s hopelessly wrong, and that a hidebound belief in the amyloid hypothesis is stopping us from finding a cure.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart talk about the amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer’s, ask whether all the hype over the three recent Alzheimer’s drugs (“a momentous breakthrough!”) is justified, and look at some ways we could do better research on dementia.

The Studies Show is supported by the i, the UK’s smartest daily newspaper. You can get a money-off deal on your digital subscription—which includes full access to all Stuart’s science writing—by following this special podcast link.

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress, the online magazine about science, technology, and human progress. If you’re a listener to The Studies Show, it’s a dead-cert that you’ll love Works in Progress - and it’s all available for free. Find the magazine at this link.

Show notes

* The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) - the test Stuart quotes at the start

* NHS list of Alzheimer’s symptoms

* List and discussion of possible theories for the cause of Alzheimer’s

* Chris Hemsworth interview about finding out he’s at high genetic risk of Alzheimer’s

* Potential clues about the origin of Alzheimer’s from Down Syndrome

* Sharon Begley’s STAT article on “how an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure for decades”

* Science investigation of potential fraud in the original Aβ*56 study

* Explanation of why it’s bad, but not devastating for the amyloid hypothesis

* Independent panel urges the FDA not to approve Aducanumab - but they do so anyway

* Derek Lowe’s highly sceptical discussion of the “disgraceful” approval

* Stuart’s sceptical article in the i on Lecanemab (link to the trial itself)

* BBC article on the “momentous breakthrough”

* “16 cautionary notes” on Lecanemab

* Stuart’s sceptical article in the i on Donanemab (link to the trial itself)

* And Stuart’s Twitter thread on “clinically meaningful” effects in Alzheimer’s

* BBC More or Less episode discussing the problems with measuring the effect of an Alzheimer’s drug

* How do the new Alzheimer’s drugs work in theory? One potential explanation

* Paper by Elliot Tucker-Drob on how we measure dementia and how we forget about individual differences while doing so

Credits

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

Welcome to a very spooky episode of The Studies Show, on the topic of parapsychology. Tom and Stuart discuss telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and more, and look at some of the most recent attempts by scientists to show that these weird—and did we mention spooky?—psychic phenomena are real.

Can it really be the case that studies claiming the existence of psychic powers get published in mainstream scientific journals? What does this mean for how seriously we take scientific journals? And is Stuart right that a parapsychology study published earlier this year might be the best psychology study ever?

Happy Halloween! 🎃

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress, the best place on the internet to read about science, technology, and human progress. As well as its main website, Works in Progress has a Substack called Notes on Progress, with shorter—but no less fascinating—pieces on similar themes. You can find Notes on Progress at this link.

The Studies Show is also sponsored by the i, the UK’s smartest daily newspaper. You can get a money-off deal on your digital subscription—which includes full access to all Stuart’s science writing—by following this special podcast link.

Show notes

* Article on parapsychology calling it “the unwitting jester in the court of academia”

* 2021 “umbrella review” of many parapsychology meta-analyses

* 2023 in-progress meta-analysis of ganzfeld telepathy research

* Book chapter discussing parapsychology and quantum physics

* Study showing how meta-analysis can overstate effect sizes

* Daryl Bem’s famous 2011 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

* Critical analysis by Tal Yarkoni of Bem’s experiment and his statistics

* Failed replication of Experiment 9 from that study by Stuart, Chris French, and Richard Wiseman

* The Transparent Psi Project study from 2023

* Audit of the Transparent Psi Project finding a few mistakes (now corrected in the original study)

* Example of high-quality research practices in parapsychology: a “registered report” from the 1970s

Credits

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

If you catch COVID, what’s the chance the symptoms will last for months? And what’s the chance they’ll be so debilitating that they ruin your life?

Different studies have given wildly different answers to these questions - in part because they define “Long COVID” in all sorts of different ways. In this paid-only episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart try to work out what’s going on. How good is the research in this area? And, more to the point, can they talk about this topic for a whole hour without offending anyone?

To listen to the full version of this episode and see the show notes, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber to The Studies Show podcast on Substack. See below or go to www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe for the options.

If you’re already a paid subscriber: thank you!

With major (alleged!) misconduct cases happening at some of the biggest US universities, scientific fraud has been in the news a lot recently. If you’re a scientist you’re supposed to be discovering the truth - so why do some scientists (allegedly - please don’t sue us!) just make all their results up?

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart discuss some outrageous instances of scientific fraud, and how they were discovered. They look at all the reasons a scientist might decide to break the rules and falsify or fabricate their data - and talk about ways we might try and prevent these scientific crimes in future.

*EDIT 22 October 2023: In the podcast we say that Eric Stewart’s papers were retracted for “fraudulent data”. Whereas he has been accused of fraud by at least one of his co-authors (and others), and whereas he claims to have lost all the original data files so they can’t be checked, it’s not correct to say this is why his studies were retracted, as per the publishers’ retraction notes. They were retracted for gross errors and incompetence rather than fraud.

The Studies Show is sponsored by the i, the UK’s smartest daily newspaper. You can get a money-off deal on digital subscriptions—which include full access to all Stuart’s science writing—by following this special podcast link.

The Studies Show is also sponsored by Works in Progress, an online magazine about science, technology, and human progress. Did you know that, in addition to the main magazine, Works in Progress has a Substack called Notes on Progress, with shorter pieces on the same themes? You can find Notes on Progress right here.

Show notes

* Big New Yorker article about Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino

* Data Colada article on Dan Ariely’s study; and the first of several articles on Francesca Gino’s research

* New York Times article on the fallout from the Gino case

* GoFundMe page for Data Colada’s legal defence

* 2009 review of surveys asking scientists whether they’ve committed fraud, and how much fraud they think there is

* Example studies asking questions on fraud as well as sub-fraud “questionable research practices”: psychologists, economists, biomedical statisticians

* The Retraction Watch Leaderboard of the most-retracted scientists

* Story of anaesthesiologist Joachim Boldt, current leader in number of papers retracted from the literature

* Book on the fraudulent semiconductor physicist Jan-Hendrik Schön

* News of recent retractions by a superconductor physicist at the University of Rochester

* Article on John Carlisle, fake RCT-spotter extraordinaire

* Article on Elisabeth Bik, expert on spotting fake scientific images; Bik’s paper on the prevalence of problematic images

* Description of the GRIM test by Nick Brown and James Heathers

* BBC Radio 4 programme by Michael Blastland about scientific fraud-spotters, featuring Bik, Brown, and Heathers (and also Stuart)

* Recent article on using Benford’s Law to discover fraud

* Story of Hwang Woo-Suk, the audacious cloning fraudster at Seoul National University

* Story of Eric Stewart, researcher of systematic racism at Florida State University

* Story of Paolo Macchiarini, windpipe surgery fraudster and convicted criminal

* Stuart’s article on why we need to actually punish fraudsters

Credits

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

We’ve all heard of football players (that’s “soccer players” for US listeners) tearing their hamstrings, spraining their ankles, and injuring their knees. But could all that heading of the football, whether or not it causes a concussion, be having a subtler but much more damaging long-term effect on the player’s brain?

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart—the latter of whom, as you’ll discover, is not a massive fan of sport in general—discuss research on whether playing the nation’s favourite sport might lead to dementia in later life. If it does, how does it happen? And is playing football worthwhile regardless?

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress, an online magazine filled with longform essays on science, technology, and human progress. How do we encourage people to support economic growth? How did Mexico build its state in the 19th Century? And why did it take so long to develop a malaria vaccine? These are just some of the topics covered in the most recent issue.

The Studies Show is also sponsored by the i, the UK’s smartest daily newspaper. It’s filled with exclusive reporting, comment, analysis, and so much more, and you can get a cut-price deal on digital subscriptions—which include full access to Stuart’s columns and his subscriber-only science newsletter—by following this special podcast link.

Show Notes

* University of Edinburgh profile page for Prof. Alan Carson, with links to his publications on concussion and sport and related topics

* Scotland bans football players from heading the ball a day before and a day after a game

* 2012 study on “neurodegenerative causes of death” among US NFL players

* The FIELD study: 2019 study on causes of death among Scottish football players

* Lothian Birth Cohort studies on how alcohol and job complexity relate to cognitive test scores in late life, before and after controlling for how smart someone was as a child

* Does traumatic brain injury relate to more amyloid plaques and/or tau tangles in your brain? Example of a study that says yes; example of a study that says no

* 2019 review of possible mechanisms for why brain injuries might lead to dementia

* “The pig as a preclinical traumatic brain injury model”

* The “3 Rs”, to Replace, Reduce, and Refine animal research

Credits

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

If you’ve ever done a diversity training session at work, you’ll almost certainly have learned about unconscious bias, microaggressions, stereotype threat, and trigger warnings. Prejudice, racism, and trauma are apparently simmering constantly, just under the surface of our conscious minds.

It turns out that each of these concepts has been subject to a lot of scientific research. It also turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, that they’re all extremely controversial. In this first paid-subscriber-only episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look at each of them in turn and try to decide which of them—if any—stand up to scrutiny.

To listen to the full version of this episode and see the show notes, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber to The Studies Show podcast on Substack. See below, or go to www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe, for the options.

If you’re already a paid subscriber: thank you!

Nuclear power seems like exactly what we want: a reliable, low-carbon source of huge amounts of energy. So why does it produce less of our electricity per capita now than it did decades ago?

A major reason: nuclear power suffers from very bad PR. In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart discuss the ever-present safety fears surrounding nuclear power, the problems of nuclear waste, and the reasons that nuclear power is so drastically expensive. How many people died in the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, anyway? Could new reactor designs fix some of nuclear power’s problems? And is nuclear power so irredeemably unpopular that we should just give it up and move on to renewables?

The Studies Show is sponsored by the i, the UK’s smartest daily newspaper. You can get a half-price deal on digital subscriptions to the whole paper, including full access to Stuart’s columns and his subscriber-only science newsletter, by following this special podcast link.

The Studies Show is also sponsored by Works in Progress, an online magazine about science, technology, and human progress. The newest issue of Works in Progress is out now, with essays on topics like the discovery of the malaria vaccine and the surprising economics of copper.

Show Notes

* Fumio Kishida eats a Fukushima flounder; John Selwyn Gummer eats a British beef burger (with his daughter)

* Graph showing the plateau in nuclear power generation

* Hannah Ritchie on the safest sources of energy; review comparing health effects of different sources of electricity generation

* Jack Devanney on plutonium in Works in Progress; and on why the “Linear No-Threshold” model is “nonsense”

* Jason Crawford summary & review of Devanney’s book Why Nuclear Power Has Been a Flop

* Article on the wildly-varying cancer and death numbers suggested for Chernobyl

* UNSCEAR report; IAEA estimate of deaths; Alternative TORCH estimate; IARC estimate of cancers up to 2065

* IAEA analysis of Fukushima water and comparison to normal levels of radiation

* Report on deaths from the evacuation after the Tōhoku earthquake/tsunami

* Tom’s article in the i on Fukushima and nuclear power’s PR problem

* Article on spent fuels and waste from nuclear reactors

* Summary of “breeder” and “burner” reactors

* Hannah Ritchie on mining for low-carbon energy vs. mining for fossil fuels

* Article on the pollution produced from lignite mines

* Sceptical view of new nuclear plant technologies

* Graph of solar panel prices dropping over time

Credits

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

Is artificial intelligence going to lead to the extinction of humanity? What would that even look like? Everyone’s got an opinion: mostly either “that sounds absolutely ridiculous” or “that sounds absolutely terrifying”.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart do something slightly different. Stuart plays the role of an AI apocalypse sceptic, and grills Tom on all the arguments about the coming AI apocalypse. Happily, Tom has already written a whole book on the subject, so he knows all the answers.

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine, the best place to find insightful essays on science, technology, and human progress. There’s a new issue out right now! We’re very grateful for their support.

Show notes

* Tom’s book, The Rationalist’s Guide to the Galaxy

* arXiv preprint on evolving AI

* Katja Grace’s survey of AI researchers

* Timothy B. Lee’s Substack post about why he’s not worried about the existential risk of AI

* Nature editorial arguing that the AI revolution hasn’t yet helped chemistry

* Nature editorial arguing that worrying about AI doomsday is a distraction

Credits

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

Thinking of giving money to charity? Maybe you should give to a charity that does cash transfers - that is, gives the money directly to low-income people with no or minimal strings attached. Many in the “effective altruism” movement, which aims to find the best ways to spend money to improve people’s lives, are big fans of cash transfers to people in developing countries.

But lately, some blockbuster studies on cash transfers have come under heavy criticism. Does this cast doubt on the whole idea? In this episode, Tom and Stuart look at these new studies, and the evidence on cash transfers in general. How much do cash transfers really help when it comes to poverty, health, child development, and homelessness?

The Studies Show is brought to you the i, the UK’s smartest daily newspaper. Right now you can get a half-price deal on digital subscriptions, including full access to Stuart’s columns and his weekly subscriber-only science newsletter, by following this special podcast link.

The Studies Show is also sponsored by Works in Progress, an online magazine about science, technology, and human progress. There’s a new issue of Works in Progress out now, with essays on topics like vaccines, architecture, and the post-war Baby Boom.

Show notes

* Cost of a guide dog versus the cost of a cataract (or other sight-saving) operation

* GiveWell’s page on cash transfers

* Trial of GiveDirectly’s programme in Kenya; one of a programme in Uganda

* 2016 systematic review on cash transfers from the Overseas Development Institute

* 2019 systematic review of cash transfers on many different outcomes

* Reviews and meta-analyses of the evidence on cash transfers for: HIV prevention; stunting; young people’s mental health; adolescent and adult mental health

* Nature paper on cash transfers for preventing early mortality

* Stuart’s critical article in the i

* PNAS paper on cash transfers in the US on children’s brain development

* Stuart’s critical article in the Atlantic

* Andrew Gelman’s post on the study

* The book Brainwashed: The Seductive Allure of Mindless Neuroscience

* PNAS paper on cash transfers in Canada for homelessness, and its press release

* Jon Baron’s critical thread

Credits

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

If you give someone a sugar pill but convince them it’s a real medicine, they might get better because of the power of belief. That’s the standard story, anyway.

But as Tom and Stuart find in this episode, the more you dig into the science on placebo effects, the more you begin to doubt that the placebo effect is some innate bodily healing process that responds to beliefs. Instead, it might all just be due to mistakes and biases in the studies. Do we need to completely change the way we think about placebos?

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine, an online magazine full to the brim with the best writing on science, technology, and human progress. Read any of the essays in Works in Progress magazine and you’re guaranteed to come away with a new idea or a new understanding of how things work - we can’t recommend it highly enough.

The Studies Show is also sponsored by the i, the UK’s smartest daily newspaper. Right now you can get a half-price deal on digital subscriptions, including full access to Stuart’s weekly subscriber-only science newsletter, by following this special podcast link.

Show notes

* “The Powerful Placebo” - the paper from 1955 that made the placebo effect famous

* The 1965 study on placebo effects when participants know they’re getting a sugar pill

* Bad Science column from 2008 on the power of the placebo effect, “the coolest strangest thing in medicine”

* Review from 2017 on “open-label placebo” studies

* 2018 review on mechanisms of how “placebos without deception” might work

* Slate Star Codex article the 5-HTTLPR gene

* New England Journal of Medicine review of the placebo effect from 2020

* Response to the NEJM review by Dahly and Rafi

* 2010 Cochrane review of “Placebo effects for all clinical conditions”

* “The pervasive problem of placebos in psychology”

* Review & meta-analysis of the placebo effect in studies on back pain

Credits

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

On The Studies Show, we’re all about trying to get it right. But sometimes we get it wrong. Every so often, we’ll do a feedback/corrections/clarifications episode where we go back and try to correct any errors in the last few episodes, and reply to your more general feedback.

This is the first one of those, covering Episodes 1-8. Our thanks go to everyone who pointed out our mistakes. Please keep the feedback coming!

Show notes

* Retatrutide phase 2 trial; semaglutide vs. tirzepatide cost-effectiveness study

* The IARC’s useful, detailed report on (e.g.) whether being a firefighter is a cancer risk; the FDA disagrees with the IARC on whether aspartame should be labelled as a “possible” cause of cancer

* The newest published trial of psilocybin for depression

* Stuart’s more recent article on ultra-processed foods, with discussion of mechanisms; Chris Snowdon’s two part review of Chris van Tulleken’s book; interview with Herman Pontzer on his book Burn

Credits

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

In any given school, you’re never more than 6ft away from a poster about “growth mindset”. It’s the massively-popular idea that if you believe that people can change, you’ll put more effort into a task (like studying) and end up doing better at it. On the other hand, if you have a “fixed mindset” and think talent is innate and unchangeable, you won’t put in the effort and you’ll fail to reach your potential.

In this episode, Tom and Stuart talk about how the claims about the power of growth mindset have changed over the years, and explain the convoluted back-and-forth story of recent studies and reviews of the evidence. Do growth mindset interventions help kids get better grades? Is growth mindset even a thing? Take a listen to find out.

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine, an online magazine full to the brim with the best writing on science, technology, and human progress. Read any of the essays in Works in Progress magazine and you’re guaranteed to come away with a new idea or a new understanding of how things work - we can’t recommend it highly enough.

Remember that you can subscribe to The Studies Show and get an email every time there’s a new episode - just enter your email address in the box below. We’d also love it if you’d consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting the show - you can also do that below, and you’ll get access to the comments, ask-me-anything opportunities, and (soon) subscriber-only episodes:

Show Notes

* Tom’s 2017 article on growth mindset on BuzzFeed news

* Stuart’s 2022 Substack article “How Growth Mindset Shrank” (including discussion of the various Middle East Peace Process studies)

* The 2018 meta-analysis

* The 2019 large-scale study of growth mindset in the classroom

* Useful online tool to calculate and visualise effect sizes

* “Does psychology have a conflict-of-interest problem?” - Tom’s 2019 Nature News article

* The first 2023 meta-analysis (the more growth mindset-sceptical one)

* The second 2023 meta-analysis (the more growth mindset-supporting one)

* Critique of the first 2023 meta-analysis

* Devastating response to the critique (and Brooke Macnamara’s thread on the same)

Credits

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

If you were anywhere near social media at the start of August, you’ll have seen endless claims of a massive, world-changing breakthrough in physics: the LK-99 room-temperature superconductor.

In this episode, Tom and Stuart—neither of them anything approaching a physicist, so caveat emptor—discuss what a superconductor is, why it would be exciting (or not) for it to work at room temperature, and ask why people online got so excited over claims that one had been discovered… when it actually hadn’t.

The Studies Show is sponsored by the i, the UK’s best daily newspaper. You can find the latest deals—including a 50% off deal for digital subscriptions—at this link. Thanks to the i for their support!

If you’re enjoying The Studies Show, then please consider becoming a subscriber. You can join as a free subscriber and get an email whenever we release an episode. If you join as a paid subscriber, you’ll be able to access some features like ask-me-anything chats with Tom and Stuart, and (soon) paid-only episodes. Either way, you can subscribe by typing your email address below:

Show Notes

* Video of the Meissner effect - the eerie levitation of superconducting materials

* The initial LK-99 preprint on arXiv

* Stuart’s article from the day LK-99 went viral

* Statistical model that many thought proved LK-99 really was a room-temperature superconductor

* Article in Nature News explaining why the LK-99 material might’ve seemed to have superconducting properties

* Story on the retractions of work by another room-temperature superconductor researcher

* Actually-exciting superconductor advance 1 (and replication); actually-exciting superconductor advance 2 (and replication)

* Article on the Fleischmann & Pons “cold fusion” debacle

* Story of the “faster-than-light neutrino” error

* Plastic Fantastic, the book about the fraudulent semiconductor studies in the early 2000s

* Article on “quantum computing’s reproducibility crisis” and the Majorana particle

Credits

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

We’ve apparently found the culprit for the obesity epidemic, and it’s “ultra-processed foods”. They’re the plastic-wrapped, industrially-produced foods with long lists of ingredients that apparently make up 60% of the average UK diet.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart tuck in to some “hyper-palatable” research on nutrition and health, discuss the main randomised trial in this area, and try (and immediately fail) to read out the whole definition of “ultra-processed foods” in one breath.

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Show Notes

* Chris van Tulleken’s Guardian article with a summary of the case against UPFs

* The UN document giving all the details on the NOVA classification

* Study rating people’s agreement on which foods are in which NOVA category

* Stuart’s article on UPFs

* Systematic review & meta-analysis on the UPF correlation with premature death

* The NIH randomised controlled trial of UPFs versus unprocessed foods

* Photos of the meals given in the experiment, from the study’s Appendix

* Interesting Twitter discussion with the RCT’s lead author

* Page with details on Stephan Guyenet’s book, The Hungry Brain

Credits

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

Seemingly-reliable sources give you diametrically-opposed views on vaping. Are e-cigarettes “95% less harmful” than cigarettes, or aren’t they? Are vapes gateway drugs that lead people to smoke, or are they a great way to give up smoking? Is it both? Neither?

In Episode 5 of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look into the research on the health effects of vaping and try to answer these questions - as well as explaining the origin of the fabled “popcorn lung”.

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If you like the sound of The Studies Show, then please consider becoming a subscriber. You can join as a free subscriber and get an email whenever we release an episode. If you join as a paid subscriber, you’ll be able to access some features like ask-me-anything chats with Tom and Stuart, and (soon) paid-only episodes. Either way, you can subscribe right here:

Show Notes

* The WHO praises India for banning vapes

* Article on The Conversation arguing the “vaping is 95% less harmful than cigarettes” claim has been debunked

* Long UK Government/King’s College London report defending the “95% less harmful” claim (2022)

* Earlier (2018) Public Health England report with similar conclusions

* New Nicotine Alliance (unaffiliated anti-smoking charity) report with useful references on addictiveness, risk, etc.

* Popcorn lung: Science-Based Medicine piece illustrated with lungs full of popcorn; Johns Hopkins piece saying popcorn lung is a concern; American Lung Association piece agreeing; Cancer Research UK piece saying no cases ever linked to vaping

* Study retracted for erroneously comparing different age groups; study retracted for time-travelling heart-attacks

* UK cigarette smoking rate dropping in adults; dropping in children

* Tom’s article on this from 2017

* 2017 study showing vaping and cigarette smoking correlate in teenagers

* 2022 Cochrane review on vaping and smoking cessation

* Study of vaping in pregnant mice; press release; article in The Sun with scary headline

* Study on vaping vs. nicotine patches for smoking cessation in pregnant women

* People’s beliefs about vaping: increasing belief that it’s as dangerous as smoking in adults; in adults again; in children

Credits

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

You’ve surely seen the hyped news stories. Psychedelic drugs are no longer just for hippies and attendees at raves: they’re the new frontier of mental health treatment, revolutionising how we think about conditions like depression and PTSD and showing major promise in clinical trials.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look into psychedelics and mental illness. They start by talking about why scientists think psychedelics might be relevant here - and it’s to do with the theory of the “Bayesian Brain”. Then they get into the studies, and point to some serious hurdles on the way to getting good evidence on this question.

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine, the best place to find insightful essays on science, technology, and human progress. We’re very grateful for their support.

If you like the sound of The Studies Show, then please consider becoming a subscriber. You can join as a free subscriber and get an email whenever we release an episode. If you join as a paid subscriber, you’ll be able to access some features like chats with Tom and Stuart, and (soon) paid-only episodes. Either way, you can subscribe right here:

Show Notes

* Announcement that Australia has legalised psychedelics for some kinds of psychotherapy

* A long, highly technical exposition of the Bayesian Brain theory with reference to psychedelics

* Criticism of the Bayesian Brain theory more generally

* Stuart’s Substack post on psychedelics

* The Phase II randomised trial of psilocybin versus escitalopram

* The Phase III randomised trial of MDMA for PTSD

* The New York Magazine podcast series raising some safety concerns about psychedelic therapy

* Eiko Fried’s Twitter thread on a very bad study of psychedelics and mental illness

Credits

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

The WHO’s cancer-research arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), has decided that the commonly-used sweetener aspartame “possibly causes cancer”. It’s been added to a long list of chemicals, activities, and occupations that are in some way carcinogenic. Apparently.

But the list is really stupid. In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart ask about the point of this list, when after all, the dose makes the poison. Is working a night shift as much of a cancer risk as using aloe vera skin cream? Does it even make sense to ask that question?

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine, the best place to find insightful essays on science, technology, and human progress. We’re very grateful for their support.

If you like the sound of The Studies Show, then please consider becoming a subscriber. You can join as a free subscriber and get an email whenever we release an episode. If you join as a paid subscriber, you’ll be able to access some features like chats with Tom and Stuart, and (soon) paid-only episodes. Either way, you can subscribe right here:

Show Notes

* The IARC list of carcinogens

* The Dynomight explainer on aspartame, its chemical properties, and its safety

* The French study of sweeteners and cancer risk

* Context on the level of risk

* Long review article on the effects of aspartame

* Critique of two of the Rammazini Institute’s aspartame studies

* Tom’s Twitter thread on aspartame

* Stuart’s article on aspartame

* Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz’s article on aspartame and the IARC

Credits

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

Every so often a new study appears that claims that breastfed children are smarter, healthier, or otherwise better off later in life than those who were fed baby formula.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look into one recent such study, and ask what the research in general tells us about the apparently-dramatic effects of breastfeeding. Should you feel terribly guilty if you can’t, or choose not to, breastfeed your baby? Or is this an example of weak evidence being blown out of proportion?

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine, the best place to find insightful essays on science, technology, and human progress. We’re very grateful for their support.

Listen above, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or any other podcast provider.

If you like the sound of The Studies Show, then please consider becoming a subscriber. You can join as a free subscriber and get an email whenever we release an episode. If you join as a paid subscriber, you’ll be able to access some features like ask-me-anything chats with Tom and Stuart, and (soon) paid-only episodes. Either way, you can subscribe right here:

Show notes

* The new study claiming breastfed children get better GCSE results

* Stuart’s Twitter thread critiquing the study

* The WHO page stating that breastfed children “perform better on intelligence tests”

* Brazilian study of breastfeeding and intelligence (and other outcomes)

* Initial report of the Belorussian breastfeeding-promotion randomised controlled trial

* Age-16 follow-up of the RCT

* Sibling-control study of breastfeeding and intelligence

* Stuart’s Substack post on breastfeeding and intelligence

* Tom’s article on the breastfeeding controversy

Credits

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

In this first episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart discuss the new wave of weight loss drugs (like semaglutide), and the weird, often irrational arguments that people make against them.

“New, effective drugs will help people lose lots of weight and this is a good thing” doesn’t sound like it should be a controversial statement, but as this episode shows, it really is.

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine, the best place to find insightful essays on science, technology, and human progress. We’re very grateful for their support.

Listen above, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or any other podcast provider.

If you like the sound of The Studies Show, then please consider becoming a subscriber. You can join as a free subscriber and get an email whenever we release an episode. If you join as a paid subscriber, you’ll be able to access some features like chats with Tom and Stuart, and (soon) paid-only episodes. Either way, you can subscribe right here:

Show Notes

* Stuart’s Twitter thread of anti-semaglutide articles in The Guardian

* The specific Guardian article mentioned about how “body positivity has lost”

* The two-year STEP 5 trial of semaglutide for obesity

* Study on what happens when people come off semaglutide

* Review paper on the safety and side-effects of semaglutide

* One example of someone discussing the question of lean-mass loss

Credits

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