The hottest Research Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Health Politics Topics

Be Bold, Do Science

Insight Axis • 513 implied HN points • 21 Nov 23
🔬 Science Research
  1. Science is not a master and has no master - it's about constructive argument, experiment, and refinement.
  2. Science is not confined to subjects like biology or physics - it's about diverse applications and better explanations.
  3. Science is not about hoarding facts but finding theories - it's a creative action that involves testing and humility.

Economic Ornithology

Bird History • 379 implied HN points • 10 Jan 24
🔬 Science Research
  1. Before pesticides, birds were valued by farmers for their role in controlling bugs on crops, and economic ornithologists calculated the precise worth of each bird in dollars.
  2. The Bureau of Biological Survey was established to study the economic impact of birds on agriculture, shifting focus to quantify the benefits and drawbacks of various bird species on crops.
  3. Studies conducted by economic ornithologists resulted in a widespread belief in the economic significance of birds in pest control, but the field eventually lost credibility as pesticides and modern agricultural practices took over.

Intrigue

Remote View • 334 implied HN points • 28 Jan 24
🔬 Science Research
  1. The post discusses the concept of intrigue both as a verb and a noun.
  2. The post announces a livestream on January 28, 2024, at 22:00 CET, discussing thoughts from a book by Robert Temple.
  3. The post provides various references, including books, articles, and research papers on topics like science, plasmoids, and cold war technology.

Three Common Statistics Snafus in Weight Science

Weight and Healthcare • 718 implied HN points • 19 Apr 23
🏥 Health & Wellness Research
  1. Repeated attempts at intentional weight loss can have decreasing odds of success, and weight cycling can lead to significant harm.
  2. Just because a study result is statistically significant doesn't necessarily mean the effect is important or impactful.
  3. Understanding the actual increase in risk percentage versus the absolute risk percentage is crucial in healthcare decision-making.
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ObesityWeek and The Obesity Society - Part 1

Weight and Healthcare • 579 implied HN points • 25 Oct 23
🏥 Health Politics Research
  1. ObesityWeek is organized by The Obesity Society, serving the weight loss industry rather than focusing on supporting the health of higher-weight individuals
  2. The Obesity Society uses its research journal, Obesity, to publish articles that align with its weight-centric paradigm
  3. ObesityWeek is a lucrative event for The Obesity Society, with significant revenue coming from sponsors and exhibitors

This Is Your Body On No Sleep

Everything Is Amazing • 2240 implied HN points • 28 Feb 24
🏥 Health & Wellness Research
  1. Not getting enough sleep can lead to severe health consequences and cognitive impairments.
  2. Sleep deprivation can lead to negative impacts on decision-making, memory, and overall well-being.
  3. It is important to prioritize and maintain a healthy sleep routine to avoid the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation.

We Obviously Shouldn’t Ignore Left-Wing Online Radicalization

Singal-Minded • 830 implied HN points • 06 Jan 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Research
  1. Left-wing online radicalization is a growing concern and shouldn't be overlooked. We need to pay attention to how these ideas spread online.
  2. Social media can create echo chambers where certain beliefs are heavily reinforced. This can lead people to think their supportive views are more popular than they actually are.
  3. Recent research indicates that younger people may support controversial figures more than older generations. This highlights a shift in perspectives that could shape future political discussions.

Open Thread 316

Astral Codex Ten • 2271 implied HN points • 19 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Research
  1. ACX provides an open thread for weekly discussions where users can post anything, ask questions, and engage in various topics.
  2. ACX Grants project includes initiatives like exploring a mutation to turn off suffering and opportunities for researchers in AI safety.
  3. ACX mentions upcoming events like a book review contest with updated rules and a pushed back due date.

Could Used Coffee Grounds Protect Brain Cells?

Ladyparts • 479 implied HN points • 21 Nov 23
🏥 Health & Wellness Research
  1. A new study suggests that a substance from used coffee grounds could help prevent neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
  2. Current neurodegenerative disease research often focuses on drugs for symptoms after diagnosis, rather than preventing degeneration of brain cells.
  3. Research at the University of Texas at El Paso found that compounds in coffee grounds might protect brain neurons from degeneration.

An online version of Da Vinci's journal?

The Novelleist • 336 implied HN points • 20 Jun 25
📚 Literature Research
  1. Research is a fun way to spend time. It helps to take notes and explore different ideas.
  2. Sharing research notes online is a new way to connect with others and share thoughts.
  3. There are upcoming events where people can discuss books and topics with others in the community.

Five of My Favorite Papers and the Stories Behind Them

The Honest Broker Newsletter • 372 implied HN points • 06 Jun 25
🔬 Science Research
  1. Five chosen papers reflect intense moments of learning and clarity during writing. They are special, not necessarily the most popular ones.
  2. The feeling of being 'in the zone' is compared to a competitive athlete's experience, highlighting hard work leading to success.
  3. Updates include easier access to past writings and resources for paid subscribers, plus discounts for students and military personnel.

A cornucopia of new bills; Canadians support end-of-life psilocybin therapy; and tempering the hype

The Microdose • 294 implied HN points • 02 Feb 24
🏥 Health & Wellness Research
  1. At least 10 states have introduced new legislation related to psychedelics since the beginning of the year.
  2. Canadians show strong support for end-of-life psilocybin therapy.
  3. There is a growing movement to critically examine and temper the hype surrounding psychedelics, focusing on ethical and political implications.

Art to Science

Abstraction • 39 implied HN points • 02 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Research
  1. Forecasting bots can run continuously, answer many questions, and be scored in real time, turning forecasting from a slow craft into a fast, repeatable process.
  2. Large, scored tournaments and shared datasets will let people empirically test different methods and finally learn which forecasting approaches actually work at scale.
  3. Simple heuristics get you most of the way there, but reaching the frontier requires deeper techniques and open sharing of methods to accelerate progress.

ByteDance's new fine-tuning technique boost LLMs for reasoning tasks

TechTalks • 314 implied HN points • 22 Jan 24
🕹 Technology Research
  1. A new fine-tuning technique called Reinforced Fine-Tuning improves large language models for reasoning tasks.
  2. Reinforced Fine-Tuning combines supervised fine-tuning with reinforcement learning to enhance reasoning capabilities.
  3. ReFT helps models discover new reasoning paths without needing extra training data and outperforms traditional fine-tuning methods on reasoning benchmarks.

Something Is Getting Harder But It's Not Finding Ideas

Maximum Progress • 569 implied HN points • 11 Oct 23
🔬 Science Research
  1. Research investments are growing but economic growth remains constant, implying declining returns on research investment over time.
  2. The metaphor of a car's acceleration and fuel use helps explain the idea that as we discover more ideas, finding new ones becomes harder.
  3. The debate on whether ideas are getting harder to find is important, but more evidence is needed to draw a definitive conclusion.

The Sequence Opinion #782: The New Gradient: Research Directions That Will Ship in 2026

TheSequence • 42 implied HN points • 01 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Research
  1. Blanket scaling of transformers with more data and compute is showing diminishing returns, so new research directions are needed to keep improving frontier models.
  2. The field is shifting from generative AI that just looks right to verifiable AI that can deliberate and produce correct, auditable outputs, effectively adding a "System 2" for reasoning.
  3. Emerging methods like RLVR aim to give models unit-test-style feedback and tighter verification, and these kinds of approaches are poised to influence models shipping in 2026.

Reproducibility starts with good communication

Briefly Bio • 59 implied HN points • 22 Jul 24
🔬 Science Research
  1. Good communication is key to making experiments reproducible. If scientists can't share their methods clearly, it’s hard for others to repeat their work.
  2. Many methods of communication in science are outdated and not effective. This can lead to misunderstandings and mistakes in reproducing experiments.
  3. Tools that help streamline communication in science can improve reproducibility. A better system can replace complicated and unclear documentation.

No human genes have truly 100% penetrance

Trevor Klee’s Newsletter • 970 implied HN points • 10 Nov 24
🔬 Science Research
  1. No human genes have 100% penetrance, meaning not all who have a certain gene will show the related traits. This makes predicting health outcomes based on genetics challenging.
  2. Genetic diseases like Huntington's seem like they have high penetrance, but variability in symptoms and onset can make them unpredictable. It highlights the complexity of genetics beyond simple Mendelian traits.
  3. The body's systems, especially the immune system, add layers of complexity that affect how genes express themselves. This makes it really hard to guarantee that a specific gene will always result in the same outcome.

The Intensive Margin

David Friedman’s Substack • 260 implied HN points • 29 Jul 25
🚌 Education Research
  1. Many economics courses focus too much on math, making it less about real economic concepts. This can turn students away who expect more practical learning.
  2. Doing new research on topics that have been studied for a long time is tough because it's hard to say something fresh. It's often easier to use new math tools on old problems.
  3. To make meaningful contributions in economics, it's better to apply existing ideas to new areas rather than just trying to add more math to classic studies.

DeepSeek's Edge

ChinaTalk • 741 implied HN points • 12 Jan 25
🕹 Technology Research
  1. DeepSeek has no business model, which allows its team to experiment freely without pressure to earn money. This gives them a unique advantage over most other AI labs that need to focus on revenue.
  2. DeepSeek runs its own data centers instead of relying on external cloud services. This means they have better control over their resources and can optimize their setup for efficiency.
  3. The company's success comes from their innovative software optimization techniques. By being smart about how they use their hardware, they've achieved high performance even with limited resources.

Open Thread 313

Astral Codex Ten • 2202 implied HN points • 29 Jan 24
🔬 Science Research
  1. Genes matter 2x as much as the environment in schizophrenia, not 4x as previously thought
  2. A study on political reasoning errors failed to replicate, questioning a larger literature on the topic
  3. Humans merging with AI may not be unprecedented, as evidenced by a medieval Italian man merging with a knife

Study Shows Lack of Link Between High BMI and COVID Deaths

Weight and Healthcare • 698 implied HN points • 22 Mar 23
🏥 Health & Wellness Research
  1. Some studies rushed during the pandemic suggested a link between high BMI and COVID deaths, but a recent umbrella review found serious quality concerns with these conclusions.
  2. The study focused on the quality and certainty of the evidence regarding the association between high BMI and COVID mortality.
  3. Healthcare inequalities can impact outcomes for higher-weight individuals, and research often pathologizes body size without fully considering all confounding factors.

Greece’s electric car moment?

The Greek Analyst • 279 implied HN points • 31 Jan 24
🕹 Technology Research
  1. The number of electric cars in Greece is rapidly increasing, with more battery electric vehicles sold in the last year than in the previous four years combined.
  2. The country has seen a significant rise in the number of EV charging stations, with the infrastructure growing from less than 50 stations in 2018 to about 5,000 by the end of 2023, expected to reach over 100,000 by 2030.
  3. Greece's surge in electric vehicle adoption is supported by various incentives and subsidies provided by the government to promote alternative-fuel vehicles and infrastructure, with investments totaling nearly €240M since 2020.

The genetics of intelligence: Exploring the link between DNA and IQ

Nucleus Genomics • 19 implied HN points • 14 Aug 24
🔬 Science Research
  1. IQ is affected by both genetics and environment, with genetics accounting for about 50% of IQ scores. This means there are things we inherit from our parents that can influence how we score.
  2. Research has found specific DNA differences, called genetic variants, that seem to be linked to higher IQs. These variants don’t work alone but together can give insights into intelligence.
  3. The Nucleus IQ score uses genetic data to predict how your DNA might influence your IQ score, reflecting the latest research in this area. It's an evolving field, and there's still much to learn about genetics and intelligence.

Key Words That Have a Different Meaning In Weight Science Research

Weight and Healthcare • 539 implied HN points • 17 May 23
🏥 Health & Wellness Research
  1. The concept of 'long term' in weight science research can be misleading, with studies claiming 'long-term' follow-ups that are actually quite short.
  2. The term 'significant' in weight science research can be manipulated to make small weight losses seem important, leading to misleading conclusions.
  3. The idea of 'success' in weight science research is often based on short-term weight loss without considering long-term health outcomes, contributing to the perpetuation of flawed weight loss paradigms.

The Topography of Thought Edition

Why is this interesting? • 965 implied HN points • 24 Oct 24
🚌 Education Research
  1. Your writing style can show how you think and might predict your success. It's not just about the words you use, but how you organize your ideas.
  2. Some people can express a lot of different ideas briefly, while others might take longer to get through them. This can affect how effectively they communicate their thoughts.
  3. Understanding how successful people manage their ideas can help us improve our own writing and storytelling skills. It’s useful to have data to back up what we believe about writing.

Bretton Goods is becoming Speculative Decoding

Bretton Goods • 38 implied HN points • 27 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Research
  1. The blog is changing focus from explaining why countries get rich to studying AI — especially how to tell what AI systems are actually doing.
  2. The author shifted careers from policy and macroeconomics to computer science and now works on AI evaluations and reducing hallucinations through internships and a job at Elicit.
  3. Bretton Goods will be archived and its audience moved to a new Substack, Speculative Decoding, with a commitment to roughly one post a month about AI evaluations, safety, policy, and related research.

IT'S HAPPENING

How the Hell • 792 implied HN points • 22 Dec 24
🕹 Technology Research
  1. Researchers have created a new simulation engine called Genesis, which could enable the development of general-purpose robots. This means robots might soon be able to perform a wide range of tasks like humans.
  2. Recent advancements in AI, particularly in reasoning models from companies like OpenAI and Google, are pushing us closer to achieving advanced AI capabilities. This includes AI that can think logically and solve complex problems effectively.
  3. The rapid progress in AI, especially with the latest models, has led to a genuine feeling of hope for the future. People believe we could soon see robots, AI scientists, and even ambitious projects like colonizing Mars becoming a reality.

The Bitter Religion: AI’s Holy War Over Scaling Laws

The Generalist • 920 implied HN points • 14 Nov 24
🕹 Technology Research
  1. The AI community is divided over whether achieving higher levels of computation will lead to better artificial intelligence or if there are limits to this approach. Some think more resources will keep helping AI grow, while others fear we might hit a ceiling.
  2. There’s a growing debate about the importance of scaling laws and whether they should continue to guide AI development. People are starting to question if sticking to these beliefs is the best path forward.
  3. If doubt begins to spread about scaling laws, it could impact investment and innovation in AI and related fields, causing changes in how companies approach building new technologies.

Living with misophonia

Trickle-Down Wellness • 294 implied HN points • 19 Jan 24
🏥 Health & Wellness Research
  1. Misophonia is a disorder where certain sounds trigger strong emotional reactions.
  2. Research is emerging on misophonia, with potential therapeutic options like cognitive behavioral therapy.
  3. Coping mechanisms, like reframing reactions and environmental awareness, are essential for managing misophonia triggers.