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What ‘just go for a walk’ leaves out
The evidence on exercise and depression is weaker than the headlines and more interesting than the sceptics allow. It points at structure and supervision, not walks.
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Tech
Where the three-to-six-month emergency fund rule actually came from
The most repeated number in personal finance was set in 1996 by polling 156 advisers. Six million households of bank data suggest a very different answer.
Health
"Miss the 10 Best Days" Is Half of a Calculation
The statistic every advisor quotes is real. So is the mirror image nobody quotes — and when a researcher ran both at once, the result was not the one the slogan implies.
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The 90% divorce prediction that was never a prediction
The famous accuracy figures are real, and they measure something other than prediction. What happens when a divorce model is finally tested on data it has not already seen.
The sleep chart everyone copies has a footnote nobody reads
The age-by-age sleep chart is a compromise document, and the panels that wrote it said so. What the primary sources actually show about how much sleep you need.
The people who found the Blue Zones are quietly walking them back
Nicoya’s advantage inverted in forty years. Okinawa fell from 4th to 26th. And the researchers conceding this are the ones who identified the zones in the first place.
Two Researchers Disagreed About Money and Happiness. So They Ran the Study Together.
The famous $75,000 plateau and the study that contradicted it were both partly right. Finding that out required something research almost never does: the two authors sat down and re-analysed the data jointly.
Sport news
Renting is not throwing money away, but the real argument is stranger
Housing’s celebrated 7% return is almost all rental yield. Real capital gains run about 1% a year — and the variable that decides the answer is whether you actually invest the difference.
Sugar Does Not Make Children Hyperactive. The Study That Proved It Tested the Parents.
A 1995 meta-analysis of 23 controlled trials found no effect. A year earlier, a smaller study had already explained why everyone believes otherwise — by giving every child a placebo and lying to their mothers.
The eight-glasses rule is a sentence someone deleted
The 1945 document blamed for the rule said most of your water comes from food and that thirst is an adequate guide. Both sentences were cut. Here is what the evidence actually shows.
The 90% divorce prediction that was never a prediction
The famous accuracy figures are real, and they measure something other than prediction. What happens when a divorce model is finally tested on data it has not already seen.
Nobody Is Left-Brained. The Man Who Won the Nobel for Split Brains Said So...
A study of 1,011 brains looked for people whose left or right hemisphere ran stronger overall. It found lateralised functions everywhere and lateralised people nowhere.
Recipes
Opposites don’t attract, but that was never the interesting question
115 of 118 partner traits correlate positively. The gap is in personality — and the twist is that none of it predicts whether a couple will be happy.
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Nobody Selling You a Detox Can Tell You What They Are Removing
A group of scientists rang fifteen detox companies and asked one question: which toxin does this remove? Not one could answer. The regulators have been making the same point in court for twenty years.
FICO Has a Page Called "Myth Busting." Almost Nobody Has Read It.
The company that makes the score has published, in writing, that carrying a balance does not help it. Its own survey found 67% of Americans wrong or unsure about what the score can even see.
The Meditation Researchers Auditing Their Own Field
Fifteen leading contemplative scientists published a paper warning about the hype around their own discipline. Almost nobody reported it — including the finding that when you finally ask people properly, most report side effects.