The hottest Science Substack posts right now

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Science fictions are outpacing science facts for polygenic embryo selection

The Infinitesimal • 479 implied HN points • 13 Jul 24
🔬 Science Genetics Biotechnology Ethics Behavioral Science
  1. Polygenic embryo selection may not improve outcomes significantly for complex traits like IQ or education, as gains from such selections are often minimal.
  2. Screening for diseases may also have limited results, especially when those diseases are defined by arbitrary thresholds rather than clear biological mechanisms.
  3. There may be unintended consequences from embryo selection, such as increased risk for other traits, due to complex genetic correlations that are not fully understood.

American biomedical science in 2026

Can We Still Govern? • 190 implied HN points • 27 Jan 26
🔬 Science Biomedical Research Funding Science Policy Governance Public Engagement Academic Freedom
  1. NIH is being run more from the White House than by Congress and independent scientists, which undermines stable, long-term peer review and research planning.
  2. Chronic underfunding and falling grant success rates have overloaded researchers and damaged the biomedical workforce; the fix is steady public funding or fewer applicants, not relying on billionaire philanthropy.
  3. Scientists must stop staying silent and organize publicly and politically to defend scientific independence, free speech, and trustworthy journalism.

This week: Bacteria anticipate the seasons! Placebos activate the same neurons as anesthesia! And don’t touch radio towers with hot dogs.

Niko McCarty • 79 implied HN points • 07 Sep 24
🔬 Science Biology Neuroscience Physics Mathematics Environmental Science
  1. Bacteria can sense changes in seasons and adapt to prepare for colder weather. This helps them survive better when temperatures drop.
  2. Placebos work by activating the same brain neurons as pain relief drugs like anesthesia. This shows how our mind can influence our body’s responses.
  3. A fun fact: touching a hot dog to a radio tower can turn it into a speaker. Just a quirky reminder to be careful with food and electronics!

Icesteading: Executive Summary

Transhuman Axiology • 178 implied HN points • 11 Sep 24
🔬 Science Engineering Environment Research Innovation Technology
  1. Icesteading is the idea of creating colonies on artificially insulated icebergs in warm ocean waters. These 'ice-islands' could serve as places for living, working, or even launching space missions.
  2. The insulation around these icebergs can make them last for decades or even centuries before melting. This involves using materials like air or foam to keep the ice from warming up too fast.
  3. Building on these ice-islands avoids the legal and political issues on land. They offer more freedom and the chance to create underground spaces, making them a unique alternative to traditional islands.

Three interesting studies of genetic variation

De Novo • 99 implied HN points • 04 Feb 26
🔬 Science Genetics Population Genetics Genomics Immunology Virology Aging
  1. Common genetic variants in meiosis genes change how many crossovers happen, and fewer crossovers raise the risk of embryo aneuploidy; those genetic risks are also tied to a shorter reproductive lifespan (later menarche and earlier menopause).
  2. A measurable fraction of people carry high Epstein–Barr virus DNA in blood, and host immune genetics — especially HLA — largely determine who can’t control persistent EBV, while viral sequence differences had little impact on disease in this large cohort.
  3. When you exclude extrinsic causes of death, intrinsic human lifespan is about 50–55% heritable, meaning genetics explain roughly half the variation in lifespan today, and older lower estimates were driven by higher environmental mortality in past cohorts.
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Radiophobia

Gordian Knot News • 271 implied HN points • 17 Jan 26
🔬 Science Nuclear Energy Regulatory Policy Energy Policy Science History Public Perception
  1. Regulatory overreach and strict radiation rules helped create and amplify public fear of radiation, rather than public fear being the original cause.
  2. Energy market changes in the late 1960s and early 1970s made nuclear much more expensive and removed market limits on how hard regulators could push, contributing to the collapse of new nuclear orders.
  3. A large ecosystem of regulators, labs, health-physics professionals, cleanup contractors, and parts of industry benefited from strict rules and had incentives to perpetuate radiophobia.

Don't Shut Up And Calculate; Read Fields & Energy and Understand

Contemplations on the Tree of Woe • 2194 implied HN points • 08 Aug 25
🔬 Science Physics Theoretical Electromagnetism Engineering Innovation
  1. Electromagnetism has traditional theories that might be based on incorrect ideas. Revisiting older theories from scientists like Faraday and Maxwell can help clear up confusion.
  2. The current approach to electromagnetism often ignores practical applications and leads to contradictions. A new understanding suggests that fields guide energy, changing how we think about radiation and charge behavior.
  3. There's a push against conformity in science, with traditional peer review sometimes hindering innovation. Exploring new ideas, even outside typical channels, can revitalize scientific thought.

Brief Notes on Scientific Critique

Cremieux Recueil • 434 implied HN points • 27 Dec 25
🔬 Science Research Methods Statistics Reproducibility Science communication Peer Review Research Ethics
  1. Make sure your criticism is correct: check the data, run the needed analyses, and only accuse or declare problems when you can justify them.
  2. Focus on meaningful, relevant issues that actually change conclusions — don’t list hypotheticals; quantify or demonstrate how a confound or error would affect the results.
  3. Be generous and contextual: assume good faith, ask for clarification or contact authors privately when fixable, and build enough domain knowledge to notice real problems instead of relying on rote one‑liners.

What is The Infinitesimal?

The Infinitesimal • 499 implied HN points • 05 Jul 24
🔬 Science Genetics Research Behavior Heritability Statistics
  1. Human traits are influenced by many tiny genetic factors, making understanding them complex. This means small changes in genetics can impact our traits in different ways.
  2. Talking about nature versus nurture isn't simple; both genetics and environment play big roles. There's often a mix of many genes working together rather than clear-cut definitions.
  3. The concept of heritability is tricky and often debated. Different studies can show very different results about how much genetics affect things like intelligence or behavior.

🛑🚼 The end of (demographic) history

Faster, Please! • 548 implied HN points • 14 Dec 25
🔬 Science Demography Population Fertility Forecasting Public Policy Development Economics
  1. The global fertility transition seems to have largely finished, so the classic story of steadily falling birth rates is no longer the clear master narrative.
  2. Even with that shift, the demographic future is uncertain — demographers don’t know exactly how birth rates, aging, and migration will evolve next.
  3. That uncertainty has big policy and economic implications, because different population paths lead to very different outcomes for growth, labor markets, and public finances.

Pfizer and Moderna bivalent vaccines contain 20-35% expression vector and are transformation competent in E.coli

Nepetalactone Newsletter • 5405 implied HN points • 08 Mar 23
🔬 Science Health Research Vaccines Contamination
  1. Pfizer and Moderna bivalent vaccines have 20-35% expression vector and can transform E.coli.
  2. Previous estimates of DNA contamination in the vaccines were significantly underestimated.
  3. Different methods like transformation of DNA in E.coli and qPCR assays were used to quantify the nucleic acid contamination in the vaccines.

Pt3: The Status Wars of Apes

Knowingless • 2741 implied HN points • 17 Jul 25
🔬 Science Animal Behavior Evolution
  1. Different ape species have very different ways of handling status and power. For example, bonobos are known for their peaceful, cooperative approach, while chimpanzees often engage in violence and competition for dominance.
  2. In orangutan and gorilla societies, the dominant males father most of the offspring, showing a stark difference in mating patterns compared to bonobos and chimpanzees, where mating is influenced greatly by social status and female choice.
  3. Ape social dynamics often revolve around sex. For instance, while chimpanzee females face many challenges and coercion, bonobo females tend to have more agency and sexual freedom, influencing their social standings and relationships.

Human see, human do

Wrong Side of History • 731 implied HN points • 15 Nov 25
🔬 Science Evolution Behavior
  1. Humans are not just like other primates; instead, we share more traits with animals like dolphins, dogs, and even ants. Our unique cooperative behaviors set us apart from chimpanzees and gorillas.
  2. Our capacity for empathy and social bonding is crucial for our survival. While chimps can be violent and less cooperative, humans developed strong social ties that help us work together and protect one another.
  3. Humans are deeply influenced by public opinion and the need for social acceptance. Unlike other primates, we are affected by societal pressures, which can lead to extreme behaviors, including self-destruction.

Some notes on assortative mating

The Infinitesimal • 339 implied HN points • 23 Jul 24
🔬 Science Genetics Evolution Statistics Heritability
  1. Assortative mating happens when partners select each other based on certain traits, like height or education, making their children more genetically similar over generations.
  2. This type of mating can lead to increased genetic variance in the population, but does not change the genetic variance within families because the parent's traits balance out among the children.
  3. When estimating heritability or variance, it’s important to use the right approach. Population-level estimates can be misleading if based on family data, and vice versa.

Declining trust in Zeus is a technology

Experimental History • 20553 implied HN points • 31 Jan 24
🔬 Science Research History Technology Innovation Experts
  1. Randomized-controlled trials are a relatively recent method in the history of scientific evidence.
  2. Challenging old beliefs, such as trust in ancient gods like Zeus, can lead to important scientific advancements.
  3. There is a need for more transparency and accessibility in expert knowledge to earn public trust in institutions and experts.

UFOs are a soft sci-fi genre

The Intrinsic Perspective • 7615 implied HN points • 20 Dec 24
🔬 Science Astrophysics Philosophy Sociology Technology Literature
  1. UFOs are often seen as a type of soft sci-fi that mixes imaginative stories with poor evidence. This suggests that many UFO enthusiasts focus more on fantasy than reality.
  2. Real first contact with aliens is more likely to be through indirect evidence over long distances, rather than physical visits. Scientists think we might find signs of alien civilizations from far away.
  3. As science progresses, we might enter a stage of uncertainty about aliens, leading to debates without clear answers for a long time. This means we could be questioning the existence of aliens for hundreds of years.

Yes, scientific progress depends on like a thousand people

The Intrinsic Perspective • 9247 implied HN points • 29 Oct 24
🔬 Science Mentorship Elite Networks Innovation Research
  1. Scientific progress relies heavily on mentorship and connections within a large academic network. Many successful scientists come from the same elite lineage.
  2. Certain families of scientists are particularly influential, as seen with many Nobel Prize winners tracing back to a small number of academic mentors.
  3. While some critique the system as elitist, having a productive cultural substructure in science can be beneficial, and it's important to support this environment for future breakthroughs.

Using AI to Reveal Bad, Biased, and Bullshit Published Scholarship

Unsafe Science • 152 implied HN points • 26 Jan 26
🔬 Science Research Methods Social Science Psychology AI Tools
  1. AI tools can do careful, time-consuming critical reviews in minutes instead of days, making it possible to audit many papers quickly.
  2. Much microaggression research relies on self-reports, treats perceptions as objective facts, overstates causation from correlational data, and often uses circular logic that makes the claims hard to falsify.
  3. Scaling AI-driven critique could expose biased or low-quality scholarship and improve accountability, but its findings need human verification and there are real risks when criticism is dismissed as racism to avoid scrutiny.

Science can address meaning and purpose

Heterodox STEM • 64 implied HN points • 18 Feb 26
🔬 Science Philosophy Evolutionary Psychology Cognitive Science Animal Behavior Ethics Neuroscience
  1. Science can describe and explain feelings, values, and purposes as natural phenomena produced by evolution. It cannot, however, generate or prescribe what people ought to value.
  2. Meanings and purposes are real because they are patterns instantiated in brains and behavior, so social animals genuinely have goals, feelings, and significance in their lives. That human significance doesn't equal cosmic significance, but it's still real to us.
  3. Asking 'the meaning of life' in the abstract is a category error because meaning only applies relative to beings with desires and goals. Science is well suited to answer context-specific questions about what matters to those beings.

GDP is Inevitable

Cremieux Recueil • 477 implied HN points • 17 Dec 25
🔬 Science Statistics Mathematics Econometrics Measurement Psychometrics Data science
  1. When you add up many positively correlated variables with positive weights, different composite scores tend to become very similar because shared covariance grows faster than unique variance, so the sums converge toward perfect correlation as components increase.
  2. GDP will naturally correlate highly with lots of other measures since it aggregates overlapping components (and is sometimes included in other indexes), and aggregation reduces within-group noise which mechanically inflates between-group correlations.
  3. Adding items to make a composite more reliable often makes it harder to distinguish from other composites, so improving reliability can reduce discriminant validity (for example, measures like grit can converge with conscientiousness).

Machine Learning-Assisted Directed Evolution with Bruce Wittmann

Lever • 19 implied HN points • 16 Oct 24
🔬 Science Biotechnology Machine Learning Research Methods Protein engineering Computational Biology
  1. Bruce Wittmann's journey in science started from pre-med and led him to research at notable institutes like Caltech.
  2. He worked on machine learning to improve protein engineering, building tools that can help many people in the field.
  3. His collaboration with renowned scientists and contributions to published research highlight the exciting potential in protein design and computational biology.

Cooperation is the scaffolding principle of life

Optimally Irrational • 56 implied HN points • 18 Feb 26
🔬 Science Evolution Genetics Cell Biology Ecology Anthropology Behavioral Science
  1. Cooperation is the scaffolding of life: from genes inside cells to multicellular organisms, species partnerships, and animal societies, working together is what made complexity and survival possible.
  2. Cooperation is not unconditional — it evolved because it benefits participants and must be sustained by checks like punishment, partner choice, reputation, and quality control to prevent cheating.
  3. Humans scaled cooperation to huge groups by evolving social cognition and building institutions, so solving social problems means designing rules and organizations that harness collective gains while limiting conflicts of interest.

Self-Replicating Programs: Life's Origin Story Told Through Brainfuck and Assembly

Gonzo ML • 441 implied HN points • 16 Dec 25
🔬 Science Complex Systems Computational Biology Programming Languages
  1. Self-replicating programs can spontaneously emerge from random code when programs interact and rewrite each other, without hand-built ancestors or an explicit fitness function.
  2. This emergence happens across many computational substrates and spatial setups (brainfuck variants, Forth, Z80, i8080, 0D/1D/2D, long tapes), though some languages resist, so language features and locality shape how and how fast replicators appear.
  3. The system shows a clear phase transition — complexity and copyable tokens spike as replicators take over — and the resulting dynamics (competition, coexistence, niche creation) mirror ecological and origin-of-life concepts.

Could AI slow science?

AI Snake Oil • 2298 implied HN points • 16 Jul 25
🔬 Science Research Methods AI Applications Innovation
  1. AI might actually slow down scientific progress instead of speeding it up. Even with more papers being published, true advancements in science could be stuck or even going backward.
  2. The more papers people publish, the harder it is for truly groundbreaking ideas to get noticed. This makes it tough for new and unique research to break through amidst all the noise.
  3. Scientists need to focus on understanding rather than just finding quick solutions. If AI is used to bypass understanding, we risk getting stuck with incorrect theories for longer.

Your brain is a washing machine, AGI's job prospects, Americans are alone, the Earth passes "peak child"

The Intrinsic Perspective • 5983 implied HN points • 14 Jan 25
🔬 Science Neuroscience Psychology Artificial Intelligence Sociology Child development
  1. Our brains clean themselves while we sleep, which is super important for our health. If we use strong sleep aids, like Ambien, it might mess with this cleaning process.
  2. The world is seeing fewer children being born, which means we might be reaching a point where there are not as many kids in the future. This can affect society in various ways.
  3. There's a common fear that artificial general intelligence (AGI) could take away all jobs. However, it's likely that human jobs will still have value even as technology improves.

Minimal Evidence of Heterogeneity in Effect Estimates: GWAS from the Million Veteran Program

The Infinitesimal • 319 implied HN points • 19 Jul 24
🔬 Science Genetics Research Health Diversity Medicine
  1. The Million Veteran Program's study looked at genetic data from 600,000 people, revealing that diversity in ancestry helped identify genetic traits linked to diseases.
  2. Most genetic differences between groups were due to allele frequency changes rather than real differences in how genes affect health.
  3. Fewer than 1% of significant genetic associations showed differences between populations, indicating that many genetic effects are quite similar across different ancestry groups.

The Story of Titanium

Construction Physics • 26933 implied HN points • 07 Jul 23
🔬 Science Materials Research Engineering Manufacturing Medical
  1. Titanium is abundant in the earth's crust but took time to be utilized due to its bonding properties.
  2. The development of titanium as an industrial material was heavily supported by government research and funding.
  3. The story of titanium showcases the importance of serendipity in scientific discoveries and the critical role of manufacturing in technology advancement.

More Roche SBX Workflow Thoughts

ASeq Newsletter • 21 implied HN points • 05 Mar 26
🔬 Science Genomics Sequencing Biotechnology Instrumentation Laboratory Bioinformatics Research
  1. There are two Axelios workflows being compared: SBX-D is a duplex, multi-day protocol around 19 hours, while SBX-Fast completes in roughly 3.5 hours.
  2. Collected run data were used to directly compare SBX-D and SBX-Fast to show their relative throughput and performance differences.
  3. The comparison highlights trade-offs between speed and duplex capability, so choosing a workflow depends on whether higher throughput or shorter turnaround time is more important.

We’re entering a golden age of engineering biology

Noahpinion • 16647 implied HN points • 18 Feb 24
🔬 Science Biology AI Genetics Automation Medicine
  1. The advancements in deep learning, cost-effective data collection through lab automation, and precision DNA editing with technologies like CRISPR are converging to transform biology from a scientific field to an engineering discipline.
  2. Historically, biology has been challenging due to its immense complexity, requiring costly trial-and-error experiments. However, with current advancements, we are now at a critical point where predictability and engineering in biological systems are becoming a reality.
  3. The decreasing cost of DNA sequencing, breakthroughs in deep learning models for biology, sophisticated lab automation, and precise genetic editing tools like CRISPR are paving the way for a revolutionary era in engineering biology, with vast potential in healthcare, agriculture, and industry.

Effects of Delays and Chaos in Science Funding

Heterodox STEM • 64 implied HN points • 15 Feb 26
🔬 Science Research Funding Biomedical Research Science Policy Academic Research
  1. Sudden federal funding cuts, freezes, and delays have created chaos and uncertainty for medical research, forcing project pauses and at least some layoffs and undermining the ability to plan long-term.
  2. Policy shifts like multi-year grants, caps on indirect costs, and heightened political scrutiny (including around DEI) will change how research dollars are allocated and could leave many investigators—especially early-career and international trainees—without support.
  3. Trust in the funding system has been damaged, so rebuilding stable support will require clearer public communication and political action, since there is no alternative funder on NIH's scale to sustain basic biomedical research.

The mourning of the elephants

Wrong Side of History • 588 implied HN points • 16 Nov 25
🔬 Science Biology Zoology Ecology Animal Behavior Evolution
  1. Elephants show deep emotions when they mourn. They have rituals for honoring their dead, like touching the body and covering it with dirt.
  2. Octopuses and cuttlefish are surprisingly smart for invertebrates. Octopuses can solve problems and cuttlefish can count.
  3. Dogs really seem to love their owners more than food. They respond more to praise from people they care about than to treats.

The Penicillin Myth

Asimov Press • 593 implied HN points • 24 Nov 25
🔬 Science Biology Medical Research Microbiology
  1. The story of Alexander Fleming discovering penicillin is filled with uncertainty. Scientists have pointed out many inconsistencies in his account, like how he didn't notice the contamination for almost two months after supposedly finding it.
  2. Fleming's famous discovery might not have been as accidental as it seems. Some theories suggest he was actually looking for new antibacterial substances before penicillin came along; this implies he was actively searching for something valuable rather than just stumbling upon it.
  3. There are competing theories for how penicillin was discovered and its implications for science. Whether it was truly an accident or part of a more planned inquiry shows how scientific discoveries can happen through both chance and careful research.

We should measure effect sizes on substantively important scales

Wyclif's Dust • 2146 implied HN points • 12 Jul 25
🔬 Science Genetics Statistics Education Health Research
  1. Effect sizes matter when they're measured on scales that are important to real life. For example, a small change in the chance of going to university can have a huge impact on families and policies.
  2. Correlation coefficients aren't the only way to measure effect sizes. Sometimes, using different scales can make it clearer how significant an effect really is.
  3. Noisy outcomes can still be meaningful. Just because there's variation around a mean doesn't mean the underlying effect isn't strong; it's important to look at how much outcomes change in significant ways.

The Biological Argument against LNT

Gordian Knot News • 183 implied HN points • 21 Jan 26
🔬 Science Molecular Biology Genetics Cell Biology Epidemiology Science Policy
  1. DNA is fragile and gets damaged thousands of times per cell every day, but cells have powerful, diverse repair systems that undo most of that damage, so you can’t assume radiation damage is simply cumulative and unrepairable.
  2. The LNT model stays dominant by leaning on noisy exposure data and rhetorical traps that shift the argument away from biology, allowing critics to be boxed into defending vague "safe dose" ideas instead of disproving the model; clear counterexamples (like the radium dial painter cases) contradict LNT.
  3. To replace LNT we must focus on the biology, use strong, high-dose or distinct-exposure counterexamples, avoid vague safety rhetoric, and adopt a well-defined, computable harm model that accounts for DNA repair.

What is Life?

Gonzo ML • 189 implied HN points • 19 Jan 26
🔬 Science Biology Evolution Computation Thermodynamics Complexity Origins
  1. Life can be understood as self-modifying computronium: systems that compute and change themselves are favored because replication gives them dynamic stability and long-term persistence.
  2. Major evolutionary innovations come from symbiogenesis — the merging and hierarchical composition of simpler replicators — which produces reusable, repeated, code-like structures in genomes and bodies.
  3. Toy artificial-life models show replicators naturally emerge as dynamical attractors: after a chaotic start, self-replicating programs take off exponentially, increasing computational activity and leaving traces of nested sub-replicators.

💰🧪 Funding outside the box: A Quick Q&A with … philanthropy expert Stuart Buck

Faster, Please! • 456 implied HN points • 11 Dec 25
🔬 Science Research Funding Philanthropy Science Policy Institutional Design Innovation
  1. Government research funders are risk-averse because they must show accountability to taxpayers and avoid political backlash, so many high-risk, curiosity-driven projects that can produce big breakthroughs go unfunded.
  2. Wealthy philanthropists can back unconventional, high-risk research because they aren’t tied to voter accountability, but most still give to safe, prestigious institutions unless they’re actively incentivized or advised to take bolder bets.
  3. Growing institutional diversity and nudging more creative philanthropy would raise the chances of major discoveries, but private donations alone can’t fully replace large-scale federal R&D funding cuts.

Psychology’s Biggest Misses—Honorable Mentions

Living Fossils • 2 implied HN points • 11 Mar 26
🔬 Science Psychology Social Psychology Neuroscience Research Methods Mental health
  1. Many famous effects in psychology, like social priming and strong birth-order personality claims, don’t replicate well and are often statistical flukes or very weak.
  2. Boosting self-esteem doesn’t reliably cause better achievement; usually success and competence lead to higher self-esteem instead.
  3. Popular explanations like “emotional intelligence” or simple chemical‑imbalance models of mental illness are vague or unsupported, with poor measurement and limited predictive power, so we still don’t really know the causes of most mental disorders.

A Reality-Based View of Government Funding of Science

The Good Science Project • 55 implied HN points • 18 Feb 26
🔬 Science Research Funding Science Policy Biomedical Research Peer Review Venture Capital
  1. There is a tension between official grant rules and everyday practice: policies can require prior approval for scope changes, but in practice researchers often shift aims as discoveries arise and report those changes in annual progress reports.
  2. Peer review at large agencies tends to favor safer, well-supported proposals, yet agencies also run small high-risk, high-reward programs that have worked; the debate is how much of the overall portfolio should be devoted to those bolder bets.
  3. Private funders behave differently from government: venture capital favors short- to medium-term, marketable projects and foundations have narrow scopes and limited funds, so long, uncertain basic research often still relies on government support.