Science Weekly Folgen

Electric cars might seem like a no-brainer on a warming planet, but there are plenty of people who remain sceptical about everything from their battery life to their carbon impact and the environmental and human rights costs of their parts. Madeleine Finlay consults Auke Hoekstra, known as the internet’s ‘EV debunker in chief’, to unpick the myths, realities and grey areas surrounding electric cars. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod

A record 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023. To find out what’s driving this trend, Ian Sample speaks to Ivan Oransky, whose organisation Retraction Watch has been monitoring the growing numbers of retractions for more than a decade, and hears from blogger Sholto David, who recently made headlines when he spotted mistakes in research from a leading US cancer institute.. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod

Social affairs correspondent Robert Booth tells Madeleine Finlay why a class of synthetic opioids called nitazenes, first developed in the 1950s, is leading to a worrying number of fatal overdoses in the UK. And she hears from toxicology and addiction specialist Dr Joseph D’Orazio about a tranquilliser called xylazine that has been showing up in alarming volumes in the US illegal drug supply and is now starting to appear in toxicology reports in the UK. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod