Philosophy posts
- May 28, 2010
- 09:22 AM
- 633 views
Falling Child Mortality - Where we are on Millennium Development Goal 4
by Ryan in Upon*the.People
The release several days ago of revised estimates for global child mortality showing that mortality has fallen faster than we previously expected was a cause for celebration. As one of the eight targets of the Millennium Development Goals, child mortality is among the better indicators we have for the health status of a given population, and is, in the words of Michael Marmot, "the health outcome most sensitive to the effects of absolute material deprivation."[Children in Burma; The Ir........ Read more »
Rajaratnam, J., Marcus, J., Flaxman, A., Wang, H., Levin-Rector, A., Dwyer, L., Costa, M., Lopez, A., & Murray, C. (2010) Neonatal, postneonatal, childhood, and under-5 mortality for 187 countries, 1970–2010: a systematic analysis of progress towards Millennium Development Goal 4. The Lancet. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)60703-9
- May 25, 2010
- 04:26 PM
- 591 views
Scientific Impotence: How to Reject Belief-Challenging Research
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
There are several ways of responding to belief-threatening information. Discounting the ability of science to inform a particular domain of knowledge seems to be one that is used in the light of belief-threatening scientific evidence. Sadly, using the scientific impotence excuse in one domain seems to also increase the likelihood of applying it to science in general...... Read more »
Munro, G. (2010) The Scientific Impotence Excuse:�Discounting Belief-Threatening Scientific Abstracts. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 40(3), 579-600. DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2010.00588.x
- May 21, 2010
- 12:09 PM
- 1,646 views
A non-post about Craig Venter’s new bug
by Iddo Friedberg in Byte Size Biology
In case you have been vacationing in a parallel universe in the past two days, you should have heard about the new synthetic bacterium created at the J Craig Venter Institute. In a nutshell, the scientific team synthesized an artificial chromosome of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides and transferred it to another bacterium, Mycoplasma capricolum. The [...]... Read more »
Gibson, D., Glass, J., Lartigue, C., Noskov, V., Chuang, R., Algire, M., Benders, G., Montague, M., Ma, L., Moodie, M.... (2010) Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.1190719
- May 17, 2010
- 05:22 AM
- 578 views
Intelligent Design Flaws: The Evidence for Natural Selection in Our DNA
by Darcy Cowan in Skepticon
Here in New Zealand the debate between religion and evolution is a muted affair, while news on the topic regularly makes headlines in the US, here it goes almost beneath notice. That is not to say the clash does not exist here, merely that it tends not to intrude into the public sphere. Over time [...]... Read more »
Avise, J. (2010) Colloquium Paper: Footprints of nonsentient design inside the human genome. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(Supplement_2), 8969-8976. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0914609107
- May 17, 2010
- 05:22 AM
- 525 views
Intelligent Design Flaws: The Evidence for Natural Selection in Our DNA
by Darcy Cowan in Skepticon
Here in New Zealand the debate between religion and evolution is a muted affair, while news on the topic regularly makes headlines in the US, here it goes almost beneath notice. That is not to say the clash does not exist here, merely that it tends not to intrude into the public sphere. Over time [...]... Read more »
Avise, J. (2010) Colloquium Paper: Footprints of nonsentient design inside the human genome. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(Supplement_2), 8969-8976. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0914609107
- May 10, 2010
- 03:40 AM
- 610 views
Freud and Penfield were wrong about memory and it leads to woo
by Barbara Drescher in ICBS Everywhere
Don’t get me wrong, Sigmund Freud and Wilder Penfield were far more intelligent and successful than I, but in hindsight we now have evidence that disconfirms their models of memory. The costs of having an inaccurate model of how memory works are immense. There are financial and opportunity costs to psychotherapy participants and on occasion [...]... Read more »
Goodman, G. (1994) Predictors of Accurate and Inaccurate Memories of Traumatic Events Experienced in Childhood. Consciousness and Cognition, 3(3-4), 269-294. DOI: 10.1006/ccog.1994.1016
Loftus EF, & Loftus GR. (1980) On the permanence of stored information in the human brain. The American psychologist, 35(5), 409-20. PMID: 7386971
McNally, N. (2003) Remembering Trauma. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University. info:/
Quas JA, Goodman GS, Bidrose S, Pipe ME, Craw S, & Ablin DS. (1999) Emotion and memory: Children's long-term remembering, forgetting, and suggestibility. Journal of experimental child psychology, 72(4), 235-70. PMID: 10074380
- April 29, 2010
- 06:09 PM
- 691 views
I Know What I Mean but Only See How You Act
by Darcy Cowan in Skepticon
When I’m writing one of these posts it is difficult to edit them in such a way as to convey my meaning clearly to those without the background I share. I’m not talking about scientific or technical background though, I mean the background that allows me access to my own thoughts. When I re-read my [...]... Read more »
Pronin E. (2008) How we see ourselves and how we see others. Science (New York, N.Y.), 320(5880), 1177-80. PMID: 18511681
- April 23, 2010
- 06:01 AM
- 638 views
Can we ever read articles of the opposite political persuasion? An alternative model
by scritic in Cognitive Science and Human Activity
Sean A. Munson, & Paul Resnick (2010). Presenting diverse political opinions: how and how much Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems : http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753326.1753543Can we ever be convinced by someone we usually disagree with completely? Can we even manage to read regularly people whose views are antithetical to our own? These are fascinating questions, I think. First, because they are political questions; conversations and deba........ Read more »
Sean A. Munson, & Paul Resnick. (2010) Presenting diverse political opinions: how and how much. Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems. info:/http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753326.1753543
- April 21, 2010
- 11:37 AM
- 1,005 views
New Study: Some Sciences Really Are Better Than Others
by David Berreby in Mind Matters
If you want to rile up a biologist and have no pointed stick handy, try this: Tell her that chemistry or physics are "harder," more fundamentally "sciencey" sciences than hers. "You can't use the standards of one science to judge another," she might say. "Physics is different from biology, not better." Not so, you answer: There must be standards common to all the sciences, which some meet better than others do. You're now set up for a seemingly........ Read more »
Fanelli, D. (2010) “Positive” Results Increase Down the Hierarchy of the Sciences. PLoS ONE, 5(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010068
- April 15, 2010
- 07:06 AM
- 1,381 views
What Is Beauty? Your Kids' Newest Art Critic
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Do animals create art? So far, this seems a uniquely human ability.
But do animals have a sense of the aesthetically pleasing? What about the ability to judge and critique art? Can an animal decide if a given work of art is beautiful or ugly? What is beauty in the first place? All good questions.
Shigeru Watanabe of Keio University in Tokyo wanted to investigate the questions, with pigeons. Did he introduce them to the works of Picasso? Or Rembrandt? Romero Britto? No. He used art created by ........ Read more »
Watanabe, S. (2009) Pigeons can discriminate “good” and “bad” paintings by children. Animal Cognition, 13(1), 75-85. DOI: 10.1007/s10071-009-0246-8
- April 9, 2010
- 12:05 AM
- 968 views
Should journalists report on unpublished research?
by Michael Slezak in Good, Bad, and Bogus
I was recently commissioned to write a short news story about a some unpublished research. Should journalists be writing about research that hasn’t undergone peer review?
The research was about the Mpemba effect — where hot water sometimes freezes faster than cold water — and was published online on arXiv. It is quite poorly written but [...]... Read more »
James D. Brownridge. (2010) A search for the Mpemba effect: When hot water freezes faster then cold water. arXiv. arXiv: 1003.3185v1
- April 8, 2010
- 11:00 PM
- 609 views
The Language of Science – it’s “just a theory”
by S.C. Kavassalis in The Language of Bad Physics
Anyone who has seriously studied an empirical or mathematical science knows there is something very special about how those studies affect the way we view the world. There is something very profound feeling in the way our minds works after we’ve been exposed to logical and testable systems, and it enters into almost [...]... Read more »
Leshner, A. (2005) Redefining Science. Science, 309(5732), 221-221. DOI: 10.1126/science.1116621
Steinhardt, P. (2002) A Cyclic Model of the Universe. Science, 296(5572), 1436-1439. DOI: 10.1126/science.1070462
- April 7, 2010
- 08:48 AM
- 718 views
Why Do We Dream?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
A few months ago, I asked Why Do We Sleep?That post was about sleep researcher Jerry Siegel, who argues that sleep evolved as a state of "adaptive inactivity". According to this idea, animals sleep because otherwise we'd always be active, and constant activity is a waste of energy. Sleeping for a proportion of the time conserves calories, and also keeps us safe from nocturnal predators etc.Siegel's theory in what we might call minimalist. That's in contrast to other hypotheses which claim that s........ Read more »
Hobson JA, & McCarley RW. (1977) The brain as a dream state generator: an activation-synthesis hypothesis of the dream process. The American journal of psychiatry, 134(12), 1335-48. PMID: 21570
Hobson, J. (2009) REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(11), 803-813. DOI: 10.1038/nrn2716
- April 1, 2010
- 06:01 PM
- 1,143 views
How do researchers perceive peer review?
by Janet D. Stemwedel in Adventures in Ethics and Science (Sb)
You don't have to look far to find mutterings about the peer review system, especially about the ways in which anonymous reviewers might hold up your paper or harm your career. On the other hand, there are plenty of champions of the status quo who argue that anonymous peer review is the essential mechanism by which reports of scientific findings are certified as scientific knowledge.
So how do scientists feel about anonymous peer review? A 2008 paper in Science and Engineering Ethics by David........ Read more »
Resnik, D., Gutierrez-Ford, C., & Peddada, S. (2008) Perceptions of Ethical Problems with Scientific Journal Peer Review: An Exploratory Study. Science and Engineering Ethics, 14(3), 305-310. DOI: 10.1007/s11948-008-9059-4
- March 31, 2010
- 04:58 PM
- 1,283 views
Preventing Plagiarism.
by Janet D. Stemwedel in Adventures in Ethics and Science (Sb)
Especially in student papers, plagiarism is an issue that it seems just won't go away. However, instructors cannot just give up and permit plagiarism without giving up most of their pedagogical goals and ideals. As tempting a behavior as this may be (at least to some students, if not to all), it is our duty to smack it down.
Is there any effective way to deliver a preemptive smackdown to student plagiarists? That's the question posed by a piece of research, "Is There an Effective Approach t........ Read more »
Bilic-Zulle, L., Azman, J., Frkovic, V., & Petrovecki, M. (2007) Is There an Effective Approach to Deterring Students from Plagiarizing?. Science and Engineering Ethics, 14(1), 139-147. DOI: 10.1007/s11948-007-9037-2
- March 29, 2010
- 11:39 PM
- 1,001 views
Climate change and philosophy of science: Does climate science aim at truth?
by Michael Slezak in Good, Bad, and Bogus
A couple of weeks ago there was an interesting exchange in The Guardian between George Monbiot and Nicholas Maxwell, a philosopher of science from University College London. In his piece, Monbiot presents an excellent, if overly pessimistic, analysis of the psychology behind climate change denial. In his response, Maxwell draws on some interesting results from the philosophy [...]... Read more »
Cartwright, Nancy. (2004) Do the laws of physics state the facts?. Readings on the Laws of Nature. info:/
Kitcher, P. (1981) Explanatory Unification. Philosophy of Science, 48(4), 507. DOI: 10.1086/289019
- March 29, 2010
- 07:39 PM
- 1,121 views
What causes scientifc misconduct?
by Janet D. Stemwedel in Adventures in Ethics and Science (Sb)
In the last post, we looked at a piece of research on how easy it is to clean up the scientific literature in the wake of retractions or corrections prompted by researcher misconduct in published articles. Not surprisingly, in the comments on that post there was some speculation about what prompts researchers to commit scientific misconduct in the first place.
As it happens, I've been reading a paper by Mark S. Davis, Michelle Riske-Morris, and Sebastian R. Diaz, titled "Causal Factors ........ Read more »
Davis, M., Riske-Morris, M., & Diaz, S. (2007) Causal Factors Implicated in Research Misconduct: Evidence from ORI Case Files. Science and Engineering Ethics, 13(4), 395-414. DOI: 10.1007/s11948-007-9045-2
- March 27, 2010
- 10:15 PM
- 1,178 views
How hard is it to clean up the scientific literature?
by Janet D. Stemwedel in Adventures in Ethics and Science (Sb)
Science is supposed to be a project centered on building a body of reliable knowledge about the universe and how various pieces of it work. This means that the researchers contributing to this body of knowledge -- for example, by submitting manuscripts to peer reviewed scientific journals -- are supposed to be honest and accurate in what they report. They are not supposed to make up their data, or adjust it to fit the conclusion they were hoping the data would support. Without this commitme........ Read more »
Anne Victoria Neale, Justin Northrup, Rhonda Dailey, Ellen Marks, & Judith Abrams. (2007) Correction and use of biomedical literature affected by scientific misconduct . Science and Engineering Ethics, 5-24. info:/10.1007/s11948-006-0003-1
- March 25, 2010
- 11:05 AM
- 790 views
Poverty of Stimulus and Ecological Laws
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
The first critique of Gibson's perceptual psychology came from noted cognitive scientists Fodor & Pylyshyn (1981). The critique was simply that Gibsonian information is an empty concept; however, this critique is ably addressed by Turvey, Shaw, Reed & Mace in the 'ecological laws' paper.... Read more »
Fodor, J., . (1981) How direct is visual perception?: Some reflections on Gibson's “ecological approach”. Cognition, 9(2), 139-196. DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(81)90009-3
Turvey, M. T., Shaw, R. E., Reed, E. S., . (1981) Ecological laws of perceiving and acting: In reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn (1981). Cognition, 9(3), 237-304. DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(81)90002-0
- March 20, 2010
- 01:36 AM
- 868 views
Neural correlates of conscious access: implications for autism/psychosis
by sandygautam in The Mouse Trap
Image via Wikipedia
There is a recent article in New Scientist about consciousness and its neural correlates and the article focuses on work of Stanislas Deheane and his colleagues and how they are trying to get evidence and proof for the Global workspace theory of consciousness as proposed by Beranrd Baars.
That led me to this excellent More >Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
Related posts:Living on the edge of chaos; implications for autism and psychosis Image via Wikipedia I serendi........ Read more »
Gaillard, R., Dehaene, S., Adam, C., Clémenceau, S., Hasboun, D., Baulac, M., Cohen, L., & Naccache, L. (2009) Converging Intracranial Markers of Conscious Access. PLoS Biology, 7(3). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000061
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