RealClearScience

Why Do So Many Celebrities Have Lyme Disease? Last week, media outlets were awash with headlines about another celebrity revealing a years-long battle with Lyme disease. Justin Timberlake announced on social media that he has been plagued with de

Why do so many celebrities have Lyme disease? "Spoiler: It’s not ticks in Beverly Hills. It’s fraudulent diagnostics, wellness grifters, and a whole lot of celebrity pseudoscience." by
@drandrealove.bsky.social www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/05/w...

'Food Noise' Could Be the Key to Weight Loss Of all the myriad mysteries of science, the one that's currently got my neurons in a twist concerns a Toffee Crisp stashed away in my kitchen cupboard. I'm entirely preoccupied by it – it’

‘Food noise’ is persistent, intrusive thoughts about food and eating between mealtimes. Managing it could be the key to weight loss. www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/05/f...

The Bone-Crushing Dogs That Hunted Across America Long before coyotes and millions of years before wolves, bone-crushing dogs padded across North America. The prehistoric canids came in an array of sizes, from small nippers comparable to foxes to hug

"Long before coyotes and millions of years before wolves, bone-crushing dogs padded across North America. The prehistoric canids came in an array of sizes, from small nippers... to huge, skeleton-busting predators..." via @smithsonianmag.bsky.social www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/05/t...

Earth’s Core Appears to Be Leaking From the Surface All the activity on Earth’s surface — erupting volcanoes, shifting tectonic plates, restless seas and myriad forms of life — depends on the two-part engine under the hood. Directly b

"Strong new evidence suggests that primordial material from the planet’s center is somehow making its way out. Continent-size entities anchored to the core-mantle boundary might be involved." via @quantamagazine.bsky.social www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/05/e...

Scientists say they have solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars. via @apnews.com www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/05/s...

The drop in death rates from cardiovascular disease has been truly astounding. "Over a century of progress in surgery, drugs, prevention, and emergency response has driven down death rates from heart disease and stroke." via @ourworldindata.org www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/05/t...

Why Nuclear Tops Renewables in Almost Every Way Renewable energy seems increasingly inevitable. Falling wind and solar prices, coinciding with government Net Zero commitments and rising electricity demand from data centers and electric vehicles, ma

"Renewables lack the vigour and reliability to generate the energy we need exactly when we need it. A future of energy scarcity, industrial ­wind-down, and food insecurity lies ahead should we embrace them." www.realclearscience.com/blog/2025/08...

Why a Wormhole Would Look Like a Sphere, Not a Hole An Einstein-Rosen bridge is a hypothetical, yet unproven, feature of spacetime. In theory, these so-called wormholes provide a shortcut through the Universe to connect two separate points in space-tim

"What would a wormhole really look like? It's unlikely that wormholes truly exist, but here's what they would look like if they did." www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/04/w...

Caffeine Pouches: A New, Troubling Teen Trend A growing number of US teenagers are using caffeine pouches to get an energy rush, say experts who worry the trend could soon take off in the UK. The small teabag-like pouches, placed between the lip

Teens in the U.S. are starting to use caffeine pouches. "With a single pouch containing as much caffeine as two cups of regular coffee, it could be easy to take too much and get bad side effects." www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/04/c...

An "invisible barrier is keeping knob-less jellyfish confined to Arctic and sub-Arctic waters." www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/04/a...

The Dog Breeds Most at Risk of Overeating When it comes to pooch plumpness, some dog breeds are more likely to be overweight than others, according to a recent study. Researchers at Texas A&M University measured ‘food motivation&rsq

Which dogs are most likely to overeat? The study found that sporting breeds – that is, spaniels, retrievers, setters and pointers – were 10% more likely than mixed breed dogs to have high food motivation. www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/04/t...

Americans need to eat much more fiber than they currently are, but a new "fibermaxxing" trend urges eating far more than is necessary, which has its own health risks. via
@uk.theconversation.com www.realclearscience.com/articles/202...

Is the Honeybee Crisis a Hoax After All? When I started studying honeybees in 1998, I quickly noticed just how much people loved them. I also realised that people’s knowledge rarely extended beyond “bees make honey” and &ld

"Headlines may shout about honeybee die-offs, but the numbers show otherwise. In 2023, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimated that honeybee colonies have increased globally by 45 per cent since 1990, despite CCD." www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/02/i...

The Universe Is Not Made of Information Many physicists and computer scientists, from John Wheeler to Google Deepmind's Demis Hassabis, have argued that reality is fundamentally made of information. Wheeler called this

"Reality cannot be made of information, because without already existing physical objects to encode it, information does not exist." www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/02/t...

"Hannah Cairo, just 17 at the time... solved a 40-year-old mystery about how functions behave, called the Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture." via @quantamagazine.bsky.social www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/02/a...

Odd Black Goo Oozing From Ship Teeming With Life Research vessel Blue Heron trawls the Great Lakes, gathering data from the water. The floating laboratory’s most recent discovery, however, came from an unexpected location: its own rudder. Whil

A black goo was oozing from a ship on the Great Lakes — and teeming with life. via @cnn.com www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/02/o...

What a Submersible Found at Depths of 31,000 Feet Ocean researchers have discovered thriving alien-like communities filled with tube worms, mollusks and spiky white creatures at the bottom of ocean trenches in the northwest Pacific Ocean. The discove

Life at 31,000 feet below the surface: "Ocean researchers have discovered thriving alien-like communities filled with tube worms, mollusks and spiky white creatures at the bottom of ocean trenches in the northwest Pacific Ocean." via @livescience.com www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/02/w...

"When it comes to our Universe’s origins, scientists discuss the Big Bang, cosmic inflation, and other theories. Why doesn’t “God” come up?" by @startswithabang.bsky.social www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/02/w...

Across Cultures, One Key to Happiness Stands Out One of the most comprehensive assessments of factors affecting well-being is the World Values Survey. Initiated in 1981, the survey asks nationally representative sample populations in nearly 100 coun

"Decades of global surveys point to a single, consistent foundation of well-being: our relationships." www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/01/a...

Every Scientific Empire Comes to an End Roald Sagdeev has already watched one scientific empire rot from the inside. When Sagdeev began his career, in 1955, science in the Soviet Union was nearing its apex. At the Kurchatov Institute in Mos

"Not since the Red Scare, when researchers at the University of California had to sign loyalty oaths... has American science been so beholden to political ideology." via @theatlantic.com www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/01/e...

Celeb Hair Loss Treatments Won't Work. Here's What Does Browse the Internet or supermarket shelves, and it seems there are a growing number of products for restoring thinning locks. Hairfluencers abound, touting serums, sprays, oils and foams that contain

"Here’s everything you need to know about hair loss treatments – and how the latest research could offer a more permanent solution." www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/01/c...

"Researcher Robert G. Endres from Imperial College London has developed a framework that suggests the spontaneous origin of life faces far greater challenges than previously understood." via @universetoday.com www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/01/w...

"The Shroud of Turin, claimed to be Jesus' original burial covering, could not have been created on a human body, a new study finds. It is much more likely that the image is an imprint of a sculpture, according to a graphics expert." via @livescience.com www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/01/s...

"In October 2017, a single flash of lightning during a thunderstorm streaked across the Great Plains for 515 miles. The flash traveled from eastern Texas all the way to Kansas City—and now into the record books." via @popsci.com www.realclearscience.com/2025/08/01/5...

How to Actually Survive the Apocalypse In February 2025, scientists at the University of Chicago moved the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds to midnight. The clock is a metaphor for humanity's risk of extinction and this is the closest it has e

Most doomsday preppers have it wrong. This is actually how to survive the apocalypse. www.realclearscience.com/2025/07/31/h...

Why It's Best to Start Out Statins at High Dose The exact role of different types of dietary fat and the best approach to prevention in cardiovascular disease has been somewhat controversial. However, the level of controversy among experts is much

"Like all medications, statins may have side effects.... Don’t be scared off of trying them if it is clinically appropriate to do so. If you have not discussed managing your vascular risk factors with your doctor, now is a good time to do so." www.realclearscience.com/2025/07/31/w...

Women Are More Competitive With Each Other Than Are Men. www.realclearscience.com/2025/07/31/w...

Powerful Psychedelic Mirrors Near-Death Experiences Have you ever wondered why people who nearly die often describe speeding toward supernatural light, or seeing their life flash before their eyes? You may have also heard about the powerful psychedeli

The psychedelic DMT mirrors near-death experiences. via @uk.theconversation.com www.realclearscience.com/articles/202...

2,500-Year-Old 'Gift to the Gods' Finally Identified A mysterious, orange gunk found in a bronze jar uncovered some 70 years ago at an ancient shrine near Pompeii, Italy, has finally been identified as honey. After several failed attempts over recent de

"A mysterious, orange gunk found in a bronze jar uncovered some 70 years ago at an ancient shrine near Pompeii, Italy, has finally been identified as honey." www.realclearscience.com/2025/07/31/2...

Why did such a strong earthquake produce such a weak tsunami? via @nytimes.com www.realclearscience.com/2025/07/31/w...