New Articles – Students Against Pseudoscience

Can we buy clean air?

Air Pollution in Mumbai, photo taken by Kartik Chandramouli

Author: Arjun Kamdar

Over the last few weeks the air pollution levels in India have reached extremely hazardous levels. On several days, seventy-four of the hundred most air polluted cities were in India. This is a serious crisis that is impacting everything that breathes, and is rightly being considered a public health emergency. Among the many marketed solutions, one caught my attention and is deeply alarming: wearable air purifiers.

Searching for solutions

Understandably, this crisis has people scrounging for solutions. The idea of a small, high-tech device that one can carry around and promises to purify the air has intuitive appeal. This little device costs about £30, it comes via a glossy website, uses the word ‘scientific’ in copious amounts, and has pastel colour options. All that seems to be missing is a man in a lab coat smilingly recommending this as the ultimate solution. Fundamentally, this sells the idea that air can be privatised – this little rock around one’s neck can create a portable halo and emits negatively-charged anions that ‘attack’ the bad particles to ‘purify’ the air. There is one major problem; it does not work.

Air as a public bad

For decades, India’s urban elite have shielded themselves from the failures of public systems. Healthcare, education, security, transport – most of these have been informally privatised. Those who can afford it buy their way out of poor public infrastructure.

Air, however, is different. It is defined as a public good, or in this case, a public bad. This means that it is (1) non-excludable (no one can be prevented from breathing it) and non-rivalrous (one person’s use does not reduce availability for another). The textbook example of a public good is, ironically, a fireworks show: no one can be excluded from enjoying it, and one person’s enjoyment does not diminish the experience for anyone else. The same logic applies to air: we all share the same air, and it is impossible to contain it in one place or prevent someone from breathing it. There are no neat delineations between indoor and outdoor air.

Smog blankets buildings in Gurugram. Photo by Niranjan B.

The pseudoscience of wearable air purifiers

This is why air pollution demands collective action. No technological innovation can bypass this. While using masks or creating ‘clean air bubbles’ by installing indoor filtration systems or based on robust technology like HEPA filters can help to some extent, eventually, one must step outside or open a window. Wearable devices are marketed as the silver-bullet solution, despite there being no real evidence for their efficacy – neither in practice nor for what they market as “Advanced Variable Anion Technology”.

The scientific claims behind many of these products crumble when looked at closely. Companies cite ‘certifications’ and ‘lab tests’ from prestigious institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), one of India’s top engineering and science universities, a well-chosen appeal for the target audience of India’s urban elite and upper-middle class. However, the referenced tests have a fundamentally flawed study design, with too few repetitions to carry any scientific weight/value. In some of these tests they burn an incense stick in a sealed chamber suggested to be representative of air pollution outdoors in India, and then measure the reductions in ultrafine particulate matter over time, without any control condition. Such designs fail at both internal validity, i.e., the mechanism of action as well as external validity, since they ignore the complexity of outdoor pollution, which depends on wind, humidity, temperature inversions, particle composition, emission sources, and dozens of other factors. And most importantly, a seemingly endless supply of pollution. These wearable devices may as well be a bunch of flashing lights.

Some of these devices verge on the dystopian. One widely advertised model resembles a potted plant with plastic leaves, claiming that this technology will purify the surrounding air. The irony is stark. Some also offer these devices for corporate gifting.

Implications of misinformation

If these devices genuinely worked, or even showed promise, they would already be the focus of research and public health practice. Air pollution is not a novel challenge for humanity, and neither is the knowledge of ions. We understand these technologies well, and the reason they have not advanced further is simple: because science has already shown that this is a dead end.

There are two critical implications of this misinformation. One, it is unethical and exploitative, and two, it can crowd out motivations for the systemic change that is needed to tackle this large challenge.

These devices exploit people’s vulnerabilities – the legitimate fears that people have for themselves and their loved ones is used to turn a quick buck. Selling untested gadgets during a public health crisis is a dangerous manipulation of public fear for personal gain. The burden of proof of the efficacy of these devices lies with manufacturers, it is not the job of citizens or scientists to test and gather evidence that they don’t work. This is understood in section 2(47) and 18-22 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 on ‘unfair trade practices’ and the penalties for misleading advertisements.

Customers of these products I spoke with mentioned that while they are sceptical, “it might at least do something, if not as much as these companies promise”. While the sentiment is understandable, this is a very dangerous narrative. A proliferation of this flawed idea that clean air can be acquired through a quick, personal fix, could weaken the pressure on the government to take action and enact the systemic reforms that are needed. This crowding out of motivations is a real threat to movements that require long-term action. Air pollution is a public and collective challenge, impacting everyone from all classes and therefore, could be a catalysing factor for demanding structural changes. The misconception that private, individual-specific solution is a possibility hinders this, leading to a continuation of the status quo.

A member of parliament wore such a device by a company called Atovio a few months ago – this explicit validation by a public figure, even unknowingly, only amplifies misinformation and gives these dishonest claims a misleading legitimacy.

Air pollution shrouds the streets of Mumbai. Photo by Shaunak Modi.

Can air pollution be solved?

It is not an intractable problem; Beijing faced similar challenges in 2013 as did Bogota in 2018. Both cities ramped up their efforts and managed to tackle the seemingly insurmountable challenge of air pollution through the evidence-backed combination of strict emission controls and regulatory enforcement, and transformative shifts in urban mobility and energy use. India can too.

This potential is evident to India’s citizens; people from all walks of life and classes have mobilised, organising protests and legal arguments across the country to confront this serious threat.

There is no technology yet that can privatise air. Structural changes in how cities and societies function are the only real solution, and until then air will remain a public bad. Some problems cannot be bought away.

Ig Nobel: The whimsy and the magic of science

Author: Maya Lopez (Co-President)

When the 2025 Nobel Prizes were announced last month, Cambridge’s science enthusiasts and news junkies alike were buzzing with excitement, discussing the laureates, dissecting the research, and tallying college wins. However, I noticed less talk around a month earlier on the Ig Nobels”. Maybe because no Cambridge members were awarded this year? Or perhaps because it’s not serious enough?? … Whatever the reason, today we will take a break from all the rigidity of science and the recent serious concerns around politics contesting science. Instead, let’s take a look at the whimsical research that is also… seriously a science, which, as Nature once put it, “The Ig Nobel awards are arguably the highlight of the scientific calendar”.

Are Ig Nobel Prizes a real award?

This is one of the top Google searches with the keywords: “Ig Nobel prize”. The answer? YES*. It is a very real award with ceremony and all that has now been going on for 35 years. But “*” was not a typo as it is also, yes, a parody of the all-too-famous Nobel Prize, which probably needs no explanation of its own (hence the namesake and the pun of “ignoble”). For those of you who are unfamiliar, Ig Nobel is annually awarded by an organization called Improbable Research since 1991 with a motto of: “research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK”. This organization also publishes a “scientific humor magazine” (who knew that was a thing?) called Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), so they, in a sense, can be seen as a specialist that focuses on promoting public engagement with scientific research through fun. The Ig Nobel Prizes are often presented by Nobel laureates in a ceremony held at the MIT or other universities in the Boston area. Much like the “real” Nobel prizes, it has different award disciplines like: physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature, economics, and peace, plus a few extra categories such as public health, engineering, biology, and interdisciplinary research. (The award categories do vary from year to year, though.) The winners are awarded with a banknote worth 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars (a currency that is no longer used; roughly worth US$0.40), so it’s not really about the monetary value. They also get an opportunity to give a public lecture upon award, but researchers do face the risk of being interrupted by an 8-year-old girl (or, in the case of 2025, a researcher dressed up as one) crying “Please stop: I’m bored”, if it dares go on for too long. The ceremony, as you can imagine from here, has a number of running jokes, and if you are interested, you can watch the whole ceremony of 2025 on Youtube.

Bringing “in” science to the everyday curiosity:

So it’s a parody, yes, but the award does exist and is given to actual researchers. The quickest way to get a sense of the Ig Nobel might be to simply browse the list of research that was awarded prizes. This year, we’ve got:

Category	Title	Reference
Aviation	Studying whether ingesting alcohol can impair bats’ ability to fly and also‹ their ability to echolocate	_{doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2010.02.006}
Biology	their experiments to learn whether cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid being bitten by flies.	_{doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223447}
Chemistry	experiments to test whether eating Teflon is a good way to increase food volume and hence satiety without increasing calorie content	_{doi.org/10.1177%2F1932296815626726}_{patents.google.com/patent/US9924736B2/en}
Engineering design	analyzing, from an engineering design perspective, how foul-smelling shoes affect the good experience of using a shoe-rack	_{doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2229-8_33}
Literature	persistently recording and analyzing the rate of growth of one of his fingernails over a period of 35 years	_{doi.org/10.1038/jid.1953.5}_{pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2249062}_{doi.org/10.1001/archinte.1968.00300090069016} _{doi.org/10.1001/archinte.1974.00320210107015} _{doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-4362.1976.tb00696.x} _{doi.org/10.1001/archinte.1980.00330130075019}
Nutrition	studying the extent to which a certain kind of lizard chooses to eat certain kinds of pizza	_{doi.org/10.1111/aje.13100}
Peace	showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak in a foreign language	_{doi.org/10.1177/0269881117735687}
Pediatrics	studying what a nursing baby experiences when the baby’s mother eats garlic	_{pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1896276}
Physics	discoveries about the physics of pasta sauce, especially the phase transition that can lead to clumping, which can be a cause of unpleasantness	_{doi.org/10.1063/5.0255841}
Psychology	investigating what happens when you tell narcissists — or anyone else — that they are intelligent	_{doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2021.101595}

I think the goal of “laugh and think” is clearly successful in all of this research. But speaking of thinking, some of these research topics made me wonder (and maybe you are too): “Why would you investigate that?” (What adult would?) or “Is this real, funded/published research”? What I want to highlight (and what may not be clear from the brief list on the Wikipedia page), is that they all have proper references attached to them. So yes, though their published titles might sound a bit more academic or “stuffy” (though often by not much), they are actual peer-reviewed papers!

Are you ridiculing science?

This question on the official FAQ page caught my attention, because I, as an IgNoble enthusiast, hadn’t imagined any serious criticism against these awards. Digging a bit deeper, I found that decades ago, the UK’s then-chief scientific adviser – Sir Robert May – made a formal ~~complaint~~ request that “no British scientists (should) be considered for an IgNobel, for fear of harming their career prospects”. (Note that the UK, alongside Japan and the USA (no wonder I’m acquainted with this prize), are regulars of this prize as a nation, winning awards nearly every year.) Furthermore, the article reads “He was particularly concerned when ground-breaking research into the reasons why breakfast cereal becomes soggy (by the University of East Anglia) won a prize,” essentially hinting at the concern of public ridiculing science (as a whole?). If you think about it, such a general attitude of “it’s not with the scientific investigation unless it’s clearly applicable/translatable/important” is perhaps far too typical, especially in basic sciences.

However, I think the founder of the prize, Marc Abrahams, had the best defence against the practice of “rewarding silly science”.

“Most of the great technological and scientific breakthroughs were laughed at when they first appeared. People laughed at someone staring at the mould on a piece of bread, but without that there would be no antibiotics… A lot of people are frightened of science or think it is evil, because they had a teacher when they were 12 years old who put them off. If we can get people curious and make them laugh, maybe they will pick up a book one day. We really want more people involved in science and I think the webcast will help do that.”

Slightly on a tangent, but “Maths Anxiety” is a recognized experience that many develop during childhood. While no research might exist on this (yet), I also suspect a similar phenomenon with STEM at large. Sometimes I get comments from students taking humanities subjects (even in Cambridge!) like “wow, you’re doing a real/serious degree”, or “science sounds so difficult”. For some people, “being put off” by science might trace back to a negative experience during their first formal introduction to science as a subject in school. In that case, bringing their interest back to science with all-serious demeanor and stuffy topics might be quite a high barrier to cross. However, looking at the Ig award list from earlier, and how quickly they make you go “huh” after the laugh, I can’t help but think that these funny, curious studies might be the push they need to ignite their curiosity and welcome them back to scientific inquiry without any pressure.

The satire (and controversy?) of IgNobel

That being said, not all IgNobel prizes were specifically awarded to quirky “research that cannot (or should not) be reproduced”. It was also sometimes awarded as a satire. In the recent case of 2020, Ig Nobel Prize for Medical Education was awarded to Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, Narendra Modi of India, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Donald Trump of the USA, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan. Now, before you start typing away your complaints and protests (or throwing paper airplanes), hear the reason why: they were awarded for “using the Covid-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can”. I’d say that makes you think quite a bit, especially as a person in the scientific community.

If you consider these instances in isolation, perhaps there is some point to what the former scientific chief advisor was saying, and that a serious researcher might not want to be associated with this prize (kinda like the Raspberry award, I guess?). However, this was apparently not a popular opinion, at least in the UK scientific community, which backlashed at the comment earlier. To this day, we get awardees from the UK in the Ignobel prizes.

Legacy beyond the funny and curious:

Parody and satire, yes, but in case you think this is still a long post for much ado about nothing, as it’s still in the realm of a joke, I want to present you this final case of when these jokes lead to “actual” science (not that they weren’t real science to begin with, but…). Take Andre Geim for instance, who shared the 2000 Ig Nobel in Physics with Michael Berry for levitating a frog – yes, a real frog – using magnets. Ten years later, he went on to win the actual Nobel Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking research on graphene. This itself may sound like a lucky coincidence but it is also worth mentioning that this frog experiment was reported in 2022 to be the inspiration (at least partially) behind China’s lunar gravity research facility.

These are not the only examples where such “silly research” actually ended up having real-world impact and use. In 2006, the Ig Nobel Prize in Biology was awarded to a study showing that a species of malaria-carrying mosquitoes (Anopheles gambiae) is attracted equally to Limburger cheese smell and human foot odor. This initial study was published in 1996, and the results suggested the strategic placement of traps baiting this mosquito with Limburger cheese to combat the Malaria epidemic in Africa. While these applications of the study might not be immediate, I think what allows for this translation (aside from being oddly specific) is partly due to the cost-effectiveness. The more typical “scientific” solution one might envision with disease control might involve genomics, vaccines, or pharmaceuticals. While they are all state-of-the-art and highly effective (and certainly have the sci-fi appeal), the cost both in terms of financial and time resources, can be expensive. Compared to that… cheese? I’m guessing that it’s more budget friendly and easy to implement. This research as well as this year’s award in biology about painting (zebra-like) stripes to cows as a mosquito repellent, all make me re-appreciate that sometimes the viable solution might be something unexpectedly simple and close at hand. These studies show how science, even in its quirkiest forms, can indicate practical and effective solutions to improve everyday lives.

Diversification of sci-comm tactics

Whether you admire the nobleness of the Ig Nobel, think it’s all fun and whimsy sci-comm, or avoid it altogether as an aspiring “serious” researcher, I think this still stands as a rare gem in the diversity of what science-communication can look like. In recent years, “debunking style’ science communication is seemingly (back) on surge, as well as various independent video-based science communication content creators (such as the guest speaker we had last week). In the age where science itself and its institutions are increasingly seen through a critical eye or outright contested, I do understand the urge to fact bomb or even isolate myself in all the “seriousness”. This is especially tempting when we know that some of the fruit of scientific research, like vaccines, can save lives, and we desperately want people to protect themselves. I personally don’t consider myself especially witty, but celebrate those who can masterfully blend research and humor to entice audiences and reignite their interest in science. Of course, not a single sci-comm tactic is bulletproof – some, like Sir Robert, may find these things distasteful, while others simply prefer something “serious,” and that’s ok. But science as a community might just benefit from having such a quirky tactic under its sleeves, and the diversity in science communication approaches might very well be the best shot we’ve got for this day and age of increasing division. Who knows, maybe some researchers will look into the efficacy of the IgNobel prize headlines against the science-anxiety.

Science and extreme agendas

Author: Raf Kliber (Social Media Officer)

Original feature image art specially drawn by: TallCreepyGuy

While I work myself to boredom at a local retail store, I listen to some podcasts in the background. Something to cheer me up. Among my favourites are the Nature Podcast and Climate Denier’s Playbook. But, on that specific Wednesday, the episode was anything but cheering. I landed on the Nature Podcast’s “Trump team removes senior NIH chiefs in shock move” episode, which provided me with a bleak look into the current US administration’s proceedings. The bit that shocked me the most was how much the move clung to Project 2025‘s agenda. One of the moves discussed was a defunding of ‘gender ideology’ driven research (read anything that includes the word trans, even though such research is useful for everyone). Furthermore, instead of such ‘unimportant’ research, the administration wanted to conduct studies into ‘child mutilation’ (read trans conversation therapy) at hospitals. Eight hours later, while soaking in a mandatory afterwork bath, I began pondering “what is the interplay between extreme agendas and the ‘fall’ of science?” and “what I, a STEM person, could do about it?”. As a Polish person, my first bubbles of ideas started with fascism and the Third Reich.

Jews, fascism, and ‘directed’ science

I moved to the UK when I was twelve years old. This event spared me the traditional trip to Auschwitz one takes when in high school. It spared me from the walls scratched by the nails of the people trapped in gas chambers. It spared me from the place so horrible yet so pristinely preserved that visiting it is as close to time travel as one can get. About a fifth of the population of Poland was wiped out in World War II. On average, every family lost someone. Not on average, many families were completely gone. Due to the gravity of the topic at hand I reached out to Dr. Martin A. Ruehl, lecturer in German Intellectual History at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at University of Cambridge for some guidance. He also gave a talk on “What is fascism?” during the Cambridge festival, which I recommend. Another reason is that I am by education, a physicist, and just as physicists have their own set or rigorous habits that make their field solid, historians and philosophers have theirs.

Fascism as an idea is fuzzy, or at least with fuzzy borders. One knows definitely that after Hitler took over the power in Germany, it took on Fascist ideology. It is also abundantly clear that the current UK is not a fascist regime. Trying to nail the border delineating the least fascistic and just about not fascistic regime is futile, complicated further by each regime having their own unique element. The process of how it festers and develops in a country is left for others to explain, and I encourage the reader to watch this video essay by Tom Nicholas on how to spot a (potential) fascist. I will go with the conclusion of Dr Ruehl’s talk. Fascism is a racist, nationalistic, extreme and violent idea that often puts the core group in a self-imposed theoretical attack from the outgroup. (e.g. Jews were an imagined threat to the German state, even though they weren’t). I procrastinate talking about subject matter to highlight two important points: Fascism is a complex topic that could be studied for lifetimes and consequently, I am not an expert. I have made my best attempt at giving it the due diligence it deserves.

Disclaimers aside, what was the state of science during Hitler’s reign? Let us set the scene. The role I’d like us to play is that of a scientist at the time. Let us imagine ourselves in 1933 Germany, right at the beginning of the Nazi reign. Nazi party made it rather clear: Either you, as the scientist, are ready to conduct research that aligns with the party’s agenda, or you’re out of academia. Unless you’re Jewish and known to be on the left of the political spectrum (historical pre-nazi left, although it would still include things like early transgender care, for example, as advocated by Magnus Hirschfeld), then you don’t get a choice. Physics Today has a nice article that contains the migration of selected physicists out of Nazi Germany, which I recommend having a look at. Similar goes for other branches of science. The crux of the situation is that if you are studying races or ballistics, you are more than welcome to stay. Hitler did recognise that only the most modern military equipment would allow for the Third Reich to wage war on everyone. Similarly, he did want to put his ideals onto the firm foundation of “cold and logical” science, even though at times that compromised the scientific process. For example, the creation of Deutsche Physik (which denied relativity) and the burning of books by the above-mentioned Magnus Hirschfeld. (As much as my past self would thoroughly disagree, trans people are a cold and logical conclusion of how messy biology can be. More so than arbitrarily dividing all of population into two buckets.)

The adoption of the idea of Social Darwinism (that fittest social groups survive) and the knowledge of what genes do (albeit well before the discovery of DNA structure and the ability to compare genomes) created the foundation of ignorance for ‘scientific racism’ and eugenics. That being said, there was more to it than the current state of not-knowing. According to the introduction of “Nazi Germany and the Humanities” edited by Wolfgang Bialas and Anson Rabinbach, “Creation of the hated Weimar Republic created a deep sense of malaise and resentment among the mandarins, who, for all their differences, had in common the belief that a “profound ‘crisis of culture’ was at hand””. To draw a conclusion, the loss of the war and a tense national atmosphere led to the development of such völkisch ideals way before Hitler’s regime touched the ground. To further quote, “many retained the illusion of intellectual independence”. The general sense of superiority also gave rise to books like Deutsche Physik, a work that opposed Albert Einstein’s work directly.

(Note from the author: Googling “Social Darwinism” will lead you to creationist videos by Discovery Science (A YouTube channel by Discovery Institute, a fundamental creationist think tank). They seem to be hooked on using the aforementioned atrocities to try to link Darwin, and his early understanding of evolution, to Satan and hence to him leading us away from God with his theory. It is worth mentioning that although it bears his name, Darwin did not play a role in coining or using the term.)

To summarise this section: The way the corrupt ideals spread into science and politics in Nazi Germany arose from discontent and false hope. It was more of a fork situation. Both the world of academia and politics took up the story of national threat and superiority due to high levels of discontent originating from the Weimar era, and while intertwined together, I think that the cross-influence only amplified the process. This resulted in academia and politics taking up both ideals independently, and simply supported each other in the downward spiral such as antisemitism.

USSR, Russia, and limiting scientific cooperation.

A nice cup of tea on the following day led to some more thinking about other regimes. Like a true ‘Brit’, I took out my teapot and with a cup of Earl Gray in a fancy Whittard porcelain in my hand, I drifted off again into another rabbit hole. This time instead of west, I dug the tunnel east.
An interesting tidbit from my past regards my primary school. The changing rooms in that place had an interesting design. If one were to pay enough attention, they would see a system of grooves in the floors that were meant to act as drainage. Why drain something from an indoor location? The changing room was meant to serve as an emergency field hospital in case of another war. The school turns out to be old enough to see some of the old soviet practices in its design. For those unaware, Poland was part of the Soviet bloc up until 1991. Just 12 years before my birth, and 13 before Poland joined the EU. So let us journey to the east and see what history has to teach us.

Stalin was a dictator, just like his Austrian-German counterpart. What is slightly different is the ideology that shaped the persecution of scientists at the time – a different flavour of extremism. I could go on a rant about what Stalinist flavour of Marxism is, but just like Fascism, there are scholars who spend their lives studying it. I am not one of them.

Nevertheless, the parallels between the corruption of sciences in Fascist Germany and Stalinist USSR are rather staggering for such different ideologies. In Germany, anything considered Jewish or going against the greatness of the Aryan race was immediately cut out, while the rest was bent towards the leading political party’s view. Here it was much the same. The humanist subjects took the largest hit in independence, as those in Germany. Lysenkoism played a role in slowing down the genetics research in the USSR. Instead, what followed was an increase in Lamarckism (acquired characteristics are passed on, rather than typical natural selection). This then, possibly, contributed to agricultural decline, creating another subject of memes for the edgy GenZ.

This also led further to isolation of the scientists. While every now and then they would invite foreign scientists (as Feynman wrote in his letters, and let us be honest, this might have been because of his involvement in Los Alamos) the mingling of Russian scientists with the rest of the world was minimal. Did I forget to mention that geneticists were often executed for not agreeing with Lysenkoism? Science is a global endeavour for a reason. It needs way more manpower than any country alone has. A country can never be a fully independent branch, it will simply lead to a slow withering of progress.

To have a nice circular structure in this section and bring it back to my home: Attitudes can also persist after occupation. The Polish government made some unpopular moves in academia during the time of the PIS party. Polish academia uses a scoring system, where each publication in a journal grants you points. Each point tries to quantify your contribution to a field. So technically a biochemistry paper would give you points in both biology and chemistry. They started awarding more points for papers in Polish journals rather than international ones, alongside some mixing of awarding points in political sciences for publishing theology papers. This may be seen as a slight resurrection of the national pride in sciences which I despise so much (Springer Nature’s journals are always going to be my favourite to skim through).

So what?

My Eurocentric summary of history is probably boring you to death. Let us talk about the US. Trump! The name that makes my hair stand on the back of my neck. The similarity of what is currently happening in the USA really makes me think that history does indeed repeat itself.

Firstly, just like Lysenko and his anti-genetics, Trump decided to elect RFK Jr as the minister of HHS. A well known opponent of vaccines is in a position of hiring and firing researchers. The MAHA (make America healthy again) report included a lot of less-than-optimal healthcare research directions. RFK really believes in a mix of the terrain theory (that the terrain of your body i.e. fitness and nutrition, play THE most important part of your immune system) and miasma theory (covered in a previous article here, but basically a medieval theory on bad air making you sick). There are a whole host of reasons for a person to also point out that a recovering drug addict and brain tapeworm survivor does not make for a great leader for a health agency. To be a devil’s advocate though, he did come up as an environmental lawyer. Additionally, RFK supports removal of fluoride from water and has helped to spread misinformation about vaccines in Africa. He has a very tangible body count and actively harms populations.

Secondly, there are the topics from the headlines in the first section. It is clear that the current administration’s aims are not simply doing science to explore x, but rather confirming x under the guise of science. This is why 75% of scientists that answered Nature’s poll said that they are looking to move out of the USA. Additionally, in a piece by the New York Times, experts in Fascism are also moving away from USA. It is something that is now consequently causing the ‘brain drain’ in the USA and, ironically for an administration that is anti-China, hands over the scientific majority to China. (Whether you think that is good or bad, is up to you. I personally am neutral.) Additionally, the administration has already tried to block Harvard’s ability to admit international students which contribute heavily towards their income stream – all in retaliation for Harvard allowing students to express their right to free speech and protest in favour of Palestine. This is slightly more sneaky than executions and imprisonments. Nevertheless, in a capitalist society, it might be somewhat equivalent when the funding we all depend on goes dry.

Lastly, there is a difference I would like to point out. Regimes like the one above often arose from a dire need for a radical leader and major changes. The current administration is exercising what I would like to call stealth authoritarianism (as coined by Spectacles here). Gone are the days of having posters with long-nosed depictions of minorities that eat children on every street (although the ‘they eat the dogs’ moment was close enough for many). The current US president is using rather specialised and closed off social media to reserve their opinions to their most dedicated followers rather than the general public. We live in the age where the algorithm separates us. It is becoming ever less likely to encounter an opinion we disagree with out in the wild without searching for it. Executions are no longer needed to silence the critics, for as long as you have a devoted fanbase, the infectiousness of the internet can create a potent and numerous enough group to win the election.

The fact that someone can be so overtly against reality, so blatantly corrupt, yet at the same time can feed a mirage to the right people to get elected is the true curse of the modern information landscape. For me personally, it is the main reason why CUSAP and similar societies are more important now than ever before.

What can you do

Every good opinion piece should end with a call to action. I also don’t want this entire blog post to be a long way of saying “AAAA WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!”, because we most likely won’t.

If you are in the USA and courageous enough, protest. It should be easy enough to find one nearby. This is not the main recommendation. Police brutality has already made itself visible in the past month.
What you can do more safely is support local lobbying. Be prepared that democracy is not as accessible as it seems. Genetically modified skeptic has posted their experiences trying to vote down the requirement for schools in Texas to have the 10 Commandments in classrooms. It was not a pleasant experience, but organisation and support for lobbying individuals can go a long way. Even if it means bringing them food and supplies or sitting in to notify them when it is their turn to speak at meetings.
Vaccinate your family against misinformation. The emotions can run high when politics are involved, but perhaps you can connect one bit of their viewpoint to that kernel of truth that may help. My personal jab at right-wing oil enthusiasts is to connect it with their dislike of migration, as this is a likely result of climate change. (Yes, I don’t believe migration is bad, but they do. Sometimes, you have to engage one topic at a time.)
Join a group to lobby and promote critical thinking. Here at CUSAP we try to go beyond Cambridge; thus we welcome articles written by non-members. You can get in touch with us at the https://cusap.org/action/. Youth against misinformation is another one. Plenty more can be found online.
Most importantly, do not shut up. Speak up when you see fake news. Don’t get distracted by trivial problems. Call your local political governors, meet with them, email them. This goes regardless of which party they are associated with. Make sure that they know that the truth is what you support. (It goes without saying, as long as you feel safe to do so)
Lastly, for my own sanity: do not be nihilistic about how little significance one action or vote has. One vote can make a lot of difference when it is surrounded by a couple thousand more singular votes.

Plague doctors were onto something?? (albeit for a wrong reason)

Author: Maya Lopez (Blog Chief Editor)

On June 13th, 1645, George Rae was appointed as a second plague doctor in Edinburgh. This was following the first doctor John Paulitious, who died due to, well, plague. While plague was already an endemic disease in the 17th-century UK, this outbreak was one of the worse ones. The 11th major outbreak in Scotland and over in London, this particular outbreak was also known as the Great Plague of London (albeit the last of this scale, hence the name rather than having the highest death toll than earlier iterations). With the rising death tolls in the city of Edinburgh (which will ultimately culminate in 1000s by the end of this outbreak), it was not particularly surprising that the doctors themselves would die from contracting the plague. Such (increasingly) high-risk jobs naturally saw a salary raise, culminating in a monthly rate of a whopping 100 Scotts a month by the time Dr. Rae was appointed. However, Dr. Rae survived his term, and thus he was only paid his promised salary slowly over the decade after the plague epidemic ceased after negotiation. This is not to say that the city council provided a generous pension after his civil service, but rather the council simply did not have the cash to pay him on the spot because, well, they didn’t expect that he would come out of the pandemic alive! (It is believed Dr. Rae never received his full share in the end.) Is this to say that he was just a lucky soul who had a super immune system? When I heard of this fascinating tale of the man who once walked the narrow streets of Mary King’s Close, Edingburgh, I was extremely fascinated by his secret of survival in a disease where with the bugonic plague, you have roughly 50:50 chance of survival and if it was pnumonic plague, well… it’s nearly always leathal with the treatment options available at the time. So to me, this spoke, he avaded contraction itself – but how? He was actively going out of his way to inspect the sick, and these ultra-narrow, multistoreyed, alley-houses are not what I would call the best example of well ventilated environment. And his most likely secret (of course, it may be that he did have excellent health and an immune system) was no other than the iconic symbol of plague doctors – their outfit.

How they thought you could catch the plague in the 17th century

Let’s go back a step into the 17th-century body of knowledge about plague. At this point, it was already an endemic disease with multiple outbreaks for centuries, so it was not a completely foreign disease in Europe. While by this time, the Renaissance and Enlightenment were slowly recovering the knowledge loss and new knowledge delay throughout out Middle Ages in Europe, a lot of their medical knowledge was still mostly based on classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, which naturally framed how they perceived and viewed the mechanism of the plague. Plague was thought to be spread based on Miasma – an abandoned medical theory where “poisonous air” (often of bad odor) carries the disease. This theory was deeply rooted throughout the Middle Ages and was the predominant theory used to explain outbreaks of various contagious diseases (like cholera, chlamydia, or the Black Death) that occurred prior to the advent of the germ theory. Additionally for plague, this miasma theory was further combined (?) with astrology in 14th centrury France to elaborate on its mechanism, where 1345 conjunction of “hot planets” (apperantly Mars, Saturn and Jupiter…don’t ask me why) in the zodiac sign of Aquarius (a wet-sign!… whatever that means) took place. This supposedly caused unnaturally hot and moist air to blow across Asia toward Europe, leading to the catastrophic Black Death. While I’m not sure if such a cosmos-level mechanism has been described for EVERY plague outbreak, the idea linking it to some sort of bad things coming from pestilent air was the general view on how the disease came to be, and this naturally affects how the disease prevention would be approached.

When it comes to how people thought the plague manifested in our bodies, this explanation was often based on humorism. This is yet another abandoned medical system that originated from ancient Greece and was upheld throughout Europe and the Middle East, nearly consistently for 2000 years, until, again, cellular pathology explained things otherwise. It is a fairly complex system (and I am NOT going to explain the full details today), but essentially, the plague, like many diseases, was thought to be a bodily result of imbalances in the four humors that constituted our bodies. Particularly, the doctors identified that with the bubonic plague, which results in bubo formation (the stereotypical pus-filled swellings) especially around groins, armpits, and neck, and saw this as evidence of the body attempting to expel humors from the nearest major organs. This results in historical treatments that focus on “expelling” these bad humors by bloodletting or diets and lifestyle coaching that will balance the humors (like cold bath + avoiding “hot foods” like garlic and onions (???) apparently). It was also said that some doctors (and religous services?) provided additional service at a fee, which may include potions and pastes, but as far as I can see, by 17th century, more of the “out of the box remedies” like “Vicary Method” (look up with your own disgretion, but it essentially involves somehow transfering the disease to chicken in a rather graphic way, until the person OR the chicken died), seems to have died out of popularity. However, in cases where these measures aren’t enough and bodies are piling up (which unfortunately was often the case with outbreaks), generally the effort was focused on preventative measures rather than treatments. Traditional approaches includes house hold level quartine, routine searches and removal of deceased by council appointed services, smoking of “sweet smelling” herbs to combad the evil sent, banning of public gathering, and cats and dogs were killed (and this we will learn that it may not been just horrible but double further worsen the situation).

How to catch a plague (according to science)

But okay, what REALLY causes the plague, and what do we know of this disease? You might have some vague idea that this has something to do with rats, which is not completely wrong, but the real mechanism is essentially a blood-borne vector disease, which is the pathology lingo to say that it’s a germ-caused illness transmitted through blood. Blood? Well, not necessarily just of humans, but let me draw you a picture, as I heard it on one of my favorite podcasts. One hungry flea jumps onto a rat for a blood meal. But oh, no, this rat has Yersinia pestis (the real culprit bacteria behind the whole massacre) in it! So this bacterium gets into the flea and multiplies in its tiny stomach. Within 3-9 days, this poor little flea, now hungry again but super queasy from overflowing bacteria in its tummy, will try to take another blood bite from a new rat it landed on and ends up throwing up – rat blood and the bacteria – but now in quantities of 11,000-24,000 Y. pestis. Once back in mammals, this parasite is in a different life cycle phase and will enter the lymphatic system, duplicate until it eventually the infection spreads to the bloodstream, to the liver, spleen, and other organs. This bacteria can infect over 200 species, but their primary hosts’ (ie flea’s) primary host like Ratus ratus (sewer/black rats) tend to have mild resistance. This may be allowing for asymptomatic carriers (ie immune system keeps the bacterial duplication/symptoms at bay), and with their relatively high replacement rate, it seems like the natural infections are less of a trouble for these rats. (And see? This is yet another reason why we should’ve kept the cats to keep rats at bay!) However, when the infection happens to humans, the story’s different.

In Homo sapiens for example, the diease can manifest (depending on what type you contract as well) in three ways: bubonic, septicemic, pneumonic. In bubonic plague, following the incubation period of between 1-7 days, the infection spreads to the lymph nodes, leading to the infamous bubos forming – the swellings we discussed earlier that doctors observed that are essentially the incubator full of bacteria and pus. (And yes, this is the one that most people probably imagine the plague to look like on a patient.) With this type, you actually had roughly a 30-60% chance of survival despite the horrendous visual (more on this later). These patients often also experience other symptoms like fever, chills, head and body aches, vomiting, and nausea. Septicemic plague is the version where the bacteria (say those that overflowed from the swelling lymph nodes or a direct flea bite into the bloodstream) enter the bloodstream, resulting in sepsis. Like most sepsis, left untreated, it’s almost certainly lethal, with a mortality of 80% or 90%. And at this stage, as well as the bubos themselves, can result in localized necrosis, where the body tissues usually from the terminal area like fingers, feet, nose, etc, die locally, turning black (hence the name, “Black Death”). This is nasty enough, but the scariest variation is probably the pneumonic plague. This, unlike bubonic plague, does not form the characteristic swellings. Fundamentally, to contract the two earlier variants, the infected blood needs to go into you either via a flea bite or with lots of contact with buboes. But with pneumonic plague, it can also be contracted as an airborne disease. The infection takes place in the lungs, resulting in infectious respiratory droplets that can also be transmitted directly from human to human. Furthermore, while the pneumonic plague patients are said to be most infectious at the end stage of their symptoms, their incubation period is really short – around 24h -, and without modern medical intervention (ie, antibiotics!), the mortality is 100%.

Time to call the plague doctor in their OG hazmat suit

So let’s say you were a poor soul after hearing this story who was sent back in time to the 17th century. You notice having the early symptoms of chills and fever, and the buboes are starting to form (which gurgled even according to some horrific accounts!). Time to call the doctor, but if they don’t know the actual cause and with no antibiotics at hand, what CAN they do for you? Besides, it’s not like you need a diagnosis when it’s pretty clear what you contracted, and you had such a high chance of dying at this rate. As described in the first section, it’s true that what doctors could do to effectively treat an individual is limited; hence plague doctors where sometime even seen more synonimous to caller of death because by the time they comes around, there is a good chance for you to be diagnosed as too late and you’re left waiting to die. However, for the neighbors and for public record keeping, it was still a useful service for you to be identified and your house to be marked with a white flag that this household has succumbed to the plague. In other words, while these plague doctors are called “doctors,” they functioned perhaps more akin to public health workers (which is also not surprising that this is the “pre-med school era”, and the credentials behind the beaked mask often varied). While you suffer with fever, you hear the lucky news that, in fact, Dr. Rae may be just able to offer a treatment (given that it appears to be bubonic plague), aside from all of the humor restorative bloodletting: to lance the buboes. This allows the “poison” to run out, cauterizing shut the cleared wound, thus sealing and disinfecting. This was a high-risk treatment in itself, but you managed to survive.

But then you start to wonder, this guy literally just let the biohazard out all over, and how does he manage to survive facing patient after patient? Despite all my debunking of plague treatment tactics in the previous section, this is where the plague doctors, especially their attire, might have been on to something. Amongst his attire, the mask may have been the most iconic, but potentially the most uncertain piece of historical origin that’s worn. However, if it was worn as seen in mid-1600s drawings, a crow-like beak extending far from the face was filled with “sweet smelling herbs”, intending to fight off the “bad air”. Of course, this doesn’t quite work as they presumed, given that miasma theory was not true. A mask of this sort may have been better than no mask just to give some physical filter, but honestly, the herb-based filtering system is probably not enough to filter out the bacteria of the aerosol droplets coming from pneumonic plague patients (ie, NOT the same standard as modern respirators and clinical masks). The cane that was used to inspect you without touching directly may also have given Rae a social distance measure to “keep away people” (presumably other sick-ish people in streets… while the ethics of that is also dubious, but it was tough times, I guess?). But the real deal is arguable, the REST of the garment. In fact, in Dr. Rae’s time, he may have been pretty upto date in terms of his PPE game given that the first description that fully resembles what we think of as plague doctor costume shows up in the writing of physician to King Louis XIII of France, Charles de Lorme, during the 1619 plague outbreak in Paris. It was announcing his development of a full outfit made of Moroccan goat leather head to toe, including boots, breeches, a long coat, hat, and gloves. The garment was infused with herbs just like the mask (because, of course, miasmas!). Whether the full credit of this now iconic costume should go to Charles de Lorme seems to be subject of debate. However, this leathery suit did one thing right: it prevented flea bites pretty well. So long as you are extra careful with how you handle the taking off of this OG PPE (and don’t breathe in the pneumonic plague patient droplet), you have a pretty functional protection at hand.

A broken clock is right twice a day – nothing more, nothing less –

So it just so happens to be that Dr. Rae unknowingly (though he may have had sufficient faith in his sweet herbs and leather suits) was geared up to protect himself from the actual culprit behind the plague. Naturally, I found this to be an emblematic tale highlighting the importance of the correctness of the supporting facts and the logic of a theory, which is indeed a crux of modern science and academia. This may sound obvious, but it’s an important reminder to those who end up in a pseudoscientific line of knowledge (which could be any of us!): just because some specific outcome of the belief system happens to work, the supposed mechanism behind it is not automatically correct. Clearly, with the germ theory falsifying the miasma theory, the leather hazmat suit cannot be used as evidence to say that the miasma theory is correct: it’s just not letting the flea bite. Conflation of partial truth and correctness of the whole theory is perhaps a philosophical one as well, given that it’s sometimes easy, by human nature, to conflate things that are happening and ought to happen.

But this is also a lesson for pseudoscience skeptic thinkers: just because something was established or mixed in the pseudoscientific rhetoric, the individual practice/claims/results are not automatically entirely false. And this is a moment that we all need to be honest ourselves – have we previously dismissed practice or ideas just due to the way it was presented? Of course, this is not to say that we should actively praise every single little kernel of truth mixed in the pseudoscience rhetoric, which may inevitably be overly assigned credibility. Heck, in fact, the mixing kernel of truth is indeed a tactic a “sciencey writers” can employ as well. However, if we decide everything is pseudoscientific based on when/who/where/or the context rather than the content, isn’t this attitude in the very nature of pseudoscience, where we are letting our preexisting notions and biases determine our lens to view “truth”? So instead of praising individual kernels of truth, let’s acknowledge them as what they are; that is correct; but in the same breath we should be able to say: but doesn’t mean the rest is correct because of blank or it’s not tested. This is an intentional communication that indeed requires more effort, and if done wrongly, it may still give the same dismissive debunking effect, which could spiral pseudoscientific believers into more pseudoscience. Therefore, let us practice this fine-resolution distinction of science and pseudoscience and use this to PIVOT the conversations, so that we can invite everyone in the conversation to a factual exploration of intellectual curiosity (instead of saying like “medieval doctors had no clues about bacteria (indeed), so they did everything wrong (see the issue here?).”

And after all, it is important to acknowledge the intention behind some of the pseudoscience/outdated knowledge. It’s not always from malicious intent, unlike some disinformation where one can or DOES actually know better, which should be tackled with fury than these plague scenarios. For example, this miasma theory in a large sense can still be seen as an attempt to conceptualize contagious disease – it was a protective and survival instinct justified with a set of logic back then, and rotting smell is probably a bad sign anyway. Humorism (which is bona fide pseudoscience in modern medicine) was also wrong and largely unscientific, but it was perhaps an attempt to reconsider nutrition and hygiene practices. So they are wrong, but people were trying to survive, and especially when modern scientific investigation tactics and tools were unavailable, I find something beautiful in humanity still managing to land on “tried n true method” with some kernel of truth that inevitably did protect lives, with many missteps along the way which cost lives. It is a history of H. sapiens grappling for truth for survival. Acknowledge, and then further explore: but now we know more about these pesky diseases, and we even know why some parts were wrong, while why some parts were right! So keep thinking, keep asking, and keep talking, and don’t be too scared about correcting or being corrected; and let us all appreciate our inner scientists and our desire to just approach the truth. And of course, don’t forget to wear adequate PPE (maybe not a leather mask and suits in this day and age) when you are a bit under the weather and you want to keep your friends safe. Let the fresh air in and ventilate; maybe not to clear our miasma, but to circulate air and keep virulent particles away. And like my favorite podcast always says, “Wash your hands; Ya filthy animals!” 😉

Recommended Listen/Watch:

Amazing podcast series by two scientists: Erin and Erin. This episode is a major source of the historical and biological information in this article:

https://thispodcastwillkillyou.com/2018/02/10/episode-5-plague-part-1-the-gmoat/

Something shorter and eye-catching? This video will probably give you a big appreciation of all the illnesses our ancestors were often combating and we’re pretty lucky to not have to face them as much or at all! (It can get visually horrific, so please watch with caution.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WL5jy2Qa8I

Fiscal Cakeism

Author: Andreas Kapounek (Treasurer and Sponsorships officer)

There are different ways to increase government revenue (a non-complete list):

Tax more
Grow the economy so the same percentage of tax leads to more revenue
Borrow more

Nevertheless, it often seems like politicians neglect the economic realities that trade-offs between these three streams pose.

Tax more? You run the threat of depressing economic growth (as you reduce the incentives to start or expand a business). This means you may end up with less revenue than with the previous, lower, tax burden. This becomes clear in the limit: in the extreme, a 100% income tax would remove any economic (!) incentive to pursue a job, likely leading to the loss of most jobs.

Borrow more? If the markets are led to believe that the government may not be as likely to pay back all of this larger amount of debt than they owed previously, they will ask the government to pay larger risk premiums to lend money to the government. In practice this means that the government will have to pay higher yields on government bonds, as perfectly illustrated by the recent hike in German “Bund” borrowing costs in response to the announcement to moderate the German debt brake to increase defense spending.

Paradoxically, the interplay between taxation and borrowing is what stumped some recent British governments: If you promise to cut taxes and keep expenditure the same, people will assume that you must borrow the difference, driving up borrowing costs. At the same time, if you promise to keep taxes the same but spend more, people will equally assume that you will have to borrow the difference.

So having explored the interplay between taxation and growth, we are left with one more way to fund expenditure: government debt. As the famous (well, in Austria at least) Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky said: “And when someone asks me what I think about debt, I tell them what I always say: that a few billion more in debt gives me fewer sleepless nights than a few hundred thousand unemployed people!” I believe most people agree with that statement in principle!

So why can more borrowing be bad? Borrowing can have adverse consequences, because it affects anyone in the country with debt. For example, it drives up the cost of mortgage repayments. Furthermore, it increases the cost of future government debt, making it harder (for example) to raise capital for urgent infrastructure repairs when needed. Or as John F. Kennedy (who might be more familiar to many readers of this blog than Bruno Kreisky) said, when advertising for more spending in economically robust times: “the time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”

All sides of the political landscape seem to appreciate these concepts when convenient but forget about them and selectively moralize these principles when not. At face value, it can be hard to see a necessary connection between economic policy and political philosophy. Believing that more borrowing without the matching growth expectations or unfunded tax cuts drive up the cost of debt (bond yields) is neither right-wing, left-wing, libertarian, capitalist, communist, or centrist: it is the best model of reality we currently have.

Least understandable about these moralist views on economics is that it seems as if we broadly agree on the goals we pursue in our economies: There is broad agreement that (other things being equal) more wealth is better than less wealth, better living standards are better than worse living standards, and a more equal income distribution is better than a less equal income distribution. I would broadly call these shared goals “good stuff”. Now, of course, there can be fervent arguments about the relative importance of these goals and this may be a legitimate driver of ideological differences. But surely, we should be opposed to any policy reducing all three and support policies improving all three goals.

There is strikingly much less political agreement on the goals pursued through social policy (people legitimately debate whether a more progressive or more conservative set of values is “better”). On contentious social issues such as reproductive rights, gun control, or school uniforms, people who differ in their political views often do not share a common set of policy goals.

But back to fiscal policy. What I would argue for, is a more honest approach to fiscal policy. It is perfectly legitimate to want to increase public services and equally legitimate to want to cut taxes if one has evidence that either measure may contribute to a more prosperous economy – but on this issue we really cannot have our cake and eat it.

The discussion above has largely focused on taxing and borrowing, but has broadly neglected the size of the economy. To stay with our ill-fitting cake metaphor – perhaps, if we just grow the cake, there will be some to have and some to eat? There is! But growing the economy is hard and getting harder.

As our advanced economies have matured over the second half of the 20^th century into the 21^st, the technological advances required to support high growth have increased. While it may have been really fruitful to build the Channel Tunnel it would add almost no utility to the European economy to now dig another one. Inventing the iPhone added great value to the economy but “inventing” the iPhone 367 might only marginally grow GDP and living standards. This is also why China is outgrowing the West but is not projected to catch up in per capita terms anytime soon – as they approach the Western level, their growth rates are expected to flatline too. AI might change this logic – but for now, the iron logic of marginal returns is tightening its screws on economic progress.

We should and can be honest about this – in some way, we can even be proud of this. Never in the history of humankind has there been a better time to be alive than today and it is objectively hard to improve the current situation quickly.

There is hope: We are not in the dark about our progress. Economists have spent decades putting the concepts so amateurishly (and in an oversimplified way) articulated by me in this blog into formulas. These formulas do not quite have the predictive power of Newtonian physics (Einstein did away with that anyways!), and acting as if they were a perfect description of the world can be dangerous. While the mathematical modelling underlying classical economics is fantastically rigorous, many concepts have not been experimentally validated (but this topic may need to wait for another blog post). Furthermore, in no way should this blog post diminish alternatives to current economic theories when these alternative descriptions of the economy are model based, yield testable predictions, and these predictions turn out to be true when tested: in fact, I would argue one should be agnostic to dogma and ideology, and focused solely on accurately describing reality, making sure to update beliefs when new evidence arises. Progress should be guided by the scientific method and controlled experiments where possible – if someone serves a piece of cake to 1000 participants, which all proceed to have it and eat it, I might have to find new metaphors. Nevertheless, most current models are performing much better than random guessing at forecasting developments in our economy and are our best available tool to shape policy.

Therefore, we do have means to make educated guesses about which policies may increase “good stuff” and which policies may decrease “good stuff”. Maximizing “good stuff” should guide our fiscal, monetary and economic policy – and nothing else.

Therefore, we should:

Improve and verify our methods to forecast “good stuff” and create policies accordingly
Apply these policies
Measure the effects and adjust policies accordingly

The Scientific Method Is Western Biased?

Author¹: Isha Harris(Co-President)

This week we had a lecture titled Decolonising Global Health. The premise was that modern medicine is a colonial artefact, as is science as a whole. Western philosophers pioneered ideas of objectivism and empiricism, and in doing so marginalised traditional and indigenous forms of knowledge. The lecturer explained how coloniality of knowledge is wielded by the descendents of colonisers, and we are facing an epistemicide as indigenous and alternative forms of knowledge are discredited. The lecturer described medicine as the most cruel outcome of the colonisation of knowledge, and expressed regret that medical knowledge is centred around empiricism and positivism. She then posited some solutions for medical schools, including:

Consider indigenous and traditional healing practices as equal or superior to western medicine
Question the use of hospitals, suggesting we don’t need to practise medicine in these colonial settings
Accept degrees in traditional medicine as valid accreditation to practise medicine in all parts of the world
Use dreams as a diagnostic tool

I will preface by saying that I absolutely think science has a murky, colonial past, and lot to answer for throughout history. Exploitation and unethical experimentation have been all too common, and it’s quite unsurprising that science has lost the trust of many minority groups. Some particular examples include Henrietta Lacks, the namesake of HeLa cells, James Marion Sims’ gynaecology experiments on enslaved black women, and Nazi experiments during the holocaust. Science is not perfect, and we are right to continue questioning its practice to this day. At least, science as an institution.

But science as a method is independent of the shortcomings of the past. Science is simply the process of testing your ideas by observing the world, and updating them when the evidence conflicts. We are all scientists when we look at the window and decide whether to bring an umbrella; when we smell milk to check if it’s gone off.

Scientific thinking has existed, in all parts of the world, for millennia. If a cavemen was told that this patch of berries is safe to eat, they’d sure as hell want you to give you some evidence before eating them. If I claim that your spouse is cheating on you, you’re going to ask me to prove it, whether you live in the West or East, now or in 3000 BC. It just so happened that it was the Western Enlightenment philosophers who formalised it using big words like hypothesis.

In my view, to claim that the scientific method is western biased is intensely patronising, and actually quite racist. It is to say that non-Westerners simply cannot comprehend the concept of testing your ideas with evidence, that they were left behind after the enlightenment, stuck in the dark ages of folklore and conspiracy. And this is absolutely not true! The developing world does some incredible science, and is really leading the way in certain fields such as palaeontology, infectious disease, and epidemiology. Africa for example boasts some pretty impressive institutions, such as the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust, and the Evolutionary Studies Institute. I wonder what the great scientists working in these faculties would make of my lecturer’s great claim?

More broadly, the concept of ‘alternative forms of knowledge’ as a whole just seems vastly unserious. Epistemological relativism, where knowledge is seen as context dependent and equally valid regardless of empirical support, is ridiculous at best, and dangerous at worst. It threatens the great progress that the developing world is seeing, thanks to improved technology, agriculture and healthcare. It risks romanticising cruel practices, such as female genital mutilation, simply by virtue of them being indigenous. And to teach Cambridge medical students that these forms of knowledge are equivalent to evidence based practice is dangerous. If the students took this lecture seriously, we wouldn’t question a patient when they opted for herbal remedies over chemotherapy. Because all forms of knowledge are equivalent, right? Surely the cancer cells understand that!

All knowledge should be critically assessed, and subject to strict empirical standards. As it stands, science has the most demonstrable impact on wellbeing, so it is the knowledge-form we opt for. Of course, if I am presented with some new evidence showing that an alternative way of knowing in fact leads to a more effective discovery of the truth, then I will gladly reconsider my position, like any good scientist. But until that day, let us spread the wonders of modern science far and wide, uplift the developing world to enjoy its rich rewards, and support their great efforts in practising it themselves.

This article was originally posted on Co-President’s personal blog and adapted for publication here for CUSAP. ↩︎

Unpacking Immigration Misinformation in The 2024 Elections: Claims, Facts, and Psychological Influence

Author: Leila Yukou Lai (Speakers and Academics Officer)

During the 2024 elections in both the UK and the US, immigration emerged as a prominent issue in political campaigns. Figures like Farage claimed that,

“Mass immigration is making Britain poorer……. half of the immigrants coming to the UK are dependents who do not work”

“We need to prepare for Channel migrant ‘invasion’ from countries ‘with terrorism, gang culture and war zones”

“Immigrants are causing divisions in communities and have made the UK unrecognisable”

Similarly, Trump’s campaigns included assertions such as,

“We have more terrorists coming into our country now than we’ve ever had – ever in history, and this is a bad thing. We have thousands of terrorists coming into our country”

“They are eating the cats and dogs”

“They are taking away your jobs”

Some of these statements are partial truths, while others are false information. This article will fact-check the prominent immigration-related claims from the 2024 elections. We will examine how political campaigns leverage concerns like economic threats, national security fears, and cultural anxieties to create sensationalised perceptions of immigration that shape public discourse in ways often misaligned with the underlying realities of the issues. Additionally, we will examine the psychological roots and impacts of immigration narratives.

We will further discuss practical strategies for addressing and countering such narratives in everyday life in our Feb 4th Event, so please register to join if it interests you.

Fact-Checking Prominent Claims & The Psychological Roots

Economic Threats

Claim	Facts
“Mass immigration is making Britain poor……half of those that have come aren’t coming to work, they’re coming as dependants”Farage	The former part of the claim can be debunked by research led by Professor Dustmann from UCL, which found that immigrants to the UK, particularly those from the EEA and post-2004 EU accession states, made significant positive fiscal contributions, with EEA immigrants contributing 34% more in taxes than they received in benefits and recent EU immigrants adding £20 billion to the public purse. In contrast, UK natives’ tax payments fell 11% short of the benefits they received, resulting in a net cost of £617 billion. The latter part of the claim is partially accurate. The inaccuracy lies in the overall visa statistics, as only one-third of visas issued (all types) in the most recent reporting period were for dependents. However, regarding work visas specifically, he is almost correct—43% were dependents. Nevertheless, he omitted the fact that these dependents are ineligible for benefits but allowed to work, positioning them to potentially contribute to the economy rather than becoming a burden which he falsely implies.
“Immigrants are taking away your jobs”Trump	This claim can be debunked by insights from Economics research and experts. Firstly, economists from the Brookings Institution suggest that immigrants often fill labor-intensive positions, such as gutting fish or working in farm fields, which are typically shunned by native-born workers. This suggests that immigrants are not necessarily competing for the same jobs as the majority of American workers. In addition, analyses from the US National Bureau of Economic Research (2024) reports that immigration does not significantly drive down wages for American workers overall. Building on this, it’s noteworthy that, although immigrants represent around 15 percent of the general U.S. workforce, they account for about a quarter of the country’s entrepreneurs and inventors, according to Harvard Business Review. By creating new businesses and innovations, immigrants contribute to job creation and economic growth, further undermining the notion that they simply displace American workers.

National Security Threats

Claim	Facts
“We have more terrorists coming into our country now than we’ve ever had – ever in history, and this is a bad thing. We have thousands of terrorists coming into our country” Trump	This claim implies more terrorists have entered the US under the Biden ministration, which is misleading. Data from U.S Department of Homeland Security indicates that the actual number of individuals on the terrorist watchlist caught at the border is in the hundreds (139 at the southern border and 283 at the northern border as of July 2023), not the thousands as Trump claimed. Furthermore, since the 2021 fiscal year (the beginning of the Biden administration), the number of individuals on the U.S. government’s terrorist watchlist apprehended at the borders has increased each year. This trend indicates that border screening measures have become more rigorous, rather than more lenient as Trump suggested.
“We need to prepare for Channel migrant ‘invasion’ from countries ‘with terrorism, gang culture and war zones”Farage	While it is true that the top foreign nationals involved in UK terror-related offenses from 2002 to 2021 were people from Algeria, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, Somalia, India, and Sri Lanka, it is important to note that these offenses represent a small fraction of their respective communities in the UK. In the year ending 30 September 2024, the highest number of terrorist crimes were still conducted by UK nationals and those who are ethnically White, according to data from the Home Office. Research published in the British Journal of Political Science shows there is little evidence indicating more migration unconditionally leads to more terrorist activity, especially in Western countries.

Cultural Anxieties

Claim	Facts
“Immigrants are causing divisions in communities and have made the UK unrecognisable”Farage	Concerns about cultural identity are rather subjective and difficult to address purely with data. However, Farage’s claim can still be challenged, a review conducted by the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford, which concludes that higher ethnic diversity in UK localities does not consistently correlate with higher social tension. Instead, local economic factors (e.g., unemployment, funding for public services) are more predictive of community conflict. Therefore, this claim of immigration undermining social cohesion lacks credibility.
“In Springfields, they are eating the cats and dogs”Trump	This claim was fostered by a comment made by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who later admitted in an interview with CNN that he was willing to “create stories” to get his message across. According to state officials from Ohio, even Republican leader Mike Dewine, there is no credible evidence to support the rumor that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are stealing or eating pets. Local law enforcement and animal control records do not reflect any such incidents, and no verified reports exist.

Sensationalised Language, Psychological Impact of Immigration Narratives

Having clarified the relevant facts, let’s now examine the linguistic choice employed by conservative leaders in their claims about immigration. Even if some of their claims are partially correct, it is undeniable that the statements are highly sensationalised and crafted to elicit strong emotional responses. This dynamic was evident in Ohio, where baseless allegations about the Haitian community in Springfield eating pets triggered public panic and a wave of hoax bomb threats. Similarly, in England, false narratives claiming that an asylum seeker was the perpetrator of a knife attack in Southport, though not directly linked to Farage’s claims, led to widespread riots spanning from Plymouth to Sunderland.

One reason such rhetoric remains effective is its reliance on several psychological phenomena, including in-group/out-group biases and the negativity bias. For instance, using language like “invasion”, Farage portrays migrants as an external force poised to disrupt national order, framing the situation in a way that elicits anxiety and heightens threat perception. This framing aligns with Social Identity Theory, whereby the in-group (domestic population) feels compelled to defend itself against the out-group (immigrants). Similarly, when Trump claims immigrants are “taking away your jobs” or there are “thousands of terrorists coming into our country”, he is tapping into the negativity bias which refers to the human tendency to pay more attention to, and be more influenced by, negative or threatening information than by neutral or positive details. These emotional depictions overshadow data indicating, for instance, the benefits that immigration brings to local economies or that instances of immigrant-linked terrorism are statistically rare.

In addition, repeated exposure to a single narrative can increase people’s belief in its accuracy, even when that information is demonstrably false. Therefore, simply by the virtue of repetition, political campaigns can embed the same message into public consciousness without necessarily adhering to factual accuracy. As a result, it is challenging for data-driven clarifications about immigration to break through the emotional impact of sensational rhetoric. Nonetheless, recognising these psychological levers is a crucial step toward fostering more nuanced, evidence-based discussions on immigration, rather than allowing panic and misinformation to drive policy and public sentiment.

Susceptibility to Immigration Misinformation

Research suggests that individuals with higher levels of ethnic moral disengagement are more likely to believe in racial hoaxes. Moral disengagement occurs when an individual justifies or rationalises harmful beliefs or behaviours, often by dehumanising out-groups or reframing actions as morally acceptable. This cognitive process allows individuals to convince themselves that commonly accepted ethical standards don’t apply to them, hindering their empathetic capacity, especially toward marginalised groups. Such tendencies are often linked to authoritarian worldviews, which favor strict hierarchies and resist social change, making these individuals particularly susceptible to immigration misinformation.

Our speakers for the upcoming event, Dr. Tessa Buchanan and Malia Marks, have both conducted research on the relationship between authoritarian tendencies and susceptibility to immigration misinformation, and they will share their findings with us further at the event. Their insights will not only shed light on the psychological dynamics of misinformation but also equip us with tools to critically assess narratives surrounding immigration. We invite you to join us on Feb 5th at the Queen’s College, Cambridge for a fruitful discussion.

Campaign Catch-22: Why Election Campaigns Fail at Changing Minds

Author: Mohith M. Varma (Social Secretary)

U. S. election campaigns rank among the most expensive in the world. Even with vast investment in advertisements, rallies, and canvassing, election outcomes often depend on just a few battleground states, while most American states grip firmly onto a given political direction. Why does this happen? Why is it that, despite billions of dollars spent to induce a shift in how people think, voters often appear to have already made their minds up and refuse to budge?

At the heart of this mystery lies a possible contributor: an evolutionarily acquired aspect of human nature that may have once served us well. Consider our ancestors in the time that survival hinges on the swift choice. If you were part of a small tribe and a sudden threat approached-say, a wild animal or a rival group, quickly sticking to a decision could be the difference between life and death. Doubt, hesitation, or second-guessing could have catastrophic consequences. The inclination to accept initial judgments and avoid uncertainty— this tendency is so practically adaptive that it became an evolutionary imperative for survival.

In modern life, this psychological wiring still affects us. We are predisposed to defend once a decision has been made about a potential candidate or political position. Changing views may, at times, feel like admitting to a prior mistake and can feel uncomfortable too. When presented with evidence that contradicts our beliefs, it is very uncomfortable, especially if those beliefs are tied to our identity and social ties. This leads to confirmation bias, which is essentially the tendency to find only evidence that backs previously held views rather than evidence that may contradict them. If you have already made up your mind that the candidate is not a good fit, you are likely to disregard any evidence pointing in the opposite direction.

People, in a polarized political climate, often surround themselves with similar minded people and maintain those beliefs instead of questioning them. This is even magnified further in the age of social media. We select which information to see in our news feeds (this effect is further amplified by social media algorithms), we add friends with who we agree, and we go to groups that hold true to what we now know to be true. This leads to an echo chamber, in which the alternative views are not only ignored, but often actively discredited. Hence, despite vast sums of money spent on campaign ads, the impact may be small. In fact, it is known that the more people are exposed to information that challenges their opinions, the more those existing opinions can harden. It is known as the backfire effect. In other words, the more forcefully a campaign seeks to change the person’s opinion, the more entrenched they may become.

Moreover, identity politics is another aspect that cannot be sidestepped. It’s more and more part of people’s identities to associate with a particular party today. The political gap today is not just one where both sides have different policies but one where both belong to bigger cultural movements. For many, the thought of changing sides is seen as abandoning some greater group within society and can be quite uncomfortable. In fact, billions of dollars to run presidential campaigns are not just about swaying minds but galvanizing the base. In states that are reliably red or blue, campaigns may basically be about maintaining each front in turn, sustaining level of support, and ensuring turnout.

This brings us to: What can be done to help people break free from these entrenched positions? How can we encourage more thoughtful decision-making among voters?

Fostering open-mindedness is an important first step. When people feel appreciated and understood, they are more likely to change their beliefs. We need to establish forums for genuine dialogue rather than merely criticizing the other side or denigrating those who hold different opinions. Listening to others without judgment and understanding their concerns can help bridge the divide, making it easier for people to reassess their views. This reflective form of empathy can result in better, more nuanced decisions. Whereas interactions that devolve into personal attacks—common in polarized debates broadcast on news channels and even on social media posts—tend to reinforce divisions rather than promote reflection or change.

Misinformation is one of the main factors that strengthens deeply entrenched views. News and social media can form echo chambers where users opt to see content only confirming their beliefs. Campaigns could do more to directly address misinformation by promoting fact-checking initiatives, partnering with trusted sources, and encouraging voters to seek reliable, evidence-based information. Another way to prevent the spread of misleading or deceptive narratives is to be transparent about campaign messaging, such as clearly stating the source and backing for policy proposals.

Lastly, we need to invest in an informed electorate. Voter fatigue resulting from the sheer volume of political commercials and messages can lead some people to refrain from participation or withdraw from participation. Campaigns are most effectively optimized by including information in the materials on the concrete issues in question, as opposed to techniques based on negative advertising or politically driven narratives.

Although these solutions may appear idealistic, they undeniably do not lie in a realm of impossibility. The art of any successful implementation of a solution will be in enduring effort. In this sense, such approaches are not sensation-grabbing, but instead will require a generation-long, systemic change in the cultural drive toward the making of an informed, participatory, and more reflective voter. It is going to take time, resources, and effort, but if the right strategies are put in place, change is not only feasible-it is critical for a healthier, more effective democracy.

Society’s Acceptable Misinformation

Author: Barty Wardell (Co-President)

After a year of hiatus, we are planning on using this blog more regularly so do stay posted!

I wanted to write about misinformation, and how misinformation is itself mischaracterised. Many people have heard about the corrosive effects of misinformation, mostly because the propagation of anti-vax ideology has shown how quickly distrust can spread – and how demonstrably harmful mistrust can be. Many others have written much better than I am able to about this specific phenomenon and its social and psychological context, so if you are interested I would direct (for the purposes of this post) you elsewhere. However, there are some things I believe deserve some greater attention.

I had a significant mindset shift after speaking to a friend who I saw at New Year. They had been sharing a post about LFT swabbing from the i newspaper, long before there was any consistent data on whether or not it made LFTs more effective. The article itself consisted of two epidemiologists posting to their personal twitter accounts merely highlighting that it was a possibility LFT swabs should be changed, with both stating their evidence as anecdotal. The i had then re-packaged this as worthy of scientific or public attention, leading my friend to share it.

I was irked by this, because I thought both the newspaper, and my friend who has a science degree, should know better than to share what is clearly conjecture. Their rebuttal was to the effect that no social harm was done, which is of course superficially true before first exposure (anchoring) bias is accounted for, or the fact that it conditions people to accept similarly low standards of information in the future. Furthermore, it elicits trust in the sharer of the information, who is likely to repeat the damage in the future. The fact was they were simply trying to be Covid secure, but it is not what surprised me – what surprised me was that the others there agreed it was not robust, but also saw no damage from sharing it.

This sits in a wide array of what I call “Acceptable Misinformation”, which is socially acceptable to support, discuss and share, but is known widely to be misinformation. This can be seen as the difference between anti-vax, which produces a strong rejection by most when mentioned in conversation, and ill-researched dietary advice or beauty tips, which might be causally shared by friends. An easy explanation to this is that one does great amounts of societal damage while the other one can certainly be described as harmful but mostly less so. While this is true, it ignores the fact that the psychological reality that as you start to question information less, the easier it becomes for you to believe increasingly invalid sources. There is also the fact that the same online spaces that share this low grade misinformation also contain links or articles to more damaging pseudoscience.

We all have our own unique experiences, full of events which colour and warp our perception. What is key to realise is that we all spread this “Acceptable Misinformation”, from questionable historical facts to home cleaning solutions – we will repeat this information without worry most of our lives. The critical realisation of this, is that as a result we are already primed to accept worse conspiracies than the mild ones we already hold dear, we are all susceptible to misinformation. I feel this should shock many into re-estimating the damage of misinformation, and to hold some more sympathy for those who do fall further into conspiracy belief than perhaps the rest.

Using Critical Thinking to Build Resilience Against Misinformation Professor – Prof. John Cook

We welcomed Professor John Cook, Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, for our first presentation of Lent term. Prof. Cook has built on decades of research into inoculation theory in the field of behavioural psychology, and in his talk, discussed how this may be applied to climate change denial.

His talk, titled “Using Critical Thinking to Build Resilience Against Misinformation”, delved into his research into inoculation theory, a suggested framework for stopping the spread of misinformation.

The key feature of inoculation theory is that it exposes people to a “weakened form” of misinformation. A warning is displayed before the misinformation is shown and this is then followed by an explanation of the relevant counter-arguments. The aim of this technique is to train people to recognise the overarching characteristics of science denial when they encounter misinformation in day-to-day life. Professor Cook groups these practices into a set of five main characteristics:

Fake experts: The practice of presenting an unqualified person or institution as a source of credible, expert information.
Logical fallacies: When the assumptions of an argument do not lead to the conclusion.
Impossible expectations: The act of demanding unrealistic standards of certainty before acting on science, when science can never give absolute certainty on any finding.
Cherry picking: When data are carefully selected to appear to confirm one position while ignoring other data that contradict that position.
Conspiracy theories: When it is assumed that that there is a scheme planned by those with nefarious intent, without sufficient evidence to support this.

One of the highlights of this talk was the discussion of parallel argumentation – a method used effectively to demonstrate the ways in which misinformation is logically untrue. This process involves transplanting the flawed logic used by a piece of misinformation to another scenario, showing the absurdity of the logic. An example can be seen in Professor Cook’s comic strip below.

*CrankyUncle comic depicting parallel augmentation.*

Prof. Cook goes on to discuss the challenges faced combating misinformation and suggests psychological and behavioural reasons for the spread of misinformation in today’s society.

The “Cranky Uncle” app, developed by Prof. Cook, presents a possible solution to these problems. It hosts a game that teaches players about misinformation and encourages competition, to be the best at spotting it. Prof. Cook believes this app has the potential to break into echo chambers and teach critical thinking skills to children, if it were implemented in a school setting.

CUSAP is grateful to Professor Cook for joining us to share his fascinating research and innovative solutions to the global problem of misinformation. The practical application of inoculation theory demonstrates a way in which the spread of misinformation and pseudoscience can be countered and suggests we all have a role to play in inoculating ourselves and others.

Eilidh Hughes | Climate Change Awareness Officer, Students Against Pseudoscience