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Science Fictions

Science Fictions

By: Tom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie
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A weekly podcast about the latest scientific controversies, with Tom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie

sciencefictionspod.substack.comTom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie Science
Episodes
  • Unpaywalled: The science of Johann Hari

    Unpaywalled: The science of Johann Hari
    May 12 2026
    We are sorry we’ve been missing so many episodes recently! Stuart’s been busy and Tom’s been… also busy. We’re busy. Hopefully back to normal service next week. In the meantime, here’s an old paid episode, unpaywalled. Apologies.…Johann Hari is a journalist with an interesting past who has now written four very popular books on scientific topics (addiction, depression, attention, and obesity). Are those books any good?In this paid-subscriber-only episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart—who have both written reviews of Hari’s books—discuss Hari’s career, his sudden emergence as a science writer, and exactly how many miles you need to travel around the world to ensure your book becomes a New York Times bestseller.Show Notes* The funniest bad book review ever, of The Meaning of Disgust by Colin McGinn (review by Nina Strohminger)* Hari’s corrections page for his new book where he discusses the Jay Rayner debacle* Article about Hari’s quotations of Antonio Negri* Brian Whelan’s criticism of Hari from 2011* And another article by the same author on the same topic* Guy Walters on Hari in the New Statesman* David Allen Green on Hari and the allegations of sockpuppeting and Wikipedia editing* Hari’s “personal apology” from 2011 where he admits to the Wikipedia editing and some of the sloppiness with quotes* Telegraph blog on Hari and the translation in his article on the Central African Republic (Hari denies making up the quote)* Amazon pages for Chasing the Scream, Lost Connections, Stolen Focus, and Magic Pill* Jeremy Duns on quotations in Chasing the Scream* Dean Burnett’s viral criticism of Lost Connections* Stuart’s tweets from 2018 where he attempts to find the source of Hari’s depression-relapse numbers* Stuart’s Unherd review of Stolen Focus* Collection of Matthew Sweet’s criticisms of the studies behind Stolen Focus* Even more tweets from Matthew Sweet* Stuart’s tweet on the “average American worker” study cited by Hari* Tom’s Guardian review of Magic Pill* Study of body image distortions in 100 people… done in 1987* 2018 study of whether a parenting intervention reduces child BMICreditsThe Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe
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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • Episode 100: Replication, replication, replication

    Episode 100: Replication, replication, replication
    Apr 28 2026

    We made it: triple figures! And as luck would have it, Nature just simultaneously published four major meta-science papers that are right up our street. Aw. Thanks, Nature. You shouldn’t have.

    How screwed is social/behavioural science? We read all four papers to find out.

    We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who’s been listening for all this time. See you for the next hundred!

    Show notes

    * The four Nature papers:

    * Replication

    * Reproducibility

    * Robustness

    * The non-DARPA one

    Credits

    The Science Fictions podcast—all 100+ episodes of it!—is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.



    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe
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    1 hr and 17 mins
  • Episode 99.5: Candidate genes

    Episode 99.5: Candidate genes
    Apr 21 2026
    Here’s another one for the annals of “entire scientific field becomes totally misguided for decades”. How could it have been possible that so many scientists fell for the idea of candidate genes—that there were individual gene variants that explained huge chunks of variation in depression, aggression, intelligence, and many more psychological traits? How could they have written literally hundreds of peer-reviewed papers based on completely false “results”?Well, they did. Here’s the story.(Why 99.5? We’re putting off doing Episode 100, just so we can mark the occasion with an even better topic).The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine, the journal of underrated ideas for making the world a better place. Today we talked about the new article on why Japan’s railways are so good and what other countries can learn from them. Read all their articles, for absolutely zero cost, at worksinprogress.co.Show notes* The first study on 5HTTLPR and depression, from 1996* Caspi et al.’s seminal 2003 Science paper on gene-environment interaction with 5HTTLPR and depression* “Orchid genes” in The Atlantic; Wired; The New York Times* Caspi et al’s 2002 paper on MAOA, the “warrior gene”* Article on the Maori people and MAOA* 2009 story on an Italian court reducing a sentence due to MAOA* Though no such luck in New Mexico in 2021* Scott Alexander’s classic 2019 article on candidate genes* Failure to replicate the 5HTTLPR GxE as early as 2005* 2009 meta-analysis with flat-as-a-pancake results for 5HTTLPR* Letter about the lopsided nature of its citations* 2011 “critical review” of candidate gene studies* 2019 Border et al. study attempting to replicate depression candidate genes* 2025 GWAS of depression* A Google Scholar search for “5HTTLPR depression”, restricted to articles published in 2026CreditsThe Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe
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    1 hr and 13 mins
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