Economics & Markets

The most popular solutions to the black hole information paradox are likely wrong because they require physics to change at a massive scale where it shouldn't.

Public transport subsidies as high as 73 percent do almost nothing to change a person's long-term travel habits.

Common steroids don't actually turn off inflammatory signals in the brain. they just disconnect the on switch from the machine.

Hospital patients in the normal range for magnesium have a higher risk of dying than those given extra supplements.

Verification capacity is now a bigger bottleneck for the global economy than the actual discovery of new ideas.

A person who makes a disaster possible receives much less blame if another human agent steps in to do the final dirty work.

Demographic-macroeconomic laws don't actually exist. the results of major studies change depending on which countries you look at.

The mathematical foundation for how the world's largest banks calculate their safety buffers is wrong by 41 percent.

Green budget tagging makes an entire country's economy more productive just by changing how money is labeled.

Mixed Reality headsets trigger a subconscious caution mode in the brain that makes users move their hands more slowly and reach wider than they do in real life.

Soft robots can now rotate and change shape using simple chemical reactions as their only motor.

A new flame-retardant plastic made from green tea can repair its own cracks when you shine a light on it.

A new nano-weapon delivers a low-toxicity form of arsenic that only turns into a lethal poison once it is inside a tumor.

Auction winners don't actually need to know when other people stop bidding to win at the best price.

A being's capacity for irreversible loss is the only thing that makes it a moral subject, not its intelligence or its ability to make choices.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was used as a central zero point to organize ancient archaeological sites across the entire African continent.

Bamboo-reinforced concrete from early 20th-century China was a high-tech engineering system that used bitumen and boiling water to outperform steel.

A man-made material inspired by the physics of black holes can trap and hold sound waves in a single spot.

Private energy saving goals actually work, but telling other people about green targets makes them completely ineffective.

Tiny defects inside a diamond can now be used to take three-dimensional photos of invisible microwave fields.

Adolescents often get sent back to foster care even when their parents haven't done anything wrong.

Certain types of narcissists are actually more likely to report every cent of their income to the government than the average person.

Voluntary corporate disclosures about human rights risks often serve as an unintended early warning system for future legal scandals.

A room-temperature test can detect the Dengue virus at incredibly low levels without using any of the fragile enzymes required by PCR.

The human ability to finish a task is actually a mechanical system of different bottlenecks that can break in very specific ways.

Common cellophane can be turned into a high-tech medical sensor using a simple laser and no expensive pumps.

Chronic pain in the mouth should be treated as a disease itself even when doctors can find no physical cause for it.

Dictatorship is an evolutionary governance mechanism that trades accountability for the speed needed to survive a crisis.

A new type of water filter cleans heavy metals by dissolving itself and turning the toxins into solid crystals.

Mathematical models prove that being a double agent is a self-destructive experiment that is guaranteed to fail.

A new green solvent system can pull 100 percent of the toxins out of walnut waste in a single step.

A turban worn under an industrial hard hat actually makes the helmet absorb lateral impacts better than a bare head.

A new metal halide sensor changes its glowing color the moment it touches a single drop of humidity using a reversible hydrogen-bond switch.

Opioid dependence in anesthesiologists creates an economic cost driven by professional vacancy rather than drug consumption.

The perfect prices predicted by modern economic theory are actually impossible for any computer or human to mathematically calculate.

American export controls intended to slow down Chinese technology actually caused Chinese firms to boost their R&D spending by 49.1%.

Dark, carbon rich soil is often much less stable and healthy than soil with far less carbon content.

A dataset of 10,765 hires reveals that not a single resume keyword can actually predict how well an employee will perform on the job.

Amazon reviews became longer and less helpful almost overnight in December 2022 when shoppers started using AI to describe products they hadn't used.

Angry comments on social media posts might increase your clicks, but they simultaneously decrease the actual donations your cause receives.

A blood test finds esophageal cancer that is often missed by physical tissue biopsies.

Macroeconomic factors explain 92% of U.S. trade deficits, meaning unfair trade deals are almost never the actual cause.

The rapid expansion of the early universe might have been caused by quantum information loss rather than a mysterious new particle.

American data centers generate $25 billion in environmental damage every year, sometimes costing local communities more than the value they add to the economy.

Male mice exposed to nanoplastics pass down severe lung damage to their children and grandchildren through their sperm.

A common heart failure medication can lock HIV inside immune cells and prevent the virus from waking up.

Starting a new conspiracy theory requires almost no data, but debunking one requires proving every single possible alternative cause is wrong.

A treatment designed to kill superbug bacteria actually triggers them to build a nearly indestructible protective shield.

A new way to sort lithium isotopes using liquid electrolytes could solve the fuel crisis for future nuclear fusion reactors.

Sending parents text messages to encourage school engagement actually causes more students to leave their current schools.