Happy December. This will undoubtedly be my last message of the year.

My October column for Skeptical Inquirer, “‘Have You Seen My Wallet?’ Civic Honesty around the Globe,” was a bit of good news. According to a remarkably ambitious field experiment conducted in forty countries, people are more altruistic than you might think. The authors of the study turned in over 17,000 “lost” wallets at reception desks at museums, public offices, or other institutions. The wallets contained either no money at all or the equivalent of US$13.45, and the “owner’s” email address was clearly displayed. The crucial measure was contacting the owner (actually, the experimenters) or not. Contrary to standard economic theory, people virtually everywhere were MORE likely to contact someone they thought was the owner if the wallet contained money than if it didn’t. Not what the experimenters expected, but good news nonetheless. One country took issue with their results in the study, but I will leave that episode for you to discover in the article.

A modern ECT machine.

My latest “Behavior & Belief” column, “Profound Autism and Electroconvulsive Therapy: A Neglected Resource,” is on the use of ECT with children whose severe behavior has not responded to other therapies. It features the story of Amy S. F. Lutz and her son Jonah, who greatly benefited from ECT. In Jonah’s case, the improvement in his behavior after ECT meant the difference between being institutionalized and continuing to live at home. Unfortunately, ECT’s scary reputation, fostered by films such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, has led to severe restrictions in some states, which means that many families whose children might benefit from ECT have difficulty accessing it.

That’s it for 2025. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season, and may 2026 be a better year for us all.

SV