Sometimes a red dress just looks good when you’re dancing. Photo by Lieven SOETE.
- Oy. A study of high fructose corn syrup and mineral deficiency doesn’t mean that corn syrup causes autism. It really, really doesn’t.
- Double oy. A study finding that politically conservative undergraduates take less time to read essays on scientific topics doesn’t mean they’re refusing to comprehend the content.
- Triple oy. A study of online dating profiles doesn’t mean that we’ve evolved to find red clothing sexy.
- Hmmm. The recently-publicized study showing an association between unacknowledged same-sex attraction and homophobia doesn’t support the idea that most gay-hating is actually externalized self-hatred.
- Quadruple oy, with a backflip. A male OB-GYN’s discovery of previously unseen structures in a female cadaver’s vaginal wall—in a search prompted by his misreading of an unrelated journal article—doesn’t mean he’s found the G-spot.
- It all depends on the numbers. Growing meat tissue in Petri dishes probably won’t be cheaper than growing it in cows.
- BP et al. could’ve done a lot better. Two years after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Christie Wilcox returns to a conversation with her grandfather, an expert in oil spill cleanup.
- Enjoy that last cup. Climate change and increasing worldwide demand mean that coffee is about to get a lot more expensive.
- A good bower needs landscaping. Spotted bowerbirds use “bush tomato” fruit to decorate their nests, and end up planting more bush tomatoes.
- They’re … stubby. Maggie Koerth-Baker tracks down the next trend in bananas.
- Seventy years later. Two of Alan Turing’s original cryptography papers have just been declassified.
- Excuse me while I put in a quick eight miles. Emerging evidence that exercise makes you smarter.
- Taking it one small step at a time. A new startup proposes to mine asteroids, and it might just work.
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