Science Fictions

For a while in the early-to-mid 2010s, the most prominent psychology research in the world was on power posing. Harvard’s Amy Cuddy did a TED talk that reached tens of millions; her exhortation to “fake it til you make it” struck a chord and produced endless book sales from readers fascinated to hear how, just by adopting an expansive posture, you could revolutionise your own psychology and succeed at life.In this episode, with the benefit of hindsight, we ask: what was that all about?This podcast is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine. In today’s episode we mentioned “The Perks of Being a Mole Rat”, Aria Shrecker’s entertaining new piece on what makes some animals live for an inordinately long time. Find it and endless other fascinating pieces on human progress at worksinprogress.co.Show notes* Dana Carney (not Carvey)’s 2016 letter on changing her mind about power posing* The 1996 study about walking more slowly down the hallway after reading words to do with old people* Tom’s first and second pieces in Nature* Daryl Bem’s piece on “Writing the Empirical Journal Article”* Amy Cuddy’s TED talk (the third most-watched ever)* Two studies we mentioned on the facial feedback hypothesis* 2014 NYT article on power posing and Amy Cuddy* Amy Cuddy’s bestselling book, Presence* UK Conservative Party politicians power posing for some reason* The original 2010 power posing paper in Psychological Science* A re-examination of the robustness of the results* Ranehill et al.’s 2015 replication attempt* Cuddy et al.’s “summary and review” from the same issue* Simmons & Simonsohn on the whole evidence base on power posing* Cuddy’s strategic retreat* Meta-analysis on expansive vs. “lack of contractive” posingCreditsThe Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.comHave you seen the award-winning film I Swear, about a Scottish man with Tourette’s? (The less said about what happened at the ceremony where it won said award, the better). If so, you might want to know more about this very weird medical condition. We’ve got you covered.In this paid-only episode, we go into the competing neurological theories of what causes Tourette’s, the troubles with diagnosing it, what if anything can be done to treat it, and whether you can “catch” it by watching too many videos on TikTok.Become a paying subscriber at sciencefictionspod.com (or click the button below) to hear the full episode and read the full show notes.

In 2024, researchers claimed to find something mysterious at the bottom of the ocean. It was “dark oxygen”—oxygen produced where there’s no chance of photosynthesis. So what could possibly be producing it?Natural batteries—at least according to the scientists. This bizarre discovery seemed to upend everything we knew about the abyssal floor, had big implications for deep sea mining, and might even have helped explain the origin of aerobic life. But (and look, you know what we’re going to say here) could there have been something a little more mundane explaining the findings?The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. On this week’s episode we talked about the new article on the genetics of cabbages, and how the wild cabbage has been selected into so many of the familiar vegetables we know today. Find this and so many more articles, all for free, at worksinprogress.co.Show notes* The 2024 dark oxygen paper in Nature Geosciences* Media coverage: BBC, Guardian, New Scientist* Andrew Sweetman’s piece in The Conversation discussing his research* On the deep seas of Enceladus and Europa* The UN and Greenpeace discussing the implications of dark oxygen* The “extraordinary claims” critical paper in Frontiers in Marine Science from 2025* Huge European investigation into marine mining from 2023* Critical EarthArXiv preprint from 2025* Norwegian interview with Andrew Sweetman, addressing some criticisms* PubPeer discussion of the paper; Wikipedia page with some rather harsh language* Paper on the expected amount of oxygen on the ocean floor, and on how the process itself needs oxygen to get started* Reanalysis of Sweetman’s raw data in another EarthArXiv preprintCreditsThe Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

The last few episodes have been pretty heavy. So here’s… well, here’s the 2D:4D ratio. Does the difference in length between your index finger and your ring finger reveal a huge amount about your personality (and much more besides)?Perhaps you won’t be surprised by the answer. But we promise you’ll be surprised by just how much effort scientists have put into finding out…The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. And now, articles from Works in Progress magazine are read aloud to you by… Stuart from Science Fictions. Every week, a new audio version of a WiP article will be released for your listening enjoyment. Find out more at www.worksinprogress.news.Show notes* Anthropological paper from 1888 on hands* A “preliminary investigation” of digit ratio and personality (2002)* Meta-analysis on the topic of aggression from 2017* PNAS study on the digit ratios of London City traders* Vastly bigger, null study on 2D:4D and economic preferences* Study of digit ratio in orchestral musicians* Follow-up study with contradictory results on musical abilities* 2D:4D and the wearing of wedding rings* Original paper on sexuality and digit ratio* 2025 meta-analysis* Digit ratio and penis size* Manning’s 2020 paper on COVID-19 and digit ratio* Critical follow-up letter* 2010 meta-analysis on athletic ability* Using 2D:4D to understand prehistoric cave paintings* 2021 BMJ Christmas Issue study on digit ratio and luck* Comparing inter- and intra-observer reliability for digit ratios across different measures (and Manning’s concerns about similar)* Debate over “allometric scaling”: concerned; less concerned* 2024 meta-analysis on whether this even relates to other testosterone measures* 2026 meta-analysis still using 2D:4D (among other measures)CreditsThe Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.comAnd now… following last week’s episode on ECT, here’s part two of our double episode on depression treatments. This time we’re looking at antidepressants. You’ll be delighted to hear that we immediately encounter our favourite thing—dueling meta-analyses.To hear the whole episode and read the show notes, become a paying subscriber at www.sciencefictionspod.com/subscribe.

Open up some scientific papers, and you’ll hear electroconvulsive therapy described as the most effective treatment for depression (especially very severe depression). But open up others, and you’ll see it described as completely useless—and a sad indictment on a medical establishment who’ve completely failed to provide proper evidence on it. Not only that, but they’ve exposed patients to serious side effects, like memory loss, for no good reason.Who’s right? In this episode, we look into the most controversial psychiatric treatment since lobotomy.NEXT WEEK: we’ll follow this with an episode on another controversial psychiatric treament: antidepressants.On this week’s episode we discussed the article “The Perks of Being a Mole Rat”, from our sponsor, Works in Progress magazine. As ever, we’re very grateful for their support. You can find many more excellent articles at worksinprogress.co.Show notes* 1937 article by Egas Moniz, lobotomy Nobel Prize-winner* Weird 1998 article defending him on the Nobel Prize website* Megan McArdle on Walter Freeman* The ECT scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest* 2024 article discussing the possible mechanisms of ECT’s effect* 2010 review about sham ECT studies* 2019 review of each individual sham ECT study and the meta-analyses that include them* 2022 response to the review* Response to the response* Contemporary news article about the controversy* 2021 article in defense of ECT* The parachute RCT* 2010 meta-analysis on cognitive effects* 2025 meta-analysis on autobiographical memory lossCreditsThe Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

This episode is dedicated to Justin Eldridge.We like to think that, in often hamfisted ways, we’re applying critical thinking on this show. But what even is “critical thinking”? Can you measure it? Can you teach it to kids—or for that matter, to anyone? Can teaching critical thinking help people defend themselves against misinformation and disinformation? It would be very ironic if “critical thinking” had become a buzzword in the world of education—a buzzword that people used, er, uncritically…The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by the marvellous Works in Progress magazine. The article on Swiss vs. Japanese watches that we mention in the episode can be found at this link, and all the other Works in Progress articles can be found at worksinprogress.co.Show notes* NY Times article on schools teaching critical thinking* UK Government Curriculum Review from 2025* Daisy Christodoulou on teaching students to spot misinformation* Daniel Willingham’s 2007 article on critical thinking* His book Why Don’t Students Like School?* The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus study* The tree octopus website* 2017 Dutch replication study* Two bigger studies in 2016 and 2019* 2015 meta-analysis in Review of Educational Research* Woodworth and Thorndike (1901) - a psychological classic* Herbert Simon on “problem isomorphs”* The Stanford Civic Online Reasoning programmeCreditsWe’re very grateful to Daisy Christodoulou for talking to us for this episode. Any mistakes are, of course, our own. The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

Here’s another episode that revists a topic we’ve covered before. A while back, we did an episode on the downsides of cannabis (for example, the risk of psychosis). But of course, a lot of people claim there are medical benefits, too! Not least among them is Donald Trump, who recently re-scheduled cannabis so that it can be studied more for medical purposes.That research is sorely needed. In this episode, we discuss the very uncertain state of our knowledge on medical marijuana.The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine, where you can find Samuel Hughes’s excellent new article on “Urban expansion in the age of liberalism”, as discussed in today’s episode. That’s at worksinprogress.co—which is packed full of other great articles on science, tech, and human progress.Show notes* “Trump expands access to cannabis” (December 2025)* Info from the DEA on drug schedules* The new JAMA review on medical marijuana* Reason article on the 2011 RAND study; Retraction Watch article on the same* Studies on the crime impacts of medical marijuana (increase; neutral; decrease)* Useful 2021 review of the wider societal effects of medical marijuana legalisation* 2020 Arizona “natural experiment” study* Washington Post article on the poor resemblance of “real” marijuana compared to what’s allowed for research studies* Survey on the use of cannabis for medical purposesCreditsThe Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.comIt’s rare that we return to a topic, but it’s also nice to have been right. In 2024 we did an episode on microplastics, and cast a lot of doubt on some of the more outrageous claims about them filling up your brain, your arteries, and (for the fellas) your testicles. Since then a lot more flaws in the science have been found—and at least one of them is utterly devastaing. Become a paid subscriber to listen to the full episode and read the show notes.

Here’s a cheery one for our first episode of the year. Guess what happens when you give several sets of scientists the same dataset and ask them to answer the same question? Well, they all find the same results, right? Right!?Sadly not. This “Many Analysts” problem has been analysed and debated in multiple different scientific fields and across several papers. We cover them in this episode. What does it tell us about the objectivity of science if different teams draw different conclusions from the exact same data?The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. Their excellent new article on how we’re living in “the golden age of vaccine development”, as discussed on the show, can be found (along with the rest of their articles on science, history, and technology), at worksinprogress.co. We’re very grateful that they support the podcast.Show notes* 2015 Nature commentary article on “crowdsourced research” (on racism in football)* And the full 2018 writeup titled “Many Analysts, One Data Set”* Gelman and Loken on the “Garden of Forking Paths”* 2020 many-analysts neuroscience (fMRI) paper* And the plan for the similar study on EEG* 2022 PNAS many-analysts paper on the “hidden universe of uncertainty”* 2026 critique on ideological bias from George Borjas* 2023 critique on effect sizes vs. statistical significance* 2025 ecology & evolution many-analysts paper on blue tits and eucalyptus* 2025 economics many-analysts paper with results on data cleaning* 2024 PNAS critique of many-analysts research* Julia Rohrer’s critique of multiverse analysisCreditsThe Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

We’ve covered a lot of bad science stories over the year. Here are a few more. But in the optimistic spirit of the “holiday season”, the last one has a happy ending. Thanks for listening—especially if you’re a subscriber! See you in 2026.Stuart & TomShow notes* A surge of low-quality AI papers on public datasets* A surge of low-quality AI letters to the editor* Retraction Watch story on the Dana Farber scandal* NY Times story on the papers being retracted or corrected* The settlement in the case CreditsThe Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

STOP PRESS: a beloved 20th Century populariser of psychology who wrote massively successful books has been shown to be full of crap. Actually… don’t stop press. Just put it on the pile with all the others.This time it’s Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who wrote The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Awakenings, and many other books. An article in The New Yorker has shown that a lot of his case studies were, well… let’s say they’re not what they seem. In this episode we discuss the new article and Oliver Sacks’s career more generally, and ask: should we have known?The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. The article we discussed on today’s show is about the tragically low South Korean birth rate, and why it got that way. Find that, and so many more articles about human progress, science, and technology, at worksinprogress.co.Show notes* Rachel Aviv’s December 2025 New Yorker article on Oliver Sacks* Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders letter about “questionable aspects” of the autistic savant twins story, by Makoto Yamaguchi * Follow-up article by the same author* Response letter by Allan Snyder* Medical Humanities article on 10 years since Sacks’s death* Paul McHugh’s 1995 bad review of Sacks’s work* Science isn’t storytellingCreditsThe Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.comDoes the evidence support the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT)? Depends on when you asked the question. At one point the consensus was “yes”; more recently it reversed. But should it have?It also depends on what symptoms you’re talking about. Is HRT just all about hot flushes, or can it also treat mood and cognitive problems too? In this paid-only episode, we look at the evidence.To listen to the full episode and read the show notes, please become a paid subscriber to the Science Fictions podcast.

Hello everyone! We weren’t able to record a podcast this week, because 1) Stuart was busy and 2) it’s Tom’s birthday. So by way of apology we’re re-releasing this one about some drama last year between Jon Haidt, sworn enemy of smartphones, and some guys who like meta-analyses. Hope you enjoy it!A while back, The Studies Show covered the question of whether smartphones and social media cause mental health problems. Amazingly, that podcast didn’t settle the issue, and the debate has continued—and continued rather acrimoniously.Psychologists—most notably Jonathan Haidt—are currently laying into each other, analysing, re-analysing, and meta-analysing datasets to try and work out whether “it’s the phones”. In this paid-only episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart explain the story so far, and in the process get very disappointed by their heroes.If you want to hear the whole episode and read the show notes, it’s easy to become a paid subscriber at thestudiesshowpod.com.Show notes* The summary of Jonathan Haidt’s upcoming book, Life After Babel* The Google Doc on social media effects maintained by Haidt, Twenge, and Rausch* Christopher Ferguson’s meta-analysis of causal social media effects studies* Very useful online calculator to interpret effect sizes* Study on the (non-)relation between reported and measured phone use* Haidt & Rausch’s first article criticising the Ferguson meta-analysis and re-calculating the effects* Anne Scheel’s critical tweet* Matt Jané’s first article responding to Haidt & Rausch* Haidt & Rausch respond to Jané (and criticise Ferguson again)* Jané responds to Haidt & Rausch, again* Haidt & Rausch’s second (or is it third?) article criticising the Ferguson meta-analysis (this is the one where they note the more basic errors)* Article by Mike Males making the point that, whoever is right, the effects are all very smallCredits* The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. We’re very grateful to Malte Elson, Pete Etchells, and Matt Jané for talking to us for this episode—but any errors are our own. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

Everyone has read Entangled Life, the wonderfully-written book about fungi that took the world by storm about 5 years ago. Among many other things, it popularised the “wood wide web”—the idea that trees can communicate with one another through networks of fungi at their roots.But is the wood wide web real? It turns out scientists have some major questions. We air them on this episode.And just to be completely clear, there are no personal vendettas here! Everyone recording this podcast is 100% free of “beefs” of all kinds. Even the co-host who was beaten in a book contest by the aforementioned mushroom book.The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. Their most recent article is about the wonderful invention (and history) of the dishwasher, one of several incredible labour-saving devices that have made so many lives just a bit less dull. Read this, and so many more stories about human progress, at worksinprogress.co.Show notes* Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake* Winner of the 2021 Royal Society book award* Rupert Sheldrake and the concept of “morphic resonance”* Suzanne Simard’s TED talk about “how trees talk to each other”* Her 1997 paper on “net transfer of carbon”* 2023 paper by Karst et al.: “Positive citation bias and overinterpreted results lead to misinformation on common mycorrhizal networks in forests”* Nature piece following the 2023 paper* 2015 paper on “stress signaling” via fungal networks* 2023 paper on tree proximity* Simard’s response to Karst et al.CreditsThe Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

It has happened again. A new paper, based on a tranche of unsealed historical documents, casts serious doubt on a piece of social psychology research from the mid-20th Century. Shocker!This time it’s about some of the fundamental inspirations for the idea of cognitive dissonance—the idea that holding contradictory views in one’s head creates discomfort and a need to change one of the beliefs. So what does the new historical research say? What about all the studies that claim to find evidence for cognitive dissonance—surely the whole thing isn’t a load of nonsense? Listen to this episode to find out.The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. They’ve recently been publishing a whole host of podcasts, including the one we mentioned this week, on “the economics of the baby bust” (that’s the opposite of a baby boom, by the way). You can find it and many other podcasts at podcast.worksinprogress.co. Show notes* The new paper, “Debunking When Prophecy Fails”* And the related paper “Failed Prophecies are Fatal”* The lobotomy article in the Washington Post* Scott Alexander on using facts to persuade* Dan Engber on the same* Matti Heino on the original Festinger & Carlsmith (1959) paper* The paper itself* The GRIM test (with an online tool to do it yourself)* 2024 multi-lab replication attempt on cognitive dissonance* 1983 study that was replicatedCreditsThe Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.comCreatine is the supplement of the moment, but both of us had vaguely heard that this one might actually not be total garbage.On the other hand: there are a lot of surprising claims made about it! If proponents are to be believed, it doesn’t just boost muscle mass – it reduces depression, prevents cancer, and improves your cognitive function.How much of this should we believe, and how much is it just a big load of crap? We thought we would take a look.