Trending Now
World news
Sugar Does Not Make Children Hyperactive. The Study That Proved It...
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.
Travel guides
Tech
The Open Office Was Built on a Measurement. Then Nobody Measured...
When researchers finally put sensors on employees before and after a redesign, face-to-face interaction fell by about 70%. The study did not measure productivity — and after six decades of fit-outs, almost nothing has.
Health
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.
Most popular
"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.
The 50% Divorce Rate Was True for About One Year. You Can Name It.
In 1981 the United States recorded 2,422,000 marriages and 1,213,000 divorces. Divide one by the other and you get 50.1%. It was also the peak year. The statistic has not been updated since.
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.
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.
Sport news
Learning Styles: The Experiment That Would Settle It Has Almost Never Been Run
You are not a visual learner or an auditory learner. The claim has a precise testable form, a required study design, and a research literature that overwhelmingly endorses it without using that design.
The Open Office Was Built on a Measurement. Then Nobody Measured It Again for...
When researchers finally put sensors on employees before and after a redesign, face-to-face interaction fell by about 70%. The study did not measure productivity — and after six decades of fit-outs, almost nothing has.
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.
Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day
The randomised trials point gently the other way. But the real story is the audit that found only 17% of citations to a key trial described its results accurately.
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.
Recipes
Nobody Is Left-Brained. The Man Who Won the Nobel for Split...
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.
LATEST ARTICLES
Latest article
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.
The 50% Divorce Rate Was True for About One Year. You Can Name It.
In 1981 the United States recorded 2,422,000 marriages and 1,213,000 divorces. Divide one by the other and you get 50.1%. It was also the peak year. The statistic has not been updated since.