benbreen

Interesting two part article by a Harvard Med School professor on whether psychiatric meds rely on an "activated placebo effect" (i.e. a placebo with side effects). Some would argue this isn…

That link is great. And please do expand on this! I'd love to read more about this topic. It would make an interesting contemporary counterpart to Kenneth Pomeranz's "The Great Divergen…

It is indeed possible that Chinese trading vessels may have reached the Kamchatka peninsula and the Aleutian Islands. The more unlikely part here is that those voyages would have been made known to a …

I think the article makes a good case for it having more to do with a kind of cultural globalization among financial elites than with QE, since the market has been booming more less continuously since…

This is utterly fascinating (regardless of whether they're genuine, forgeries, or something in between). But this quote strikes me as key here : "As Olshin is first to admit, the authenticit…

Tweaked the title a bit because it's drawing a hyperbolic conclusion from the paper it cites (which is nonetheless interesting): http://www.pnas.org/content/111/39/…

Thematically related: http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/01/tiny-brontes