-
It’s Science, but Not Necessarily Right
The New York Times: ONE of the great strengths of science is that it can fix its own mistakes. “There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong,” the astrophysicist Carl Sagan once said. “That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.” If only it were that simple. Scientists can certainly point with pride to many self-corrections, but science is not like an iPhone; it does not instantly auto-correct. As a series of controversies over the past few months have demonstrated, science fixes its mistakes more slowly, more fitfully and with more difficulty than Sagan’s words would suggest.
-
Lung cancer victim’s deathbed image sends potent message
Los Angeles Times: For American smokers, her portrait is a glimpse of a future frightening to ponder and, for U.S. health officials, perhaps too powerful to foist on the public: an unsparing photograph of a person scarcely recognizable as a woman, her body wasted by cancer, her hair gone, her blue eyes fixed in a thousand-mile stare. She was Barb Tarbox, and she died on May 18, 2003, of lung cancer at the age of 42. From October 2002, two months after she was diagnosed, to the moment of her death, the Edmonton, Canada, homemaker set about making her ordeal a lesson to others about the dangers of smoking.
-
Why Trolls Behave the Way They Do
The Wall Street Journal: People who troll online get the same thrill from it as drinking and exercising power according to U.S. researchers. Apparently anonymity means web users lose their inhibitions in much the same way as alcohol reduces people’s inhibitions. The people’s true characters are revealed, according to research conducted by Northwestern University. Read more: The Wall Street Journal
-
Is He Gay? Ovulating Women Can Tell
TIME Healthland: Ovulation is a really useful biological function. Not only does it facilitate pregnancy — though sperm are in no short supply, the ephemeral egg appears just once a month — but new research finds that it also helps a woman select potential partners by enhancing her "gaydar." All this complex sexual decision-making is going on behind the scenes, according to a study published online this week in the journal Psychological Science that found that straight women at their peak period of fertility are far more accurate than non-ovulaters at sussing out who's gay and who's not just by looking at a man's face.
-
Mood and Experience: Life Comes At You
Living through weddings or divorces, job losses and children’s triumphs, we sometimes feel better and sometimes feel worse. But, psychologists observe, we tend to drift back to a “set point”—a stable resting point, or baseline, in the mind’s level of contentment or unease. Research has shown that the set points for depression and anxiety are particularly stable over time. Why? “The overwhelming view within psychiatry and psychology is that is due to genetic factors,” says Virginia Commonwealth University psychiatrist Kenneth S. Kendler.
-
Scary New Cigarette Labels Not Based in Psychology
Science: There's no question that the nine new graphic cigarette warning labels designed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which will be on all cigarette packages sold in the United States starting in September 2012, are ghastly. But has rampant gruesome imagery in shows like House emasculated their effectiveness? And will these pictures really convince a jaded smoker to quit or prevent a rebellious teenager from starting?
