“Groupthink: The brainstorming myth.”

“Your Creative Power” was published in 1948. An amalgam of pop science and business anecdote, it became a surprise best-seller. Osborn promised that, by following his advice, the typical reader could double his creative output. Such a mental boost would spur…

“Why It Was Easier to Be Skinny in the 1980s”

“A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points…

“How Plants Secretly Talk to Each Other”

“The evidence for plant communication is only a few decades old, but in that short time it has leapfrogged from electrifying discovery to decisive debunking to resurrection. Two studies published in 1983 demonstrated that willow trees, poplars and sugar…

“Scientific Publishing Is Killing Science”

“researchers worry that academic journals are failing at both of these functions: Peer review is failing to ensure the quality of published research, and new research fails to get into the hands of those who need it, ending up behind journal paywalls…

“REVERSE VOXSPLAINING: DRUGS VS. CHAIRS”

“The problem with the pharmaceutical industry isn’t that they’re unregulated just like chairs and mugs. The problem with the pharmaceutical industry is that they’re part of a highly-regulated cronyist system that works completely differently from chairs and…

“This is Urgent: Black Scientists Matter”

“I feel that professional societies have had some time to think on this and decide to respond. And that is why in 2016, I am outraged that there has been almost total silence.

Even on the non-violent stuff that is very explicitly…

“Bros Funding Bros: What’s Wrong with Venture Capital”

“The venture capital industry is stuck in yesteryear — the same people, living the same lives and having the same experiences making largely the same decisions. This sameness may have been a strength, but now it is creating blindspots…

“Racism in the Research Lab”

“One of us is a professor and neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins University (soon to be the Chair of Neurologic Surgery at the Mayo Clinic), the other is a professor and a basic research scientist at Yale University.

Our minority trainees are exhausted…

“Academic Work Is Labor, Not Romance”

“one sentence in particular is especially relevant to the coming inevitable struggles between precarious academic laborers and administrators. “Labor disputes,” the board notes simply, “are a fact of economic life.” Such an unequivocal statement about the academy…

“‘Great Pause’ Among Prosecutors As DNA Proves Fallible”

“There was something wrong with how state labs were analyzing DNA evidence.

It seemed the labs were using an outdated protocol for calculating the probability of DNA matches in “mixtures”; that is, crime…