your science briefing 03.19.2025

How multitasking fries your brain, AI scam bots are doing the exact things AI startups were warned they'd do, cancer vaccines enter oncology wards, and more...

Every job description today demands that you can multitask. It seems inevitable that today’s fast-paced work environments, where there’s always something new, you will need to juggle at least a few things at the same time. But there’s a bit of a problem. If you ask experts in neurology, they’ll tell you that your brain can’t actually multitask. It just switches from task to task really quickly, and doing it day in, day out means you’ll half-ass each task instead of full-assing it, and burn yourself out as you do… (MIT)

Security experts warned that AI can be weaponized for phishing attacks or scamming people by effectively pretending to be someone they know thanks to deepfakes or a voice generator. AI companies made a farting noise in response and created the very models they were warned against creating. And now, these models are being used to automate, streamline, and optimize scams and attacks… (Forbes)

extra: If it sounds like the entire internet is out to get you, it is. I’ve made a deep dive into the death of the internet as both an article and a 15 minute video showing why it doesn’t just seem like we’re overran with bots and ads, it really is, and it’s costing us more than the GDP of entire nations… (WoWT YouTube)

You’ve undoubtedly heard certain people described as book smart and street stupid, meaning that they may be academically intelligent but irrational. A study of twins set out to see if you really can score well on IQ and reasoning tests, yet lack the skills to override your gut and find gotchas in seemingly simple scenarios that have a twist if you’re paying attention. According to the results, it seems that rationality is strongly correlated to general intelligence, and both are partially heritable… (PsyPost)

From decades of research and real world data, we know that if you want to lower the number of abortions, you need to do three things. The first is increase access to any kind of contraception. The second is comprehensive sexual education. The third is to subsidize childcare. We know that the first two lower teen pregnancies and delay the age of first sexual encounter, increasing chances of stable, healthy relationships. And the last one means more people are financially prepared to become parents. Yet, pro-life movements are vehemently opposed to all three. Why? In a surprise to absolutely no one, it’s because one of their goals is to punish sex… (EurekaAlert)

In the quest to vaccinate the world against COVID, mRNA technology finally came into the limelight. It’s next quest? Vaccines against cancer. By telling your body to produce proteins associated with certain cancers, they train your immune system for a heavy duty response to the earliest stages of precancerous growth, delaying onset, slowing progression, and giving doctors more time to effectively manage cancers and treat a recurrence as a sort of flare-up they can aggressively treat, prolonging remission and increasing quality of life… (Wired)