Photo credit: Dangubic/Deposit Photos Here's a link to CNN's coverage of a study on alcohol use and gray matter in the brain. The headline reads, "Drinking any amount of alcohol causes damage to the brain, study finds." Let's consider how well the study supports the causal claim the journalist (or the editor) attached to it. …
Continue reading Claim: “Drinking any amount of alcohol causes damage to the brain”
That sounds delicious, thank you! Photo credit: Nathan Motoyama/EyeEm/Getty Images June is food month on the ERM blog! This story's about the headline, Loud music makes you eat bad food?!?!?Whaaaaaaatever! QRock 100.7 was one of several news outlets that had fun describing this study for its readers. Let's find out what kind of study was …
Credit: IFLA.org (Open source image) Most research methods instructors hope their course will teach students to be better consumers of information. They want to not only help students read empirical journals; they also want to help students become critical thinkers about anything they encounter in the "real world" of the Internet. Maybe you'd like to …
Continue reading Start next semester with a fake-news lesson
This article on msnbc.com presents a summary of research by Dr. Dacher Keltner on differences in empathy and social reasoning between upper- and lower-class Americans. How does the evidence support the view that richfolks, like Mr. Potter here, are less sensitive to others? Photo: RKO Radio Pictures/Photofest 1. The article describes several studies from Dr. …
Continue reading The rich are different….and not in a good way
Recently, Google’s Daniel Russell presented a talk on Search Literacy, a skill for the information age. The 35-minute presentation is viewable on youtube as one of the GoogleTechTalks. Anyone who spends time searching for information online can benefit from this presentation. Russell presents some tips for designing good searches and recognizing false or faked information. …