Every type of birch tar a University of Cologne-led team made with reconstructed Neanderthal methods inhibited the wound bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. That makes a medical role for the old hafting adhesive plausible, though proof that Neanderthals dressed wounds with it would have to come from their sites.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+35
- Incentives55
- Confidence50
Liege and Rockefeller researchers report near-atomic structures of the machine that adds the same short leader to nearly every trypanosomatid messenger RNA, including several proteins with no human counterpart.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption12
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives62
- Confidence57
A perforated ivory rod from Hohle Fels was catalogued as a prestige object until its discoverer noticed spiral grooves inside each hole, and a replication with cattail fiber suggests it made rope that never survived.
Reality
- Evidence52
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives45
- Confidence62
An international team reconstructed speciation and extinction rates for the reptile group that produced dinosaurs and crocodiles. The shape matches what family trees have shown, and three hypotheses still compete to explain the slowdown.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives52
- Confidence60
Experiments at Liege and KU Leuven reproduced Mercury's core formation and produced a graphite crust 40 to 120 metres thick above a core holding under 0.5% carbon, far too little to explain the planet's density deficit.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives58
- Confidence58
A ULiege team scored the sleep of more than 500 healthy volunteers against their polygenic risk for Alzheimer's, and found the link only in the 50-to-69 group, which is the smaller half of the sample and the one nobody has yet followed to a diagnosis.
Reality
- Evidence30
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives60
- Confidence40