The world of science and technology continues to produce both remarkable breakthroughs and baffling persistence in fringe beliefs. This week’s highlights include a global telepathy study, the selective censorship of names in news reporting, an honorary doctorate awarded to a cartoon dog, and the quiet implosion of several cultivated meat companies. These events, while disparate, reveal deeper trends: the enduring appeal of pseudoscience, the absurdities of modern media, and the occasional triumph of satire over seriousness.
The Global Telepathy Study: Reinventing the Wheel (Poorly)
A new initiative, the Global Telepathy Study (trueesp.com), is attempting to prove extrasensory perception through a crowd-sourced app. Participants synchronize their “brain waves” through real-time telepathy tests, transmitting images via a mobile application. This echoes earlier parapsychological experiments, like those conducted by Joseph Rhine in the 20th century using Zener cards. Rhine’s work was famously undermined by the fact that initial “successes” often disappeared under stricter scrutiny—suggesting luck played a larger role than psychic ability. The modern study is essentially a digital rehash of flawed methodology, led by individuals with backgrounds in advertising and a former CIA psychic spy. The project even delves into “quantum ESP research,” claiming brain neurons create consciousness through quantum entanglement. The absurdity is compounded by the study’s founder continuing to send press releases to skeptical outlets, which ensures continued ridicule.
Censorship and Sensationalism in Media
The news cycle itself offers its own brand of oddity. One reader noted that HuffPost and Yahoo News censored the name of former Vice President Dick Cheney in an article about Donald Trump’s health, replacing it with asterisks. This raises questions about editorial standards and the oversensitivity of modern media. The original article by HuffPost dared to spell out the name, so the censorship appears to be a Yahoo News decision, highlighting a curious aversion to certain words.
Academic Absurdity: An Honorary Doctorate for a Cartoon Dog
Universities increasingly award honorary degrees to celebrities and influencers, but Griffith University in Australia took things to a new level by offering a professorial chair to Bandit Heeler, the fictional animated dog from the children’s show Bluey. The university fabricated a biography, citing his “fieldwork in remote jungles” and “landmark publications on dance-mode freezing in pre-literate societies.” This was actually awarded to Bluey’s creator, Joe Brumm, whose brother is a palaeoanthropologist at the university. The incident underscores the trivialization of academic honors.
The Cultivated Meat Crash
Several cultivated meat companies have recently gone out of business, including Meatable and Believer Meats. One reader suggested that Believer Meats’ failure was due to its CEO’s last name: Burger. While darkly humorous, this highlights the financial and logistical challenges of lab-grown meat, which has struggled to become commercially viable despite years of hype.
These seemingly unrelated events collectively demonstrate a recurring pattern: the persistence of flawed science, the absurdities of modern media, and the occasional triumph of satire. The world remains full of both genuine progress and baffling irrationality.
