Science News BS Heat Map, June 12, 2026

         

Science News Article	BS Rating	Comment
Mitochondria directly interact with the nuclear pore complex		---
"Dark triad personality traits carry distinct physical signatures in the brain"		This low-quality study follows a defective plan followed by many brain scan studies: (1) you identify about 24 people with some particular mental characteristics; (2) you then brain scan them and brain scan about 24 control subjects; (3) you then look for brain differences (being free to look anywhere in the brain), and claim these differences as "brain signatures" of the mental characteristic.  The fallacy is that any two randomly selected groups of people will always have some differences in their brains, no matter how identically they think and behave. A convincing study of this type would require a pre-registered hypothesis, with a comparison made of only some specific area or type of brain difference that previous research had suggested, along with a much larger study group size; and no claim of discovering anything would be justified until there were repeated replications of the reported brain differences, replications in pre-registered studies.**
"The first complex cells had genes from a complex mix of species"		The article refers to eukaryotic cells far more complex than much simpler prokaryotic cells, believed to have existed first. But even the simplest self-reproducing prokaryotic cells are enormously complex units, requiring hundreds of specialized proteins. Article titles like this mislead us by describing eukaryotic cells as "the first complex cells." All cells are enormously complex.
"An Early Step on the Long Strange Road to Photosynthesis"		Quote: "However, the set of chemical reactions we call photosynthesis has bewitched and befuddled scientists for generations. It requires the coordination of dozens of proteins and hundreds of pigments that harvest photons, all embedded in a cellular structure less than one-thousandth the width of a human hair. Electrons pinball across membranes and between compounds to drive molecular turbines that rebuild air and water into sugars to provide the energy and raw materials that cells need to grow." The article  tries to suggest the beginnings of an evolutionary account for this mechanism with a very high functional threshold, but fails to tell any credible tale of how it could have arisen through any gradual process. But at least there's a good explanation of the vast complexity of photosynthesis.
Bumblebees can solve complex puzzles like chimpanzees and elephants, study finds		When wonders of cognition like this occur in insects with almost no brain cells, it is more evidence against the "brains make minds" dogma that neuroscientists keep senselessly parroting.
"A study by IRB Barcelona and the BSC rethinks the origin of our cells as a story of microbial alliances"		"The study challenges the idea that cellular complexity emerged from a single evolutionary encounter, pointing instead to a gradual process of interactions among different microorganisms that lasted for millions of years." The ridiculous "standard story" tall tale of eukaryogenesis is rightly challenged, but the suggested replacement is equally unbelievable.
"How the brain regulates learning on a cellular level: 3D maps reveal synapses reorganizing in real time "		The press release is promoting a study that  electrically zapped dead brain tissue from rats, something that does nothing to explain how learning occurs in living humans who are not electrically zapped. For more on the press release and its study, read here.
"Ancient genome duplications laid the foundations of complex brains"		We have an attempt to explain a huge number of new genes required for the appearance of the first brains, an attempt that very implausibly appeals to "genome duplications." Innovative new types of genes cannot credibly be explained by appealing to duplications. We read, "The data analyses were mind-bogglingly complicated." That should cause us to suspect shaky, dubious analysis.
A unicellular relative links aggregative multicellularity to animal origins		We have the confession, "How animals evolved complex multicellularity from their unicellular ancestors remains unanswered." But if you don't understand that, what confidence can you have that any descent or ancestry from unicellular life ever occurred? The suggested solution is the same old "clumping" aggregation explanation that utterly fails to explain how we got the very complex anatomical innovations used by visible life forms. *

*"Big picture, we want to understand how initially dumb clumps of cells, cells that are one or two mutations away from being single-celled, don’t really know that they’re organisms — they don’t have any adaptations to being multicellular, they’re just a dumb clump — how those dumb clumps of cells can evolve into increasingly complex multicellular organisms, with new morphologies, with cell-level integration, division of labor, and differentiation amongst the cells. Just like, we want to watch that process of how do these simple groups become complex. And this is, like, one of the biggest knowledge gaps in evolutionary biology. I mean, in my opinion.....We don’t really know the process through which simple groups evolve into increasingly complex organisms."-- Biologist Will Ratcliff (link). 

** The paper authors basically confess the low value of what they have produced, by saying, "Our exploratory whole brain analysis revealed significant results in hypothesized regions, that did not survive correction for multiple comparison and therefore did not reach significance in the regions-of-interest analysis." Those very familiar with neuroscience and statistics will recognize this as basically a confession of having produced nothing convincing.