Credit: halfpoint/Deposit Photos Summer is the time for music festivals like Burning Man, Burning Nest, Firefly, and Bonnaroo. If you are planning to attend one this year, this post might interest you. The science journalism clearinghouse called Study Finds recently reported on a study conducted at Yale University. The journalists' report included the causal headline …
Continue reading Music festivals “make people more generous, socially connected”
Conspiracy theories, unlike scientific theories, are unfalsifiable. Credit: buecax/Depositphotos Early in the research methods course you learn about the theory-data cycle (Chapter 1). You also learn about the benefits of scientific reasoning over informal, everyday reasoning such as intuition, experience, or authority (Chapter 2). The QAnon conspiracy theory is a good example of several principles …
Continue reading Conspiracy reasoning vs. Scientific reasoning (the case of QAnon)
A recent study found that in psychology, the authors, participants, topics, and editors of empirical journal articles are mostly White. Photo credit: Africa Studio/Shutterstock Is science fair? You learned in Chapter 2 that empirical journals are the primary place where psychological scientists make their research public. Each empirical journal has an editorial board-- a group …
Continue reading Racial bias in psychological science journals
The published study claimed to have observed one parrot, one penguin, and one woodpecker. Photo Credit: Zdenek Machacek/Unsplash Today's the first time that the National Audubon Society has been featured on this blog! The story is ornithological (sort of) but it's mainly a parable about predatory journals. The journalist for the Audubon Society tells the …
Photo credit: Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAMS/CDC Here's a good example of a bad study. It's related to the COVID pandemic. In this story by NPR journalist Vanessa Romo, you can read about a doctor in Texas who claims to be conducting research on the drug hydroxychloroquine, using COVID patients in a nursing home …
Continue reading Testing a COVID drug: Design flaws and ethical lapses
Sugar doesn't make kids hyperactive; at least not according to a null effect study and a meta-analysis. Photo: Alamy Here's something "everybody says": Kids will become hyperactive if they eat too much sugar. This folk belief is as much a part of North American cultural wisdom as learning styles and the catharsis hypothesis. But …
Photo: fotogestoeber/Shutterstock More than ever, our citizenry needs skills for information literacy. A recent study of almost 4000 U.S. teens, conducted by Stanford's History Education group, concluded that teenagers' ability to think critically about online information is "troubling." Their report included the findings that: Fifty-two percent of students believed a grainy video claiming to show ballot …
Should you be suspicious of a study conducted by a company that produces probiotics products? Photo: Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo Guest post by Dr. Dina Gohar, University of Michigan Hippocrates, considered to be the Father of Medicine, reportedly said, “all disease begins in the gut. ” It took doctors centuries …
Did the study collect the right data to conclude that "screen time found to cause 'head horns'?" Photo Credit: Nature Scientific Reports Maybe you heard the story last week about how cell phones are making horns grow on people's heads. Take a minute to watch this short video of the morning crew from ABC news …
How might advertisers operationalize the concept of "reliability" in ways favorable to their own brand? Credit: BNFWork/Shutterstock You may have seen these ads on TV: Real people stand in a warehouse and are asked which cars are "most reliable." A Honda driver might predict, "Hondas are the most reliable." But then the cover is whisked …