Science Fictions

Here’s another one for the annals of “entire scientific field becomes totally misguided for decades”. How could it have been possible that so many scientists fell for the idea of candidate genes—that there were individual gene variants that explained huge chunks of variation in depression, aggression, intelligence, and many more psychological traits? How could they have written literally hundreds of peer-reviewed papers based on completely false “results”?
Well, they did. Here’s the story.
(Why 99.5? We’re putting off doing Episode 100, just so we can mark the occasion with an even better topic).
The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine, the journal of underrated ideas for making the world a better place. Today we talked about the new article on why Japan’s railways are so good and what other countries can learn from them. Read all their articles, for absolutely zero cost, at worksinprogress.co.
Show notes
* The first study on 5HTTLPR and depression, from 1996
* Caspi et al.’s seminal 2003 Science paper on gene-environment interaction with 5HTTLPR and depression
* “Orchid genes” in The Atlantic; Wired; The New York Times
* Caspi et al’s 2002 paper on MAOA, the “warrior gene”
* Article on the Maori people and MAOA
* 2009 story on an Italian court reducing a sentence due to MAOA
* Though no such luck in New Mexico in 2021
* Scott Alexander’s classic 2019 article on candidate genes
* Failure to replicate the 5HTTLPR GxE as early as 2005
* 2009 meta-analysis with flat-as-a-pancake results for 5HTTLPR
* Letter about the lopsided nature of its citations
* 2011 “critical review” of candidate gene studies
* 2019 Border et al. study attempting to replicate depression candidate genes
* 2025 GWAS of depression
* A Google Scholar search for “5HTTLPR depression”, restricted to articles published in 2026
Credits
The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

For a while in the early-to-mid 2010s, the most prominent psychology research in the world was on power posing. Harvard’s Amy Cuddy did a TED talk that reached tens of millions; her exhortation to “fake it til you make it” struck a chord and produced endless book sales from readers fascinated to hear how, just by adopting an expansive posture, you could revolutionise your own psychology and succeed at life.
In this episode, with the benefit of hindsight, we ask: what was that all about?
This podcast is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine. In today’s episode we mentioned “The Perks of Being a Mole Rat”, Aria Shrecker’s entertaining new piece on what makes some animals live for an inordinately long time. Find it and endless other fascinating pieces on human progress at worksinprogress.co.
Show notes
* Dana Carney (not Carvey)’s 2016 letter on changing her mind about power posing
* The 1996 study about walking more slowly down the hallway after reading words to do with old people
* Tom’s first and second pieces in Nature
* Daryl Bem’s piece on “Writing the Empirical Journal Article”
* Amy Cuddy’s TED talk (the third most-watched ever)
* Two studies we mentioned on the facial feedback hypothesis
* 2014 NYT article on power posing and Amy Cuddy
* Amy Cuddy’s bestselling book, Presence
* UK Conservative Party politicians power posing for some reason
* The original 2010 power posing paper in Psychological Science
* A re-examination of the robustness of the results
* Ranehill et al.’s 2015 replication attempt
* Cuddy et al.’s “summary and review” from the same issue
* Simmons & Simonsohn on the whole evidence base on power posing
* Cuddy’s strategic retreat
* Meta-analysis on expansive vs. “lack of contractive” posing
Credits
The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

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Have you seen the award-winning film I Swear, about a Scottish man with Tourette’s? (The less said about what happened at the ceremony where it won said award, the better). If so, you might want to know more about this very weird medical condition. We’ve got you covered.
In this paid-only episode, we go into the competing neurological theories of what causes Tourette’s, the troubles with diagnosing it, what if anything can be done to treat it, and whether you can “catch” it by watching too many videos on TikTok.
Become a paying subscriber at sciencefictionspod.com (or click the button below) to hear the full episode and read the full show notes.

In 2024, researchers claimed to find something mysterious at the bottom of the ocean. It was “dark oxygen”—oxygen produced where there’s no chance of photosynthesis. So what could possibly be producing it?
Natural batteries—at least according to the scientists. This bizarre discovery seemed to upend everything we knew about the abyssal floor, had big implications for deep sea mining, and might even have helped explain the origin of aerobic life. But (and look, you know what we’re going to say here) could there have been something a little more mundane explaining the findings?
The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. On this week’s episode we talked about the new article on the genetics of cabbages, and how the wild cabbage has been selected into so many of the familiar vegetables we know today. Find this and so many more articles, all for free, at worksinprogress.co.
Show notes
* The 2024 dark oxygen paper in Nature Geosciences
* Media coverage: BBC, Guardian, New Scientist
* Andrew Sweetman’s piece in The Conversation discussing his research
* On the deep seas of Enceladus and Europa
* The UN and Greenpeace discussing the implications of dark oxygen
* The “extraordinary claims” critical paper in Frontiers in Marine Science from 2025
* Huge European investigation into marine mining from 2023
* Critical EarthArXiv preprint from 2025
* Norwegian interview with Andrew Sweetman, addressing some criticisms
* PubPeer discussion of the paper; Wikipedia page with some rather harsh language
* Paper on the expected amount of oxygen on the ocean floor, and on how the process itself needs oxygen to get started
* Reanalysis of Sweetman’s raw data in another EarthArXiv preprint
Credits
The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

The last few episodes have been pretty heavy. So here’s… well, here’s the 2D:4D ratio. Does the difference in length between your index finger and your ring finger reveal a huge amount about your personality (and much more besides)?
Perhaps you won’t be surprised by the answer. But we promise you’ll be surprised by just how much effort scientists have put into finding out…
The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. And now, articles from Works in Progress magazine are read aloud to you by… Stuart from Science Fictions. Every week, a new audio version of a WiP article will be released for your listening enjoyment. Find out more at www.worksinprogress.news.
Show notes
* Anthropological paper from 1888 on hands
* A “preliminary investigation” of digit ratio and personality (2002)
* Meta-analysis on the topic of aggression from 2017
* PNAS study on the digit ratios of London City traders
* Vastly bigger, null study on 2D:4D and economic preferences
* Study of digit ratio in orchestral musicians
* Follow-up study with contradictory results on musical abilities
* 2D:4D and the wearing of wedding rings
* Original paper on sexuality and digit ratio
* 2025 meta-analysis
* Digit ratio and penis size
* Manning’s 2020 paper on COVID-19 and digit ratio
* Critical follow-up letter
* 2010 meta-analysis on athletic ability
* Using 2D:4D to understand prehistoric cave paintings
* 2021 BMJ Christmas Issue study on digit ratio and luck
* Comparing inter- and intra-observer reliability for digit ratios across different measures (and Manning’s concerns about similar)
* Debate over “allometric scaling”: concerned; less concerned
* 2024 meta-analysis on whether this even relates to other testosterone measures
* 2026 meta-analysis still using 2D:4D (among other measures)
Credits
The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe