Technology

MIND CONTROL:

The surprising science of how focusing your attention may fight inflammation (Richard Sima, 9/08/26, Washington Post)

The study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, suggests that our brain and attention may change how our immune system responds to inflammation. When people tried to distract themselves from an itch, it caused the inflammation — as measured by redness and swelling of the skin — to grow larger in size and last longer than if they focused their attention on it.

The research adds to growing evidence that the brain and the immune system — long thought to be relatively separate and distinct from each other — actually have an intimate relationship. Dysfunctional immune activity and inflammation have been linked to several psychiatric and neurological disorders, including schizophrenia, depression, long covid and dementia. In fact, recent research has found that our brains may trigger an immune response even from seeing someone who looks as though they might have an infectious condition.

BEING REDUCTIVE IS APPROPRIATE:

Talking cures: A psychologist chronicles an evolving profession (Nick Haslam, 4 September 2026, Inside Story)

Without being reductive, Ayan shows how the temperament of therapy’s pioneering thinkers manifests in their preferred approach to treatment. The tough-minded advocate rigour, the tender-minded heal with empathy, conservatives tighten up their patients and radicals loosen them down.

IT’S LONG COVID:

Monkey-Man Mystery Explained (Tuhin Singh, September 2, 2026, Skeptic)

Pareidolia also has a higher chance of occurring when individuals are isolated, and thus under high amounts of stress. Deprivation, whether of food, or oxygen, or even shelter, can exacerbate symptoms, as we are forced to look around more for external support, or to fear that which we cannot see. Interestingly, pareidolia is affected by cultural contexts. If one sees a monkey-like creature for example, whether it is naked or clothed, whether it can speak or not, whether it is malevolent or benevolent, is decided by the social-cultural environment in which the brain has been conditioned.

Another aspect to keep in mind is that instances of pareidolia are self-reinforcing. Once a creature gets spotted, the reports of its sighting get implanted in the minds of other observers, who may thus end up seeing the creature themselves, even if they didn’t believe in the initial reporting and dismissed it as a hoax. The mere implantation of an idea is incredibly impactful upon an impressionable, desperate, and lonesome individual, and has led to multiple cases of mass hysteria, or more technically, Mass Psychogenic Illness (MPI). Pareidolia is one of the most fascinating cases of our minds misconstruing things because we always see creatures that are almost human enough, but lie right in the uncanny valley of uncomfortable recognition. Isolated from society, we wish to see figures similar to ours, but something always feels awry.

HAVANA SYNDROME FOR NON-DIPLOMATS:

For Many Americans, Covid Is Still a Chronic, Disabling Disease. These Scientists Are Working Tirelessly to Bring Them Relief (Mike Mariani, September/October 2026, Smithsonian)

The PLRC and other like-minded groups have outlined more than 200 associated symptoms, including fatigue, muscle weakness, joint pain, sore throat, insomnia, difficulty concentrating, memory issues and post-­exertional malaise…

At least pretend it’s physical.

IT’S QUACKERY:

An Insider’s Look at What Happened When Chiropractic Was Evaluated Scientifically, and Why No One Remembers (J. Michael Menke, August 27, 2026, Skeptic)

During the 1980s and 1990s chiropractic researchers launched clinical trials, comparative-effectiveness studies, and collaborations with universities and medical centers.

Then, the larger, better-designed studies made the clinical picture go soft. Patients improved—sometimes substantially—but the improvement proved stubbornly hard to pin on manipulation. Natural history, spontaneous recovery, reassurance, exercise, attention, expectancy, and plain contextual healing kept blurring the causal thresholds.2 Manipulation generally performed about as well as any other conservative care including placebo, and when superior, it closely tracked the false positive rate expected under null hypothesis significance testing.3, 4 In fact, to this day you will see chiropractic research conclusions proudly assert that manipulation is no less effective than other treatments for low back pain, including controls—a damnation by faint self-praise.

The problem was not only scientific but psychological, cultural, and institutional, which is why supporters and critics could read the same trials as Rorschach blots and come away convinced of opposite conclusions. When one body of evidence underwrites both conclusions, the fault is rarely bias; more often the evidence was never built to answer the question asked of it.5 The remedy is unglamorous: decide in advance which single measure could settle the question, weigh several rival hypotheses at once,6 and recognize when further information can no longer move the decision.7 In short: name in advance the result that would change your mind. Chiropractic, though, thrived in the ambiguity. When outcomes were positive, manipulation worked; when they were negative, prejudice or incompetence was clearly afoot.

So the center of gravity in chiropractic research quietly retreated from the awkward clinical effectiveness question, towards safer, fundable territory: biomechanics, sensorimotor physiology, adverse-event surveillance, health-services research, and broad biopsychosocial models.

Does spinal manipulation itself produce large, reliable, clinically transformative effects beyond natural history and contextual healing?

I eventually tried to answer that question—at scale, assembling a meta-analysis of spinal manipulation for low back pain: a hundred and twenty randomized trials, some nineteen thousand patients, modeled against the natural history of recovery. The results did not rescue the story I had spent my youth defending. Once natural history and contextual healing were given their due, the slight effect we detected turned out to be natural history carrying manipulation for acute pain and a faint placebo carrying it for chronic pain.8, 9 Years later, a contemporary from those reform days, chiropractor, influencer, and fellow researcher Greg Plaugher, remarked to me that “evidence-based chiropractic” was an old and abandoned paradigm.10

…AND CHEAPER…:

Canadian supercomputers are transforming drug discovery: Can they deliver medicines faster? (Dr. Tim Sandle, August 26, 2026, Digital Journal)

The traditional process of drug discovery is lengthy and complex. Scientists must identify disease-causing biological targets, design molecules capable of interacting with those targets, test thousands of candidates, and then determine whether any are safe and effective enough to progress into clinical development. It is an expensive undertaking that is frequently described as taking around a decade and billions of dollars to bring a successful medicine to market.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being positioned as a solution to this challenge. Across academia and industry, researchers are combining AI algorithms with powerful computational infrastructure to identify promising drug candidates more rapidly.

NOT JUST THE MOON…:

The True Science and History Behind the Blue Fugates of Kentucky: The Blue Fugates of Kentucky (1820-1975) were an Appalachian family whose skin turned blue due to hereditary methemoglobinemia caused by an enzyme deficiency. (Madison Whipple, 8/20/26, The Collector)

In 1960, a young hematologist named Madison Cawein began hearing rumors at the University of Kentucky. People spoke about the blue hill folks of the Cumberland Plateau. There were blue Stacys, Combses, Smiths, and Fugates at that time as a result of inbreeding and the small gene pool from which many of Eastern Kentucky’s families came.

Cawein was an accomplished doctor. He helped isolate the antidote for cholera and helped create a drug for Parkinson’s Disease. He was, however, a hematologist at heart. Cawein said that “blood cells always looked beautiful to me,” so when he began hearing about the blue people, his interest was piqued.

Cawein, along with Ruth Pendergrass, a nurse from the American Heart Association clinic in Hazard, scoured the hollers for blue people. Pendergrass was fascinated with the blue people since she gave a blood test to a woman who identified herself as a blue Combs from Ball Creek. Cawein and Pendergrass went on daily missions to find blue people until they were frustrated and near giving up. After all, Cawein was forced to drive eight hours one way, from Lexington to Hazard, when he wanted to go on a search. Then a pair of siblings, Rachel and Patrick Ritchie, walked into the heart clinic in Hazard. They were blue, and Cawein had found his white (or blue) whale.