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222009Volume 22, Issue7September 2009

Presidential Column

Linda Bartoshuk
Linda Bartoshuk
University of Florida
APS President 2009 - 2010
All columns

In this Issue:
Spicing Up Psychological Science

About the Observer

The Observer is the online magazine of the Association for Psychological Science and covers matters affecting the research, academic, and applied disciplines of psychology. The magazine reports on issues of interest to psychologist scientists worldwide and disseminates information about the activities, policies, and scientific values of APS.

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  • Thumbnail Image for Disaster Response and Recovery

    Disaster Response and Recovery

    Disasters like Hurricane Florence and Typhoon Mangkhut draw massive media coverage, trauma interventions, and financial donations to victims. But psychological research shows the efforts don’t always yield the intended benefits.

Up Front

  • Spicing Up Psychological Science

    I was once asked to explain why I love being a psychologist. First, I don't think there is a better way to be trained in science. The difficulties of studying behavior have made us sophisticated about experimental design and statistical analysis. The results of our work impact the lives of real people. We have low tolerance for nonsense in science. As far as I am concerned, this is science at its best. We look for the essence of what makes us act and interact from the exotic to the mundane. And so it is with taste. Pubillius Syrus (1st century BC) wrote, "No pleasure endures unseasoned by variety." William Cowper (1731-1800) expanded on that a bit with, "Variety's the very spice of life that gives it all its flavour." Although it's useful for philosophizing, "spice" technically refers to aromatic or pungent plant-derived substances used to flavor foods. In addition to the pleasure they add, spices are important chemosensory labels that identify a food as belonging to the group we find familiar and thus safe.

  • The Academic Observer: The Orphan Paper

    I have been developing a concept that I cannot find in the literature on the sociology or psychology of science. However, when I describe the concept to any active researcher over (say) 45, it is immediately recognized and sometimes seems to arouse a powerful, if nostalgic, emotional experience. Let me try it out on you here, although you younger readers may need to inquire about its reality with your elders. As you guessed, I am calling the concept “the orphan paper.” When we begin our careers, we seek publications, and most any publication will do. Yes, the idea might have been slight, but we mined it through three experiments and showed that, slight or not, there was evidence for it. Our publishing careers were born when some journal editor accepted our pithy nugget, and off we went. More papers follow in this vein: fine, workmanlike (or workwomanlike) research, but nothing too special or earthshaking. As time went by, we longed for something more dramatic, a really important contribution.

Practice

  • The Academic Observer: The Orphan Paper

    I have been developing a concept that I cannot find in the literature on the sociology or psychology of science. However, when I describe the concept to any active researcher over (say) 45, it is immediately recognized and sometimes seems to arouse a powerful, if nostalgic, emotional experience. Let me try it out on you here, although you younger readers may need to inquire about its reality with your elders. As you guessed, I am calling the concept “the orphan paper.” When we begin our careers, we seek publications, and most any publication will do. Yes, the idea might have been slight, but we mined it through three experiments and showed that, slight or not, there was evidence for it. Our publishing careers were born when some journal editor accepted our pithy nugget, and off we went. More papers follow in this vein: fine, workmanlike (or workwomanlike) research, but nothing too special or earthshaking. As time went by, we longed for something more dramatic, a really important contribution.

  • Graphing Literacy in the Psychology Major

    Figure 1. Florence Nightingale's Polar Area (often referred to as the cox comb) graph depicted "The Causes of Mortality in the Army in the East" in the years 1854-55. The twelve sections represent the months in a year. The size of the section representing each month indicates the number of people who died in that particular month. The colors correspond to the different causes of death. (This adaptation of Nightingale's graph is courtesy of Worth Publishers) The most enthusiastic statistician of all” (Porter, 1986 p. 67) among her energetic 19th century peers was Florence Nightingale, the first woman admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in England. Her popular legacy, of course, is the nursing legend. When the Crimean War broke out, Nightingale directed the entire nursing operation at the war front for the British Army. Her legend began to grow as she instituted practices of basic hygiene, such as changing the bed sheets when new patients entered the hospital. She documented every change that she made so that she could identify what worked and succeeded at dramatically reducing the mortality rate (Goldie, 1997).

First Person

  • New APSSC Board Members

    Jeremy Ashton Houska President Jeremy Ashton Houska is a fifth-year doctoral student in experimental psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He conducts both basic and applied research in the areas of memory and cognition. In particular, Jeremy is interested in situation models, narrative-based persuasion, and the teaching of psychology. He has been recognized with several awards for his teaching. Most recently, Jeremy received the Society for the Teaching of Psychology’s 2009 Wilbert J. McKeachie Teaching Excellence Award. Kelli Vaughn-Blount Past-President Kelli Vaughn-Blount is a second-year doctoral student in history and theory of psychology at York University in Toronto. Her primary research areas include the history of women in psychological science, feminist psychology, social support of bereavement, and the teaching of psychology. Kelli’s current research projects include the development of a feminist psychology archive (feministvoices.com) and transformational learning in the classroom. Peter Vernig Communications and Marketing Officer Pete Vernig is a fifth-year clinical student at Suffolk University in Boston.

  • The Difficulties of Scientific Writing

    As an undergraduate, I typically spent one week or less on writing assignments, regardless of how much time my instructor gave me. It was my natural ability — or so I thought at the time — that made me adept at writing so well in such a short time. When I arrived at graduate school, I thought that my natural writing skills  would help me rise to the challenge of scientific writing. The goal of this article is to suggest that natural writing skills get far too much credit in scientific writing. In other words, writing is hard for everyone. In what follows, I detail some of the struggles of my early scientific writing experience while offering valuable lessons that I found helpful. Everyone Struggles Writing a research manuscript is difficult on many levels. The structure of a scientific manuscript differs from undergraduate writing, and this structure takes time to learn. Beyond this, data analysis can be challenging, particularly when results between studies are slightly inconsistent or if your current results show patterns that differ from patterns reported in the literature.

More From This Issue

  • APS Member Receives Presidential Early Career Award

    Rawson APS Member Katherine A. Rawson, Kent State University, has been given the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, which recognizes promising scientists at the beginning of their careers. The award includes a five-year grant to support additional research. Rawson is being recognized for her work in cognitive psychology at Kent University. Her research focuses on the cognitive process behind text comprehension, how the processes become automatic, and how component processes interact with one another.

  • On the Newsstand

    Your Brain Thinks Money Is a Drug NPR, August 7, 2009 If you've ever thought of money as a drug, you may be more right than you know. New research shows that counting money — just handling the bills — can make things less painful. "It is surprising," says Kathleen Vohs, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management who [conducted] the research. "It still surprises me." Coverage of "The Symbolic Power of Money: Reminders of Money Alter Social Distress and Physical Pain" in Psychological Science (Xinyue Zhou, Kathleen D. Vohs, and Roy F. Baumeister, Volume 20(6), 700-706). Read the full NPR article here.

  • New APS Award Recognizes Early Career Achievement

    Recently established by the APS Board of Directors, the Janet Taylor Spence Early Career Award will recognize transformative contributions to psychological science by rising stars in the field.

  • Staying Sharp: Researchers Discuss the Aging Brain

    Robert Wilson speaking as Arthur Kramer looks on at the joint APS and National Institute of Aging press conference. Do you remember where you put your keys? How about what you had for breakfast or where you parked your car? If you have a hard time remembering these things now, what about in 10 years?

  • The Burden of Stimulus Money

    There’s the familiar story of the guy of modest means who wins a lottery jackpot — and goes downhill from there. The same could be happening to the National Institutes of Health, and not for the first time. NIH had been suffering flat budgets for six straight years when Congress suddenly and unexpectedly dealt it a wad of stimulus money in February — $10.4 billion to be spent over two years, atop its current annual budget of approximately $30 billion. The health research community is understandably ecstatic. Since the stimulus ground rules call for fast spending, much of the NIH bonanza is going to projects that were previously approved but unfunded for lack of money.

  • New APS Leaders

    Linda Bartoshuk University of Florida President, 2009-2010 Linda Bartoshuk, an APS Fellow and Charter Member, has dedicated time and energy to APS since its inception. She is a familiar face on the APS Board, having served as a Member-at-Large from 2000 to 2003 and as Secretary from 2006 to 2008. Bartoshuk is one of the leading researchers in the field of taste physiology and disorders. Currently Bushnell Professor in the Department of Community Dentistry and Behavioral Science at the University of Florida College of Dentistry, Bartoshuk is known for her investigations of the effects of genetic variation on tasting and taste pathology, including taste loss and phantom tastes.

  • Alloy and Abramson: Demystifying Bipolar Disorder

    Lauren B. Alloy delivers her James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award Address. It was standing room only as Lauren B. Alloy of Temple University delivered her James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award Address (unfortunately, award co-recipient Lyn Abramson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison was not able to be there).

  • Baird Proposes Behavioral Research at the Department of Energy

    Representative Brian Baird (D-WA), a long time champion of behavioral science, has introduced a bill (H.R. 3247) in Congress to establish a social and behavioral research program at the Department of Energy aimed at understanding, among other things, the patterns of energy consumption by individuals, households, and businesses, and the mechanisms involved in decisions to implement energy conservation measures and adopt energy efficient technologies and practices. Baird’s bill was approved this summer by the House Science and Technology Committee — an important first step in the legislative process that we hope will eventually lead to the program’s creation. Rep.