CMB Anomalies: An Enduring "Wrong Way" Sign to Cosmologists

 It is sometimes said that the cosmic microwave background or CMB dates from the beginning of the universe. But in reality it dates from a time about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, a time called the Epoch of Recombination. 

What are called CMB anomalies are unexpected features in the cosmic background radiation that pervades all of space. The cosmic background radiation is also called the cosmic microwave background or CMB. Using their existing theories about the universe and its beginning, cosmologists (the scientists who study the universe as  whole) expect the cosmic background radiation to have particular qualities.  CMB anomalies are features in the cosmic background radiation that defy such expectations, hinting that cosmologists have got things wrong in some major way. 

My last major post on the topic of CMB anomalies was a 2017 post entitled "Shocking CMB Anomalies Contradict Guth's 'Empirical Success' Claims."  Below is a quote from that post:

"The first satellite to observe in detail the cosmic background radiation was the WMAP satellite launched in 2001. This satellite detected some very strange anomalies in the cosmic background radiation, anomalies that came as a surprise to scientists. One was an anomaly called the cosmic cold spot. Another was an anomaly that is technically known as the hemispherical variance asymmetry. Then there is an anomaly called the quadrupole-octopole alignment. There are nine other anomalies in the cosmic background radiation that are summarized in a table in this scientific paper. The table is below:

The p-values here give us a rough idea of the probability of finding such anomalies if standard ideas of cosmology (including cosmic inflation and dark matter) are correct.....Years after the WMAP satellite was launched, scientists launched another satellite called the Planck satellite. It was predicted that the troubling anomalies in the cosmic background radiation would go away after the more powerful Planck satellite did its work. But that did not happen. The Planck team reported the same anomalies. The table above is from a paper entitled, 'CMB Anomalies After Planck.' ”

A 2010 paper states the following about these anomalies in the cosmic background radiation:

"While not all of these alignments are statistically independent, their combined statistical significance is certainly greater than their individual significances. For example, given their mutual alignments, the conditional probability of the four normals lying so close to the ecliptic, is less than 2%; the combined probability of the four normals being both so aligned with each other and so close to the ecliptic is less than 0.4% × 2% = 0.008%. These are therefore clearly surprising, highly statistically significant anomalies — unexpected in the standard inflationary theory and the accepted cosmological model.

This is a probability of less than 1 in 10,000 under the assumptions of the theory of primordial cosmic inflation and the accepted cosmological model.

The quotes above are mainly from my 2017 post. What has happened in recent years in regard to these CMB anomalies? They seem to have mostly persisted. Recently a cosmologist named Subir Sarkar wrote an article discussing a paper he co-authored about one of these CMB anomalies, called the cosmic dipole anomaly. He wrote this, using CDM to refer to "cold dark matter":

"The cosmic dipole anomaly has thus established itself as a major challenge to the standard cosmological model, even if the astronomical community has chosen to largely ignore it. This may be because there is no easy way to patch up this problem. It requires abandoning not just the Lambda-CDM model but the FLRW description itself, and going back to square one."

Such talk about troubling anomalies and the possible overthrow of a prevailing paradigm reminds me of the theory of scientific revolutions presented by Thomas Kuhn in his much-referenced work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. According to Kuhn, there would arise among some large group of scientists a set of assumptions and belief traditions that Kuhn called a paradigm. But the paradigm might  be challenged by observations that conflicted with it, observations that Kuhn called anomalies. For a long time, conformist and habit-bound  scientists loyal to some prevailing paradigm would just ignore such anomalies, or try to "sweep them under the rug." But eventually the anomalies might become so abundant and so hard-to-ignore that there might occur a scientific revolution in which the old paradigm would be overthrown. The diagram below summarizes such ideas:

The corresponding scientific paper co-authored by Sarkar is a recent work that will be hard for the layman to read. There is one passage that is very noteworthy, the passage below:

"The simple FLRW-based ΛCDM lambda cold cark matter] model has been so successful in fitting data. However one of its ‘simple’ parameters is the Cosmological Constant Λ which, interpreted as the energy density of the quantum vacuum, would require fine-tuning of two unrelated terms to at least 60 decimal places to enable the Universe to exist in its present form. It is clear that simplicity is in the eye of the beholder." 

What does this reference to " fine-tuning of two unrelated terms to at least 60 decimal places" refer to? It refers to a degree of coincidental luck that you would have if you guessed the ten-digit phone numbers of six strangers visiting from very far away, and correctly guessed perfectly all of their phone numbers. My widely-read post here discusses the topic in greater detail. 

The fine-tuning referred to is only one of many examples of very precise fine-tuning revealed by physics and cosmology. Another one is a very precise fine-tuning involving the initial expansion rate of the universe. Cosmologists said the initial expansion rate of the universe must have been fine-tuned to about 50 decimal places, or we would not end up with a universe like the universe we have. They were so horrified by this that they wasted 45 years on a "primordial cosmic inflation" speculation misadventure trying to explain away the fine-tuning, a speculation that has failed to be confirmed, and has flunked observational tests such as the search for primordial b-modes. It is this very "primordial cosmic inflation" speculation regime that is discredited by the CMB anomalies mentioned above, which should not exist if such "primordial cosmic inflation" speculations are correct, as I explain in my 2017 post. 

Then there is the exact equality of the absolute value of the charge on every proton and the absolute value of the charge on every electron, which experiments show match to 20 decimal places. Below is a relevant quote:

"A mere 1 percent offset between the charge of the electron and that of the proton would lead to a catastrophic repulsion....My entire body would dissolve in a massive explosion...The very Earth itself, the planet as a whole, would crack open and fly apart in an annihilating explosion...This is what would happen were the electron's charge to exceed the proton's by 1 percent. The opposite case, in which the proton's charge exceeded the electron's, would lead to the identical situation...How precise must the balance be?...Relatively small things like atoms, people and the like would fly apart if the charges differed by as little as one part in 100 billion. Larger structures like the Earth and the Sun require for their existence a yet more perfect balance of one part in a billion billion." -- Astronomy professor emeritus George Greenstein, "The Symbiotic Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos," pages 63-64. 

You might think that physicists and cosmologists would be smart enough to put two and two together here. But mostly they act like the "Wheel of Fortune" contestant in the visual below. 

Bozzano's Pioneering Study of Out-of-Body Experiences

Out-of-body experiences became a well-known topic once the topic of near-death experiences became well-known in the 1970's, largely due to Raymond Moody's best-selling book on the topic (Life After Life). But the study of out-of-body experiences dates from well before the 1970's. One of the first serious works on the topic was a 1937 book by the Italian researcher Ernest Bozzano, one entitled "Les Phénomènes De Bilocation" or "The Phenomenon of Bilocation."  The book has attracted little attention, both because it has never been translated into English (to the best of my knowledge), and because instead of using the well-known phrase "out-of-body experience" in its title the author used the rarely recognized word "bilocation" (meaning to be in two different places at the same time). 

An encyclopedia article on Bozzano (link)

Using Google Translate, I can translate the very interesting cases Bozzano cites, which are mainly cases that appeared in English publications. The book I have at www.archive.org is a French translation of an Italian work. As I wish to avoid whenever possible  using Google Translate to translate the French into English (which would often end up being a possibly unreliable affair of going from Italian to French to English), I will track down whenever possible the original English text of the papers Bozzano is referring to. Luckily this is possible because Bozzano was very good about citing his sources, and the www.iapsop.com site is very good about preserving such sources. 

The type of experiences Bozzano documented were largely the same as what are now called out-of-body experiences.  If you have an experience in which your soul or spirit seems to float out of your body, and goes away from your body, you can either call that an out-of-body experience or a case of bilocation (being in two places in the same time). 

Early on the Bozzano book cites the very interesting case below, which sounds more like a typical out-of-body experience. The case is found on page 288 of the July, 1894 edition of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, which can be read here: 

"Whilst arguing with myself as to whether I was asleep or not, I suddenly seemed to divide into two distinct beings. The force that occasioned this was that which I have described above. One of these beings remained motionless on the sofa ; the other could move some little distance, and could actually look at the motionless body on the sofa. There existed between these two ' beings' an elastic force which prevented the one from severing its connection with the other. At will I could make the second ' being' lie on the floor, or move some distance about the room. As the distance between the two beings became greater, so did the elastic force seem to become more powerful. A limit was soon reached at which no effort of will could effect a further severance. This limit was about two yards. When this limit was reached, I could feel resistance to the separating efforts in both ' beings.'  During this time, as before, I retained perfect consciousness of what was happening in the room. De B. had returned. I saw and heard him come in ; he commenced to play the piano again, and H. was making wry faces at the music. After a great effort I managed to call H.'s name. He looked round and went on writing. Afterwards he gave as his reason for not answering that he thought I was ' fooling ' him. The dual condition continued for five minutes more. Then fusion seemed to set in. I resisted the feeling of fusion. It could be prevented at will. Eventually, with a curiosity to know 'what was going to happen next,' I allowed it to proceed. The two beings then rapidly united again. I tried to get into the dual condition again. This seemed to be prevented by the same force that ' inhibited ' me at first. I then began to think out a theory to account for all these sensations, and during this time the inhibiting force grew weaker and gradually disappeared. There was no sensation of waking, but simply a slow cessation of the conditions. The whole time I was actively engaged not only in theorising, but in recording events in the room, to see whether I observed them accurately or not. As it turned out, my observations had been minutely correct. I continued to remain in the same position on the sofa ; I was anxious to see 'if anything more was going to happen.' Nothing did happen, so in the course of ten minutes I got up and related my experiences to my friends. They were much amused, but very much inclined to doubt the whole affair. Their idea seemed to me to be that I had been all this time manufacturing something to tell them."

We have here an account that is entirely consistent with long-standing theories that each human has an "astral body" that is connected to the physical body by a seemingly elastic cord that is sometimes called "the silver cord."  Many similar accounts would later be collected by Robert Crookall, who was the main researcher of out-of-body experiences in the period between Bozzano's 1937 book and the rise of interest in out-of-body experiences occurring during the 1970's. In my post here I quote some very interesting passages from the works of Crookall, in which we hear of people describing such a "silver cord" or elastic band connecting a physical body and what has been called a spirit body or astral body. 

Bozzano then cites an account which can be found on page 34 of the January 17, 1903 edition of the periodical Light, which can be read here. The author is George Wyld MD.

"One day in the year 1874, as I took chloroform to relieve the intense agony I was suffering from the passage of a renal calculus, I suddenly lost all pain, and as suddenly saw my 'soul-form’ standing and contemplating my body as it lay motionless on the bed, about six or seven feet from where my ‘spirit-form’ stood. The revelation was only for a few seconds, but it was sufficient to convince me that I saw my soul-form outside the body. Shortly afterwards I called upon three medical men who were accustomed to administer anaesthetics, and they all said they had frequently heard their patients make the same remark as to their experiences as I had done. I also called at the Dental Hospital, and my experience was further confirmed, but the view there taken was that it was an illusion. But I knew it to be an experience, exactly such as happens in cases of drowning, when by manipulations the lungs are emptied of water, and the soul then returns to the body. If this be so, then we have in the use of anaesthetics a scientific means of proving the existence of the soul as an individuality external to the body, and the question that has engaged psychologists for thousands of years is solved ; and if so it is the most momentous discovery ever made. Impressed by these ideas I wrote to the editor of ‘ The Lancet ’ one day in 1895, and much to my surprise he replied that he would be happy to insert a paper from me on the subject, which he did, also drawing the attention of the profession to my views. Seeing that there are probably twenty thousand medical men who read ‘ The Lancet ’ ; and as perhaps not fewer than one thousand patients are placed under the influence of anaesthetics weekly in Great Britain, I expected to see an extensive correspondence in ‘ The Lancet’ on the subject; but, on the contrary, no serious notice was taken of the matter."

What Wyld encountered here is the senseless tendency of scientists and doctors to ignore important clues about nature which defy dogmas they were taught in school.  Such a tendency has been the most terrible impediment to the advance of science and knowledge. 

Bozzano then refers us to the article "Astral Excursions" by Franz Hartmann MD, which appears on page 159 of the March 1908 Occult Review, which can be read here. It begins with a third-hand account of an out-of-body experience, which I won't describe. Then Hartmann gives a first-hand account:

"To this I may be permitted to add a similar experience of my own which I had at Colombo (Ceylon) in 1884. I went with my friend B------ to a dentist, to have a tooth extracted. I took chloroform, and after getting under its influence I soon saw myself standing beside the dentist’s chair in which my body was lying. I appeared to myself just the same person as when in my normal state. I saw all the objects in the room, heard all that was spoken; but when I tried to lift one of the instruments on a little table next to the chair, I could not do so, as my fingers passed through it. Since then I have occasionally seen myself stepping out of my physical form, and this occurs in two ways; namely, if, while this separation takes place my consciousness is centred in the physical body, I see myself in the astral body standing before me at the side of my bed, and if my consciousness is centred in the astral body, I see my physical form lying in bed. I have never made consciously any astral excursions to distant places, but such experiences may be sufficient to convince one that man has an astral body capable of existing independently of the physical form, and to those who have experienced such things the doubts of those who have experienced nothing may appear quite as unworthy of consideration, as would the arguments of one who had never seen railways and were in consequence to deny their existence."

Next Bozzano quotes from an account that appeared on page 46 of the February 8, 1919 edition of the periodical Light, which can be read here. We hear an account by Captain Gilbert Nobbs of getting a severe head injury during World War I. A bullet passed out through his left eye, and he was permanently blinded. He gives this account of what happened:

"I hesitate to tell what followed. But as I am trying to record the sensations experienced at the time of receiving a head wound I will describe the next experience simply and leave the reader to form his own conclusions. 

 I was blind then as I am now : but the blackness which was then before me underwent a change. A voice from somewhere behind me said : ' This is death , will you come ?' Then gradually the blackness became more intense. A curtain seemed to be slowly falling ; there was space ; here was darkness blacker than my blindness ; everything was past. There was a peacefulness, a nothingness ; but a happiness indescribable . 

I seemed for a moment somewhere in the emptiness looking down at my body lying in the shell-hole, bleeding from the temple. I was dead, and that was my body ; but I was happy ! 

But the voice I had heard seemed to be waiting for answer. I seemed to exert myself by a frantic effort, like one in a dream  who is trying to awaken .  I said , ' No, not now ; I won't die .'  Then the curtain slowly lifted ; my body moved and I was moving it. I was alive ! There, my readers, I have told you , and I have hesitated to tell it before . More than that, I will tell you that I was not unconscious; neither did I lose consciousness until several minutes later , and then unconsciousness was quite rent.

I have told you how clear was my brain the moment I was hit, and I tell you also that after the sensation I have just related my brain was equally clear, as I will show you , until I became unconscious. Call it a hallucination , a trick of the brain , or what you will. I make no attempt to influence you...Whatever it was, I no longer feel there is any anxiety about death. Nor do I dread it." 

On pages 57-58 of the book we read that Mrs. Nathalie Annenkof wrote the following about two out-of-body experiences she had:

"You asked me to write down the two cases of 'exit from my body' that I told you about. I will try to do it as accurately as possible.   It is 4 years since the first case took place. I did not know then that it was possible, having no idea about such things. In the spring of 1926, on a very beautiful and warm day, I was sitting in the cemetery, on the edge of the grave of my little girl, whom I had just lost. I was depressed and sad, but in good health. I remember very well that while I was watching the bees gathering honey from the flowers I had just planted, I felt myself becoming light, then lighter and lighter physically and mentally. My first impression was that my legs and arms were no longer heavy, then my stomach, then my chest. And suddenly I found myself above and next to my body, which I saw sitting on the edge of the grave. I looked at my tired face. I even noticed that my coat was stained with dirt. And I had the sensation of hovering above my body in complete bliss. I had the sensation of a great and luminous joy of living, as if I were living a thousand lives at once, and of complete tranquility.

I could not move and did not feel the need to. But I could see, understand and feel an inner and happy life. My body looked like a rag, like an abandoned thing. I thought: 'This is death!' And yet I had the joy of living.

I saw the cemetery guard approach my body, touch it, feel it, call me and run away. He told me later that he had gone to call for an ambulance, and that my hands and face were starting to get cold.

When I saw him leave, I understood that he thought I was dead and suddenly I was seized with fear. 'This is death,' I thought. 'How will my husband live without me?'

But I felt so alive that I said to myself: 'I must get back into my body.' I tried to get back into it and was afraid of not being able to do so.

I began by feeling heaviness, then the pains, the little discomforts to which we are so accustomed that we no longer notice them. Then came the sadness and the desire to cry. I walked home.

Two weeks ago the same thing happened again. I was reading a cheerful book one evening in bed, laughing to myself...Suddenly, I had the impression of leaving myself, and I saw my body lying down, book in hand, while I felt myself in the air, very happy, with a feeling of inner life. I looked at my body, I found it good and I said to myself: 'It's a pity to die so young!'  I approached my lying body and tried to enter it. I immediately felt that it absorbed me, like a sheet of blotting paper, or like a sponge absorbs water.  My husband rang, I got up to open the door for him."

On page 63 of the book, we read an account by Joseph Costa:

"I had the clear and precise sensation of finding myself with my thinking 'self' alone, in the middle of the room, completely separated from the body, which continued to lie on the bed. I saw - if it is permissible to designate thus the sensation that I experienced - the things around me as if a radiation penetrated through the molecules of the objects on which my attention was fixed, as if matter had dissolved on contact with thought....I saw my body perfectly recognizable by its particularities, its profile, my figure, but also bundles of veins and nerves vibrating with a luminous tingling....My thinking 'me' was weightless, or, to put it better, without the impression of the force of gravity and the notion of volume or mass. I was no longer a body, since my body lay inert on the bed: I was like the tangible expression of a thought, of an abstraction, capable of transporting me to any place on earth, sea, or sky, faster than lightning, in the same instant that I would have formulated it at will, and without even the notion of time and space. If I said that I felt free, light, ethereal, I would only be expressing from afar the sensation that I felt in this moment of infinite liberation....I can assure the reader that until this moment, I had not read or heard of spiritualism: spiritualist theories, phenomena of bilocation, splitting of soul and body. Mediumistic experiences and spiritualist sessions were completely unknown to me. I can therefore absolutely exclude the hypothesis that for me it was simply a phenomenon of suggestion. Nor could it be a question of a dream, because of the enormous difference in the sensations remaining in the memory of the images provoked by a dream and those too dissimilar in their sensitive reception, which I had present to my mind at that moment. In fact, I did not encounter in this memory that nebulosity, that indistinct sensation between the chimerical and the reality that the impressions of a dream have. Because finally I never had such a vivid sensation of really existing as in the moment when I felt separated from my body."

Bozzano then cites the account on page 515 of the 1908 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, which can be read here. A woman describes an out-of-body experience that includes a life review.  On page 70 Bozzano quotes Eugenie Garcia as having an out-of-body experience, apparently while being hypnotized:

"I saw myself suddenly standing in the middle of the room where I had just been put to sleep; 'Look, it seems to me that I was sitting only a moment ago; so I got up without knowing it, let's see.'  I cast my eyes on myself: 'Look! I am luminous, transparent, light as a feather.'  Suddenly, I saw my body lying motionless in an armchair. Three or four people surrounded me, watching me attentively. What are they looking at me like that? Let's see. I come closer and look at myself too. doing like everyone else. I could clearly see the inside of my body, I could see the heart beating, the blood circulating, the networks....Then I looked around me, but, instead of meeting with my eyes an opaque and non-transparent surface as houses or movable objects usually are, I saw everything clear as glass. I saw my neighbors' people and apartments as if we lived in a crystal house."

The report of being able to see inside a human body was one quite a few times reported by people hypnotized during the nineteenth century. In the literature of the time, such an ability was sometimes described as lucidity, clairvoyance or clairvoyant lucidity.  As discussed here, clairvoyants such as Alexis Didier passed very many successful tests in which a similar ability was demonstrated, with Alexis many times identifying what was inside the contents of locked boxes and folded pages inside sealed heavy envelopes. 

Bozzano then cites the case below, found on page 40 of the January 22, 1932 edition of the periodical Light:

"DOCTOR'S OUT-OF-THE-BODY EXPERIENCE 

An out-of-the-body experience which brought assurance of conscious life after death is related by Dr. Overend G. Rose, of 8 Roval Well Terrace, Cheltenham, in the first issue of the new and enlarged series of The Spiritualist, the organ of the Spiritualist Community, London, of which Mr. Ernest Hunt is now in editorial charge. Dr . Rose relates that, after being thrown from a horse and badly injured, he was ' picked up for dead ' by two men who witnessed the accident and five hours passed before he regained consciousness. 'Although I was insensible,' Dr. Rose writes, ' I could see my body lying there on the ground. I could see the men pick me up (heard them say I was dead) and carry me into the house. I was able to see the doctors trying to bring me ta, and all the time I was able to see myself lying there. I seemed to be floating in a summer sea. I cannot describe the sensation of peace and happiness and yet someone seemed to tell me I had to go back. And that is why I told the doctors I was not going to die.' Commenting on his experience, Dr. Rose writes : 'Now, the points I wish to make are-first, I had never seen the men who picked me up before and have never seen them since, as they were strangers to the district, just riding through. Yet I was able to describe them even to their clothes, and also their horses, which they had tied to the fence when they went to pick me up. Secondly, although I was totally unconscious, I was able to tell the doctors everything that had taken place, and what my injuries were. I am convinced that I was outside my body, yet I was able to see and hear. It makes me certain there is a life after death, which does not require a material body for us to be able to see and hear, and that we shall retain our personality.' " 

On page 79 Bozzano quotes an account of an out-of-body experience:

"I lay down on the bed and began to read. It was then that I was suddenly invaded by a wave of sleep which I could not resist. This upset me greatly, for I was reading Amiei's Journal, which interested me greatly, and I would have liked to continue. But it was all in vain, and I fell asleep suddenly. I immediately felt as if I had left my body. I turned over, and seeing my body curled up in an uncomfortable position, I wondered how one could fall asleep in such a posture. I had the idea of ​​leaving and I went into the corridor by going through the door, but this was evidently by force of habit, since I could just as well have gone through the wall, seeing that I did not open the door, but went through the wood. I did not move my feet, since to go to any place, I only had to desire it. Which did not prevent me from seeing myself in possession of legs, arms and body, and from feeling better than usual. There was no one in the corridor, except a negro who was polishing the floor. I confronted him, but he did not seem to see me. I understood that I must have become invisible, which increased my curiosity all the more. I then amused myself by passing in front of him, behind him, around him, brushing against him, but he never glanced at me. The thing amused me. But then I suddenly had the thought that if someone came to get me, and that my body should be awakened from its sleep while I was out of it, complications might result, probably not very pleasant. I immediately returned through the wood of the door and when I was near the bed, my body 'sucked' me imperiously, 'sheathing' me by the feet! It was fortunate that this idea came to my mind, because immediately there was a knock at the door and Mrs. Canfield, the landlady of the inn, came in and asked me permission to take my dressing gown."

On page 81 Bozzano quotes this account of an out-of-body experience:

"While I was ill in the great hospital of Pittsburgh, I was subjected to a serious operation. For the first time in my life, I had to be given an anesthetic. Scarcely had I begun to breathe it than I experienced a wonderful sensation of well-being and beatitude. But, to my great surprise, I found myself in the company of the doctor and the nurse, and in front of me, lying on the operating table, I saw my body inert and lifeless. I noted the surgical instruments and bottles placed next to it, and I even noticed that one nurse had her cap askew, which was rather comical.

I was led to look up and I saw coming towards me, through the ceiling, my dear grandmother, dead ten years ago. She approached me and took me by the hand, saying that I must hurry, because the time available was very short. We passed through the ceiling together, as easily as we would have passed through a smoke screen. We found ourselves outside, in a luminous atmosphere where my grandmother drew my attention to a landscape that was familiar to me, showing me where my home was, which emerged from magnificent trees. While I was ecstatic at this perspective, my grandmother exclaimed: 'We don't have time! Now we have to go back into your body!' And before I could even answer, I woke up in my bed and saw a nurse leaning anxiously over me.

This is what I have been able to report about my experience of out-of-body experience, which was for me a powerful revelation: If what happened to me must be repeated at the moment of death, then there is no point in fearing death."

"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.