The hottest Science Substack posts right now

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Predictions about the future of neurogrifters and neuro-nonsense

Brain Pizza • 728 implied HN points • 26 Dec 24
🔬 Science Neuroscience Health Psychology Education Technology
  1. Neuroscience is becoming popular, but this can lead to the rise of people trying to take advantage of it for their own gain. It's important to be wary of those exploiting this trend.
  2. Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future of neuro-related claims and theories. Many ideas about neuroscience may not hold up over time.
  3. The term 'neuro-' is becoming a buzzword, which can lead to confusion and misinformation. It's vital to approach neuro-based claims with a critical eye.

Fields & Energy

Fields & Energy • 459 implied HN points • 29 Oct 23
🔬 Science Physics Electromagnetism Quantum Mechanics Philosophy History
  1. The author is working on a book called 'Fields & Energy' that explores electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. He plans to share sections of the book weekly over about two years.
  2. The book argues that electromagnetism involves two different phenomena: fields and energy, which could help explain various puzzles in physics. It also ties these concepts to historical and philosophical insights.
  3. The author aims to make the book accessible to both professionals and non-specialists, blending technical details with general concepts to engage a wider audience.

Spain’s African Swine Fever Crisis

Who is Robert Malone • 10 implied HN points • 10 Feb 26
🔬 Science Virology Epidemiology Biosecurity Genetics Vaccinology Agriculture
  1. African swine fever was detected near a high-security research lab and genetic analysis showed the strain closely matches a laboratory reference virus, prompting police raids and a sealed criminal investigation into a possible lab release.
  2. Spain’s pork industry is a global powerhouse, and the outbreak triggered immediate export bans and urgent containment actions, with a real risk of massive economic losses if domestic farms become infected.
  3. The case highlights serious gaps in biosafety and oversight for high-containment, internationally funded pathogen research, underscoring the need for greater transparency, clear accountability, and stronger governance to prevent accidental releases.
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1.0 On Generation & Corruption

Fields & Energy • 459 implied HN points • 25 Oct 23
🔬 Science Physics Mathematics Technology Philosophy History
  1. In physics, our understanding has greatly improved over time, but some concepts can still feel confusing or counterintuitive. We often have to rely on complex math that works well, even if it doesn't make total sense at first.
  2. Michael Faraday challenged the common ideas of his time by introducing the concept of 'fields' instead of just focusing on point particles. This helped explain how forces work in a way that made more sense to him.
  3. Today, we still face similar questions about our understanding of reality in physics. As we develop new mathematical tools, we should ask if we need to rethink our basic ideas about how things work, just like Faraday did.

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Pronouns

Vectors of Mind • 491 implied HN points • 22 Feb 23
🔬 Science Linguistics
  1. The distribution of pronouns worldwide shows strong similarities, suggesting a common origin or diffusion around 15,000 years ago.
  2. The existence of globally similar pronouns challenges the idea that self-awareness and language evolution go back more than 8,000 years.
  3. An examination of pronouns in different language families supports the theory that self-awareness and linguistic features may have spread at around the Holocene period.

Should we be afraid of nuclear meltdowns? I used to think so

Everything is Light • 491 implied HN points • 16 Feb 23
🔬 Science Nuclear Energy Environment Public Health Natural Disasters Energy Sources
  1. Most alternatives to nuclear energy are much worse in terms of risks and consequences.
  2. Nuclear meltdowns are rare and often poorly understood, leading to unnecessary fear.
  3. Compared to other energy sources like coal and oil, nuclear energy is safer and causes less harm to the environment and human health.

The other man: Neanderthal findings test our power of imagination

Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning • 686 implied HN points • 01 Jan 25
🔬 Science Genetics Anthropology Paleontology Evolution History
  1. Neanderthals were more diverse than previously thought, similar to modern humans. Recent DNA findings show that they had unique social behaviors and were genetically distinct from their neighbors.
  2. The ancient DNA era has rapidly changed our understanding of human prehistory. Discoveries from ancient genomes have revealed new insights into our ancestors and how they interacted with Neanderthals.
  3. A notable finding is the discovery of a Neanderthal named Thorin, who lived in isolation for thousands of years. This suggests that Neanderthals had unique ways of life that are very different from modern humans.

Bird of the Week: Long-Tailed Duck

Discourse Blog • 235 implied HN points • 09 Feb 24
🔬 Science Nature Animals Videos Facts
  1. The Long-Tailed Duck is a fascinating bird known for its long tail feathers that males use to attract females.
  2. Long-Tailed Ducks reside in very cold regions like Canada, Alaska, the Arctic, Greenland, Scandinavia, and Siberia.
  3. These ducks have unique features like changing plumage, loud calls, and being master divers, making them iconic birds worth admiring.

Two cautionary tales about BA.2.86

Logging the World • 478 implied HN points • 07 Oct 23
🔬 Science Research Epidemiology Vaccines Public Health
  1. Don't just look at proportions, consider sample sizes too. Confidence intervals are important when dealing with limited data.
  2. Focus on the bigger picture when it comes to analyzing new variants. Growth rates matter.
  3. Instead of fixating on one variant, keep an eye on other potentially impactful variants as well. The situation is constantly evolving.

Links for Winter 2026

Telescopic Turnip • 31 implied HN points • 28 Dec 25
🔬 Science Biology Microbiology Evolution Ecology Genetics Neuroscience Biotechnology
  1. Some viruses can trigger bacteria to self-organize into a single, coordinated structure, producing collective behaviors that look a lot like a hive mind.
  2. Gene-level molecular clocks suggest mitochondria were acquired relatively late, after the nucleus, cytoskeleton, and vesicle-transport systems had already evolved, which challenges the idea that mitochondria jump-started eukaryotic complexity.
  3. Forbidding children from moving or fidgeting appears to impair creativity, and larger studies are needed before treating stillness as a universal schooling requirement.

Let’s Sequence the Bennu Samples

Viruses Must Die • 52 implied HN points • 06 Dec 25
🔬 Science Astrobiology Genetics Molecular Biology Planetary Science Space Exploration Biochemistry
  1. Samples from the asteroid Bennu contain DNA bases and amino acids, so the rock carries familiar building blocks of life.
  2. If life can travel between worlds, Earth-style DNA sequencing might actually detect it, so teams should try sequencing Bennu material despite contamination concerns because any truly novel sequence would be decisive.
  3. The amino acids are mostly racemic but show an excess of left-handed valine, which could hint at a biological origin but is ambiguous due to racemization, making sequencing an especially important follow-up.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Cognitive Bias or Statistical Artefact?

UX Psychology • 218 implied HN points • 16 Feb 24
🔬 Science Cognitive Bias Psychology Statistics User Experience Awareness
  1. The Dunning-Kruger effect explains how people with lower ability often overestimate their competence, while highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their capabilities.
  2. The disconnect between competence and metacompetence judgments is seen not only in psychology but also in areas like aviation, memory, and medical skills. It can impact product development and UX teams by highlighting the challenge of relying on feedback from less competent individuals.
  3. Debate continues on whether the Dunning-Kruger effect is purely a statistical artefact or a psychological phenomenon. Regardless, it prompts the need for critical self-awareness, peer review, and continuous growth to mitigate its impact in fields like UX.

The Galactic Quarantine

ᴋʟᴀᵾs • 471 implied HN points • 06 Jun 23
🔬 Science UFOs Extraterrestrial Life Evolution Biomimicry
  1. The zoo hypothesis suggests a scenario where a more advanced intelligence has isolated or quarantined the planet, similar to animals in a zoo.
  2. Civilizations may rise and fall based on genetic selection, with humans being perceived as 'angry apes' by more advanced species.
  3. Encounters with UFOs and potentially non-human beings could be viewed in the context of a 'farm' or 'nature preserve' scenario, where humans are studied or observed by a superior intelligence.

Genetic Variations that Predispose People to Severe COVID-19, Cause of Acute Deadly Hepatitis in Children Likely Identified, SARS-CoV-2 Origin Still Being Investigated

LIL Science • 471 implied HN points • 18 May 23
🔬 Science Genetics Infectious Diseases Research Virology
  1. Research has identified genetic variations that make people more likely to have severe COVID-19.
  2. The likely cause of acute deadly hepatitis in children has been identified as a combination of viruses and genetic predispositions.
  3. The origin of SARS-CoV-2 is still under investigation, with reports detailing activities in China preceding the pandemic.

Accelerated Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in US Deer Populations

LIL Science • 471 implied HN points • 29 Aug 23
🔬 Science Virology Evolution Public Health
  1. SARS-CoV-2 can evolve quickly in deer populations and may become very different from current variants.
  2. Zoonotic transmission is the spread of a virus between humans and animals, which can lead to new variants that may be problematic for human immunity.
  3. Monitoring wildlife for zoonotic diseases is crucial to prevent the emergence of highly divergent variants that could infect humans.

Epistemic Hell

Secretum Secretorum • 1768 implied HN points • 27 Jan 24
🔬 Science Health Physics Medicine Biology Research
  1. Through history, reasoning based on limited information has led to dangerous outcomes, like chronic cyanide poisoning and scurvy.
  2. Some scientific problems, like understanding heredity, have been challenging due to complexity and the need for exceptional datasets.
  3. To escape epistemic hells, radical ideas, serendipity, unlearning prior knowledge, and persistence are vital.

Energy in electronic circuits

lcamtuf’s thing • 2244 implied HN points • 16 Oct 23
🔬 Science Physics Electronics Energy Circuits
  1. Designing electronic circuits has become more stringent over the years due to advancements in technology.
  2. Understanding how energy travels through electronic circuits is crucial for circuit stability and efficiency.
  3. High-speed signals in electronic circuits can lead to significant energy expenditure and signal integrity issues.

How do we know what 21 degrees C means?

The Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything • 452 implied HN points • 27 May 23
🔬 Science Measurement Instruments History
  1. Temperature measurement has a long history and was viewed differently in ancient times.
  2. Gradual advancements in creating reliable thermometers involved changing materials and introducing numerical scales.
  3. The meticulous work of individuals like Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit and Jean-Andr de Luc contributed to establishing standardized temperature scales.

Behaviorist Evolutionary Psychology

Dissentient • 452 implied HN points • 06 Mar 23
🔬 Science Evolutionary Psychology Learning Social Behavior
  1. Behaviorism and evolutionary psychology have different approaches to learning mechanisms and understanding human nature.
  2. Primary reinforcers and punishers play a significant role in shaping behavior and motivation in humans.
  3. Social interactions involve shaping behavior through reinforcement and punishment, influencing adaptive goals and responses.

Recent Metascience News/Links

The Good Science Project • 40 implied HN points • 18 Dec 25
🔬 Science Research Policy Reproducibility Research Integrity Institutions Life Sciences Artificial Intelligence
  1. Even though we spend much more on science and R&D than in the past, the bottleneck for economic growth is often our ability to translate discoveries into marketable products, not a shortage of new ideas.
  2. Research funding and review rules are shifting: NSF is allowing fewer outside reviews and giving program managers more discretion, and NIH has removed the old requirement to get advance permission for very large grant applications.
  3. Reproducibility and data-quality problems keep appearing in areas like crystallography, and analysts caution against treating measures like “variance explained” as if they directly show a variable’s causal impact.

What is Vaccine Beer

Viruses Must Die • 35 implied HN points • 24 Dec 25
🔬 Science Biotechnology Synthetic Biology Immunology Microbiology Bioethics Food Science Public Health
  1. Live brewer’s yeast engineered to make viral proteins can be put into beer and may trigger antibody responses; the authors drank such “vaccine beer” and reported no discernible side effects.
  2. They show you can recreate the necessary plasmids and brew vaccine-containing beer outside a university lab using commercial DNA synthesis and readily available home-lab and brewing supplies, making the approach accessible to homebrewers and small food producers.
  3. They argue food-based vaccines could lower cost and increase access, and that current US law could allow these products to be marketed as GRAS foods so long as no disease-prevention claims are made, while formal medical efficacy testing would remain under regulatory oversight.

2.6.2 Newton's Legacy

Fields & Energy • 219 implied HN points • 07 Feb 24
🔬 Science Physics History Mathematics Philosophy Methods
  1. Newton's laws of motion were groundbreaking but took time to be fully understood and accepted. People did not immediately grasp his ideas about forces and motion.
  2. Many later scientists built on Newton's work, refining and developing his theories. Newton laid the groundwork, but others were key in shaping what we now know as classical physics.
  3. Newton's scientific approach set a high standard for future research. His methods are still considered a model for how scientific investigations should be conducted.

Emerging Stars

Compounding Quality • 216 implied HN points • 08 Feb 24
🔬 Science Physics Mathematics
  1. Isaac Newton is famous for his Laws of Motion in physics and mathematics.
  2. Newton's Laws of Motion are fundamental to classical mechanics and still widely used today.
  3. This post about Newton's Laws of Motion is for paid subscribers.

Cancer-Selective, Pan-Essential Targets from DepMap

Rough Diamonds • 20 implied HN points • 09 Jan 26
🔬 Science Cancer Genomics Drug Discovery Computational Biology Molecular Biology
  1. Large-scale DepMap screening can flag genes whose knockout strongly harms many cancer cell lines but not immortalized "normal" lines, yet these results are limited by dataset definitions (many hits fall on DepMap's "pan-essential" list) and by the poor representation of healthy human tissues in culture, so experimental validation is needed.
  2. The top candidates include both familiar chemotherapy targets and new leads: some targets already have clinical-stage inhibitors or ADCs (e.g., TFRC, NMT1), while others (e.g., YRDC, SEPHS2, PHF5A, ADSL) are preclinical or underexplored and could be druggable by different modalities.
  3. LLM-generated code (Claude Code) made the project fast and reproducible, but agent-produced code can silently change behavior or omit checks, so careful human review, testing, and follow-up biological experiments are essential.

Author's Introduction

Fields & Energy • 439 implied HN points • 30 Sep 23
🔬 Science Physics Engineering Education Technology History
  1. Physicists and engineers often focus on different aspects of understanding reality. Physicists typically ask 'why' things happen, while engineers ask 'how' to make things work.
  2. Electromagnetism is a key part of our everyday experience, but training in this field has become disconnected between physics theory and practical applications. There's a need for better communication and education between physicists and engineers.
  3. New ideas in science can often be met with skepticism or rejection. It's important to question established norms and be open to fresh perspectives, even if they challenge widely accepted beliefs.

The vast deserts of useless science

Wyclif's Dust • 804 implied HN points • 19 Oct 24
🔬 Science Statistical Analysis
  1. Correlation does not mean causation, yet many scientists treat it as if it does. This can lead to misleading conclusions and a lack of real progress in research.
  2. Many fields, like veterinary science, show a lot of poorly conducted studies that don't really prove anything. This is concerning because it affects how animals are treated, with not enough good evidence to support common practices.
  3. The scientific community needs to hold itself accountable and produce reliable research. Right now, there isn't enough incentive for some researchers to conduct proper studies, leading to a lot of flawed findings.

Urban Umwelt in Awe of Animals

Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind • 199 implied HN points • 15 Feb 24
🔬 Science Biology Ecology Animal Behavior Urban wildlife
  1. Animals have unique ways of sensing their world that we often can't understand. For example, dogs like Taylor use their amazing noses to gather information that goes beyond what we can perceive.
  2. The concept of 'umwelt' shows that each species experiences their environment differently. This means animals interact with their surroundings in ways that are complex and rich, not simple or automatic.
  3. Learning about how animals sense the world can help us appreciate their lives and experiences more. It reminds us that our way of sensing things isn't the only way and that every creature has its own valuable perspective.

THB Insider #12

The Honest Broker Newsletter • 628 implied HN points • 19 Dec 24
🔬 Science Climate Energy Technology Research Policy
  1. The author will soon evaluate their predictions for 2024 and will post about the upcoming 2025 predictions. It's a fun way to look back and see how accurate they were.
  2. A new paper has been posted for feedback and will be revised based on comments received. This is a chance for readers to engage and contribute their thoughts.
  3. The author is planning a Q&A session and is inviting readers to submit their questions. It's an opportunity for direct interaction and to discuss important topics.

Philosophic Premises of Quantum Mechanics – Part I

Fields & Energy • 359 implied HN points • 12 Nov 23
🔬 Science Physics Quantum Mechanics Philosophy History Theory
  1. Quantum mechanics is often misunderstood, with some believing it challenges objective reality. However, the issues stem from outdated philosophies rather than quantum theory itself.
  2. During the Weimar period in Germany, there was a strong cultural push against reason and causality. This opposition influenced the development of quantum mechanics during that time.
  3. Many scientists who shaped quantum mechanics were caught between supporting the new ideas and adhering to older principles of causality, leading to mixed interpretations of their findings.

A Toast to Vaccine Beer

Viruses Must Die • 35 implied HN points • 21 Dec 25
🔬 Science Vaccines Immunology Microbiology Biotechnology Public Health Food Science Science Policy
  1. Vaccines can be delivered through everyday foods like yeast or beer, which could make immunization simpler, cheaper, and more widely accessible.
  2. The current drug approval system’s heavy safety theater and monopoly incentives have increased public distrust and helped anti-vaccine sentiment gain influence.
  3. Treating vaccine-foods as consumer products with independent third-party testing and public reviews could rebuild trust, encourage competition, and provide transparent information on safety and effectiveness.

Should We Care About Replication?

Economic Forces • 6 implied HN points • 19 Feb 26
🔬 Science Research Methods Replication Peer Review Economics Academic Publishing Price theory
  1. Replication matters because it helps catch fraud and honest mistakes, but it doesn't have to be literal — redoing analyses with different data, larger samples, or better measures can serve the same purpose.
  2. A fall in published comments doesn't mean debate stopped; many critiques now happen in peer review and long appendices, and academic hierarchies and publication norms also shape what gets publicly challenged.
  3. Frontier empirical work is noisy and many surprising results won't generalize, so basic price theory and simple models are essential for asking better questions, judging results, and prioritizing what to replicate.

Paul Stamets on Fungi, Heterodoxy and Systems

rebelwisdom • 687 implied HN points • 07 Mar 23
🔬 Science Biology Ecology Evolution Psychology
  1. Fungi play a critical role in ecosystems, being essential for survival and offering various benefits to humans.
  2. Mycelium networks demonstrate resilience and adaptability, showing how diversity and innovation can emerge from minorities and unconventional thinking.
  3. Psilocybin mushrooms provide not just physical effects, but also potential societal and spiritual benefits, connecting different cultures and promoting collaboration over conflict.