This week's science stories prove that statistics can be meaningless and humans are disturbingly obedient. Spurious correlations like margarine predicting Maine divorces and Will Smith movies matching Kosovo electricity are hilarious reminders not to trust numbers at face value. Meanwhile, new research validates Milgram's obedience experiments - ordinary people really will electrocute strangers just because someone in a lab coat tells them to.
NASA's Mars rover might have found ancient microbial life while humans plan red planet vacations, and this year's satirical Ig Nobel prizes celebrated seemingly ridiculous research that often reveals genuine insights - like 35 years of fingernail growth studies or painting cows as zebras to repel flies. Most remarkably, scientists observed mice performing what looks like CPR on unconscious buddies, licking faces and manipulating airways like tiny paramedics.
From meaningless correlations to authority-induced cruelty and rodent emergency medicine, science keeps serving up combinations of absurd, terrifying and adorable discoveries that prove reality has a seriously twisted sense of humor. At least when the robot uprising comes, we'll have trained mice to perform CPR on the survivors.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
01:47 Autism and Paracetamol Controversy
08:26 Spurious Correlations
13:33 Milgram's Obedience to Authority
23:50 Fascism and Authority
27:11 Mars Rover Perseverance
28:55 Exploring Martian Rocks for Signs of Life
29:22 Perseverance's Advanced Chemical Analysis Tools
29:41 Potential Evidence of Microbial Life on Mars
30:28 Challenges in Proving Biological Origins
31:10 NASA's Perseverance Project and Its Implications
33:38 Mars Sample Return Mission
36:20 The IG Nobel Prizes: Celebrating Unusual Science
37:03 Notable IG Nobel Prize Winners
44:23 Mice Performing CPR: A Surprising Discovery
48:41 Conclusion
SOURCES:
Jesus on toast and baby-poop sausages: 2014 Ig Nobel Prizes
Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate pizza-eating lizards, drunk bats and garlic-flavoured breast milk
Teflon diet, garlic milk and zebra cows triumph at 2025 Ig Nobel prizes
Mouse-to-Mouse Resuscitation: Rodents Try to Revive Unconscious Buddies
True believers: The incredulity hypothesis and the enduring legacy of the obedience experiments
Milgram’s Infamous Shock Studies Still Hold Lessons for Confronting Authoritarianism
The U.S. government has jumped the public health shark
NASA Says Mars Rover Discovered Potential Biosignature Last Year
Redox-driven mineral and organic associations in Jezero Crater, Mars
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