This is a fascinating story. A Lebanese team published a study showing massive benefits for apple cider vinegar in 2024. People immediately noticed it was problematic, and complained. BMJ asked the authors for the data, and they sent it through. The study has just been retracted and WOW 1/n
Sep 29, 2025 at 10:51 PM
Retraction: <i>Apple cider vinegar for weight management in lebanese adolescents and young adults with overweight and obesity: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study</i>
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
I saw in a recent issue of the Times Literary Supplement that you have been critical of the “chambermaid” study which purported to show that people were losing weight without changing their diet or exercise. I agree that this study did not show what it claimed.
Archive: New COVID-19 ‘Citizen Science’ Initiative Lets Any Adult with a Smartphone Help to Fight Coronavirus
The online study would try to help researchers gain insight into how the virus is spreading and identify ways to predict and reduce the number of new infections.
Jason Shepherd on Twitter / X
I have quite a lot of thoughts on this..that won't fit in a tweet. Bottomline is that there are issues scientists in the US would love to improve - faster review, less grant writing, more stability and freedom to do risky science. The folks celebrating this doc are mostly../1 https://t.co/xlPAH9XYNC— Jason Shepherd (@JasonSynaptic) July 23, 2026
Anthropic Risk Report: August 2026
I am grateful that Anthropic is producing periodic Risk Reports.
Annual Reports | CAA
For archived content, please refer to the National Diet Library's Web Archiving Project (WARP).
Andreas De Block on Twitter / X
It took Nature three years to publish this rebuttal, which clearly demonstrates the fundamental flaws in the original paper. In the meantime, the paper's conclusions influenced scientific debate and policy decisions. Such delays in correcting flawed research do real damage. https://t.co/QI3Ei3PE70— Andreas De Block (@DeblockBlock) August 13, 2026
The Curious About Everything Newsletter #65
The many interesting things I read in July 2026
Good news, everyone! I have a short piece coming out in The Conversation on Monday that explains the main issues with this study. It's impossible for me to have the same media reach as the original press release. So I'd be extremely grateful if people could help me share it as widely as possible 🙏
G. Willow Wilson
Good news, everyone cnn.com/2026/05/14/health/arts-ageing…
A challenge if anyone wants to take it up. Here is a recent review in the BMJ on the "Evidence for clinical interventions targeting the gut microbiome in cardiometabolic disease". There is not a single effect estimate reported in this review, or either supplemental file bmj.com/content/383/bmj-2023-075180
Evidence for clinical interventions targeting the gut microbiome in cardiometabolic disease
www.bmj.comatproto is actually a massive socioeconomic experiment in which we test the hypothesis "contributors to the common good who deserve success should be able to find it" and initial results are looking good
Devin Gaffney
Excited to announce that the Graze team is joining @flipboard.com! We're thrilled to be working with such a stellar team continuing to build the next era of the attention economy. Read more below:
Interesting conversation exploring the future of atproto sustainability!
JP
I want people to be comfortable paying for an atproto account (ie. space on a PDS) It’s the bedrock of everything we’re building; if it’s not funded it’ll get squeezed in ways that are bad for users (hi Gmail) We should normalise having (very cheap) paid-tier PDS accounts on the services we build
