Olivia Goldhill

Scientific jargon has the remarkable ability to turn just about anything into pseudo-academic pontification. This month, the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Consciousness and Cognition published a paper titled “Synesthetic hallucinations induced by psychedelic drugs in a congenitally blind man,” which sounds impressive. It is, in reality, a lengthy description of a former rock star’s hallucinogenic experiences 40 years ago, during the 1970s.

If fMRI had been invented in the 18th century, scientists would have used neuroimaging to find biological evidence of poetic talent, murderousness, and wit. So argues Russell Poldrack, psychologist and neuroscientist at Stanford University, who believes the words we use to conceive of mental states have always drastically distorted the science of psychology.

In the 50 years since the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., the memory of the transformative civil rights leader has undergone a “Disneyfication.” Textbooks, movies, and TV shows often suggest that King’s quest for racial and economic equality was ultimately successful. Yet half a century since his assassination, King would be dismayed by the ongoing inequality and racism in the US. And the complexities of his ideas are often overlooked.

In 2015, Marco Rubio decisively alienated the philosopher voting base by suggesting that philosophers would be better off as welders.

Cambridge Analytica talks a big talk. “We can use ‘big data’ to understand exactly what messages each specific group within a target audience need to hear,” Alexander Nix, the company’s chief executive, said at a marketing conference last year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Most people turn to personal narratives or philosophical justifications to explain why they hold a particular political opinion. A recently published psychology study suggests they should also look to the size and shape of their brains.

The concept of “implicit bias” is a staple of workplace diversity trainings and conversations about systemic racism. Largely that’s because two decades ago, psychologists created the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which they claimed effectively measures unconscious prejudice even among those who claim to be consciously egalitarian.

Getting ahold of psychedelic drugs is neither easy nor cheap—especially if you’re a scientist. Academic research on psilocybin, the key “magical” ingredient in magic mushrooms, has taken off in recent years thanks to studies that have found it a promising treatment option for depression and addiction (as well as more abstract, less health-focused findings, such as that psychedelics create the sense that the self is an illusion.) Scientists who want to study the drug, though, have to go through a lengthy and expensive process to obtain it.

In 1976, the French philosopher Michel Foucault made the meticulously researched case that sexuality is a social construct used as a form of control

Psychology has always been used as a tool for political manipulation. At its most crude, politicians historically used terror to control the public, and propaganda to mislead them. Certain contemporary methods, though, are far subtler.

In 2008, the psychiatrist Stephen Greenspan published The Annals of Gullibility, a summary of his decades of research into how to avoid being gullible. Two days later, he discovered his financial advisor Bernie Madoff was a fraud, who had caused Greenspan to lose a third of his retirement savings.

In high school, I studied advanced mathematics. This has two uses: Firstly, I can tell people that I once studied advanced mathematics. Secondly, I know about Euler’s equation.

Parents are used to getting the blame for their children’s emotional defects. When it comes to empathy, it turns out they are partly responsible. Scientists studied the empathy of 46,861 people who analyzed their DNA through the personalized genetics company 23andMe and found that genetics explains a significant chunk of differences in abilities to understand others’ emotions.

There’s only one thing worse than finding a severed hand while strolling along a Siberian riverbank: finding 54 severed hands.

Long before magic mushrooms became a way for hippies to turn on, tune in, and drop out, and well before ancient mesoamerican mystics employed them in religious ritual, they had their use as an insect repellant. Some 200 species of mushrooms naturally produce psilocybin, which, when imbibed by humans, can trigger “magic,” hallucinogenic effects. But obviously these mushrooms didn’t evolve to send humans on psychedelic trips.

A person’s tweets are a window into their personality. So much so, that researchers from the World Well-Being Project at the University of Pennsylvania were able to map personality traits onto thousands of counties in the United States using a collections of tweets.

When you think of a psychopath, what qualities do you imagine? Your answer may depend on the country you’re from. Newly published research suggests that psychopaths are not the same worldwide: The most salient feature of psychopaths in the US seems to be callousness and lack of empathy, while the most central feature of psychopaths in the Netherlands is their irresponsibility and parasitic lifestyle.

As the US embarks upon a new and tense phase of relations with Russia, the UK has fresh reason to be thinking about Soviet-era politics. Formerly classified documents reveal that the British Foreign Office ignored some very clear red flags to accidentally employ a Soviet spy some 70 years ago.

In the Disney movie, Dumbo the flying elephant is a particularly shy, mischievous animal. In real life, elephants can’t flap their ears to fly—but, like Dumbo, they they do have distinct and complex personalities.

Antidepressants have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (and comparable regulatory agencies in other countries) and prescribed by medical professionals for decades. Researchers, though, are still working to definitively establish that antidepressants are more effective than placebo.

The French philosopher Michel Foucault expressly forbade any posthumous publications of his work. “Don’t pull the Max Brod-Kafka trick on me,’” he reportedly told his friends. (Kafka’s friend Max Brod defied the author’s wishes by posthumously publishing his novels, including The Trial and The Castle.)

Artificial intelligence experts and roboticists aren’t the only ones working on the problem of autonomous vehicles. Philosophers are also paying close attention to the development of what, from their perspective, looks like a myriad of ethical quandaries on wheels.

Personality tests are both incredibly popular and largely bogus. BuzzFeed made its name in part by publishing quizzes telling readers which ‘90s kid they are, which Friends character they are, which Disney princess they are, and…well…which Disney princess they are, really. None of these have any scientific basis. Then there’s the somewhat more reputable Myers-Briggs test, inspired by Jungian theories about personality types. Some 2.5 million people take it every year, and 88% of Fortune 500 companies use it. Despite its reputation, however, the Myers-Briggs has poor scientific validity.

Chances are, whenever you see a delightful video—pandas rolling around in the grass, perhaps, or a great standup-comedy set—you quickly forward it to your nearest and dearest, knowing they’ll love the clip as much as you do. A neuroscience study, recently published in Nature Communications (Jan. 30), provides solid evidence that it’s fair to assume your friends will react similarly to videos you love.