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A Question of Trust: Fixing the Replication Crisis
The Guardian: Human beings are born to communicate with each other. Communication involves both trust and vigilance. We constantly monitor how reliable the information is and how trustworthy the person is who has provided the information. So what about information we get from scientists? Psychology has recently provided material that could figure in a crime scene investigation story. This is not a story about scientific fraud, but about the failure to replicate experiments. This is serious because replication is the gold standard by which we know if we can trust a result. Read the whole story: The Guardian
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Here’s a New Way to Waste Time: Pre-crastinate
New York Magazine: Introducing a newly discovered way to waste time: “Pre-crastinating,” the inverse of procrastinating. If procrastination is putting things off, pre-crastination is “the tendency to complete, or at least begin, tasks as soon as possible,” even if doing so will cost us more time and effort in the long run, according to an upcoming paper in Psychological Science (the researchers sent Science of Us an early copy). Read the whole story: New York Magazine
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Overexposed? Camera Phones Could Be Washing Out Our Memories
NPR: Los Angeles blogger Rebecca Woolf uses her blog, Girl's Gone Child, as a window into her family's life. Naturally, it includes oodles of pictures of her four children. She says she's probably taken tens of thousands of photos since her oldest child was born. And she remembers the moment when it suddenly clicked — if you will — that she was too absorbed in digital documentation. "I remember going to the park at one point, and looking around ... and seeing that everyone was on their phones ... not taking photographs, but just — they had a device in their hands," she recalls. Read the whole story: NPR
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Speed-Reading Reborn for Smartphones, Smartwatches
Scientific American: Speed-reading is either a productivity enhancer or a gimmick that lets people gobble up content without really understanding or retaining what they’ve read. This debate—dating back to the late 1950s—resurfaced recently when Samsung integrated the new Spritz speed-reading app into the high-profile Galaxy S5 smartphone and Gear 2 smartwatchlaunched last month.
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Want to Really Appreciate Your Food? A Higher Price May do the Trick
Los Angeles Times: If you could get a $5 lunch for $1, would it taste better? Be a more satisfying lunch? If you chose the bargain, guess again. Price affects consumer satisfaction, and getting a deal doesn't necessarily make diners like their food better, according to researchers at Cornell University who frequently study human behavior and eating habits. Read the whole story: Los Angeles Times
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Why That Video Went Viral
The New York Times: There it was, virtual gold: a video of a firefighter resuscitating a kitten trapped in a smoky home. Neetzan Zimmerman, then an editor at Gawker, a news and gossip site, knew it was destined for viral magic. But before he could publish a post about it, his editor made a request. Mr. Zimmerman was to include the epilogue omitted by most every other outlet: The kitten died of smoke inhalation soon after being saved. For telling the whole story, Mr. Zimmerman paid a price. “That video did tremendously well for practically everyone who posted it,” he recalled, “except Gawker.” Why should one sad detail mean the difference between an online megahit and a dud?
