While studying psychology in West Lafayette, Indiana, Sarah wondered whether it’s correct to speak of a treatment’s efficacy or its effectiveness. Usually, in research and professional settings, efficacy describes how well a treatment works under controlled conditions, such as clinical trials, while effectiveness addresses how well it performs outside of that context, where circumstances can vary. In everyday conversation, though, this distinction is less important. This is part of a complete episode.
In English, you can express skepticism with the classic saying when pigs fly. In Tagalog, a similar sentiment is expressed with a phrase that translates “when the crow turns white, when the heron turns black,” and there’s a Hungarian phrase that...
Dax in Santa Cruz, California, wonders: Now that we’re into the 21st century, when will people stop saying that initial 20 when referring to a year such as 2028 the way we dropped the 19 in the term 1980s and just started referring to the ’80s? This...
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