“I see a train wreck looming”—Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman did not mince words in a 2012 email to colleagues in which he drew attention to what he considered a potential replication crisis in at least some areas of psychology. Kahneman’s skepticism was fed by failed attempts to replicate classic priming studies, increasing concerns about replicability in psychology more […]
There will come a time when George W. Bush and Barack Obama will be remembered as poorly as Millard Fillmore and Chester Arthur are today, according to Psychonomic researchers Henry Roediger and Andrew DeSoto, who have examined how rapidly well-known people are forgotten from our collective historical memories. Their work appeared in Science last week after being presented […]
What’s the value of knowing the Emissions of CH4 from Enteric Fermentation in Cattle in the Caribbean in 2010? (It’s 536.8272 gigagrams, by the way.) According to McKinsey and Company, publicly available “open data”—particularly government data—can add between $3 and $5 trillion to the global economy each year. The availability of such data is said to help companies […]
“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 […]
Why do our hearts ache, and why do we get butterflies in our stomachs? Why is a word or phrase always on the tip of your tongue? Words that convey strong emotions often involve bodily organs (e.g. my heart aches, I have butterflies in my stomach), and we speak of kind people as being warm. […]
A common idea in educational theory is that “active” or “self-directed” learning tends to be better than passive forms of instruction. That is, as compared to watching a lecture or listening to a discussion, students learn more effectively when they take an active role in deciding what to learn and how to learn about it. The notion that […]
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 […]
Our partners at FABBS (Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences) have brought to our attention this notice from the US National Institute on Aging. They are updating their strategic plan. If you are an aging researcher (and aren’t we all?), you may want to have some input into that plan. Here is your […]
Ask any chemist and she will tell you that an electron microscope needs to be carefully calibrated. If not, its measurements are not trustworthy enough for research purposes. As psychologists, our laboratories typically do not include electron microscopes, but we do employ various measurement devices. At the most basic level, this includes our statistical “machinery.” […]
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 […]