"Best of 2025" Science Recaps Remind Us of How Badly Science Clickbait Misled Us

 Clickbait is a gigantic problem that mars the reliability of stories appearing on web pages that may be labeled as Science News. There currently exists an economic ecosystem that strongly incentivizes the appearance of interesting-sounding but misleading science stories. 

After a scientific paper has been written up and published, it is announced with a press release issued by the main academic institution involved in the research. Nowadays the press releases of universities and colleges are notorious for making sensationalized claims that are not warranted by anything discovered in the research being discovered. Often a tentative claim made in a scientific paper (basically a "perhaps" or a "maybe") will be stated as if it is was simply a discovery of a definite fact.  Other times a university press release will make some important-sounding claim that was never made in the scientific paper writing up the research.  

There are complex economic reasons why press releases so erroneous keep appearing so often, and why they are passed on in clickbait Internet stories that lead to pages containing ads that generate revenue. To understand those reasons you have to "follow the money" and look at which parties are profiting from such unreliable but interesting-sounding stories. The reasons are explained in this post, and sketched in the diagram below.

All year long we are misled by these hype-filled boasting stories appearing on "science news" pages. The stories are claiming the most glorious breakthroughs and the most wonderful progress. So when you go to read one of those "Best of the Year" stories on some science site, such as a page labeled "The Best Physics Results of 2025," you might then expect to get a mind-blowing recap, listing the most marvelous breakthroughs.   But you will be greatly disappointed. Reading such end-of-year recap stories with adequate critical scrutiny, you may shake your head in dismay and disappointment, and ask yourself, "Is that all they got done?"

Let us look at a few examples, starting with a PhysicsWorld article entitled "Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year in physics for 2025 revealed."  We have no mention of any real breakthrough in the field of physics. The first item on the list is not anything even involving physics, but some research in astronomy. It is a report of finding life-related chemicals on the asteroid Bennu. But the levels reportedly detected are so low (only a few parts per billion) that nothing like any breakthrough has occurred. As I explain in my post here, the reported chemical levels are so low they probably result merely from earthly contamination, rather than a detection of such chemicals on the asteroid Bennu. 

We read of nine other claimed "breakthroughs," none of which are anything very interesting, and none of which are any actual "breakthroughs." The article is filled up with various results from technology and medicine. Reading the article, we may ask, "Where was all that grand progress we were promised would be coming soon?"  Not long ago, physicists were boasting the most grandiose boasts, mindlessly crowing about creating "theories of everything." What happened to such boasts? It seems they are "gone with the wind." 

A Harvard University page is entitled "Breakthroughs of 2025." Here are some of the items mentioned. 

• We read of how David Liu did work that helped some gene-fiddling genetic therapy for a certain type of very rare genetic disease . It sounds like good work, but it isn't that much of a breakthrough,  partially because of the rarity of the disease.
• There's a discussion of work on the origin of the "Uralic family of languages," with a very dubious claim that some DNA analysis has shed light on the origin of such languages. This is no breakthrough. The origin of language is a huge unsolved problem of science. 
• There's some mention of AI work on genomic analysis, something involving rare genetic variants that may increase disease risk. It's not any real breakthrough. 
• There are boasts about  a neuroscientist paper that does not qualify as either a breakthrough or a good neuroscience research paper, because its use of too-small study group sizes (often less than 15). 
• There is the claim that "Harvard scientists offer clues into how to treat deadly aortic aneurysms and hypertension," but it is not at all a breakthrough, because it is merely some rodent research, rather than something tested on humans. 
• There is the claim that "Through research and archeology, Harvard scientists got one step closer to understanding the origins of life and the early history of Earth’s largest animal group." The claim is unfounded. The claim links to a very misleading article in the Harvard Gazette entitled "A step toward solving central mystery of life on Earth." The article is debunked in my post here, entitled "Harvard Misrepresents Information-Empty Bubbles As Being Relevant to Life's Origin." Some scientists made some  artificial gizmo including green LED lights, and got some little bubbles bearing no real resemblance to anything living. One of them senselessly boasted that this was some breakthrough in understanding the origin of life. It sure was not. 

I fail to find any big breakthroughs listed on Harvard's page entitled "Breakthroughs of 2025." Another "end of year recap" article is entitled "Top Scientific Discoveries Of 2025: A Year of Quantum Leaps And Cosmic Revelations."  We don't read about any real "quantum leaps" in science (that term being one referring to an instantaneous change from one position to another).  We mainly merely read about various types of incremental progress. There is mention of a medical treatment that can supposedly prevent HIV transmission. That might qualify as a breakthrough, although  progress in fighting HIV has been steadily occurring for decades. 

Quanta Magazine has some "year in review" articles reviewing science progress in 2025. They fail to discuss any item that is very memorable and important. Specifically:

• A "The Year in Physics" article starts out by discussing a very dubious claim that dark energy is getting weaker. Scientists have never even observed dark energy, and it has no place in the Standard Model of Physics. So it is kind of like a "is the leprechaun population dwindling?" article. Then there's something about a big black hole, which we are told is "terribly exciting." But that's astronomy, not physics. Ditto for the section entitled "How Climate Scientists Saw the Future Before It Arrived." That isn't physics progress. Finally there's a section about AI dreaming up physics experiments, but that does not qualify as big physics progress.  Then the article ends. Where was all the big physics progress? The article fails to list any. 
• A "The Year in Biology" article starts out with a section "What Can a Cell Remember?"  No actual progress in biology is discussed in that section. Then there's a section "A Biography of Earth Across the Age of Animals." That also is not a discussion of biology progress. Then there's a section "AI Is Nothing Like a Brain, and That's OK," which also is not a discussion of progress in biology. Then there's a section entitled "How Paradoxical Questions and Simple Wonder Lead to Great Science," which also is not a discussion of biology progress. Then there's a section entitled "Touch, Our Most Complex Sense, Is a Landscape of Cellular Sensors." It is not a discussion of biology progress, and touch is not our most complex sense.  Then the article ends. Where was all the big biology progress? The article fails to list any progress very big. 

The journal Science has just announced its "2025 Breakthrough of the Year." It is: renewable energy. The page talks mainly about solar power, a technology that has existed for decades. We read this:

"So far, this is not a story of new technology. China is 'more or less relying on the same core [solar] technology that the United States invented half a century ago,'  Li says."

I guess in a year where there haven't been much in the way of real science breakthroughs,  this is what happens: the "Breakthrough" award goes to some old technology. 

You will probably be disappointed by such "best of 2025" articles, because you probably got the idea all year long that scientists were making so many great leaps forward. You  probably got such an idea by reading hype-filled misinforming "Science News" web pages that look rather like the page imagined below. 

When "Science Slop" Clickbait Runs Amok

Looking Back at My Blogging Activity, Part 1: The Year 2013

This is the first in a series of rarely-appearing posts in which I will look back at my blogging activity during some previous year.  Let me start with my first year of blogging, the year 2013. 

My blogging activity started out in May, 2013 with the first posts of this blog. I think I got off to a good start on the science fiction side. I regard my May 2013 story "The Museum" as one of my better ones. It is about an extraterrestrial planet where the culture all revolves around a magnificent museum of galactic history.  You can read the story here. Back then (before AI image generators) it was very hard to make artwork like the illustration I produced for the story, which is shown below.

My first attempt at prognostication on this blog was a stumbling one, although I think I have a good excuse for the stumble. In my post "The Coming Energy Crisis," I predicted that a crisis would soon occur. Around this time talk about "Peak Oil" was very popular. The graphs of US oil production seemed to show that it had peaked around 1970. The outlook seemed dim. Quite surprisingly, there was a huge rebound in US oil production, and by around 2018 US oil production reached levels never reached before. This surprising reality invalidated my prediction. 

I think I did a much better job of prediction in my 2013 post "Is the Singularity Near?" Based mainly on the consideration that software advances much more slowly than computer hardware, I suggested that "the technological singularity will not occur anywhere near as quickly as singularity enthusiasts imagine."  I now have additional reasons for drawing such a conclusion, including a judgment that there will be no way to make computers truly intelligent (in a comprehending sense) by mimicking any functionality of the human brain (something that is not the actual source of human intelligence for reasons I discuss on my blog here).  

In June 2013 I was writing posts on this blog at one of the fastest rates I have ever produced, nearly once a day. I wrote a riches-to-rags science fiction story "The Emperor's Escape" that is well worth a read (you can read it here). I also wrote the story "The Thirty-seventh Marina Terletsky," a very interesting tale of long-term cloning on an interstellar expedition.  You can read it here. 

My June 2013 post "A Fine-Tuned Universe" was the first post on a topic I would end up discussing in more than 50 subsequent posts. Discussing extremely improbable strokes of luck needed for our universe to be habitable, I noted "In fact, our universe somehow managed not only to land the particular 'hole in one' described in the first graph of this blog post, but it also managed to land quite a few other 'holes in one,' all of which were necessary for beings like us to exist." I think my original post on this topic holds up very well twelve years later. 

My July 2013 post "The Problem With Mind Uploading" was my first discussion of this topic. I expressed skepticism about the idea that anyone could extend their lifespan by uploading their mind into a computer. I stated this:

"Mind uploading wouldn't really extend your lifespan; at best it would mean additional years for someone or something that was a copy of you. If you want to entertain the prospect of living far beyond the human lifespan, you can consider possibilities such as biological life extension or replacing your body below the neck with a robot body or the possibility that near death experiences suggest a chance of spiritual immortality. I don't believe mind uploading is going to save anyone from the Grim Reaper."

The post holds up very well 12 years later.  I am glad that in the post I never conceded the possibility that you could actually make an intelligent individual by copying someone's brain. In later years I would come to recognize a whole additional reason for dismissing the possibility of mind uploading by copying brain contents,  which is that brains are not the actual source of human intelligence.  My comment in the 2013 post about "spiritual immortality" foreshadows such a realization. 

My July 2013 story "Superior Species" is one of my better story-telling efforts, and manages to combine science fiction with an anti-racism theme.  

 In August 2013 my post "You Are the Only You" attacked the Everett "many worlds" theory that there are an infinite number of copies of you in parallel universes.  I am proud of having got things right on this topic in the first post on that topic. I have never wavered since then in my thinking that Everett's theory is the worst kind of nonsense. 

My September 2013 post "Things We Can Never Be Certain About" is a piece of philosophical reasoning that holds up very well 12 years later. I have since come to be more confident about the reality of some of the things I mention in the post. But I think the point I originally made (that it is impossible to be 100% certain about such matters) still holds up. 

In the same month I published my post "Is There More Evidence for ESP or String Theory and Supersymmetry?" It was the first of more than 70 posts I would end up writing on the topic of ESP (telepathy).  I am proud to have got things right on this topic from the beginning. I pointed out that the experimental evidence for ESP was well-replicated, and that experiments using the ganzfeld protocol consistently showed results far above what would occur by chance.  I stated this:

"Given the abundant experimental evidence that has accumulated for many decades, and the lack of credibility in any theory that it is fraudulent, it seems that the evidence for ESP is actually surprisingly substantial. The commonly made claim that experiments suggesting ESP cannot be replicated does not seem to be correct. There actually seems to be a quite significant degree of replication. ESP may or may not exist, but there seems to be a large, rather consistent body of experimental evidence to support the claim that it does exist."

I then discussed the evidence for string theory and the theory of supersymmetry, pointing out that although such theories are popular among physicists, neither is well-supported by evidence.  I stated this:

"The evidence for either supersymmetry or string theory is actually weaker than the evidence for ESP. This is because there is basically no evidence for either supersymmetry or string theory."

My 2013 post "Is There More Evidence for ESP or String Theory and Supersymmetry?" holds up extremely well after 12 years. To this day, all tests for supersymmetry have failed, and there is still no evidence to support either supersymmetry or string theory. Since writing this post, I have discovered many other cases of evidence for telepathy or ESP, which I have documented in my 70+ posts on this topic.  ESP tests using the ganzfeld protocol continue to produce convincing results. The latest result of an ESP test is the result reported on page 62 of the year 2025 document here. It is a test of 240 participants conducted at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland's largest university), by two professors. The researchers used the long-successful Ganzfeld protocol, which for many years has produced results of around 30% to 32%,  well above the result expected by chance (only 25%).  The tests were done in a "ganzfeld laboratory" in a "quiet and secure basement room of a university building," in the years 2023 and 2024. We read that "Seventy-two hits were obtained out of 240 sessions, a 30% hit-rate," a success well above the result expected by chance, only 25%.

My October 2013 post "How to Have a Pleasant Pandemic" is one that was prescient. At the beginning of the post I imagined the outbreak of a new infectious disease in New York City. In italics I described the scenario:

"Before long you hear that hundreds of people have died from the new flu strain in New York City alone. You notice that many people on the subway are starting to wear surgical masks. You wonder whether you should do so also. But you figure that it's a rather timid thing to do, and you notice that still most people are not wearing the masks. So you decide not to wear one.

Soon the death toll in New York City rises to the thousands. At about the time when most of the people start wearing surgical masks on the subway, you start wearing one too. ...

The death toll in New York City rises higher and higher. Before long, more than 50,000 have died. Now you start wearing your surgical mask everywhere, including all of the time you are at work...You start wearing two surgical masks, one on top of the other.."

At the time I wrote this, there had been no very large infectious disease outbreak in New York City since about the years 1918-1919, the years of the Spanish Flu. In the year 2020 there did occur a massive worldwide pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the web page here, by December, 2022 there were 60,000 COVID-19 deaths in New York state, with a majority of them in New York City. So my hypothetical scenario closely resembled what actually happened. In my October 2013 post "How to Have a Pleasant Pandemic" I gave some good tips about protecting yourself from a pandemic, the type of tips that were widely repeated when the pandemic occurred. 

My 2013 post "Darwinism Fails to Explain Man's Higher Faculties" was the first of many posts I would eventually write expressing skepticism about the explanatory power of Darwinism. When I wrote the post I had not yet understood the reasons why Darwinism fails to explain the origin of human bodies. In later posts such as the one here I explained such reasons. 

My 2013 post "Cosmic Fine-Tuning Visualized" was an in-depth examination of the evidence for cosmic fine-tuning, that our universe has a very special arrangement of laws and fundamental constants necessary for it to be habitable, an arrangement gigantically unlikely for chance to have produced. Featuring the visual below, the post holds up very well as a discussion of this deep topic, and I have written many other posts on the same topic, which you can read here. 

My 2013 post "When I Trained to Be an Electron: A Physics Story" is one well worth a read, taking an extremely imaginative approach of telling a story as a subatomic particle might tell it, if subatomic particles had minds. I took a similar personification approach recently when sending two Christmas cards to siblings. I wrote my Christmas greeting as a Christmas card itself might write, if it had a mind. 

List of Breakthrough Prize Winners in Life Sciences Hints at the Lack of Progress in Evolutionary Biology

 The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences is a 3-million dollar prize given for advances in biology.  The prize was founded by 2013 after donations by high-tech billionaires such as Mark Zuckerberg. Let's take a look at a list of all the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences that have been awarded since 2013, quoting from the wikipedia.org page that lists them:

• "for the genetics of neural circuits and behavior, and synaptic guidepost molecules"
• "for linkage mapping of Mendelian disease in humans using DNA polymorphisms"
• "for the discovery of PI 3-Kinase and its role in cancer metabolism"
• "for describing the role of Wnt signaling in tissue stem cells and cancer"
• "for research on telomeres, illuminating how they protect chromosome ends and their role in genome instability in cancer"
• "for discoveries in the mechanisms of angiogenesis that led to therapies for cancer and eye diseases"
• "for the discovery of general principles for identifying human disease genes, and enabling their application to medicine through the creation and analysis of genetic, physical and sequence maps of the human genome"
• "for cancer genes and targeted therapy"
• "for characterization of human cancer genes"
• "for induced pluripotent stem cells"
• "for cancer genomics and tumor suppressor genes"
• "for the discovery of T cell checkpoint blockade as effective cancer therapy"
• "for defining the interlocking circuits in the brain that malfunction in Parkinson’s disease – this scientific foundation underlies the circuit-based treatment of Parkinson’s disease by deep brain stimulation"
• "for the discovery of Target of Rapamycin (TOR) and its role in cell growth control"
• "for discoveries leading to the development of controlled drug-release systems and new biomaterials"
• "for the discovery of genes and biochemical mechanisms that cause hypertension"
• "for discovering critical molecular determinants and biological functions of intracellular protein degradation"
• "for the discovery and pioneering work on the development of high-frequency deep brain stimulation (DBS), which has revolutionized the treatment of Parkinson’s disease"
• "for the discovery of covalent modifications of histone proteins and their critical roles in the regulation of gene expression and chromatin organization, advancing the understanding of diseases ranging from birth defects to cancer"
• "for the discovery of a new world of genetic regulation by microRNAs, a class of tiny RNA molecules that inhibit translation or destabilize complementary mRNA targets"
• "for harnessing an ancient mechanism of bacterial immunity into a powerful and general technology for editing genomes, with wide-ranging implications across biology and medicine"
• "for the development and implementation of optogenetics – the programming of neurons to express light-activated ion channels and pumps, so that their electrical activity can be controlled by light"
• "for discovering mutations in the amyloid precursor protein (APP) gene that cause early onset Alzheimer’s disease, linking accumulation of APP-derived beta-amyloid peptide to Alzheimer’s pathogenesis and inspiring new strategies for disease prevention"
• "for the discovery of human genetic variants that alter the levels and distribution of cholesterol and other lipids, inspiring new approaches to the prevention of cardiovascular and liver disease"
• "for pioneering the sequencing of ancient DNA and ancient genomes, thereby illuminating the origins of modern humans, our relationships to extinct relatives such as Neanderthals, and the evolution of human populations and traits"
• "for elucidating how eukaryotic cells sense and respond to damage in their DNA and providing insights into the development and treatment of cancer"
• "for discovering the centrality of RNA in forming the active centers of the ribosome, the fundamental machinery of protein synthesis in all cells, thereby connecting modern biology to the origin of life and also explaining how many natural antibiotics disrupt protein synthesis"
• "for pioneering research on the Wnt pathway, one of the crucial intercellular signaling systems in development, cancer and stem cell biology"
• "for elucidating autophagy, the recycling system that cells use to generate nutrients from their own inessential or damaged components"
• "for discoveries of the genetic causes and biochemical mechanisms of spinocerebellar ataxia and Rett syndrome, findings that have provided insight into the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative and neurological diseases"
• "for discovering how plants optimize their growth, development, and cellular structure to transform sunlight into chemical energy"
• "for elucidating the unfolded protein response, a cellular quality-control system that detects disease-causing unfolded proteins and directs cells to take corrective measures"
• "for elucidating the sophisticated mechanism that mediates the perilous separation of duplicated chromosomes during cell division and thereby prevents genetic diseases such as cancer"
• "for elucidating the molecular pathogenesis of a type of inherited ALS, including the role of glia in neurodegeneration, and for establishing antisense oligonucleotide therapy in animal models of ALS and Huntington disease"
• "for the development of an effective antisense oligonucleotide therapy for children with the neurodegenerative disease spinal muscular atrophy"
• "for determining the consequences of aneuploidy, an abnormal chromosome number resulting from chromosome mis-segregation"
• "for discovering hidden structures in cells by developing super-resolution imaging – a method that transcends the fundamental spatial resolution limit of light microscopy"
• "for elucidating how DNA triggers immune and autoimmune responses from the interior of a cell through the discovery of the DNA-sensing enzyme cGAS"
• "for the discovery of a new endocrine system through which adipose tissue signals the brain to regulate food intake"
• "for discovering functions of molecular chaperones in mediating protein folding and preventing protein aggregation"
• "for discovering molecules, cells, and mechanisms underlying pain sensation"
• "for discovering TDP43 protein aggregates in frontotemporal dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and revealing that different forms of alpha-synuclein, in different cell types, underlie Parkinson’s disease and Multiple System Atrophy"
• "for developing technology that allowed the design of proteins never seen before in nature, including novel proteins that have the potential for therapeutic intervention in human diseases"
• "for deconstructing the complex behavior of parenting to the level of cell-types and their wiring, and demonstrating that the neural circuits governing both male and female-specific parenting behaviors are present in both sexes"
• "for discovering that fetal DNA is present in maternal blood and can be used for the prenatal testing of trisomy 21 and other genetic disorders"
• "for elucidating a quality control pathway that clears damaged mitochondria and thereby protects against Parkinson’s Disease"
• "for elucidating the molecular basis of neurodegenerative and cardiac transthyretin diseases, and for developing tafamidis, a drug that slows their progression"
• "for engineering modified RNA technology which enabled rapid development of effective COVID-19 vaccines"
• "for the development of a robust and affordable method to determine DNA sequences on a massive scale, which has transformed the practice of science and medicine"
• "For discovering a fundamental mechanism of cellular organization mediated by phase separation of proteins and RNA into membraneless liquid droplets."
• "For developing a deep learning AI method that rapidly and accurately predicts the three-dimensional structure of proteins from their amino acid sequence."
• "For discovering that narcolepsy is caused by the loss of a small population of brain cells that make a wake-promoting substance, paving the way for the development of new treatments for sleep disorders."
• "For the development of chimeric antigen receptor T cell immunotherapy whereby the patient's T cells are modified to target and kill cancer cells."
• "For developing life-transforming drug combinations that repair the defective chloride channel protein in patients with cystic fibrosis."
• "For identifying GBA1 and LRRK2 as risk genes for Parkinson's disease, implicating autophagy and lysosomal biology as critical contributors to the pathogenesis of the disease."
• "For the discovery and characterization of GLP-1 and revealing its physiology and potential in treating diabetes and obesity."
• "For establishing the role of B cells in multiple sclerosis and developing B-cell based treatments, and for revealing that Epstein-Barr virus infection is the leading risk for multiple sclerosis."
• "For developing base editing and prime editing, technologies that edit the DNA of living systems without cutting the DNA double helix, and rewrite segments of genes at their native locations, enabling the correction or replacement of virtually any mutation."

None of these prizes are for work that was any real progress in evolutionary biology. Judging from these awards between 2013 and 2025, it seems that scientists are getting nowhere trying to prove their claims that species arose through Darwinian evolution.  The closest that we have in the list above to something sounding like progress in evolutionary biology is this reference: "for pioneering the sequencing of ancient DNA and ancient genomes, thereby illuminating the origins of modern humans, our relationships to extinct relatives such as Neanderthals, and the evolution of human populations and traits." But no mention is made to any specific progress in evolutionary biology.  Studying ancient DNA has not actually illuminated the origin of modern humans in any substantial way. Neanderthals are not believed to be ancestors of humans, and it is believed that modern humans and Neanderthals co-existed before the Neanderthals went extinct about 40,000 years ago. 

Evolutionary biology has never offered any credible explanations for the origin of any complex biological innovation. The more that we understand how information-rich and how vastly organized organisms such as mammals are, the less credible are the explanatory boasts of evolutionary biologists. The claim of evolutionary biologists that biological innovations requiring the most enormously impressive engineering effects arose because of mere accumulations of random mutations is as senseless as the claim that some large library of books arose because of an accumulation of accidental ink splashes. 

Nowadays departments of evolutionary biology do not serve very substantially as sources of real biology progress. They instead serve mainly as outposts of ideological imperialism, bastions dedicated to preserving old belief traditions and moldy old boasts that give comfort to atheists. The most progress in biology these days comes from departments of biochemistry. The more progress that occurs in biochemistry, the more we understand the stratospheric levels of fine-tuning, component interdependence and well-engineered molecular machinery needed for organisms to function, and the less credible are Darwinist boasts of having explained the origin of species such as mankind. Darwinist ideas do so little to explain the endless astonishing wonders of biochemistry that Darwin and evolution often get virtually no mention in biochemistry textbooks, as I document in my post "The Negligible Presence of Evolutionary Explanations in Six Biochemistry Textbooks."

What is also remarkable in the list above of winners of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences is the lack of any accurate mention of progress in the field of cognitive neuroscience. The only thing that sounds like such a mention is the statement "for deconstructing the complex behavior of parenting to the level of cell-types and their wiring, and demonstrating that the neural circuits governing both male and female-specific parenting behaviors are present in both sexes." There are no actual neural circuits governing parenting behaviors, and claims to explain complex behavior on the basis of "wiring" are unfounded. The quoted statement refers to a year 2021 award to Catherine Dulac, who did not actually produce any well-designed robust research backing up any claim that there are "neural circuits governing both male and female-specific parenting behaviors." See the appendix of this post for more about Dulac's work. 

From the list of prize winners above, it sounds like those trying to prove "brains make minds" claims are making as little progress as those trying to prove the claims of Darwinism. The more carefully you study the physical shortfalls of brains and their synapses, the less credible such "brains make minds" claims will seem. 

Appendix: I looked on Google Scholar for examples of Dulac's work related to claims that there are "neural circuits governing both male and female-specific parenting behaviors." I find some examples of what look like low-quality rodent research. Specifically:

• Dulac co-authored the paper "Galanin neurons in the medial preoptic area govern parental behavior." It is some research involving mice, but how many mice were used? We seem to get no mention of that in the paper, and that typically occurs when some way-too-small study group size was used. The paper confesses, "The sample sizes in our study were chosen based on common practice in animal behavior experiments." That's what scientists say when they lazily failed to do a sample size calculation to determine how large a sample size should be used for a result with good statistical power. The use of way-too-small study group sizes is disgustingly predominant in neuroscience rodent research, so you do nothing to show that you used an adequate sample size by referring to "common practice in animal behavior experiments."
• Dulac co-authored the paper "Functional circuit architecture underlying parental behaviour." It is a paper using way-too-small study group sizes of only 3 mice or 6 mice. No research like this should be taken seriously unless it used study group sizes of at least 15 or 20 animals per study group. 
• Dulac co-authored the paper "Urocortin-3 neurons in the mouse perifornical area promote infant-directed neglect and aggression." It is low-quality research because of its use of way-too-small study group sizes such as only 8 mice. 
  

Dulac has written various review papers reviewing research by others trying to show "neural circuits governing both male and female-specific parenting behaviors." But such review papers are not good evidence, because they are based mainly on citations of other scientists' experiments that typically involve way-too-small study group sizes, as does almost all neuroscience research these days involving rodents. 

The list of Breakthrough Prizes above also refers to an award "for the genetics of neural circuits and behavior, and synaptic guidepost molecules." It was a 2013 award to Cornelia Bargmann, whose research was about C. elegans, a type of speck-sized worm. This was not cognitive neuroscience research involving humans. When we look at a paper such as Bargmann's paper here, we find an unfounded claim of there being a "synaptic guidepost protein," and some research that apparently fails to involve adequate study group sizes.  It is hard to tell exactly how many worms were used, due to another appalling case of failing to clearly specify study group sizes. But at one point we read "five independent F1 animals were transferred onto a single plate," suggesting a study group of only five worms. No mention is made of any sample size calculation, a good indicator that some way-too-small study group sizes were used. A search on Google Scholar for the phrase "synaptic guidepost" seems to reveal no other viewable paper using that phrase in its title, suggesting that Bargmann's results were not well-replicated. Beware of neuroscientists using nicknames for particular types of cells or proteins; the nicknames are typically inappropriate. 

You do not incentivize good scientific research when extremely large cash awards are given for poorly designed research guilty of Questionable Research Practices such as the use of way-too-small study group sizes. When that happens, all that occurs is that a message goes out that a neuroscientist might get rich by doing low-quality research. 

A Spooky Event Seemed to Foretell or Coincide With Their Deaths

 In the series of 12 posts below, I discussed dreams, visions or mysterious voices that seemed to foretell a death or disaster:

When Dreams or Visions Foretell a Death

More Dreams or Visions That Seemed to Foretell a Death

Still More Dreams or Visions That Seemed to Foretell a Death

Still More Dreams, Visions or Voices That Seemed to Foretell a Death

Even More Dreams and Visions That Seemed to Foretell a Death

Some More Dreams or Visions That Seemed to Foretell a Death or Disaster

When the Future Whispers to the Present

When Dreams or Premonitions Seem to Act Prophetically

Dreams, Visions or Premonitions That Seemed to Correctly Predict a Death

Dreams, Visions or Premonitions That Seemed to Foretell a Death

Additional Dreams or Visions or Apparitions That Seemed to Foretell a Death or Disaster

Sometimes Dreams, Visions or Premonitions Seem to Foretell a Death

Let us look at some more cases of this type, along with a spooky event coinciding with a death. 

Below we have a 1919 account of a daughter (Hazel Bonner) warned in a dream of the fatal shooting of her father:

You can read the account here. 

The account below appeared in a newspaper, and can be read on page 188 of the document here:

"A few nights ago a little boy of rare intelligence, named Fillmore, son of G. Fisher, residing in Reistertown, Baltimore county, about the midnight hour, awoke his mother and informed her that he was going to die. He told his father the same thing, and when told he was dreaming, replied that he was awake and knew that he was going to die. The parents thought nothing more about it, and the child slept comfortably until morning. When he awoke in the morning, he repeated his presentiment to his parents; and as soon as breakfast was over he insisted on being allowed to go and tell Mrs. Walters, a neighbor, that be was going to die. His mother told him that he had better go and see his grandmother, if he was going to die. He made his visit to his grandmother, and also to Mrs. Walters, after which he returned to his home. During the afternoon of the same day, his mother was called out of the house for a few minutes, and when she returned she found the little fellow awfully burned by his clothes having taken fire. As soon as the fire was extinguished he said to his mother, 'I told you I was going to die.' A physician was called in who dressed his injuries, telling him that he would soon be well. He said, 'No, Fillmore is going to die;' and during the night the little fellow breathed his last. This was a most extraordinary presentiment, and during the whole day he spoke of dying, though he enjoyed excellent health.-Baltimore Republican, Feb. 2."

Below is a newspaper account of a woman (Mary Scott Turner) who seemed to have a vivid dream of being warned by her late son, with the dream occurring the day before she died in a fire.

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1916-01-24/ed-1/seq-1/

Below is a newspaper account you can read here, one which attracts our lurid interest. And things become even more fascinating when we check out what is referred to in the little box at the bottom right, saying Mrs. White says she was warned in a dream. 

Scrolling down in the story to get details, we find a startling result. Apparently it was not just one person who had a dream warning of Eddie White's murder, but two different people: Eddie's wife and Eddie's brother. Eddie's wife dreamed Eddie was found dead in his car, murdered; and the headline above says he was murdered in a taxi. We read this:

Below is a newspaper account of a boy (Ellis Rogers) who had a dream foretelling his drowning death:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86072054/1918-06-05/ed-1/seq-1/

Below is a news account of a woman who had dreams and premonitions telling her that her missing husband was dead:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045433/1908-08-23/ed-1/seq-16/#

The newspaper account below tells us a woman (Stella Pivinski) having a vision warning her of a shooting that she soon experienced:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1913-09-26/ed-1/seq-8/

Below we read an account of a strange omen at the wedding of Eveline James, one that seems to have been fulfilled. 

You can read the account here:

https://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/islandora/object/uofm%3A2961879?solr%

In the newspaper account below, we read of a woman (Mrs. I. H. Jones) who had a dream that seemed to foretell a death:

You can read the account here:

https://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/islandora/object/uofm%3A2946161

On the same page we have the dream account below. If we interpret the part about the brother rising out of the ocean as being a reference to rising up to an afterlife, the dream may seem one that accurately foretold a death:

In the 1901 news account below, which you can read here, we read of a woman who had three dreams predicting her death, shortly before she died:

Woman's Death Foretold by Dreams

New York Sun Special Service

"Middletawn, N. Y.. April 22.—Mrs. Maria Conkllng, wife of David Conkling. living near Rockhill. who died suddenly Thursday, had been warned in dreams three successive nights that her end was near. The story told by members of her family and by neighbors to whom she related her dreams while making preparations for death is

as follows:

She was 49 years old and apparently in perfect health. Monday night she dreamed that her daughter, who died twelve years ago, appeared to her and beckoned to her; Tuesday night her mother, who died about twenty-five years ago. appeared to her while she slept and beckoned to her; Wednesday night she dreamed that a black-robed figure of death stood by her bedside holding a taper, and while it beckoned, the taper suddenly went out.

Thursday afternoon, while engaged in household duties, the final summons came in the form of a stroke of apoplexy."

The account below is taken from page 41 of the document here, a document with many interesting accounts of the paranormal. The narrator is Philip Masey, the husband of Mrs. Masey:

"Mrs. Mary Masey, who resided on Redcliffe Hill, Bristol,

at the beginning at this century, was a member of the Society of Friends, and was held in high esteem for piety. A memorable incident in her life was that one night she dreamt that a Mr. John Henderson, a noted man of the same community, had gone to Oxford, and that he had died there. In the course of the next day, Mr. Henderson called to take leave of her, saying he was going to Oxford to study a subject concerning which he could not obtain the information he·wanted in Bristol. Mrs. Masey said to him, 'John Henderson, thou wilt die there.'  Some time afterwards, Mrs. Masey

woke her husband one night, saying, 'Remember, John

Henderson died at Oxford at two o'clock this morning, and 

it is now three.'  Her husband, Philip Masey, made light of

it ; but she told him that while asleep, she had been transported to Oxford, where she had never been before, and that she had entered a room there, in which she saw Mr.  John Henderson in bed, the landlady supporting his head, and the landlord with several other persons standing around. While gazing at him some one gave him medicine, and the patient, turning round, perceived her, and exclaimed, 'Oh, Mrs. Masey, I am going to die ; I am so glad you are come, for I want to tell you that my father is going to be very ill,

and you must go and see him.' He then proceeded to

describe a room in his father's house and a bureau in it,

'in which is a box containing a remedy; give it him, and he

will recover.'  Her impression and recollection of all the persons in the room at Oxford was most vivid, and she even described the appearance of the house on the opposite side

of the street. Tbe only person she appeared not to have seen in the room was a clergyman who was present. The

husband of Mrs. Masey accompanied Mr. Henderson's father

to the funeral, and on their journey from Bristol to Oxford

by coach (the period being before railways and telegraphs

existed), Mr. Philip Masey related to him the particulars of

his son's death, as described by his wife, which on arrival

they found to have been exactly as told by Mrs. Masey.

Mrs. Masey was so much concerned about the death of

Mr. Henderson, jun., that she forgot all about the directions 

he had given her respecting the approaching illness of his

father, but some time afterwards she was sent for by the

father, who was very ill. She then remembered the directions given her by the son on his deathbed at Oxford. She immediately proceeded to the residence of Mr. Henderson, and on arrival at the house she found the room, the bureau, the box, and the medicine exactly as had been foretold to her. She administered the remedy as directed, and had the pleasure of witnessing the beneficial effect by the complete

recovery of Mr. Henderson from a serious illness."

On page 32 of the book here, we read the following very interesting claim:

"Most people that have reached middle age have generally experienced some strange phenomena before a death has taken place. Some have heard noises like

a cannon going off  ; others have heard sounds like the

ticking of a watch; or loud knocks at the door; birds

singing; loud knocks about the room or on the table;

candle lights that have gradually dissolved; cups and

saucers shaking, and various articles of crockery moving and breaking; sounds of music in the distance; also dreaming about some friend or relation that has passed on to the higher life ; pictures falling, and heavy articles of furniture, such as pianofortes, being moved out of their place; the falling of stars and meteoric

bodies from the sky; ravens taking rest on the tops

of houses; birds and animals making strange and unusual noises; dogs howling in front of a house; and  a number of other things. Some people can tell almost to a day when there is going to be a death, because they have experienced the same phenomena

before. In some cases there will be a sign of death

about a week before it takes place; others will perceive the sign a few clays before or on the same day. It all depends upon the development of the recipient."

We then hear the author tell some eerie stories of howling dogs that seemed to foretell a death. She says in the days just before her father died a howling dog appeared on her doorstop.

Bennu Building Block Bunk Balloons Badly

 Boy, are they ever talking about something they say was found in the asteroid Bennu. But it's mainly more "science slop" baloney. 

An example is the recent Fake News headline in the often-erring New York Post, a paper I am not very proud to have as an example of my local New York City newspapers. It is the doubly untrue headline "Asteroid hurtling toward Earth found to be teeming with building blocks of life: researchers." The title refers to the asteroid Bennu, which is not "hurtling towards Earth." And the chemicals referred to (which probably do not even exist on Bennu) are chemicals claimed to have been detected in only the tiniest trace amounts, such as 1 part in a billion -- a level that can never truthfully be described as "teeming." 

What happened was that a spacecraft (OSIRIS-REx) retrieved a small sample of soil from the asteroid Bennu, and the sample was brought back to Earth. Scientists analyzing the sample reported the tiniest trace amounts of some amino acids and some of the nucleobases used in RNA, along with some sugars. However, the reported amounts were all so small we can have no confidence in the reported results. In all likelihood, they are simply due to earthly contamination, which could have occurred at any of many different stages of the scooping up/earthly retrieval/earthly analysis process.  

The December 2025 paper that is the inspiration for such clickbait is one co-authored by Daniel P. Glavin, and entitled "Bio-essential sugars in samples from asteroid Bennu." We read a claim of a detection of sugars, but the abundance levels are negligible. The paper states this:

"The abundances of ribose, lyxose, arabinose and xylose were 0.097 ± 0.014, 0.018 ± 0.007, 0.11 ± 0.03 and 0.079 ± 0.033 nmol g−1, respectively (Table 1). Glucose had the highest concentration of the sugars at 0.35 ± 0.05 nmol g−1, whereas galactose was 0.014 ± 0.004 nmol g−1 (Table 1)."

The phrase "nmol g" means nanomole per gram. The reported abundance are less than 1 nanomole per gram, which is roughly something like 1 part per billion. When a claim is made to have detected something at a level so small, we can have no confidence that the result actually came from space, as opposed to resulting from earthly contamination.

The paper here ("OSIRIS-REx Contamination Control Strategy and Implementation") tells us about methods to prevent microbes and amino acids from existing on the OSIRIS/REx spacecraft that gathered the sample from the asteroid Bennu. It claims, "To return a pristine sample, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft sampling hardware was maintained at level 100 A/2 and <180 ng/cm² of amino acids and hydrazine on the sampler head through precision cleaning, control of materials, and vigilance."  This is a mention of some standard of cleanliness that was a target level, and we have no guarantee that such a target level of cleanliness was actually obtained. Moreover, the standard of cleanliness mentioned is less than 180 nanograms per square centimeter.  Under such a standard, we might expect that you would get tiniest trace amounts results as reported by Glavin from trace amounts from Earth that were left on the spacecraft when it reached the asteroid Bennu.

The relevant threshold here is 180 nanograms per square centimeter. Anything greater than such an amount might be evidence of amino acids or sugars picked up from the asteroid Bennu. Anything less than that we can have no confidence in, and should regard as purely the result of earthly contamination.  None of the "building blocks of life" reportedly detected from the asteroid Bennu exceeds this threshold. They are all much less than the threshold. 

So we can have no reasonable confidence in any of these reports of detecting amino acids or nucleobases or sugars from material retrieved from the asteroid Bennu. No reliable evidence has been presented that anything relevant to life was discovered on the asteroid Bennu. 

The "Bio-essential sugars in samples from asteroid Bennu" paper confesses, "The abundances of the biologically important sugars in the Bennu sample (glucose, arabinose, ribose and xylose) might nevertheless suggest the possibility of contamination." The valine row in Extended Data Table 4 of the paper reporting tiniest trace amounts of amino acids in Bennu samples suggests that earthly contamination may have occurred. There is a total "d/l" ratio of .5, which is not the 1.0 ratio we would expect if there was a sample without any earthly contamination. 

What almost always happens in such press reports is that writers pay zero attention to the negligible levels of the chemicals found, and the writers pay zero attention to the all-important issue of contamination, explained in the infographic above. 

The New York Post article quotes the sometimes-misspeaking astronomer Avi Loeb as claiming, "The finding that the asteroid Bennu contains most amino acids, the building blocks of life-as-we-know-it suggests that these building blocks are common in the Universe."  No, supposedly finding something in only the tiniest trace amounts of a few parts per billion does not suggest that something is common.  And in this case no reliable evidence has been gathered that anything relevant to life was discovered in space, because of the very high chance of earthly contamination. And amino acids are not actually the "building blocks of life."  The building components of one-celled life are protein molecules, which are very special arrangements of amino acids, arrangements fantastically unlikely to arise by chance. Components requiring so many specially arranged parts should never be referring to as "building blocks," as if they were simple. 

Astronomers have been making these kind of misstatements for 50 years. Astronomer Carl Sagan told us the same baloney, when he falsely claimed this: "The carbon-rich complex molecules that are essential for the kind of life we know about, are fantastically abundant. They litter the universe."  There are no reports of detecting amino acids, sugars or nucleobases in space, in anything more than the tiniest trace amounts; and such reports are typically unreliable, involving very large uncertainties that make them weak from an evidence standpoint.