Popular self-help books,
checked against the research.
Before you spend ten hours on a book, find out whether its big ideas hold up. We check each book's central claims against published studies and give it an Evidence Score from 0 to 10.
Latest reviews
Good Habits, Bad Habits
Written by a leading habit researcher, it rests on solid, peer-reviewed findings. A few numbers get simplified, and it offers fewer ready-made tools than its competitors.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
A landmark tour of judgment and bias whose core ideas hold up well, docked half a point for priming and ego-depletion chapters that failed large replications.
Atomic Habits
Practical advice built on solid habit science, wrapped in catchy but untested claims about identity and compounding. Useful, but less proven than the subtitle says.
Mindset
A real research idea stretched far past its data: beliefs about ability matter a little, for some students, in some settings, not across all of life.
The 5 Second Rule
A harmless, memorable starting cue wrapped in confident brain claims that no study supports; the countdown itself has never been tested.
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How we score a book
- List the claims. The four to six ideas the book asks you to act on.
- Check the research. Meta-analyses and large replications first, then individual studies.
- Flag known problems. Failed replications, retractions and shrinking effect sizes lower the score.
- Show our sources. Every review links to the studies behind the verdict.