A list of my past mistakes

DatePostMistakeRewardSource
2019-09-02What useful fundamental physics are we missing?I wrongly said that neutrino oscillations have no practical application$2Lee Pavlevich
2019-11-17NAMistake: Trusting 'Why We Sleep' too much. This mistake is hard to phrase because I wasn't committed to any object level claim, with the possible exception of 'every animal sleeps'NAAlexey Guzey's review
2019-12-01On the causal powers of mormonismVarious mistakes related to incomplete sources and a paper I should have cited on suicide rates for LDS church members that I did not$14Personal email (Alison Hugh)
2020-02-25-The Longevity FAQVarious mistakes around my description of the early history of C. Elegans research + other things outlined in the changelogs there. The actual rate I would have paid is less than $60 but I decided to make a special exception. The money was donated to SENS.$60*Laura Deming, personal email
2020-04-15Progress in semiconductorsI failed to appreciate the important of wire delay, overplayed the role of the memory bottleneck.$24Andrew Clough, personal email
2020-09-10Bloom's two sigmaBeing too optimistic about Success for All, even if that was in the Questions section (Which was more speculative in nature)$4Michael Goldstein (personal email)
2021-01-08The Non-Non Libertarian FAQ, Kenneth Arrow on the welfare economics of medical careExact mistakes are listed on the Arrow page, along with my comments on them$50The reddit user known as LordeRoyale
2021-06-17Epigenetic clocks: a reviewI claimed that some results obtained with Horvath's clock are general (for every reasonable measure of epigenetic age) whereas in fact these don't always show up in other clocks.$20Morgan Levine
2022-02-12Talent: a reviewAs explained in the EDIT in the post, now I support reference checksA drink next time we meet lolArmand Cognetta
2022-02-17Epigenetic clocks: a reviewForgot to cite a key paper and wrongly said one paper was published in 2015 rather than 2013$4Bobby Brooke
2022-09-07Set Sail for Fail: On AI riskWrongly said that chimpanzees have better working memory than humans based on a single piece of evidence, where there is a review from earlier in 2022 that shows otherwise$64Nathan Nguyen
2024-04-26Links (86)I cited a a study that said that many Instagram and Tiktok users regret the platforms exist. That study is not very good for reasons here but I do think the conclusion is sufficiently directionally correct from alternative evidence here$4Nathan Nguyen
2026-02-15The Rise and Fall of RawlsianismI claimed Rawls abandoned the difference principle because not every rational agent behind the veil of ignorance would choose it. But Rawls never denied that there is one uniquely rational choice in the original position; it was actual citizens in liberal societies, not the parties to the original position, who he later said would come to different conclusions about principles of justice.$40Joel da Silva
2026-09-08Alzheimer's: from causes and risk factors to models and interventionsI claimed that people with mutations like APOE3 Christchurch do not experience cognitive decline. The cited study (Arboleda-Velasquez et al. 2019) reported one PSEN1 mutation carrier with two copies of APOE3 Christchurch who developed mild cognitive impairment in her seventies, approximately three decades later than expected. This was delayed onset, not an absence of cognitive decline.$10Teagan Doherty
2026-09-08Systems Biology: understanding beyond genesI incorrectly described Mintz and Illmensee (1975) as transferring cancer-cell nuclei into oocytes and producing mice entirely from cancer cells. They injected whole teratocarcinoma cells into blastocysts, producing chimeras. Replaced the citation with Hochedlinger et al. (2004), which used nuclear transfer but also produced chimeric mice, and removed the inaccurate claim of subsequent replications.
2026-09-08From chaos, order: On the nature and measurement of biological agingI claimed that no epigenetic predictor of intrinsic capacity existed, but Fuentealba et al. had published one on June 4, 2025, before my article. Added the citation.Teagan Doherty
2026-09-08From chaos, order: On the nature and measurement of biological agingI incorrectly assigned a greater-than-99% probability to surviving from age 10 to 80. I intended to compare one-year survival (10 to 11 versus 100 to 101). Clarified the time horizons and replaced the 50% figure at age 100 with approximately 63% for males and 67% for females, using the SSA's 2023 period life table.Teagan Doherty