Contriving

And yes, they do acknowledge correlation vs causation issues.

After combing through the health records of 1.3 million people over 10 years, researchers found an unusual link between cat bites and depression. More than 41 percent of those who had presented to hospitals with cat bites were also treated for depression at some point. Furthermore, 86 percent of the people that had been both bitten and diagnosed with depression were women. If you are a woman who's been bitten by a cat, there's nearly a 50 percent chance that you will be diagnosed with depression at some point, the study suggests.

(First sentence in this post trolling cat lovers)

Cat Bites Are Linked To Depression
The reason why is not fully clear. Maybe cats just dislike depressed people. 

Originally posted on Google+ · February 19, 2014

Intuit the Pythagorean Theorem.

Originally posted on Google+ · February 18, 2014

There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written
Some of the bowhead whales in the icy waters off of Alaska today are over 200 years old

Originally posted on Google+ · February 17, 2014

I find a lot of studies lead to results that make me think "well….yeah".  But, I always find them interesting.  In this case (and quite often in other cases), it's on a subject I hadn't even considered before.

Which then makes me wonder if I'm not suffering from a type of pernicious hindsight bias.  Maybe if I had thought about the subject before, I would have come to different conclusions and thus would be surprised to find these results?

Ancient settlements and modern cities follow same rules of development
Recently derived equations that describe development patterns in modern urban areas appear to work equally well to describe ancient cities settled thousands of years ago, according to a new study led by a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Originally posted on Google+ · February 17, 2014

Using a man who has an external pump which is helping his own heart beat whilst he waits for a transplant, neuroscientists explore the ways in which we detect our own heartbeat.

Neuroscientists think we detect our own heart-beats via two routes – one is "somatosensory"; that is, we feel the movement of the heart's beat in our skin and this information is processed in the part of the brain that deals with touch. The other route is "vagal", based on fibres that feed directly from receptors in the heart to the brainstem and then onto two brain areas known to be vital for IA: the insular cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex.

Neuroscience lessons in body awareness from the man with two hearts

Originally posted on Google+ · February 17, 2014

Originally posted on Google+ · February 16, 2014

Maintaining all this data is a difficult job. It requires significant editing and polishing, mostly involving mindless, repetitive tasks such as formatting links and sources but also adding basic facts.

So much of this kind of work is automated. Behind the scenes, automated bots scan Wikipedia and Wikidata pages continually polishing the content for human consumption.

The Shadowy World of Wikipedia’s Editing Bots | MIT Technology Review
Much of the editing work on Wikipedia is too mind-numbingly repetitive for humans, so automated bots do it instead. But keeping track of automated editing has always been hard … until now.

Originally posted on Google+ · February 15, 2014

It's amusing to see fitness experts and gurus always taking such strong stances about the right way to lose weight when we're constantly figuring out stuff we didn't know before.

Lowell’s lab has made the surprising discovery that the hunger-inducing neurons that activate these AgRP neurons are located in the paraventricular nucleus — a brain region long thought to cause satiety, or feelings of fullness. This unexpected finding not only provides a critical addition to the overall wiring diagram, but adds an important extension to our understanding of what drives appetite.

Surprising new clue to the roots of hunger
Researchers are creating a wiring diagram of the complex brain circuits that regulate this intense motivational state While the function of eating is to nourish the body, this is not what actually compels us to seek out food.

Originally posted on Google+ · February 15, 2014

Originally posted on Google+ · February 14, 2014

 On the other hand, I'm extremely hesitant to put any stock in them since the field is rife with un-replicatable stuff.

Anyway, this sounds about right.  (Though, studies "sounding right" is probably part of the reason the field is in the state it's in)

A new study suggests that people feel more comfortable talking about private matters in a larger room at a larger desk. It's a result with obvious practical implications for professionals who require openness from their clients.

How room and desk size affect people’s comfort discussing personal issues

Originally posted on Google+ · February 14, 2014