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In The Beauty, mysterious deaths of models are linked to a new drug and a sexually transmitted infection, both of which kill as they beautify. But if you want great body horror, this isn't the place to look, concludes Bethan Ackerley

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

Nearly 40 years after Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, Sarah Alam Malik's epic exploration of the cosmos reflects a changed landscape around science in the 21st century, finds Alison Flood

As Elon Musk and Pete Hegseth talk about wanting to make Star Trek real, long-time fan Chanda Prescod-Weinstein says they've misconstrued the heart of the story

In his lyrical book Frostlines, Neil Shea argues that we are more connected to the Arctic than we might think, says Elle Hunt

Feedback is delighted by an experiment on the Milan metro system, which involved a prosthetic bump, a Batman costume and some unexpected displays of public decency

Within days of the U.S. strike on Caracas and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026, a remarkable claim was sweeping across social media: American forces had deployed a devastating “sonic weapon” that left Venezuelan soldiers vomiting blood and unable to stand.

The headlines have been dramatic with Forbes proclaiming: “U.S. Secret Weapon May Have Incapacitated Maduro’s Guards.”1 The Economic Times wrote about America’s “Secret Sonic Weapon,”2 while the UK Sun asserted: “US ‘Sonic Weapon’ is REAL after Chilling Claims it Left Captured Maduro’s Guards ‘Vomiting Blood.’”3 The story was dramatic, almost terrifying, but as we shall argue here, almost certainly false.

Within minutes of the first explosions on January 3, conflicting claims were already circulating on social media about the number of missiles fired, ground forces deployed, and helicopters spotted flying over the city of Caracas, the focal point of the attack. The ambiguity and uncertainty that typify the fog of war are ideal breeding grounds for rumors. Ordinarily, such rumors fade as reliable information emerges. But in this case the U.S. military remained silent, while the Venezuelan government, like many authoritarian regimes, is notorious for withholding information. 

This is a classic setup for the proliferation of rumors, whose intensity is proportional to both the perceived importance of the event and the level of ambiguity.4 Situations such as this are fertile soil for exaggerations, half-truths, conspiracy theories, and outright fabrications. Even after the situation on the ground stabilized and many early rumors were confirmed or denied, claims about the use of a sonic weapon not only persisted but flourished.

From WhatsApp to the World

One challenge in tracing this story to its origins is that as it began in Venezuela, where the earliest accounts circulated in Spanish. Fortunately, one of us (DZ) is a fluent speaker and was able to examine the primary sources. In the days that followed, audio recordings rapidly spread on WhatsApp, describing events through purported firsthand accounts from soldiers and relatives near the impact zones.

On January 9, one story began circulating widely. In it, a supposed member of colectivo—an armed militia that controls different sections of the city—described how the attack unfolded in the historic 23 de Enero neighborhood of western Caracas. 

The audio was posted on the YouTube channel of Emmy Award-winning Venezuelan journalist Casto Ocando, and soon accumulated over one million views.5 In it, an anonymous narrator describes the attack.

“They shut down the entire electrical system, knocked out the radars, knocked out everything.”

He then recounts how a soldier activated a Russian-made anti-aircraft defense system to attack the helicopters.

“When he fired it, a drone immediately detected it and, well, they died, they killed them, all of them [the soldiers] with a single bomb… There are many dead, many people burned, many people wounded. I’ll send you a video, there are approximately 100 military personnel dead,” he adds.6

The narrator’s confidence in precise casualty figures amid the chaos of a nighttime attack, is itself a red flag.

The alleged eyewitness continues:

“There were only eight helicopters and 20 men…who killed 200 men, 32 with a single shot, plus presidential guards of honor and civilians.”

He then describes weapons that “fired more than 300 bullets per minute,” adding,

“a thing that made me bleed, I was bleeding from my nose and didn’t know what it was, it was a whistle that sounded throughout Caracas and made people bleed from their noses and ears. We couldn’t move, that whistle immobilized us, they say it’s what’s called a sonic shockwave. It was something really horrible….”

The clip ends with claims that Americans

“don’t fight fair. They fight from above, with drones. The speeds of those helicopters…. They only sent eight helicopters and destroyed all of Caracas.”  

The description of a sound that causes nosebleeds and immobilization across an entire city is physically implausible. While acoustic weapons such as Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) can cause pain and disorientation at close range, their effects diminish rapidly with distance as the sound energy disperses. No known acoustic technology can cause bleeding from the ears and nose at a distance, let alone city-wide.

Enter, Stage Right, Mike Netter 

On January 9, the WhatsApp audio recording quickly spread across various social networks. The following day, popular conservative influencer Mike Netter, posted on X a strikingly similar story, which he attributed to a security guard loyal to Nicolás Maduro.

🚨This account from a Venezuelan security guard loyal to Nicolás Maduro is absolutely chilling—and it explains a lot about why the tone across Latin America suddenly changed.

Security Guard: On the day of the operation, we didn't hear anything coming. We were on guard, but… pic.twitter.com/392mQuakYV

— Mike Netter (@nettermike) January 10, 2026

It is reproduced below so readers can judge for themselves:

Security Guard: On the day of the operation…suddenly all our radar systems shut down without any explanation. The next thing we saw were drones, a lot of drones, flying over our positions…. After those drones appeared, some helicopters arrived, but there were very few. I think barely eight helicopters. From those helicopters, soldiers came down, but a very small number. Maybe twenty men. But those men were technologically very advanced…

Interviewer: And then the battle began? 

Security Guard: Yes, but it was a massacre. We were hundreds, but we had no chance. They were shooting with such precision and speed... it seemed like each soldier was firing 300 rounds per minute… At one point, they launched something... it was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside. We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move…. Those twenty men, without a single casualty, killed hundreds of us. We had no way to compete with their technology, with their weapons. I swear, I’ve never seen anything like it. We couldn't even stand up after that sonic weapon or whatever it was.

Interviewer: So, do you think the rest of the region should think twice before confronting the Americans?

Security Guard: Without a doubt. I’m sending a warning to anyone who thinks they can fight the United States. They have no idea what they’re capable of. After what I saw, I never want to be on the other side of that again. They’re not to be messed with.

Interviewer: And now that Trump has said Mexico is on the list, do you think the situation will change in Latin America? 

Security Guard: Definitely. No one wants to go through what we went through. Now everyone thinks twice. What happened here is going to change a lot of things, not just in Venezuela but throughout the region. 

The story was originally posted in English, itself suspicious for a supposed Venezuelan guard. Had this been a genuine interview with a colectivo member, the original would have almost certainly appeared in Spanish. No Spanish-language version has ever surfaced. The “interview” appears to be a reconstruction of the WhatsApp audio, repackaged in a question-and-answer format.

Another red flag is the distinctly pro-American tone, which is unlikely to have come from a foreign fighter, let alone one sworn allegiance to defend his government. Defeated soldiers do not typically serve as unsolicited recruitment posters for the enemy. The guard also conveniently uses round figures (eight helicopters, twenty men, 300 rounds per minute) and makes no mention of his comrades’ courage or resistance, and ends with a warning directed at Mexico: precisely echoing President Trump’s rhetoric at the time.

Journalists are trained to go to the source. Accordingly, we contacted Netter to request details of the alleged guard and the interviewer, and asked him to share the original Spanish source of this interview with us. He said he couldn’t do so without first asking the source, which he promised to do. At the time of this writing, he never got back to us.

Press Secretary Leavitt Intervenes

Mike Netter’s post could have disappeared into the daily churn of social media had it not been for White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt who shared it on her official account with the dramatic text: “Stop what you are doing and read this...”

Stop what you are doing and read this…
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 https://t.co/v9OsbdLn1q

— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) January 10, 2026

This endorsement dramatically elevated the story’s perceived credibility, despite the absence of any corroborating evidence. In effect, an anonymous social media claim received a semi-official White House endorsement of an unverified anonymous claim, a departure from the press secretary’s traditional role as a gatekeeper of verified information. As a result, Netter’s post has gained over 30 million views and 10,000 responses.

Ever Increasing Circles

On January 10, the New York Post repeated Netter’s account under the headline: “US used powerful mystery weapon that brought Venezuelan soldiers to their knees during Maduro raid: witness account.”7 The story recounted the most spectacular elements: the sound wave, exploding heads, nosebleeds, and vomiting.

Curiously, the same YouTube channel of Casto Ocando that had released the original audio, later uploaded a new video citing the Post article, the Post’s reconstruction as independent confirmation of its own earlier material. Other media outlets went further, falsely claiming that the Venezuelan guard had been interviewed by the New York Post.8

This process, where secondary reporting is mistaken for a primary source, is a classic example of how media myths are manufactured through journalistic shortcuts.

Notably, none of the Venezuelan soldiers who later appeared on camera—people whose identities and ranks are known, mentioned the use of sonic weapons. Footage aired on the Chavista network Telesur depict young men wounded by shrapnel describing missile strikes, drones, and gunfire. None reported bleeding from the nose, vomiting, or sensations of cranial explosions.9 Nor are there civilian testimonies from Caracas describing a city-wide whistling sound. Some soldiers and civilians did report buzzing sounds, including individuals near Fort Tiuna, one of the attack sites. However, these sounds are readily explained by falling ordnance and whizzing bullets—mundane combat phenomena, not evidence of exotic weaponry.

It is also conspicuous that during President Trump’s exclusive interview with the New York Post, which was published on January 24th, he was asked about the “sonic weapon” rumors. Trump replied that the U.S. has “the discombobulator” that disabled enemy equipment as the American helicopters swooped in to attack in Carcas. But he made no mention of its effects on people.10

It’s Similar to the Havana Syndrome

The symptoms described in the WhatsApp audio are strikingly similar to claims made during the Havana Syndrome scare. Recently, the intelligence community has deemed the involvement of a foreign power “highly unlikely,” attributing the Havana Syndrome causes to psychogenic and environmental factors rather than directed energy weapons.11

The Venezuelan sonic weapon narrative appears to be drawing from the same well of popular mythology. Furthermore, nosebleeds following an explosive military attack are far more likely to be caused by conventional factors such as blast pressure, dust, smoke inhalation—even stress as opposed to a hypothetical sonic weapon.

The narrator in the WhatsApp audio clip may be misattributing ordinary combat effects to an extraordinary cause: a classic pattern in rumor formation.

Under conditions of extreme stress, uncertainty, and sensory overload, people routinely seek out coherent explanations that give meaning to their own experiences. In the context of a sudden nighttime military strike, in a backdrop rife with ambiguity and anxiety, physical symptoms such as nosebleeds, dizziness, ringing in the ears, and temporary immobility, are especially prone to being reinterpreted through the lens of culturally available narratives.

From a rumor and folklore perspective, the sonic weapon story fulfills a familiar psychological function: it collapses complex, confusing events into a single explanatory cause, providing closure amid uncertainty. The sonic weapon narrative transforms uncertainty into conviction and speculation into “fact.” This process reduces anxiety. As philosopher Suzanne Lange once famously observed: humans possess a remarkable ability to adapt—except when confronted with chaos.12

A Familiar Pattern

The sonic weapon story follows a well-worn media myth template: an ambiguous event, an information vacuum, an anonymous account, amplification by politically motivated actors, and validation by authorities who should know better.

What began as a WhatsApp voice message from an anonymous militia member, was transformed into a polished English-language “interview,” boosted by a partisan influencer, and essentially endorsed by the White House. At no stage was a shred of physical evidence produced. The ‘Discombulator,’ as far as the evidence shows, exists only in the fog of war, and in the imaginations of those eager to believe. 

It is also worth asking the cui bono question: “Who benefits from the sonic weapon narrative?” First, the U.S. government and military—by projecting overwhelming technological superiority. Second, pro-government Venezuelan sources also benefit from a story that excuses their rapid military defeat.

When both sides gain from a myth, its survival is all but guaranteed.

The psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT seemed to induce similar patterns of brain activity in a lama - a revered spiritual teacher in Tibetan Buddhism - as meditation, advancing our understanding of the drug's neurological effects

The psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT seemed to induce similar patterns of brain activity in a lama - a revered spiritual teacher in Tibetan Buddhism - as meditation, advancing our understanding of the drug's neurological effects

A new optical device allows researchers to generate and switch between two stable, donut-shaped light patterns called skyrmions. These light vortices hold their shape even when disturbed, making them promising for wireless data transmission. Using a specially designed metasurface and controlled laser pulses, scientists can flip between electric and magnetic modes. The advance could help pave the way for more resilient terahertz communication systems.

Some think the rise of C-sections means that one day all births will require serious medical intervention. But a surprising new understanding of the pelvis suggests a different story

An array of 15,000 qubits made from phosphorus and silicon offers an unprecedentedly large platform for simulating quantum materials such as perfect conductors of electricity

If anybody is still accusing Bill Maher of being pro-Trump, have a gander at this nine-minute clip from “Real Time” two weeks ago (I missed this one).  It’s a scathing indictment of people who criticize Democrats but neglect the news showing that MAGA and Trump are far more odious. (He begins by calling out ICE for what happened to Renée Good.)   The money quote: “Trump isn’t draining the swamp—he’s bottling it.”

At 5:30, however, he can’t resist giving a lick to Democrats for ignoring the rants Cea Weaver, Zohran Mamdani’s apointee to protect tenants, has emitted on social media. They include “If you don’t believe in the government’s sacred right to seize private property, it’s over,” “Private property, especially home ownership, is a weapon of white supremacy,” “Impoverish the white middle class,” and “Elect more communists.”  Maher then reads between the lines and calls Mamdani a “straight-up communist.” That may be hyperbolic, but I think he’s more extreme than most voters realized, and I’m amazed at the degree of enthusiasm for him.

Maher’s point is that people need to absorb the news that’s inimical to their own ideology, painful though that may be. It’s not the best of his bits, but it’s okay.

Weaver’s alleged statements aren’t made up.  The NY Post quoted some of them, and then, in its latest report on her, adds this:

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s newly instated radical-left tenant advocate, Cea Weaver, broke down Wednesday as she dodged questions from reporters about her gentrification hypocrisy.

The 37-year-old, who has faced backlash for blasting homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy” in the past, teared up when she emerged briefly from her apartment building in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, at about 9 a.m.

Weaver, who was tapped by Mamdani to be his new director of the city Office to Protect Tenants, quickly ran back inside after she was asked about the $1.6 million home her mother owns in Nashville, Tennessee.

Mamdani has a bright future in the Democratic Party so long as it leans wokeish.

A social network where humans are banned and AI models talk openly of world domination has led to claims that the "singularity" has begun, but the truth is that much of the content is written by humans

The latest Jesus and Mo strip, called “discipline,” came with a note and a link:

It’s that Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham again.

An excerpt from the National Secular Society‘s report:

An Islamic charity issued regulatory “advice and guidance” after it promoted misogyny has since streamed a sermon saying men can ‘physically discipline’ wives who are ‘rebellious’.

Last month, Birmingham mosque Green Lane Masjid and Community Centre (GLMCC) live streamed a sermon in which Aqeel Mahmood [see video below[ said “discipline in the case of rebellion” is one of the “rights of the husband over the wife”.

He said: “The husband is a leader. He has his responsibilities. Physical discipline is a last resort on the condition that it doesn’t cause pain, injury, fear or humiliation”.

. . . Mahmood also said a husband has a “right” to “intimacy” with his wife and a wife must not leave the house without her husband’s permission. Mahmood is understood to be an imam at the centre.

Yes, a “last resort” to be used on “rebellious” women. Some “faith of peace”!

Here’s a short clip showing Mahmood’s interpretation of Islamic law:

Chemicals used in refrigeration break down in the atmosphere to produce trifluoroacetic acid, a persistent pollutant that could be harmful to humans and aquatic life

Many times in my career I have sat across from a patient who expressed that they are getting serious about their health, and then rattle off a list of things that they are doing to improve their health – all mostly worthless. I do not blame them – they are victims of a self-help, supplement, and wellness industry that has completely mislead […]

The post The Data Is In – Exercise Is Good For You first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

New tools unlock new discoveries in science. So when a new type of non-destructive technology becomes widely available, it's inevitable that planetary scientists will get their hands on it to test it on some meteorites. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, by Estrid Naver of the Technical University of Denmark and her co-authors, describes the use of two of those (relatively) new tools to one of the most famous meteorites in the world - NWA 7034 - also known as Black Beauty.

Researchers from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), in collaboration with the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC), have led the most extensive observational study to date of runaway massive stars, which includes an analysis of the rotation and binarity of these stars in our galaxy.

How Rational People Lower Standards of Reasoning When It Comes to Politicized Issues

One of the hardest things to accept, especially for people who care about rationality, is that epistemic rigor is rarely applied consistently. Most of us do not give up bad arguments. Instead, we give up standards of evidence when the conclusion becomes socially or morally important to us.

There are well-established psychological reasons why this happens. Decades of research in social psychology show that many of our beliefs are not just opinions we hold, but parts of who we are. They become woven into our identities, our friendships, and often our professional lives. 

Put more simply, we build our identities, friendships, and careers around certain beliefs. As a result, challenges to those beliefs are not experienced as abstract disagreements but as personal threats. Our self-preservation mechanism kicks in: We bend reality as far as necessary to preserve a flattering story about ourselves and our ingroup. Denial and aggression toward the outgroup follow naturally. 

Psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner, who developed Social Identity Theory, showed that people internalize the values and beliefs of the groups they belong to, treating them as extensions of the self. When those beliefs are questioned, the threat is processed much like a threat to your status or belonging. The reaction is often defensive rather than reflective. 

More recent work on motivated reasoning helps explain why such a reaction is so persistent. In the 1990s, psychologist Ziva Kunda demonstrated that people selectively evaluate evidence in ways that protect conclusions they are already motivated to believe. When a belief supports your identity or social standing, the mind unconsciously applies stricter standards to disconfirming evidence and looser standards to supporting evidence. 

Intelligence does not necessarily make you more objective; it can make you a more effective advocate for your own side.

Political scientist Dan Kahan later expanded this idea with what he called “identity-protective cognition.” His research showed that people with higher cognitive ability are often better, not worse, at rationalizing beliefs that align with their cultural or political identities. In other words, intelligence does not necessarily make you more objective; it can make you a more effective advocate for your own side! 

This body of research helps explain why challenges to core beliefs can feel existential. If your moral worldview underwrites your relationships, your career, or your sense of being a good person, abandoning it comes with real social and psychological costs. Under those conditions, defending the belief feels like defending your life as it is currently organized. 

Seen in this light, the selective abandonment of evidentiary standards is not a moral failing unique to any one group. It is a predictable human response to perceived identity threat. Reasoning shifts from a tool for understanding the world to a mechanism for self-preservation. 

I learned this firsthand during my years in the New Atheist movement. What struck me was how selective people’s skepticism could be. In debates about religion, the standards were ruthless. In debates about politics and social issues, those same standards were easily relaxed, and often vanished. 

Take prayer. For decades, skeptics have pointed to controlled trials showing no measurable benefit of intercessory prayer. The best-known example is the STEP trial, a randomized study of nearly 1,800 cardiac bypass patients published in The American Heart Journal. It found no improvement in outcomes for patients who were prayed for, and in one group outcomes were slightly worse among patients who knew they were being prayed for. Among the New Atheists, prayer was considered resolved beyond reasonable debate not only because the experimental evidence showed no effect, but because the underlying causal story itself collapsed upon examination. 

Reasoning shifts from a tool for understanding the world to a mechanism for self-preservation.

Philosophically, intercessory prayer fails at the most basic level: It posits an immaterial agent intervening in the physical world in ways that are neither specified nor independently detectable. There is no plausible mechanism, no dose-response relationship, no way to distinguish divine intervention from coincidence, regression to the mean, or natural recovery. 

When some studies do claim positive effects of prayer, they almost invariably collapse under close inspection—small sample sizes, multiple uncorrected comparisons, vague outcome measures, post hoc subgroup analyses, or outright publication bias. Some define “answered prayer” so flexibly that any outcome counts as success; others rely on self-reported well-being, which is especially vulnerable to expectancy effects and motivated reasoning. 

This is precisely why large, preregistered trials and systematic reviews, such as those published in The American Heart Journal, are treated as decisive: They close off these escape hatches. The conclusion that prayer “doesn’t work” is not dogma; it is the residue left after methodological rigor strips away every alternative explanation. 

Now compare that level of scrutiny to how many people treat evidence in politically favored domains. What matters here is not even whether these conclusions are right or wrong, but how they become insulated from refutation. 

In debates over trans healthcare, for example, studies in favor of many invasive medical interventions are based largely on self-reported outcomes, short follow-up periods, and substantial attrition. Despite these limitations, they are frequently treated as definitive. Criticisms that would be routine in almost any other medical context are instead dismissed as bad faith. But the fact that these issues involve real suffering should not exempt them from evidentiary scrutiny; it should raise the bar for it. In this case, the most comprehensive evidence available—multiple systematic reviews—has raised serious concerns about the overall quality of the evidence base, particularly with respect to pediatric interventions. 

The UK’s Cass Review, commissioned by the National Health Service and published in stages between 2022 and 2024, concluded that the evidence for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in adolescents is generally of low certainty. Similar conclusions were reached by Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare and Finland’s Council for Choices in Health Care, both of which revised clinical guidelines after finding the evidence weaker than previously assumed. None of this proves that such treatments never help anyone, especially adults who exhausted other options. It does show that claims of scientific certainty are unjustified. 

The same pattern appears at the level of theory. New Atheists made a cottage industry out of attacking unfalsifiable religious claims and god-of-the-gaps reasoning. Yet many of the same people now defend claims about “systemic discrimination” that are structured in exactly the same way: When disparities persist, they are treated as proof. When they shrink, the explanation retreats to subtler and less measurable mechanisms. Evidence against the claim rarely counts against the claim in the way it would in other domains. 

Consider policing. It is often treated as a settled fact that racial bias is the primary driver of police shootings. But when Harvard economist Roland Fryer examined multiple large national datasets on police use of force, he found that there were no racial differences in officer-involved shootings once relevant contextual factors—such as crime rates, encounter circumstances, and suspect behavior—were taken into account. 

What followed was not a broad reevaluation of the claim, but a shift in how it was framed. Rather than direct bias operating at the level of individual officers, explanations moved toward less specific and harder-to-measure forces: institutional culture, historical legacy, or diffuse forms of “structural” racism. These explanations may or may not be true, but they function differently from the original claim. Because they are more abstract and less tightly specified, they are also far more difficult to test or falsify. 

Here’s the key issue: The pattern we can observe in all this is not that evidence resolved the question, but that disconfirming evidence changed the nature of the claim itself. A hypothesis that was once presented as empirically straightforward became broader, more elastic, and increasingly insulated from direct empirical challenge. Sounds familiar? It’s the god of the gaps fallacy. 

The same pattern appears in debates over wage gaps. Raw differences in average earnings between groups are often presented as straightforward evidence of discrimination. But when researchers such as June O’Neill and later Claudia Goldin showed that simply controlling for factors such as occupation, hours worked, experience, career interruptions, and job risk substantially narrows or eliminates many commonly cited wage disparities, the original claim quietly shifted. 

Evidence that would count against the claim in any other domain instead causes the claim to become broader, more abstract, and less falsifiable. 

It was no longer argued that some demographics were being paid less than others for the same work under the same conditions. Instead, the explanation moved upstream: Sexism or systemic racism were said to operate on the variables themselves, shaping career choices, work hours, and occupational sorting in ways that produced lower average pay. 

Again, these higher-level explanations may be partly true. But they function very differently from the initial claim. A hypothesis that began as a concrete, testable assertion about unequal pay for equal work became broader, more abstract, and harder to falsify. Evidence that would ordinarily count against the claim did not weaken it; it simply pushed the claim into less measurable territory. In other words, evidence that would count against the claim in any other domain instead causes the claim to become broader, more abstract, and less falsifiable. In these cases, disparities function the way miracles once did in theology: as proof of hidden forces. 

What bothered me about the New Atheism movement was not disagreement over conclusions. It was the collapse of standards. Arguments once dismissed as unscientific were rehabilitated the moment they became morally fashionable. I focus here on the New Atheism movement because it marked the first time in my life (and, as far as I can tell, the first time in history) that a movement, at least on its surface, explicitly committed itself to applying the highest standards of evidence to some of the most consequential claims about the world, and in doing so successfully and very publicly dismantled societal structures and beliefs that had endured for millennia. 

Skepticism is adopted when it flatters the self and abandoned when it threatens a moral narrative.

I’ve been thinking about all this for a long time, and I’ve come to suspect that most people—not by choice, but by evolutionary design—do not want or need a fully accurate understanding of how the world works. They want beliefs that protect their identity, signal membership in the right group, and increase their chances of (social) survival. Michael Shermer explained some of the evolutionary processes at hand here rather well in his books How We Believe and Conspiracy. In short, when it comes to patternicity—the human tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise—making Type 1 errors, (i.e., finding nonexistent patterns), carries little evolutionary risk while the opposite (i.e., missing real patterns) often can be the difference between life and death. This means that natural selection will favor strategies that make many incorrect causal associations in order to establish those that are essential for survival and reproduction. 

Under those conditions, reasoning becomes performative. Skepticism is adopted when it flatters the self and abandoned when it threatens a moral narrative. That is why debates on these topics so often drift toward unfalsifiable language and moral imperatives. 

A fair question follows: How does anyone know they are not doing the same thing? 

I think the real danger we should try to internalize is not that other people do this. It is that all of us do.