This has come up a few times on the blog already: Carroll/Langer: Credulous, scientist-as-hero reporting from a podcaster who should know better 7 steps to junk science that can achieve worldly success A suggestion for Freakonomics and Sean Carroll: Interview Nick Brown Two researchers in the Harvard psychology department published a paper reporting that they could make people heal faster by telling them that more time had passed. Nick Brown and I looked at this paper carefully and didn’t think that it offered good evidence for its claims. Meanwhile, the paper was promoted uncritically in various media outlets. As I wrote a couple years ago, to the extent that healing is important, I think it’s important not to overstate evidence for speculative claims about what works. Individual and societal resources are limited. If you want to say something like, “Sure, this is pie-in-the-sky research, but if it works it would be wonderful (‘kind of amazing,’ as physics podcaster Dean Carroll…
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