Okay, it’s time to finally answer the question: is drinking booze good or bad? Is there really a “J-curve”, such that it’s bad to drink zero alcohol, good to drink a little, and then bad to drink any more than that? What exactly is the “safe level” of alcohol consumption, and why do the meta-analyses on this topic all seem to tell us entirely different things?

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart get very badly intoxicated—with statistics.

We’re sponsored by Works in Progress magazine. There’s no better place online to find essays on the topic of “Progress Studies”—the new field that digs deep into the data on how scientific and technological advances were made in the past, and tries to learn the lessons for the future. Check them out at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* Media reports say alcohol is good! Oh no wait, it’s bad. Oh, sorry, it’s actually good! No, wait, actually bad. And so on, ad infinitum

* The three conflicting meta-analyses:

* 2018 in The Lancet (“no safe level”)

* 2022 in The Lancet (the J-curve returns)

* 2023 in JAMA Network Open (using “occasional drinkers” as the comparison)

* Some of the press coverage about the J-curve age differences

* David Spiegelhalter’s piece comparing the two Lancet meta-analyses

* Tom’s piece on the idea of “safe drinking”

Credits

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. We’re very grateful to Sir David Spiegelhalter for talking to us about this episode (as ever, any errors are ours alone).

Everyone knows your brain hasn’t finished maturing until you’re 25. That’s so well-known, in fact, that some countries (like Scotland) have built it into their criminal justice system, giving lower sentences to under-25s—even very violent ones—on account of their immature brains.

But in this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart discuss what the evidence really says about when the brain matures—and the trickiness of linking important policy decisions to the science.

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine, who don’t just have their magazine (at worksinprogress.co), but also have a Substack with a range of extra articles. It’s all thoughtful, thought-provoking stuff—and its all free. Find it at worksinprogress.news.

Show notes

* The three Scottish criminal cases:

* “Golf club thug spared jail over age”

* Community service not jail for rape (and the conviction later quashed)

* 3 year-jail sentence for rape

* The Scottish Sentencing Council guidelines from 2022

* The commissioned review by University of Edinburgh on brain maturation

* Useful 2022 Nature paper on structural “brain charts for the human lifespan”

* 2024 preprint on the lifespan trajectory of functional brain activation for cognitive control

* 2023 paper with 10,000 people aged 8-35 measured on executive function tests

* BBC Science Focus article by Dean Burnett on the “brain matures at age 25” idea

* “The myth of the 25-year-old brain” in Slate

* Stuart’s i article from last year on the Scottish Sentencing Council

Credits

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

There’s one thing we know Viagra does very well. But what other uses does it have? Can it, as has now been claimed in three separate studies, prevent Alzheimer’s disease?

In this priapic paid-only episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart ask if there might be something to the theory that, through some vascular mechanism, Viagra might slow the effects of dementia. Or is that all just a phallus… er, fallacy?

The criminal justice system and science are both broadly looking for the same thing - the truth. But in many cases the two don’t mix well. Whether it’s court cases that attempt to decide the truth of a scientific dispute, or the use of fingerprints, DNA, or statistics by the prosecution in a murder case, a lot can go wrong - and there’s a lot at stake.

Inspired by the recent discussion, or perhaps lack of discussion, around [a criminal case nobody in the UK can talk about for legal reasons], Tom and Stuart spend this episode looking into what happens when science meets the law.

Our favourite online magazine is Works in Progress - so it’s particularly pleasing that they’re the sponsors of The Studies Show. Works in Progress publish in-depth essays on underrated ideas to improve the world, covering the history and future of science and technology. Go to worksinprogress.co to read their entire archive for free.

Show notes

* UK man arrested for airport-related joke (2010); UK man arrested and punished (narrowly avoiding prison) for saying “burn auld fella, buuuuurn” upon the death of “Captain Tom” (2022)

* Simon Singh successfully sued by chiropractors (but then successfully appeals; 2010)

* Paper on the Italian criminal cases that helped fuel the anti-vaccine movement

* Jim Carrey campaigns against vaccines

* Tom’s 2018 New Scientist article on glyphosate and cancer

* 1995 article on the “phantom risks” of breast implants

* Helen Joyce on the Sally Clark case

* Tom’s 2024 Unherd article on “the dangers of trial by statistics”

* 2022 Royal Statistical Society report on the same topic

* How Bayes-savvy statisticians helped overturn Lucia de Berk’s conviction

* Gerd Gigerenzer on OJ Simpson

* 2022 philosophy paper on the issues with forensic science

* 2016 White House report on the gaps in forensic science

* Dror & Hampikian (2011) study on bias in DNA interpretation

* 2009 “Texas sharpshooter” paper on the rarity (or not) of DNA matches

* Useful 2023 review of human factors research in forensic science

* Interviews with 150 forensic examiners on potential biases in their work

Credits

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

To be addicted to something, you’ve got to… er, actually, what does it mean to be “addicted” to something? We all agree you can be addicted to heroin, but can you also be addicted to videogames, or sex, or listening to podcasts?

And actually, it turns out we don’t all agree you can be addicted to heroin - or, at least, people have very different models of what that means. In what is effectively an hour-long clarification of a throwaway comment in a previous episode, Tom and Stuart talk through the various aspects of addiction, and try to pin down the scientific definition of what turns out to be a strangely elusive concept.

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine, whose recent issue covers its usual mix of science, technology, and policy ideas to help with human flourishing. Read deeply-researched articles about prediction markets, gentrification, concrete, and drink-driving policy at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* Addiction: A Very Short Introduction, by Keith Humphries

* And his Atlantic article on how de-stigmatising drugs could be a mistake

* Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time (and How to Spend it Better) by Pete Etchells

* Scotland’s unbelievably bad drug problem in one graph

* Theodore Dalrymple on Samuel Taylor Coleridge

* And another historical case: The Rugeley Poisoner

* US physician referring to addiction as a “disease” in 1874

* And a German physician discusses “morbid craving” for morphine in 1875

* Made-up Victorian theories on the cause of addiction

* Useful Vaughan Bell article on “the unsexy truth” about dopamine

* Evidence that Parkinson’s patients still experience pleasure despite low dopamine levels

* Evidence that a majority of (UK) smokers want to quit

* The CAGE screening questionnaire for alcohol disorders

* On the 1980 letter cited in and discussed in Dopesick

* Marc Lewis’s Memoirs of an Addicted Brain

* A discussion and critique of the “Rat Park” experiments

* Paper on “Addictive Symptoms of Mukbang Watching” (this is real!)

* The jokey origins of “Internet Use Disorder”

Credits

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

Should you avoid giving your child peanuts to ensure they don’t develop an allergy? If you’d asked medical authorities this question in the late 90s and early 2000s, you’d get an answer that’s completely opposite to what you’d get now.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart discuss the science behind the medical recommendations on peanut allergy - the remarkable story of a major scientific U-turn.

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine. Their latest article, about “advance market commitments” for vaccines and antibiotics and other stuff besides, is now available at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* Useful review article on the “diagnosis and management of food allergy”

* Analysis of UK NHS data on hospitalisations and mortality from anaphylaxis

* Two studies raising doubts about parents’ claims that their child has an allergy

* Recommendations on improving tests for food allergy

* 1998 UK Department of Health document recommending not to give children peanuts until 3 years of age

* 2000 American Academy of Pediatrics statement that broadly agrees

* Stuart’s 2023 i article on the controversy

* 2008 observational study comparing Jewish children in the UK (no peanuts) to Jewish children in Israel (lots of peanuts)

* …after which the advice in the UK is announced to be “suspended”

* The 2015 LEAP randomised controlled trial on peanut avoidance vs. peanut consumption in infants

* Follow-up of the same data to age 12

* BBC article about the follow-up

* Observational study from Australia finding no significant change in the prevalence of peanut allergy

* Paper arguing that if we want to see effects, we need to give peanuts to babies even earlier

* The EAT trial of food allergen exposure in non-high-risk infants

* Re-analysis of LEAP and EAT data to work out the best age to administer peanuts

* The PreventADALL study from Sweden

* 2019 article collecting examples of “medical reversals” from across the scientific literature

Credits

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

Many Western countries, most notably the US, had a major decline in their crime rate in the 1990s. About 20 years earlier, the US had banned the use of lead in gasoline. Perhaps you wouldn’t think those two facts are related - but many researchers think this wasn’t a coincidence.

After getting distracted and doing a whole episode on lead and IQ a couple of weeks ago, Tom and Stuart get to the subject they intended to cover: the lead-crime hypothesis. How strong is the evidence that the presence of lead in a child’s early environment increases their propensity for crime when they grow up? And how strong is the evidence that lead removal (at least partly) caused the declining crime rate?

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress, the magazine full of new and underrated ideas for advancing science, technology, and humanity. They have a new issue out right now, which opens with a fascinating essay on the decline of drink-driving. Check it out at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* Numbers on the US crime rate over time

* Evidence from Finland on IQ and crime

* The first study (to our knowledge) on the lead-crime hypothesis, from 2007

* Rob Verbruggen’s 2021 Manhattan Institute report on lead and crime

* Jennifer Doleac’s 2021 Niskanen Center report on lead and crime

* Paper focusing on 1920s/30s America and the impact of lead on crime

* 2020 Swedish paper on moss lead levels and crime

* 2021 PNAS paper on lead and personality change

* 2022 meta-analysis on the lead-crime hypothesis

* 2023 systematic review on the same topic

Credits

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

Johann Hari is a journalist with an interesting past who has now written four very popular books on scientific topics (addiction, depression, attention, and obesity). Are those books any good?

In this paid-subscriber-only episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart—who have both written reviews of Hari’s books—discuss Hari’s career, his sudden emergence as a science writer, and exactly how many miles you need to travel around the world to ensure your book becomes a New York Times bestseller.

Petrol, pipes, paint: they made a whole generation duller. That’s if you believe the research on the effects of lead on IQ. By interfering with neurological development, the lead that we used to encounter routinely has left hundreds of millions of us with a tiny bit of brain damage.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look at the toxic effects of lead - from very obvious, high-dose lead poisoning to the more insidious, low-level effects that have apparently held millions of people back. How strong is the evidence for the effects of low-level lead exposure on IQ?

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine, a journal of ideas to accelerate human progress. If you’re a student aged 18-22 and want to attend the Works in Progress “Invisible College” this August (at which Stuart is speaking), take a look at this link.

Show Notes

* Centers for Disease Control (CDC) page on lead poisoning

* Articles on the history of lead poisoning from the BBC and the Guardian

* 2022 PNAS study concluding that “half of US population exposed to adverse lead levels in early childhood” (the one with the “824,097,690” figure)

* Article on blood lead levels and which are considered dangerous

* The 2005 meta-analysis on lead and children’s IQs

* Cited in the 2021 “Global Lead Exposure Report”

* The critique from the CDC in 2007

* The critique paper from 2013

* The critique paper from 2016

* The correction from 2019

* The critique paper from 2020

* Quasi experiments: from Rhode Island; using manufacturing employment

* 2018 paper on low-level lead and all-cause mortality

Credits

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

Preventing cancer. Curing depression. Single-handedly ending the COVID-19 pandemic. Oh, and something to do with your bones. Is there anything Vitamin D can’t do?

Maybe the answer is: “quite a lot”. In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look into the claims about the wondrous powers of Vitamin D supplements - and whether any of them have any decent evidence behind them. The whole story turns out to be a perfect parable for how to think about health research.

📚Buy Tom’s book, Everything is Predictable, at this link! And join us at the book launch in London on 16th May 2024! 📚

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine: the stylish, well-argued, data-packed place to read essays about science, technology and human progress. Find their latest issue at this link.

Show notes

* Rupa Huq MP’s article from during the COVID pandemic on how the government should be “shouting about Vitamin D”

* Huq and David Davis MP convince the government to recommend Vitamin D

* Stuart’s New Statesman article on why this was jumping the gun a little

* How Vitamin D regulates calcium and phosphorus metabolism in the body

* Might it slow tumour growth? Or prevent cardiovascular disease? Evidence from rats

* Observational studies on how Vitamin D levels are related to: depression, cognitive impairment, cancer rates, cardiovascular disease, all-cause mortality

* Review paper claiming widespread deficiency in Vitamin D

* Scientific American article including discussion of the confusion over what it means to be “deficient” in, and/or have an “insufficiency” of Vitamin D

* 2019 paper reporting results from the VITAL trial on cancer and cardiovascular risk

* D-health trial results on cancer risk and cardiovascular risk

* From the D-health trial, papers reporting no effect of Vitamin D supplementation on: cognitive impairment, depression, microbiome diversity, telomere length, hypothyroidism, erectile dysfunction, falls, fractures

* Classic xkcd cartoon on false-positive jelly beans

* 2022 Nature Reviews Endrocrinology review on the (lack of) evidence for the effects of Vitamin D beyond bone-related problems

* Story of UK man who died of a Vitamin D overdose

* Vitamin D and COVID: the promising observational study; the null trial

Credits

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

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.

Did your schoolteacher also do the thing with the banana and the condom? It might’ve been cringe and awkward, but just ask the experts: the evidence is “clear and compelling” that sex education classes reduce the likelihood of teenage pregnancy, the transmission of STIs, and even the prevalence of sexual abuse.

In this paid-subscriber-only episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart ask the inevitable question: how “clear and compelling” are we talking, here? Those experts wouldn’t exaggerate the strength of the evidence for something like this… would they?

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 microplastics, 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 thestudiesshowpod@substack.com, 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).

It’s one of the best-known findings of psychology research: kids who can delay gratification by not eating a marshmallow will grow up healther, wiser, and more successful. But guess what? Later studies had trouble finding the same results. What do we actually know about delaying gratification?

Get ready to control yourselves, because in this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart tell the story of yet another famous psychological study that turned out not to live up to the hype.

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine. If you’re looking for thoughtful essays on areas of policy, science, and technology that you might not have considered previously, there’s no better place. Check it out at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* The famous 1988 paper by Walter Mischel and colleagues on predicting teenage outcomes from childhood marshmallow test performance, and the famous 1990 one (including the SAT predictions)

* And the much older research that this follows up

* Walter Mischel’s 2014 book The Marshmallow Test

* Publicity piece on the book in Vox

* First proper replication study from 2018

* Debate about how the study used covariates

* Really good Vox article describing the replication

* 2021 paper (co-authored by Mischel) following up on the original participants

* New 2024 paper following up on the replication study

* Heavily-cited 2011 paper from the Dunedin study on the predictive power of self-control measures

* Inzlicht and Roberts (2024) on trait vs. state self-control, and why we might have been thinking about this the wrong way

Credits

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

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.

We’ve now been making this podcast for a year(!). We thought we’d mark the occasion with a grossly self-indulgent look back through our favourite episodes - and our least favourites, too.

We’ve still got a massive list of potential episode topics, but we always want more. Which topics would you like us to look into? Comments below are open to all.

Thanks for listening. And remember: if you like The Studies Show, please tell a friend about it!

Show notes

* Study showing consistent results from multiple cognitive test batteries

* Lucy Foulkes’s paper on the “prevalence inflation hypothesis”

* Semaglutide and quitting smoking

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.

Remember when they were coming to take your gas stove away? Every so often a study about the effects of air pollution on health goes viral, and we’re reminded again that seemingly innocuous objects—like your kitchen cooker—could be bad for us in unexpected ways. How bad is air pollution? And is it getting any better?

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look into the science of air pollution, trying to separate correlation from causality, and working out what scientists mean when they say that deaths are “attributable” to something (it’s more complicated than you think!).

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. We usually mention their long-form pieces at worksinprogress.co, but they also have a Substack newsletter at worksinprogress.news with shorter articles on the same topics. We commend it to you, and thank Works in Progress for sponsoring the podcast.

Show notes

* Recent news about “Ella’s Law” in the UK

* Tom’s 2019 Unherd article on air pollution

* “Death risk from London's toxic air sees ‘utterly horrifying’ rise for second year running”

* The Our World In Data “Deaths by Risk Factor” graph

* 2024 BMJ Open article about the health risks of coal power stations

* Dynomight’s long article on air quality

* The 1952 “Great Smog of London”

* More useful Our World In Data articles:

* An explainer on “attributable fractions” and summing up multiple risk factors

* On indoor air pollution

* Deaths from outdoor pollution

* Death rate from outdoor pollution

* Deaths from outdoor pollution vs. GDP per capita

* The WHO calls indoor air pollution “the world’s single largest environmental health risk”

* More on attributable fractions, with some examples

* Example of an experimental study on the effects of air pollution

* The article that sparked the Great Cooker Controversy of 2023

* Example of the media coverage at the time

* Biden forced to rule out a ban on gas cookers

* Recent story on how there’s “no safe level” of PM2.5

* Based on this 2024 paper in the BMJ

* How policy interventions can reduce (and have reduced) air pollution

* London report on the effect of ULEZ

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.