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Cleaning Up Science
The New Yorker: A lot of scientists have been busted recently for making up data and fudging statistics. One case involves a Harvard professor who I once knew and worked with; another a Dutch social psychologist who made up results by the bushel. Medicine, too, has seen a rash of scientific foul play; perhaps most notably, the dubious idea that vaccines could cause autism appears to have been a hoax perpetrated by a scientific cheat. A blog called RetractionWatch publishes depressing notices, almost daily. One recent post mentioned that a peer-review site had been hacked; others detail misconduct in dentistry, cancer research, and neuroscience. And that’s just in the last week.
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A New Focus on the ‘Post’ in Post-Traumatic Stress
The New York Times: Psychological trauma dims tens of millions of lives around the world and helps create costs of at least $42 billion a year in the United States alone. But what is trauma, exactly? Both culturally and medically, we have long seen it as arising from a single, identifiable disruption. You witness a shattering event, or fall victim to it — and as the poet Walter de la Mare put it, “the human brain works slowly: first the blow, hours afterward the bruise.” The world returns more or less to normal, but you do not.
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Could the right go green?
The Boston Globe: People tend to think of morality along one dimension: good versus bad. But recent scholarship by Jonathan Haidt and others has identified that there can be multiple moral values commanding our attention—namely “harm/care,” “fairness/reciprocity,” “in-group/loyalty,” “authority/respect,” and “purity/sanctity”—and has shown that liberals are more focused on harm/care while conservatives are more focused on the others. A new study applies this moral framework to environmental politics and reveals that conservatives aren’t necessarily more opposed to environmental action; it depends how that action is framed. Read the whole story: The Boston Globe
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New Research on Visual Perception and Attention From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research on visual perception and attention from Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. When What You Hear Influences When You See: Listening to an Auditory Rhythm Influences the Temporal Allocation of Visual Attention Jared E. Miller, Laura A. Carlson, and J. Devin McAuley Can the things we hear affect the ways we allocate visual attention? In the first of three experiments, participants watched a screen while listening to an auditory rhythm. A white dot appeared in a corner of the screen in synch, slightly out of synch, or very out of synch with the final auditory tone.
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Why Aren’t People Happier During the Holidays?
The New York Times: If you’re lucky and you’re not working this Christmas Eve, you may be just settling in for a cozy evening with family and friends. You may be going off to candlelight church services, or staying home, lighting the Christmas tree, listening to carols and sipping champagne with loved ones. Soon gifts will be exchanged and yummy food will be eaten. As the song goes, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” Or is it? Read the whole story: The New York Times
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Hug your kids, say you love them – and don’t over-talk the Connecticut shootings
The Globe and Mail: As U.S. President Barack Obama said in his statement to the press on Friday, every parent in the United States (and every parent in Canada who is shaken by the mass shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut) will hug their children a little tighter and tell them that they love them, and remind “each other how deeply we love one another.” But even though parents may be stunned by what is being called one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history, experts warn them against passing on their fears to their children.
