The comments are New scientist a popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit articles that you think readers might enjoy to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com
A gift of a title
The comments are hungry for a truly spectacular title. The one where the first few words are completely weird and you think it can’t get any weirder, only for the heading to recede further from the bottom with each subsequent word, until you’re wondering if you’re reading a news source or a lost James Joyce novel.
November 29 in the online music magazine Stereoguma nice example of the form appeared: “Grimes DJing immortality influencer’s shroom trip with special guest Mr. Beast”. If you’re confused, fear not: we’ll now spend the next few paragraphs explaining what’s going on.
Let’s start on the left. Grimes is a musician whose albums often have science fiction themes. A climate-themed 2020 release was called Miss Anthropocene, and its debut Geidi Premiers was a tribute (albeit misspelled) to Frank Herbert’s book Dune.
Meanwhile, Bryan Johnson is a tech millionaire who has decided he wants to live forever, devoting much of his time to experimenting with ways to extend his lifespan. This includes exercising (OK), changing his diet (good), taking an immunosuppressant drug called rapamycin, normally used for people who have received an organ transplant (he stopped that one), and finally planning to upload his mind into an AI (of course).
The story is that Johnson took hallucinogenic mushrooms and had a bunch of biomarkers measured, all while being broadcast live. Grimes was tricked into playing music while he did this. Although YouTuber MrBeast ultimately didn’t make an appearance, others did, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and tech journalist Ashlee Vance. If we were ever to lose our minds over psilocybin mushrooms, we would prefer to have a trained therapist and loved one in the room. But we’re sure Johnson knew what he was doing.
Video of the event is available online. It lasts a little over five and a half hours. The comments should have looked at the whole thing, in the spirit of due diligence, but unlike Johnson, we know we’re going to die one day and we’re not going to waste all this time.
Unthinkable questions
Perhaps this is the start of a new recurring theme for Feedback: “questions we never thought we’d ask.” Reader Keith Edkins spotted our first such item, and all we can say to anyone trying to follow this is: good luck.
Keith saw a 2014 article in Parasitological foliawhich as its title indicates is devoted to parasites. One of these parasites is Toxoplasma gondiia single-celled organism that infects cats and is present in many people, and which may be linked to psychiatric disorders such as intermittent explosive disorder. Hence the question asked in the title of the article: “Do the prevalence of latent toxoplasmosis and the frequency of rhesus negative subjects correlate with the national rate of road accidents?
As Keith says: “The answer seems to be ‘No, if you control the statistics correctly.’ » But what a question. Can anyone top him?
Hellish graphics
Sometimes explanatory graphics are not. Over our long, modest career in science journalism, Feedback has spent a lot of time trying to understand what researchers are trying to convey in the complex graphics they provide. Flowcharts that loop back on themselves, bar graphs with color-coded shadows in monochrome – you name it, it confused us slightly.
However, a chart in a recent article Scientific reports takes the cookie, and makes the whole box of cookies with it. Reader Jim Santo pointed it out, noting “this one is a doozy,” but we’ve seen it before. Published on November 19, the study purported to describe an AI-based system to aid in the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders. Commenters have no particular opinion on the study itself, and it wouldn’t matter if we did, because the journal retracted it on December 5.
The comments anticipated this, having seen scientists discussing the paper on social media, so we hastily downloaded a copy. The key issue is Figure 1, which purports to be the “overall functioning of the framework presented as an infographic.” You have to see it to believe it.
In the center is a woman with a small child on her lap. His legs seem to be covered in concrete. The child shows a bubble that says “MISSING VALUE and functional characteristics.” To the right is another bubble that says “Historical Medical Characteristics and Environmental Characteristics.”
Elsewhere, there is a pink blob that could be a damaged bean, which apparently represents “7 TOL Llne storee”. There’s also a mention of “Factor Fexcectorn” and an inexplicable bicycle with spikes.
As the paper notes in its retraction, this is all AI-generated, but Feedback has watched us with ever-increasing fascination. Towards the bottom of the chart there is a mention of “Totalbottl”, and we wondered if the explanation could be found at the bottom of a chart. As for the bike, one can only suggest that someone was taken for a ride.
Comments will say this for Scientific reports: This is one of the fastest retractions we’ve ever heard of. It is quite common for journals to take years to retract defective articles. Retraction Watch reported on December 3 that dozens of articles by psychologist Hans Eysenck may have to be retracted due to “questionable data” and other problems, including bizarre claims that some people have “cancer-prone personalities.” To understand the glacial pace at which all this is happening: Eysenck died in 1997.
Do you have a story to share?
You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. Comments from this week and past ones can be viewed on our website.
