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Remember The Last Starfighter from 1984? In that movie a trailer-park kid with limited prospects spends his time on an arcade-style video game, Starfighter. He plays the game so much that he beats the final level, and it turns out he is the first person to ever do so. He is heavily criticized for spending so much time playing a game, which is seen as a sign of boredom and lack of ambition – a waste of time. The twist (42 year old spoiler incoming) is that the game was actually a test (the Excalibur test – a deliberate reference to King Arthur) to find a skilled pilot for an actual real-life starfighter. He goes on to save the galaxy from invasion.

The interesting premise of the movie is that playing a video game is not only a test of real-life skill, but can be used to train such skill. In 1984 this was  kind of a new idea, and appealing to a generation of kids newly hooked on video games. Video games have been significantly mainstreamed over the last half century, but there is still a bit of a cultural stigma attached to them – they are seen as the realm of dorks and geeks, with inevitable jokes about how avid video gamers with “never get laid” (or something to that effect). Since the beginning of their popularity parents have worried, with such worry being fed by a sensationalist media, that video games were going to “rot” their kids’ brains, turn them into losers who can never get a skilled job, and might even cause violent behavior. Every mass shooting someone brings up violent video games.

But the evidence simply does not support these concerns. One big problem with the research is that it shows correlation only, not causation. Sure, people who play aggressive video games tend to be more aggressive, but that doesn’t mean the game is the cause. Further, there are many confounding factors, and more recent research shows that violence in the game is not the key feature. It has more to do with the level of difficulty and the resulting frustration that seems to raise aggression, not violence in the game. More competitive and difficult games tend to be more stimulating, regardless of the level of violence. The bottom line – after decades of research, systematic reviews conclude: “There is insufficient scientific evidence to support a causal link between violent video games and violent behavior.”

Now we seem to be going through the same cycle again, but this time with anxiety and depression. It is also not just video games being criticized, but social media and any screen time. And again there is evidence of some correlation, but without showing causation. It is very likely that people who feel socially isolated or depressed might seek out video games and social media as a distraction or to have some social connection. Taking away those outlets out of fear they are causing the symptoms can easily be counterproductive. A recent systematic review found:

“Scientific research investigating social media’s impact on adolescent mental health has failed to provide clarity. There is converging evidence for a small negative cross-sectional association between time spent on social media and well-being. However, longitudinal studies and those measuring social media use beyond time spent or mental health beyond general well-being show diverging results.”

In short, the evidence is weak and mixed, while better studies designed to control for likely confounding variables do not show any consistent effect. This does not mean there are no potential issues with excessive video-game use or social media use. It is one variable that we need to consider and carefully research, and there are likely some individuals in some contexts where is does exacerbate or cause problems. But are video games and social media the “one true cause” of all adolescent current ills, and basically responsible for the recent increase in mental health diagnoses? Probably not.

The current best inference is that video games and social media are filling a void of social support structures of various kinds, and that the solution is not to simply restrict or take away screens. Rather, we should be filling the void with more diverse support and activities.

On the flip side, there is evidence that video games and other interactions with digital technology increase some skills (just like in Starfighter). What we are seeing is not an atrophy of skills, but a shifting of skills from more analog to more digital activity. Since the industrial revolution it seems that each generation laments the fact that “these kids today” lack the skills that we older folks developed, while missing the fact that they are developing new skills for a new world. We may not get this new world they are creating, but they are not creating it for us. This is part of the reason it is difficult to predict the future use of technology, because we keep trying to imagine ourselves in this future. But we will not be in that future – new generations of people will, and they will be different in ways we cannot predict. To some extent, we have to trust that new generations will find their own way.

Meanwhile, it turns out that video games are a really good way to train certain skills. If anything, the technology is under-leveraged. Video gamers are better at endoscopic surgery, because certain kinds of games develop psychomotor skills like those used in this kind of surgery. Video games can cause more general cognitive skills as well: “Findings indicate that higher levels of videogaming proficiency are linked to improvements in visuospatial short-term and working memory, psychomotor speed, and attention.” Some of this data is correlational, but a lot of it is experimental, showing a causal effect with a dose-response.

But also, video games can train specific skill, not just improve cognitive function. They are great at keeping the level of difficulty just ahead of the user, and advancing them at their own pace. You can also simulate situations that you cannot recreate in the physical world. The FAA is even trying to get in on the “Starfighter effect” – they are specifically recruiting video game players for jobs in air traffic control.

Video games definitely do not have the stigma they did when I was younger, but it is not gone completely, and much of the same instincts have migrated over to screen-time in general and social media specifically. I do think we need to resist the temptation to simplistically blame the latest new technology our kids are using for whatever societal ills we are worried about. This does not mean we should not carefully consider and research the effects of new technology on society, especially to identity vulnerable individuals or potentials for abuse. But don’t panic or overreact. Just taking away screens is likely to be counterproductive. It’s better to fill kids’ lives with diverse experiences and opportunities (which is a lot more work than just demonizing video games and screens). Also we risk losing out on the potential benefits of new technologies. Video games can build cognitive ability and are great at training specific skills, and there are many potential upsides to social media.

The post Do You Have Video Game Skilz? first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

A study of more than 10 million siblings suggests that firstborns are more likely to be autistic and have allergies, while conditions like migraine and shingles tend to affect their younger sibling

It turns out there's probably no such thing as an alpha wolf.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Quantum systems can secretly “remember” their past—even when they appear not to. Scientists found that whether a system shows memory depends on how you look at it: through its evolving state or its measurable properties. Each perspective uncovers different kinds of memory, meaning a system can seem memoryless and memory-filled at the same time. This discovery could change how researchers design and control quantum technologies.

Quantum systems can secretly “remember” their past—even when they appear not to. Scientists found that whether a system shows memory depends on how you look at it: through its evolving state or its measurable properties. Each perspective uncovers different kinds of memory, meaning a system can seem memoryless and memory-filled at the same time. This discovery could change how researchers design and control quantum technologies.

Neutrinos have mass — yet they never flip between left- and right-handed states the way every other massive particle does. The most logical fix is Paul Dirac's: invisible right-handed neutrinos that interact with nothing whatsoever. The math works. It even produces a beautiful explanation for why neutrino masses are so absurdly tiny. But it requires believing in particles that are permanently, in-principle undetectable.

An ultra-hot Jupiter exoplanet orbiting a nearby star gave scientists using the Gemini South telescope a look at how both a star and its hot planet can have similar chemical compositions. The team, led by Arizona State University graduate student Jorge Antonio Sanchez, took spectra of the planet, called WASP-189b, using the Immersion Grating Infrared Spectrograph instrument. The observations measured the abundance of magnesium compared to silicon in the hot planet's atmosphere and allowed the team to compare it to the makeup of its parent star.

Telegony is a long-discredited concept of sexual heredity that has been making a surprising comeback in recent years—particularly within digital filter bubbles, right-wing esoteric milieus, and so-called energy coaching scenes. But what does this tongue-twisting term actually mean?

Classical philologists will recognize Telegony as the title of a lost Greek epic recounting the story of Telegonus, the son of Odysseus and the sorceress Circe.1 This rare literary reference, however, has little to do with the way the term is used today. 

In scientific-historical terms, telegony refers to the former belief that a woman’s previous sexual partner—often assumed to be the first—could permanently influence her body and thereby affect the traits of children conceived later with different partners. One dictionary definition calls it “a former belief that a sire can influence the characteristics of the progeny of the female parent by subsequent mates.”2

Derived from the Greek tēle (distant) and goneia (procreation), telegony literally means “remote reproduction.” According to this notion, an earlier partner leaves a lasting biological imprint that shapes a woman’s health and the genetic makeup of future offspring—even when those children are fathered by someone else. 

This assumption has been decisively refuted for more than a century. Since the formulation of Mendel’s laws of inheritance, modern genetics has established beyond doubt that only the biological parents contribute to a child’s genetic constitution.3 Telegony has therefore long been classified as a pseudoscientific myth. 

Curiously, contemporary dictionaries still cite prominent media outlets—Time, Newsweek, and The Guardian—as sources that allegedly support or discuss telegony. A closer examination, however, reveals persistent misinterpretations. 

Both Time and Newsweek claim that Aristotle defended telegony.4 Not so. While Aristotle wrote extensively on biology and reproduction, his treatise, De generatione animalium, does not propose that former sexual partners influence future offspring. Instead, he advanced a speculative model in which male semen supplies form while the female body provides matter.5 This reflects a metaphysical conception of gender—associating masculinity with form and intellect, femininity with substance and passivity— rather than an empirical theory of heredity. 

Telegony’s modern revival is not a scientific rediscovery but a cultural repetition—a myth repackaged to meet contemporary anxieties about sexuality, identity, and control.

The remaining references stem from The Guardian and are often cited in sensational headlines.6 These articles report on field studies by Australian researchers suggesting that previous mates might influence offspring size.7 Crucially, however, the observed effect concerned houseflies only. What headlines obscure—but the articles themselves clarify—is that these findings have no relevance for mammals, let alone humans. 

From Discredited Biology to Political Myth 

Although Mendel’s laws relegated telegony to scientific error by the early twentieth century, ideas of genetic “imprinting” did not disappear entirely. They resurfaced in ideological form within National Socialist racial doctrine—though not under the explicit label of telegony. 

The Nuremberg Laws did not claim that a woman’s first sexual partner permanently affected her later offspring. Yet the underlying logic of “Aryan bloodlines” and the notion of racial defilement through sexual contact relied on structurally similar assumptions: that sexual encounters could transmit lasting biological or moral contamination.8 Political theorists have long noted that myths become politicized when they resonate with prevailing cultural anxieties— whether about heredity, purity, or social order. 

This recursive history did not end with the twentieth century. The contemporary revival of telegony occurs in milieus that generally reject any association with historical racism. Nevertheless, similar narrative patterns reappear—now reframed in spiritual, esoteric, or pseudotherapeutic language. 

In October 2025, these developments reached a broader public audience. At a Skeptic Awards ceremony in Vienna, a European provider of so-called “telegony erasure” services placed third in a public vote for the most unscientific claim of the year.9 The Berlin-based proponent advertised the ability to remove alleged energetic imprints of former sexual partners from a person’s DNA through nonmedical “energetic healing,” and claimed to have trained a network of practitioners across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. 

Publicly available material reveals striking similarities across these offerings. Multiple providers use nearly identical language, concepts, and website structures when promoting telegony deletion services, suggesting not isolated belief but a loosely organized commercial ecosystem. 

The idea that a woman is permanently “imprinted” by her first sexual partner functions as a mechanism of control, naturalizing female subordination.

The ideological references invoked by these providers are revealing. Alongside esoteric concepts, they cite the so-called Rita Laws and Slavic-Aryan Vedas as foundational sources.10 These texts are largely dismissed within Slavic studies as modern fabrications, likely originating in the twentieth century. Today, they are frequently employed within strands of Slavic neopaganism (Rodnoverie) to mythologize ethnonationalist ideas such as hereditary purity and ancestral obligation—claims devoid of medical or historical foundation.11

In this context, the Anastasia movement also appears. Based on novels by Russian author Vladimir Megre, the movement centers on a fictional Siberian healer and promotes a social utopia grounded in “natural” living, ancestral land, and hereditary harmony.12 Telegony-like ideas—particularly notions of female purity, bodily contamination, and transgenerational burden—play a central role.13 Sect-monitoring bodies in several European countries have classified parts of the movement as sectarian and, in some cases, as promoting antisemitic and ethnonationalist motifs. 

These environments often overlap with right-wing esotericism, purity cultures, and manosphere-related discourses. Blogs and forums within these spheres repeatedly—and incorrectly— reject Mendelian genetics, misattribute claims to Aristotle, and revive essentialist gender models in which women are framed as permanently passive and subordinate to male agency. What emerges is not a revival of science, but a repackaging of myth—adapted to digital platforms and marketed as personal transformation. 

The Demand Behind the Myth 

When a long-disproved concept resurfaces despite overwhelming refutation, a psychological belief question arises: Why do people adopt the myth rather than the evidence? The revival of telegony is driven by several overlapping dynamics. 

Within Anastasia-related narratives, telegony is embedded in a closed worldview that promotes rigid gender hierarchies.14 Men are portrayed as active lineage bearers, women as passive vessels and spiritual caretakers. Within this framework, the idea that a woman is permanently “imprinted” by her first sexual partner functions as a mechanism of control, naturalizing female subordination. 

Comparable patterns appear in manosphererelated online environments, where telegony is framed polemically as pseudobiological justification for moral judgments about women’s sexuality. In these filter bubbles, reductive gender stereotypes dominate.15

The wish to “remove” traces of former sexual partners may reflect dissatisfaction with experiences of medicine and intimacy.

By contrast, telegony’s resonance in alternative medicine and energy-healing scenes follows a different logic. Here, the appeal lies less in authoritarian gender ideology than in the promise of liberation from perceived constraints of conventional medicine. Audiences range from curious experimentalists to resolute opponents of scientific institutions.16

Across these contexts, however, a more general motive may be discerned. The wish to “remove” traces of former sexual partners may reflect dissatisfaction with experiences of medicine and intimacy. Many people long for healthcare that feels meaningful rather than bureaucratic, and for sexuality that carries symbolic weight beyond the purely physical.17

Against this backdrop, telegony can appear to offer something else: the promise that sexual encounters matter, that they leave traces, that intimacy has depth and consequence. This emotional appeal helps explain why myths such as telegony persist despite scientific refutation. 

Telegony’s modern revival is not a scientific rediscovery but a cultural repetition—a myth repackaged to meet contemporary anxieties about sexuality, identity, and control. Recognizing this pattern is essential to distinguishing legitimate meaning-making from the misuse of discredited science.

Saturn is one of the most recognisable and studied planets in the Solar System, it was the first thing I ever saw through a telescope and yet it is still finding ways to surprise us. New research analysing data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed a significant and unexpected quirk in Saturn's protective magnetic bubble, one that confirms the giant planets of our Solar System play by completely different rules to Earth.

For the first time in history, scientists have used a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon to search for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence. China's Chang'E-4 lander sat in the most radio quiet location humanity has ever placed an instrument, shielded from Earth's constant electronic chatter by the entire bulk of the Moon itself. They found nothing but that is almost beside the point!

Deep in the heart of a distant galaxy, two monsters are locked in a death spiral and for the first time, they have been caught them in the act. A new study has confirmed the first close pair of supermassive black holes ever detected, orbiting each other every 121 days and closing in fast. If the models are right, they could collide within a century.

Removing CO2 from the atmosphere by capturing the carbon from burning biomass is supposed to save the planet, but it looks like the flagship project will never happen

Removing CO2 from the atmosphere by capturing the carbon from burning biomass is supposed to save the planet, but it looks like the flagship project will never happen

Some gut bacteria recycle discarded sex hormones, like oestrogens, back into the body. The level of these bacteria seems to be higher in industrialised societies, which could have big implications for our health

Some gut bacteria recycle discarded sex hormones, like oestrogens, back into the body. The level of these bacteria seems to be higher in industrialised societies, which could have big implications for our health

A new study challenges old assumptions by revealing that water on the Moon likely came from multiple sources over billions of years, rather than from a single major deposit long ago.

A small comet has been spotted slowing down and then speeding up again – but in the opposite direction, which we have never seen before

It was 12 years ago when I posted the first video below of Sarah McLachlan singing what is perhaps her most famous song, “Angel.” I came across it again yesterday and decided to pair it with another version.  The first one, recorded in her home studio, shows her well-known ability to go between her “chest voice” (normal range) and “head voice” (high notes, like a falsetto or yodeling). It’s a lovely song, and was written by her and usually performed only with her own piano accompaniment (there are a lot of versions on the Internet). My earlier post describes what the song’s about.

When I looked up the song on Wikipedia, I found this:

On 8 April 2000, McLachlan performed “Angel” with Carlos Santana on guitar at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, California. The show was televised on Fox TV and released on the DVD Supernatural Live – An Evening with Carlos Santana and Friends.

And of course I hoped that song was on video, too, as I’m a Santana fan. Sure enough, it was, though Santana humbly embroiders the voice and piano with soft accompaniment and a short solo (starts at 2:24).  I would have preferred to see him cut loose with an electric solo, but of course it’s not appropriate for this song. Santna’s bit, though, was apparently improvised.

I can’t say that the version with Santana is better than the solo version, but how often do you get to hear two such different musicians play together?

It’s one of the commonplaces that young people who have gender dysphoria (“GD”) will experience both reduced psychiatric problems and reduced suicides if they proceed on to gender reassignment (GR) via “affirmative care”. The suicide claim was dispelled in 2024 by the Finnish investigators given below, who showed that both GD and GR, when compared to controls, do not show increased suicide beyond that predicted from psychiatric problems alone (they used controls).  That dispels the common claim by gender activists pushing GR: “Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?” (That’s for transitioning to female gender, but it can be reversed.)

A new paper from the same group, published in Acta Paediatrica, looks not at suicide but psychiatric “morbidity” (psychiatric problems).  The study was large, controlled, and takes advantage of the fact that in Finland every doctor visit is recorded for every citizen because of the country’s national health system.

The upshot is simple: children and young people (they used subjects up to 23 years old; henceforth called “subjects”) who sought treatment for GD had significantly more severe psychiatric problems and were referred far more often for “specialist level” treatment than were controls.  Those GD subjects were parsed into two groups: those who were given gender reassigment, and those who were not. The conventional wisdom is that if you have GD, then gender reassignment should significantly alleviate their dysphoria, measured by a reduced need for specialist psychiatric treatment.

The conventional wisdom was wrong: gender reassignment didn’t alleviate psychiatric compared to GD people who didn’t get reassignment. The conclusion is that gender reassignment, with its deleterious side effects, was not a good way to improve quality of life, at least measured by the need for psychiatric intervention.

Here’s how the term “gender reassignment” is used in the paper:

Medical GR interventions included masculinising/feminising hormonal treatments, chest masculinisation, and/or genital surgery (vaginoplasty/phalloplasty/metoidioplasty).

These treatments are all irreversible except that removed breasts can be restored by replacements.

Click below to access or download the pdf, or you can see the original paper online here.

As I mentioned, the sample size was large: there were 2,083 GD subjects who presented themselves for treatment, and for each of these subjects the investigators chose eight controls, four males and four females matched to the GD subjects by age and place of residence. The final controls numbered 16,643.

Here are the percentage of subjects who sought specialist-level psychiatric treatment between 2011-2019 (differences from 1996-2010 were in the same direction, but far more people who sought GD treatment had a history of specialized treatment in the later period. The authors don’t know the reason for the rise in GD-associated psychiatric difficulties, but it matches the rise in gender dysphoria in other places, including the U.S.

GD subjects

Sought specialized psychiatric treatment before the presentation for GD (“index date”):  47.9%
Sought specialized psychiatric treatment ≥2 years after the presentation for GD:               61.3%

Controls

Sought specialized psychiatric treatment before the presentation for GD (“index date”):  15.3%
Sought specialized psychiatric treatment ≥2 years after the presentation for GD:               14.2%

This shows that GD subjects, whether or not they went on to GR, initially had about three or more times the rate of psychiatric difficulties than did the controls. That is not new, as GD is generally related to psychiatric difficulties, and it’s likely that some people look for gender reassignment as a way to alleviate their gender dysphoria, or even as a way to alleviate general mental difficulties.  But GD subjects in general did not in general show a lessening of psychiatric difficulties after their presentation; in fact, the rate was increased by about 13.4%.

The important figures, though, are those showing whether or not GR treatment alleviated psychiatric difficulties. After all, that is the rationale for gender-reassignment treatment, whether it be hormones or surgery.  Here is Table 3 from the paper, with the last two columns being the important ones. They’re divided up by sex, and “GR-” means GD subjects not given gender reassignment, while “GR+” means GD subjects who were given gender reassignment. Click table to enlarge; I’ve put a red rectangle around the area of most importance:

This shows that GD subjects, both those who transitioned to female and those who transitioned towards male, did not have a reduction in psychiatric treatment contact (all contact, whether “specialized” or not) after their transition began or was completed. Au contraire: the psychiatric treatments went up sixfold for those transitioning to female genders and 2.5-fold for those transitioning towards male.

If you look at the third and four data columns, you can see the percentages of GD subjects who got psychiatric treatment for GD but who did not go on to reassignment. Curiously, the psychiatric treatment was more frequent in this group than in the group that went on to reassignment, but only before the data of first consultation for GD.

This difference between the third and fourth and the fifth and sixth data points on the first line is curious.  But what’s important here is that there is no marked alleviation of psychiatric contacts for GD subjects who went on to reassignment. They continue to consult psychiatrists, and at about the rate of GD subjects who didn’t go on to reassignment. Again, we don’t see the mitigation of psychiatric difficulties in GD patients that go on to surgery or hormones.  Since those procedures have deleterious side effects (anorgasmia and pronounced difficulties after surgery on genitals or even breasts), there is not a strong case to be made for gender reassignment of gender-dyphoric patients, at least in terms of alleviating mental illness.

The first two columns show the data for both male and female controls. Since they didn’t have consultations for GD, the “index date” for controls was given as the date that their matched GD subjects first had a consultation.  And, as expected, their psychiatric visits were far less numerous than the GD subjects two years after the index date (though the low levels of consultations for GR+ subjects compared to GR-subjects before the index date is still curious, and I may have missed the authors’ explanation).

This is just a cursory interpretation I’ve made after reading the paper twice, and I may have missed some data that feed into the authors’ conclusion below. What’s clear is that GD is associated with psychiatric disorders, though it may not be causal, and that gender reassignment does not improve mental health compared to dysphoric subjects who didn’t get reassigned.  All this suggests that “affirmative care” that puts GD subjects on the path to GR doesn’t, at least in this study, have the salubrious effects that are touted—as measured by the intensity of psychiatric treatment. Gender-reassigned subjects continue to suffer from mental disorders at a rate threefold to fivefold that of controls without gender dysphoria, so GR doesn’t come close to giving subjects the mental stability of controls.

The last paragraph of the paper gives what the authors see as the “Clinical Implications” of their results:

Regardless of gender, adolescents suffering from GD present with excessive psychiatric morbidity. Subsequent to medical GR, psychiatric treatment needs appear to increase. It should be noted that in some individuals, medical GR appears to be linked to deterioration in mental health. Possible mechanisms and vulnerable subgroups should be explored in future studies. The effects of medical GR and the expectations of the patient must be addressed before commencing the treatment. The considerable severe psychiatric morbidity prior to contacting the GIS, and its increase over time, suggest that for some of these adolescents, GD may be secondary to other mental health challenges. This underscores the need to thoroughly assess and appropriately treat mental disorders among those seeking GR before and after undergoing irreversible medical treatments. Psychiatric needs must be adequately met.

 

h/t: Christopher

If the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation shut down, the knock-on effects could release hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2, raising global temperatures even further