Monday, January 26
Daily News Stuff 26 January 2026
National Anthem Edition
National Anthem Edition
Top Story
- Replication crisis as a service. (Columbia)
You may have heard about the replication crisis science, and if you haven't, you should. Half of all published medical research, for example, cannot be replicated, and for preclinical trials the rate increases to four fifths.
An interesting point from that Wikipedia article is that 70% of scientists have tried and failed to replicate another researcher's work, but only 20% have been contacted by another scientist trying to replicate their work.
Which is perhaps by design:This paper in Management Science has been cited more than 6,000 times. Wall Street executives, top government officials, and even a former U.S. Vice President have all referenced it. It’s fatally flawed, and the scholarly community refuses to do anything about it.
Management science, huh? Bad as things are in medical research, at least they admit to baseline reality.
When someone tried to correct the record on this particular paper, his efforts were not well received:The authors ignored me, the journal refused to act, and the scholarly community looked the other way. Two universities disregarded evidence of research misconduct - even after the authors admitted publishing a misleading report.
A latter-day dissolution of the monasteries?
The article remains largely uncorrected - misleading thousands of people each year.
I believe our systems for curating trustworthy science are broken and need reformation.Having received no response from the authors, I contacted Management Science. After getting advice, I submitted a comment.
As the article says, ah, the tone police.
It was rejected.
The reviewers did not address the substance of my comment; they objected to my "tone".The authors did admit to the editor that they had misreported a key finding - labeling it as statistically significant when it was not. The authors claimed the error was a "typo." They intended to type "not significant" but omitted the word "not".
That's one hell of a typo.
The story gets worse from there. And that's just a single paper out of millions.
Tech News
- Washington state wants 3D printers and CNC milling machines to monitor everything you do and report on you if you are creating something that could be used in a firearm. (Adafruit_
Violating the First and Second Amendments with a single piece of legislation. Such efficiency!
- Google won't stop replacing our news headlines with terrible AI. (The Verge) (archive site)
The Verge may have gone full-blown communist revolutionary newspaper but on this they are not wrong. Google is sometimes completely reversing the meaning of tech articles in its AI summaries.
- How to add a coin slot to your gaming PC. (Tom's Hardware)
Sometimes the quest for an authentic arcade experience goes a little too far.
And sometimes it goes a lot.
- A New York startup has built a machine that produces gasoline from air. (Jalopnik)
Which is perfectly possible, just not very efficient. After all, dinosaurs breathed air, and all our gasoline comes from liquified dinosaurs.
It takes carbon dioxide and water vapour from the air, electrolyses the water, and combines them to create methanol. Then it goes through a more complicated process to turn the methanol into usable fuel.
The device costs an estimated $20,000, and if you have a free source of electricity, a gallon of gas costs around $1.50, though the article doesn't mention exactly how this was calculated.
Since you probably don't have a free source of electricity, a gallon of gas will actually cost between $10 and $30, which is why dinosaurs always win.
Musical Interlude
Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the national anthems.
Disclaimer: Okay, you can sit down now.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
03:36 PM
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