https://measuredscience.com/Science news that says how sure we are. https://measuredscience.com/articles/semaglutide-ageing-mice/https://measuredscience.com/articles/semaglutide-ageing-mice/Tue, 13 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000In one lab, 40 old female mice given daily semaglutide lived a median of 834 days, against 742 for 39 untreated mice. Treated mice in a companion group ate about a quarter less food, and the lifespan test had no group that simply ate less, so it can't say whether the drug did more than a diet would. Nothing was tested in people.https://measuredscience.com/articles/gravity-cosmic-test/https://measuredscience.com/articles/gravity-cosmic-test/Tue, 13 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000Tiny imprints in the Big Bang's afterglow show pairs of galaxy groups drifting toward each other in the way an inverse-square law predicts, at distances never tested before. The measurement pins the exponent to within about 15%, not "almost exactly". It tests how gravity fades with distance, not how strong it is, and it does not settle whether dark matter or modified gravity explains the universe's missing mass.https://measuredscience.com/articles/rem-sleep-83-diseases/https://measuredscience.com/articles/rem-sleep-83-diseases/Mon, 12 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000In 95,559 UK Biobank volunteers who wore a research wristband for a week, more estimated REM sleep went with lower risk of 83 of the 1,049 diseases tested over the next nine years. The wristband infers REM from movement, and more than a third of the links fell below the study's statistical bar once the first two years were set aside. The study can't tell whether short REM harms health or reflects illness already under way.https://measuredscience.com/articles/plague-before-black-death/https://measuredscience.com/articles/plague-before-black-death/Mon, 12 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000Ancient DNA from teeth at four Lake Baikal cemeteries carried Yersinia pestis in 18 of 46 people — the oldest directly dated plague yet found, in mobile hunter-gatherers long before cities or farming. An unusual spike of child deaths packed into a few decades is strong circumstantial evidence that these early, flea-less strains were lethal. But the study can't prove plague caused each death, and its own test for whether infection clustered within families was not significant.https://measuredscience.com/articles/waist-vs-bmi/https://measuredscience.com/articles/waist-vs-bmi/Sun, 11 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000In 1,900 US adults aged 20 to 59, a waist measurement alone did about as well as a new four-measurement obesity definition, and better than BMI. But the scan's cut-off put 69% of these adults over the line, and where that line sits changes how bad BMI looks. Nobody's health was followed.https://measuredscience.com/articles/vitamin-c-colds-review/https://measuredscience.com/articles/vitamin-c-colds-review/Sat, 10 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000Pooling 10 placebo-controlled trials, two researchers found colds were about 15% less severe in people taking at least 1 gram a day. That figure leans on how one big trial's score was rescaled; without that step it is nearer 8%. In trials that counted days stuck at home, it meant about a fifth of a day less per cold. Their further claim, that vitamin C trims only the worst days and leaves the length of a cold alone, rests on trials picked for their results.https://measuredscience.com/articles/low-fat-vegan-weight/https://measuredscience.com/articles/low-fat-vegan-weight/Sat, 10 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000In a 16-week trial of 244 adults with overweight, people told to go vegan lost about 6 kg more than people who changed nothing. By their own food diaries they ate roughly the same weight of food as before, but cut about 360 calories a day more than the other group did. A new reanalysis says fewer calories per gram explains the weight loss. The data fit that idea but can't single it out.https://measuredscience.com/articles/knee-arthritis-treatments/https://measuredscience.com/articles/knee-arthritis-treatments/Fri, 09 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000A 2025 analysis said it pooled 139 trials of drug-free treatments for knee osteoarthritis and ranked knee braces first. In its own data, braces appear in two small trials, and much of their lead comes from pooling scores measured on different scales. Exercise's benefit is the more dependable finding: at rest, a bit over 1 point less pain on a 10-point scale.https://measuredscience.com/articles/keto-liver-fat-trial/https://measuredscience.com/articles/keto-liver-fat-trial/Fri, 09 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000In a trial of 42 adults with fatty liver and prediabetes, each group lost about 10% of their weight. Liver fat fell by two-thirds on a keto diet and by under half on Mediterranean or very-low-fat diets. But the groups were small, liver fat was a secondary measure taken while people were still eating keto, and the trial can't say whether the edge lasts or what months of keto do to cholesterol.https://measuredscience.com/articles/tyrosine-lifespan-men/https://measuredscience.com/articles/tyrosine-lifespan-men/Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000A UK Biobank study found that people whose genes nudge up their blood tyrosine had parents who died somewhat sooner: about eight months per step up in tyrosine, for fathers and mothers alike. The robustness checks were mixed, the "men only" result depends on one statistical choice, and nobody in the study took a tyrosine pill.https://measuredscience.com/articles/pregnancy-infections-autism/https://measuredscience.com/articles/pregnancy-infections-autism/Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000Of 3.7 million people born in Sweden from 1987 to 2021, 975 had a diagnosed infection caught in the womb. About 1 in 10 of them was later diagnosed with autism, against about 1 in 32 of everyone else, and the gap held when they were compared with their own siblings. The study counted only infections serious enough to be diagnosed, which account for a tiny share of autism.https://measuredscience.com/articles/glucosamine-alzheimers/https://measuredscience.com/articles/glucosamine-alzheimers/Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000In a Nature Metabolism paper, two weeks of the joint supplement worsened a memory test in mice bred to model Alzheimer's (7 treated, 6 controls). In UF Health records, people with mild memory problems whose notes mentioned glucosamine were somewhat more likely to be diagnosed with dementia later, but the comparison allowed only for demographics, not for why people take it, and a first independent check didn't single out glucosamine.https://measuredscience.com/articles/earth-inner-solar-system/https://measuredscience.com/articles/earth-inner-solar-system/Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000Two ETH Zurich scientists reanalysed published meteorite data and found that lines fitted through inner-Solar-System meteorites predict Earth's rock in all ten isotope systems they checked, once the predictions are combined. No new samples were measured. The study leaves room for up to about 2% of Earth to have come from farther out, and the paper makes no claim about where the oceans came from. The water line came from the university's release.https://measuredscience.com/articles/digoxin-heart-failure-trial/https://measuredscience.com/articles/digoxin-heart-failure-trial/Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000Added to modern treatment in the Netherlands, low-dose digoxin came with 19% fewer heart-failure emergencies and cardiovascular deaths, a gap that could be chance. Deaths weren't clearly lower. The "25% fewer hospitalizations" in the headlines comes from a separate pooled analysis in which a trial from the 1990s supplied three-quarters of the patients.https://measuredscience.com/articles/cancer-2050-projection/https://measuredscience.com/articles/cancer-2050-projection/Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000A new global report estimates 20.6 million new cancer cases in 2024 and projects 34.4 million a year by 2050. That rise comes from a bigger, older world population, with the cancer rate at each age held at today's level. The projection gives no range, and the 2024 figures are themselves estimates, mostly projected from pre-2020 data.https://measuredscience.com/articles/biological-age-4-weeks/https://measuredscience.com/articles/biological-age-4-weeks/Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000In a Sydney trial, people aged 65 to 75 ate one of four fully supplied menus for a month. A new analysis compared a "biological age" score, built from routine blood, urine and body measurements, across the menus, and headlines said ageing had been reversed. The paper itself warns against that reading, and the trial wasn't designed to measure ageing.https://measuredscience.com/articles/hepa-purifiers-cognition/https://measuredscience.com/articles/hepa-purifiers-cognition/Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000Across 119 people living beside highways in Somerville, Massachusetts, a month of HEPA filtration made no overall difference on a timed connect-the-dots test. When the researchers split the group at age 40 after the fact, the 50 older participants finished the harder half about 7 seconds faster. That's about the gain from one retake of the test, though the design balances practice across months. Brain function in daily life wasn't measured.https://measuredscience.com/articles/coffee-bone-density-women/https://measuredscience.com/articles/coffee-bone-density-women/Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000In about 8,000 US women over 65, followed for roughly eight years, coffee drinkers and non-drinkers showed no clear difference in hip bone density. Above five cups a day a fitted curve drifted lower, but not clearly beyond chance, and the paper doesn't say how many women drank that much. Tea drinkers' hips were 0.003 g/cm² denser, less than a year's worth of normal age-related loss. Fractures weren't studied.https://measuredscience.com/articles/calcium-vitamin-d-fractures/https://measuredscience.com/articles/calcium-vitamin-d-fractures/Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000A review of 69 trials and 153,902 adults found that 6.5% of people broke a bone whether they took vitamin D or a dummy pill. Calcium and vitamin D together did slightly better, about 1 fewer fracture per 100 people, mostly thanks to one 1992 trial in French care homes. Most volunteers lived at home and weren't short of vitamin D; people who are truly deficient were barely tested.