All posts tagged: Findings

How youth reference groups can help amplify research findings in public discussions and improve policymaking – Evidence & Policy Blog

How youth reference groups can help amplify research findings in public discussions and improve policymaking – Evidence & Policy Blog

Published by skeptic

Lucas Walsh, Mark Rickinson, Blake Cutler and Joanne Gleeson This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘How youth reference groups can contribute to amplify research findings to public discussions and potentially improve policy making‘, part of the part of the Evidence & Policy Special Issue: The Role of Youth-Led Research in Policy Change. Where youth engagement in policymaking is often tokenistic or absent (Waite et al, 2024), this could be improved by collaborating with young people as research evidence users.  In a previous post, we examined what it means for practitioners to use research well (Rickinson et al., 2024). The Quality Use of Research Evidence (QURE) Framework guides how research can effectively be applied in practice. High‑quality, relevant research needs to be thoughtfully integrated into professional practice through critical engagement and deliberate implementation. Quality use is best supported by individual skills, mindsets and relationships, as well as organisational leadership, culture and infrastructure to enable effective evidence use. We’ve now applied the QURE Framework to better understand what enables quality use of research …

Former Abilene Christian basketball player permanently banned after NCAA manipulation findings

Former Abilene Christian basketball player permanently banned after NCAA manipulation findings

Published by skeptic

The NCAA says former Abilene Christian basketball player Airion Simmons broke the association’s gambling rules after investigators determined he shared confidential team information with bettors and agreed to influence his play during a 2024 game against Tarleton State. The ruling, released Friday (May 15) by the Division I Committee on Infractions, centered on a March 20, 2024, matchup between Abilene Christian University and Tarleton State University. NCAA officials said Simmons accepted $3,500 after agreeing to “play[ing] bad” during the game as part of a betting scheme tied to outside gamblers. Former Abilene Christian men’s basketball student-athlete violated sports betting integrity rules:https://t.co/C73syI1XiM — NCAA News (@NCAA_PR) May 15, 2026 According to the negotiated resolution, the case surfaced after another former Abilene Christian player disclosed details while attending a Division II school in September 2025. The player told coaches and NCAA officials that Simmons and another teammate discussed “a way to get paid to lose the game” while they were playing video games before the Tarleton State matchup. Investigators were also told about a FaceTime call involving …

News diary 13-19 April: Southport Inquiry findings, European football fixtures and UK housing protest

News diary 13-19 April: Southport Inquiry findings, European football fixtures and UK housing protest

Published by Sam Flores

Basel, Switzerland – July 27th, 2025: Chloe Kelly (18 England Womens National Team) attacking during the UEFA Womens Euro match of Spain vs England at St. Jakob-Park. Picture: Dantey Buitureida/Shutterstock The week begins with the publishing of the first-phase findings from the Southport Inquiry, which examined the fatal stabbings of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Merseyside. Throughout the week, football action continues in the UEFA Champions League, while the league stage of the Women’s European Qualifiers takes place on Tuesday and Saturday. Four direct qualification spots for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil will be decided on 9 June. Finally, a large-scale housing protest in London takes place on Saturday as domestic pressure over housing affordability and supply grows. Leading the week Monday (April 13): Findings published from the first phase of the Southport Inquiry; BMA resident doctors’ strikes end; Commons returns from Easter recess. Tuesday (April 14): World Economic Outlook; Andrew Bailey speaks at Columbia University; Lionesses host Spain in World Cup qualifier and Liverpool take on PSG in Champions …

Military intelligence specialists and police to analyse findings in hunt for remains of murdered mother and son in Scotland | UK News

Military intelligence specialists and police to analyse findings in hunt for remains of murdered mother and son in Scotland | UK News

Published by Sam Flores

Military intelligence specialists from the Ministry of Defence have been helping in the painstaking search for the remains of a mother and son who were murdered nearly 50 years ago. Renee MacRae, 36, and her three-year-old son Andrew were killed by William MacDowell in November 1976. Married MacDowell, who had been having an affair with Mrs MacRae, was convicted in 2022 but died behind bars at the age of 81 without revealing where he had disposed of their bodies. Image: Killer William MacDowell died behind bars. Pic: PA Police Scotland said a number of sites near Nairnside, east of Inverness, had been subject to detailed analysis since the start of this week. The force said the survey work was conducted by members of the National Centre for Geospatial Intelligence (NCGI) – part of Military Intelligence Services (MIS) – using drones and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) equipment. Detective Superintendent Brian Geddes said: “The results of this scoping activity will be studied to assess whether further search activity is required. “I want to thank our military …

‘Amy Bradley Is Missing’ Director Shares Latest Findings (Exclusive)

‘Amy Bradley Is Missing’ Director Shares Latest Findings (Exclusive)

Published by Daniella Wilson

Amy Bradley Is Missing, but the docuseries’ director Ari Mark believes he is closing in on her whereabouts. Even in light of new information, Mark is not quite ready to pitch Netflix on an epilogue episode — not yet. “I mean, look, I’m very careful about the things that I present to people like Netflix, right? I’ve sort of spent my career being really careful about what I want to stand behind, you know? However, I think the moment that I feel like we’re at this tipping point where, if we could just push out a little bit more information we really could get this thing solved, I will 100 percent approach them about that,” Mark told The Hollywood Reporter. “Creatively speaking, I don’t think Netflix [goes] for low-hanging fruit in that way, and I don’t love going for low-hanging fruit. So there’s got to be real newness there, and there’s got to be a real reason to kind of suck everybody into the whole world, back into that vortex.” For now, Mark is again …

New study findings could change how rotator cuff injuries are treated in the future

New study findings could change how rotator cuff injuries are treated in the future

Published by Jenni Sidey

Pain in the shoulder can linger long after a rotator cuff tear heals on paper. Even after surgery, strength may not return. Movement may stay limited. For many patients, the real problem is not the tear itself, but the scar that replaces what was lost. Now, new research offers a deeper look into why that scar forms. Scientists from Xiangya Hospital at Central South University used advanced tools to map how tendon cells behave after injury. Their findings show that healing does not simply go wrong. Instead, it follows a complex path where multiple cell types actively build a scar. “We were struck by how tendon cells that should support healing instead became drivers of fibrosis,” said Prof. Jianzhong Hu. “This helps explain why scarring persists even long after inflammation subsides.” Scar formation after human rotator cuff injury. a MRI imaging of normal and different stages (acute, subacute, and chronic) of human RCT. (CREDIT: Bone Research) Why Rotator Cuff Tears Heal Poorly Rotator cuff injuries are among the most common shoulder problems. They often bring …

New Findings Normalize Women’s Orgasm Differences

New Findings Normalize Women’s Orgasm Differences

Published by Jenni Sidey

Some women enjoy releasing fluid on orgasm. Others feel mortified that they’ve wet the bed. And some women who don’t release fluid worry that they’re abnormal. Some partners of squirters feel fine about it. Others fret. And some partners of non-squirting women wonder why they don’t. This issue may cause considerable anxiety. Those who feel stressed should feel comforted by recent studies. They show that whatever happens is normal. Controversy Reports of women releasing fluid on orgasm date back 2,000 years. Western physicians largely ignored the phenomenon until the 1970s, when it became quite controversial. Western sexologists first took this issue seriously in 1982, when eminent sex researchers coauthored a bestselling book, The G Spot and Other Recent Discoveries About Human Sexuality. It argued that pressing on the vagina’s front wall (the G-spot) triggered release of up to a teaspoon of milky fluid, which they called “female ejaculation.” They said it originated in the tiny Skene’s glands that surround the opening of women’s urethras. Scottish gynecologist Alexander Skene discovered the glands in 1880. He called …

New fossil findings help clarify the history of primate evolution

New fossil findings help clarify the history of primate evolution

Published by Jenni Sidey

A few teeth, smaller than a grain of rice, are changing the map of your earliest primate relatives. They come from a creature called Purgatorius, a tiny tree-dwelling mammal that lived about 66 million years ago, right after the dinosaurs vanished. For decades, fossils of this animal turned up only in northern places like Montana and Saskatchewan. That left a big blank space farther south, where some scientists suspected Purgatorius simply was not there. Now, that blank space has a dot. A team led by paleontologist Stephen Chester, an anthropology professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College, reports the southernmost Purgatorius fossils ever found. They were recovered from Colorado’s Denver Basin, at the Corral Bluffs study area. The work appears as the cover article in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, with co-authors Jordan Crowell, Tyler Lyson, and David Krause of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. A lifelike rendering of the archaic primate Purgatorius. (CREDIT: Andrey Atuchin.) The teeth that moved the boundary The new specimens are not skulls or skeletons. They …

Ten Trips, Five Findings, and One Unrelenting Rat

Ten Trips, Five Findings, and One Unrelenting Rat

Published by Sam Flores

Welcome aboard, friends! On this occasion, we aren’t going anywhere. We’re using the fiftieth anniversary of Skeptical Inquirer to reflect on the adventures we’ve had so far. Imagine what we’d learn about skepticism if we could time travel to 2076. Skeptics, and their critics, could suddenly access the next fifty years of evidence. How warm is the planet? Is creationism still a thing? Did anybody find Bigfoot? Obviously, there’s no known mechanism for traveling to the future, other than waiting, but we can use fifty years of Skeptical Inquirer to play the future observer to skepticism of the past. This type of retrospective analysis provides two advantages over temporally static study. First, it allows us to examine whether historic skepticism was supported across future decades. Where has skepticism succeeded? Where has it failed? What can we learn to make skepticism better? Second, research suggests that increasing psychological distance from a problem can improve critical thinking about that problem (see Kross and Ayduk 2017). Examining skepticism versus credulity from long ago presumably increases that psychological distance. …