We’ve covered a lot of bad science stories over the year. Here are a few more. But in the optimistic spirit of the “holiday season”, the last one has a happy ending.

Thanks for listening—especially if you’re a subscriber! See you in 2026.

Stuart & Tom

Show notes

* A surge of low-quality AI papers on public datasets

* A surge of low-quality AI letters to the editor

* Retraction Watch story on the Dana Farber scandal

* NY Times story on the papers being retracted or corrected

* The settlement in the case

Credits

The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

STOP PRESS: a beloved 20th Century populariser of psychology who wrote massively successful books has been shown to be full of crap. Actually… don’t stop press. Just put it on the pile with all the others.

This time it’s Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who wrote The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Awakenings, and many other books. An article in The New Yorker has shown that a lot of his case studies were, well… let’s say they’re not what they seem. In this episode we discuss the new article and Oliver Sacks’s career more generally, and ask: should we have known?

The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. The article we discussed on today’s show is about the tragically low South Korean birth rate, and why it got that way. Find that, and so many more articles about human progress, science, and technology, at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* Rachel Aviv’s December 2025 New Yorker article on Oliver Sacks

* Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders letter about “questionable aspects” of the autistic savant twins story, by Makoto Yamaguchi

* Follow-up article by the same author

* Response letter by Allan Snyder

* Medical Humanities article on 10 years since Sacks’s death

* Paul McHugh’s 1995 bad review of Sacks’s work

* Science isn’t storytelling

Credits

The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

Does the evidence support the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT)? Depends on when you asked the question. At one point the consensus was “yes”; more recently it reversed. But should it have?

It also depends on what symptoms you’re talking about. Is HRT just all about hot flushes, or can it also treat mood and cognitive problems too? In this paid-only episode, we look at the evidence.

To listen to the full episode and read the show notes, please become a paid subscriber to the Science Fictions podcast.