Best of 2020

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2020. 374 posts.

Science & Space
94

Surgery, the Ultimate Placebo

Ian Harris explains that more than half of commonly performed surgical operations may be placebos. Adequate studies using a blinded control group are essential. Ian Harris, a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, wrote a book titled Surgery, The Ultimate Placebo. I…

115

SLS vs. Starship

NASA just announced the lunar landers for the Artemis program. To everyone’s surprise, SpaceX’s massive Starship is one of three landers NASA chose alongside Blue Origin and Dynetics. Understandably, this is bringing up a lot of questions. Some of which we will answer in my next video/article: “Should NASA just cancel…