“This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.” This 1973 announcement by Richard Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, effectively admitted to the mendacity of all previous statements issued by the White House on the Watergate scandal. Most flip-flops by politicians are less monumental, although they can sometimes haunt an entire election campaign: During the […]
The annual meeting in Long Beach is rapidly approaching. Unlike previous years, the meeting will feature a social-media angle—and everybody attending the meeting is welcome to contribute. We will be running a Twitter stream with a dedicated hashtag, #Psynom14. If you are new to social media and are unsure about how to get started, we have three […]
It’s getting late and the party is noisy. Everybody around you is talking sat the same time and you have trouble keeping track of the conversation. And then someone at the other end of the room whispers your name. All of a sudden you can hear quite clearly: someone said your name, and all the […]
I meant to write this post last night but then something came up. I had some time set aside this morning, too, but email chewed that up. We all procrastinate, even if only occasionally. In actual fact, I didn’t procrastinate writing this post at all: I thought I was going to work on it tonight, […]
Statins reliably reduce cholesterol levels and help save lives by preventing or ameliorating cardiovascular disease. But they have side effects: About 1 in 10 people suffer nosebleeds, a sore throat, headaches, or muscle and joint pain, to name but a few of the common side effects. On balance, however, statins are widely believed to be saving lives. So […]
There is a brief flash on the screen—just 1/10th of a second. A few color patches are flashed, and 2 seconds later another array appears that stays on the screen until you respond. Your task is to decide whether any one of the patches of color in the second array differs from the colors briefly […]
Does “brain training” make you smarter, more alert, and (cognitively) younger all around? If you pay for brain training software, is that a smart investment? The people who sell this software presumably think so. But not everyone agrees. The websites of the Stanford Center on Longevity and the Max-Planck Institute for Human Development recently posted […]
If people’s memory for past events was entirely accurate and if people could only act on things they remembered, our ability to survive in the world would be severely curtailed. This may sound provocative (it is) and counter-intuitive (it is) but it’s also commonly accepted as true. Why? Because if all you remembered about certain […]
Thursday, September 25, 2014 The academic publishing business is undergoing a revolutionary transition. Within the last few years, conventional ‘paper’ publishing modes have become nearly obsolete and most scholarly literature is now online. On the face of it, this shift is merely technological. However, the technological shift has been accompanied by substantial cultural shifts towards […]