Re: [tips] Cannabis damages young brains
Regarding the alcohol-breast cancer finding: this is what I actually wrote back on 25 Feb: For instance, the [BBC] article [sensationally entitled Drink a day increases cancer risk] says that 5,000 of the 45,000 annual cases of breast cancer are due to alcohol -- an increase of 11% they say. The population of the UK is about 60 million. Half of the those are female -- 30 million. About 20% of those are children -- leaving 24 million. (see http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=6). 45,000 out of 24 million = .0019: 19 in ten thousand women are diagnosed with breast cancer in any given year. Even if the alcohol-cancer causal link were, in fact true, the number of cancer cases would drop to 40,000 which, against a vulnerable population of 24 million is .0017: 17 in ten thousand. Now ask yourself the question: Would you change you lifestyle dramatically to reduce a risk by 2 in 10,000? And that's if the causal link had been established, which it hasn't been. Regards, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Cannabis damages young brains
sbl...@ubishops.ca wrote: There's nothing surprisingly egregious about this particular article, is there? Yes. I've never seen a university press release, which should have been vetted by the authors and presumably ran with their approval, hide the fact that the research was in animals. I'm still surprised. Without actually going back a checking press releases, I can recall the case of the moderate drinking causes breast cancer announcement in Britain earlier this year, in which it seemed pretty clear that the scientists had sexed it up for the university press team, who had then re-sexed it up for the new media, who had then re-re-sexed it up for public (when in fact the actual increase in the breast cancer rate was something like 2 in 10,000, and there was little reason to believe that alcohol, rather than the billion or so things correlated with increased alcohol consumption, was responsible even for this tiny increase). Sorry to be so blase about the whole thing, but far from being unusual, it is endemic Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Stats on airplane terrorism
Here are some statistics on the probability of being the (attempted) victim of terrorism on a commercial flight that may make for interesting discussion in your courses: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/odds-of-airborne-terror.html Here's the best bit: the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Cannabis damages young brains
sbl...@ubishops.ca wrote: I never heard a rat called a teenager before this study, Canadian or not. A teenage rat would be extremely elderly! Why they did it is obvious. Studies demonstrating the dangers of cannabis for teenagers are sexy; such studies for rats, not so much. If you want publicity, you go with what is sexy, and hide what can impair it. It's also wrong. What is it that surprises you about this Stephen? The news is a commercial product. Commercial products are routinely adjusted to ensure that they sell to the greatest number of people at the highest price (or rather, those that are not so adjusted, quickly cease to be commercial products). Surely it became clear to you long ago that journalists are not scientists (as if no scientist ever turned a phrase in order to make his or her work seem more exciting to the public), and certainly no journalist's boss is a scientist. Their values lie in a different place. There are, to be sure, some good science journalists. Ben Goldacre of the Guardian comes to mind. But what he has done is figure out a way to make good science journalism sexy: he badmouths other journalists (and scientists) who do exactly what they are paid to do (viz., make science salable to newspaper readers). It's good old gotcha journalism. It is, of course, worth pointing out that the the pot-hurts-brains article was BS, but being outraged seems a bit, well, disingenuous. Almost all reporting on illegal drugs in the mainstream media is BS, and has been since the 1960s -- from pot-is-addictive, to LSD-causes-genetic-damage, to crack-babies, to the suburban-crystal-meth-epidemic. It's all BS. There's nothing surprisingly egregious about this particular article, is there? Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Who put the Little in Little Albert?
I continue my lonely toil in seach of an answer, in dank and dreary dungeons, amid flickering candles and moldy tomes. And not a cask of Amontillado to spur me on. Oh come on, Stephen. I've lived in Lennoxville (you may recall). It's not THAT bad, even in December. :-) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Another mystery for Stephen Black
It gets worse than that, Ken. There were two bishops involved. So it should be Bishops' University. :-) Chris Green Ken Steele wrote: The name of the school is Bishop's University but the email address is ubishops.ca. Why isn't the address bishopsu.ca? sbl...@ubishops.ca wrote: - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's Universitye-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada --- --- Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. steel...@appstate.edu Professor Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Three psychologists walk into a Bar mitzvah
michael sylvester wrote: Cancelled I'm sensing denial of phallic issues in this erased-joke. :-) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] lazy American students.........maybe not quite that bad
There are some good points in this article (although the irony of Stanford inveighing against elitism is pretty broad). When the author writes, however, that students today have no time to hang out or delve into deep problems or reflect on what they are learning, I suspect that she has strung together disparate aspects of her own mental life and theirs. I only wish the problems I ran into were overworking students. Admittedly, York is not elite by any measure. I am still surprised (well, maybe just saddened) that in my stats class every year, some do not know what an exponent is, most do not know what a factorial is, and nearly all are unable to do (or even follow?) the three lines of algebra I perform each year to convert a simple power formula into one that gives the number of subjects required (I am so used to NOT losing them with the phrase solve for n that I can hardly say it anymore). Perhaps they have been too busy learning the finer points of soccer and piano. If so, I am content with that trade-off. Perhaps too many of them have full-time jobs on the side. If so, then it is one of the few problems that can be easily solved by the application of money (and we should do that). I fear, however, that too many have been too busy learning Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == Mike Palij wrote: On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:31:53 -0800, Edward Pollak wrote: I wish I could send TIPS some of the blog entries written by a young cousin of mine who was teaching English in China at some private schools for the children of fairly wealthy families. The poor work ethic, sense of entitlement, lack of respect for authority that she described (for the majority of her students) was appalling even by modern American standards. Of course she also describes some outstanding students but these were a decided minority. If you consider that only the cream of the Chinese crop get to come to the USA for study, the comparison made in the original article is not a fair one. I don't mean to defend the lack of work ethic in the bulk of our modern student body you can't compare what are likely elite Chinese students with run-of-the-mill American students. Another factor: the Chinese students are likely from the privileged classes and don't have to hold down part or full time jobs while studying here. Many of our students do. The issue of biased sampling in U.S. account of students should also be kept in mind. Consider the following article which talks about U.S. students who are likely to be elite as well though the point of the article is that trying to be elite may take a significant toll; see: http://ed.stanford.edu/suse/faculty/displayFacultyNews.php?tablename=notify1id=401 In NYC, the financial and social elite often reckon the trajectory of their children's educational and social life course at an early age. This is what make stories about not getting one's child into the right pre-school program so hilarious and so sad. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] lazy American students
Beth Benoit wrote: Wow. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/12/21/my_lazy_american_students/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed1 So, what does your wow mean, Beth? Does this strike you as surprising? Outrageous? Offensive? It seems pretty much common knowledge to me. (And despite what the article says, I wouldn't suggest that [white, anglo-scottish-irish, long-standing] Canadians are much better than American kids on this score.) And I think I know where it comes from too. US (North American?, Western?) culture is crammed full of the message that we are superior, we are special, and it is something that is essential to us, not the product of some particular effort that we have expended (though perhaps our ancestors did). One sees this message everywhere from politics, to religion, to entertainment, to educational practice (virtually no one fails, everyone must be retained and eventually graduated, the slightest quiver of anxiety is immediately declared a disability and accommodated). The message is: you are a success virtually in virtue of just being you (think the self-esteem movement). Little (but loyalty) is required of you. You were born into the greatest, richest, free-est, most Godly, and, when necessary, most powerful nation/culture/civilization that has ever graced the face of the earth. Anyone who says otherwise is just hateful, jealous, and anti-(insert your country's name here). Can you imagine any US politician getting much electoral traction by announcing We have become self-indulgent and have fallen behind many other countries in education and productivity. The only way to retrieve some portion of our former international stature is for us to cut back in our personal lives (smaller, more efficient cars, houses, etc), work harder (both at work and school), pay off our debts (both as individuals and as a nation), and show a willingness to cooperate with other countries in dealing the major international challenges that face us? Never. This is not to say that India, China, and everywhere else doesn't have its share of ugly nationalistic, jingoistic, ethnocentric, overly-prideful rhetoric. They all do. (And to be entirely fair, the ones who travel to the US to get educated are not average for their culture. They are eager to get ahead, whereas a lot of the locals we face as teachers virtually fell into our classrooms). It is, rather, that people from developing countries just don't mistake political posturing for being knowledgeable and working hard to become so. They can't afford to. What they are proud of is what they -- as Indians, Chinese, etc. -- can *accomplish*. Americans, all too often, are proud of being, well, American. (Mutatis mutandis for many other Western countries.) It used to be called decadence. It has brought down many another (every?) empire. And it is a very difficult whirlpool to escape from. Happy solstice! Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] lazy American students
My earlier remarks were remarkably intemperate. I apologize to anyone who was offended. I think the dissonance caused by the various political failures of late that have been declared to be victories (e.g., climate, health, war) has gotten to me more than I realized. Have nice holiday everyone. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == Mike Palij wrote: I'm not sure but I think Chris fell out of the wrong side of the bed this morning. His comments below seem somewhat relevant to the content of the article that Beth provides a link to but without more information about the students the article writer is talking about, it is unclear whether Chris' criticism's apply to all American students of a certain race and class or to some fraction of them (the author of the article is unlikely to have such data as she self-identifies as a teacher of rhetoric and history and not a researcher). I think Chris' rant is somewhat misplaced. The general issue that he is referring to is that of American exceptionalism, a concept that is easy to recognize but difficult to pin down. For some background on this idea see the Wikipedia entry (standard disclaimers apply): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism The idea appears to be first developed by Alexis de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America and here's a website that provides a little more on how Tocqueville conceived it: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/american-exceptionalism.htm American exceptionalism has been an idea that has been recently promoted by U.S. conservatives and downplayed by moderates and liberals. Consider the following comments by Dick Cheney about President Obama being weak on American exceptionalism: |I think most of us believe, and most presidents believe and talk |about, the truly exceptional nature of America--our history, |where we come from, our belief in our constitutional values |and principles, our advocacy for freedom and democracy, the |fact that we've provided it for millions of people all over the globe |and done so unselfishly. There's never been a nation like the |United States of America in world history. And yet, when you |have a president who goes around and bows to his host and |then proceeds to apologize profusely for the United States, |I find that deeply disturbing. That says to me this is a guy who |doesn't fully understand or share that view of American exceptionalism |that I think most of us believe in. http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/12/is_dick_cheney_living_in_a_pre-2008_world.php For other conservative viewpoints on American Exceptionalism, see: http://www.american.com/archive/2008/april-04-08/understanding-american-exceptionalism Now, whether or not U.S. citizens have a sense of American Exceptionalism and whether this is the basis for bad behavior among certain groups of students is an interesting empirical hypothesis. However, Kara Miller's article is an opinion piece and not an empirical study. How many problems could a student in research methods find in the assertions she makes about her American students? Perhaps she is a magnet for lazy American students or her courses or her school or...whatever. Miller is entitled to her opinions about her students as is Chris is entitled to his opinions about U.S. citizens. But opinions are still opinions. It is better to have opinions consistent with empirical facts but everyone is well aware that this not a requirement. Sometimes an opinion is just a rant. Happy Solstice, Y'all! -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu On Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:14:21 -0800, Christopher D. Green wrote: Beth Benoit wrote: Wow. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/12/21/my_lazy_american_students/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed1 So, what does your wow mean, Beth? Does this strike you as surprising? Outrageous? Offensive? It seems pretty much common knowledge to me. (And despite what the article says, I wouldn't suggest that [white, anglo-scottish-irish, long-standing] Canadians are much better than American kids on this score.) And I think I know where it comes from too. US (North American?, Western?) culture is crammed full of the message that we are superior, we are special, and it is something that is essential to us, not the product of some particular effort that we have expended (though perhaps our ancestors did). One sees this message everywhere from politics, to religion, to entertainment, to educational practice (virtually no one fails, everyone must be retained and eventually graduated, the slightest quiver of anxiety is immediately declared a disability and accommodated). The message is: you are a success virtually in virtue of just
[tips] Op-Ed Contributor - An Officer and a Creative Man - NYTimes.com
Wow. Apparently professors at Marine Corps University think the US is losing the Afghan war because of Army officers' scores on the Myers-Briggs. Time to get new professors (whether or not you get new Army officers). http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/opinion/20moyar.html?hp Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Anybody See Any Snow?
Mike Palij wrote: By the way, anyone have a favorite Holidays song? I'm partial to Annie Lennox's version of Winter Wonderland. The Coventry Carol, in the original Medieval counterpoint (with those occasional juicy dissonances), rather than in corrected Bach chorale-style block chords (check out the version by the Sixteen Harry Christophers). Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Fwd: My Twelve Days of Tipsmas
Heaux, Heaux, Heaux! (That's how we do it in Canada.) Chris Green York U. Toronto = tay...@sandiego.edu wrote: Every year I like to dig this one out and laugh at it. Things haven't changed too, too much in 11 years! Thanks, Nancy. Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 619-260-4006 tay...@sandiego.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) Subject: My Twelve Days of Tipsmas From: drna...@aol.com Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 17:38:49 EST To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences tips@acsun.frostburg.edu To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences tips@acsun.frostburg.edu I am in a self-promoting mood. Here again for you all is my 1998 12 days contribution. Those of you who are familiar with it can delete, those of you who are new to the list, I hope you enjoy it. * On the first day of Tipsmas I posted to the list a view that got everyone pissed. On the second day of Tipsmas we posted to the list 2 quotes from Freud and a view that got everyone pissed On the third day of Tipsmas we posted to the list 3 wisecracks 2 quotes from Freud and a view that got everyone pissed On the fourth day of Tipsmas we posted to the list 4 complaints to Bill 3 wisecracks 2 quotes from Freud and a view that got everyone pissed On the fifth day of Tipsmas we posted to the list (real loud now) 5 RANDOM THOUGHTS 4 complaints to Bill 3 wisecracks 2 quotes from Freud and a view that got everyone pissed On the sixth day of Tipsmas, we posted to the list 6 critiques of Harris 5 RANDOM THOUGHTS! 4 complaints to Bill 3 wisecracks 2 quotes from Freud and a view. On the seventh day of Tipsmas we posted to the list 7 skeptics doubting 6 critiques of Harris 5 RANDOM THOUGHTS! 4 complaints to Bill 3 wisecracks 2 quotes from Freud and a view.. On the 8th day of Tipsmas we posted to the list 8 flames a raging 7 skeptics doubting 6 critiques of Harris 5 RANDOM THOUGHTS! 4 complaints to Bill 3 wisecracks 2 quotes from Freud and a view On the 9th day of Tipsmas we posted to the list 9 tests of blindsight 8 flames a raging 7 skeptics doubting 6 critiques of Harris 5 RANDOM THOUGHTS 4 complaints to Bill 3 wisecracks 2 quotes from Freud and a view On the 10th day of Tipsmas we posted to the list 10 student bloopers 9 tests of blindsight 8 flames a raging 7 skeptics doubting 6 critiques of Harris 5 RANDOM THOUGHTS 4 complaints to Bill 3 wisecracks 2 quotes from Freud and a view ... On the 11th day of Tipsmas we posted to the list 11 SET TIPS NO MAIL 10 student bloopers 9 tests of blindsight 8 flames a raging 7 skeptics doubting 6 critiques of Harris 5 RANDOM THOUGHTS! 4 complaints to Bill 3 wisecracks 2 quotes from Freud and a view ON THE TWELFTH DAY OF TIPSMAS WE POSTED TO THE LIST... 12 UNSUBSCRIBE TIPS 11 SET TIPS NO MAIL 10 student bloopers 9 tests of blindsight 8 flames a raging 7 skeptics doubting 6 critiques of Harris (big build up) 5 RANDOM THOUGHTS!!! 4 complaints to Bill (Tom?) 3 wisecracks 2 quotes from Freud and a song that got EVERYONE pissed. by Melucci 30 November 1998 Happy Sectarian Winter Holiday of your preference to all and to all a good night. * --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] more pseudoscience?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_therapy Sounds like a bit of Ellis, and bit of Maslow, and a bit of Beck, all wrapped in an easily-salable package. I've been reading Barbara Ehrenreich book _Bright-Sided_, a popular history of the positive-thinking movement. You might send a copy to your administration. They could probably save a lot of money by ending the attempt to make all of their employees happier and more effective. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == Bourgeois, Dr. Martin wrote: Well, my administration is at it again. Just got this announcement, and on a quick search, I found no evidence that this therapy is empirically supported. Anyone know anything about reality therapy? Dr. Robert Wubbolding is well known in the mental health field and academic world as a Reality Therapy expert. If you are fond of another theory or technique this is still “a do not miss workshop.” Dr. Wubbolding presents a Reality Therapy Approach to helping clients and students get real. Dr. Wubbolding presents a lively, witty, fast moving practical interactive all–day workshop offering proven techniques and skills that will enhance professional practice. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] GR8 news: We're entering a new era of literacy - The Globe and Mail
Going against the (grumpy) grain: A new study from California's Stanford University has produced some reassuring news: Young people may not be writing so badly after all, and, in fact, their prose is evolving in some promising new ways. They write more on their own time, their school essays are longer, their voices are more attuned to the people who will read their words. They know better -- at least by university -- than to drop text-speak into a class paper. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/gr8-news-were-entering-a-new-era-of-literacy/article1397742/ Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] GR8 news: We're entering a new era of literacy - The Globe and Mail
Allen Esterson wrote: Chris Green writes: Going against the (grumpy) grain: A new study from California's Stanford University has produced some reassuring news: Young people may not be writing so badly after all... http://tinyurl.com/y9b55dm Chris, as you cited this cheering news, could you explain for my benefit what is meant by rhetorical understanding of sources? I'm not sure how they operationalized it (I haven't read the article), but I would assume that being alert to the possibility of people BS-ing you (aka FOXing) would count as an aspect of rhetorical understanding. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Murder she wrote
msylves...@copper.net wrote: Have tipsters been following the case of the 98 year old lady who strangled her 100 year old husband at a nursing home? Should this be construed that aging does not diminish the natural born killer instinct? Without wanting to make light of this sad case, anyone who has dealt with extremely elderly dementing people is well aware that the ability to inhibit aggressive impulses is one of the things that goes (in some cases). Violence in nursing homes (among the patients) is an ever-present challenge. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] MBTI -- True Colors
Look pretty bad Karl. At least the openly confess to being a cult: The first principle of their philosophy? Maintain Commitment to the True Colors® Model/ Methodology Chris Green York U. Toronto == Wuensch, Karl L. wrote: I was dismayed to learn that my university made a major investment in http://www.true-colors.com/ . Karl W. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] CBC News - Health - H1N1 less lethal than feared: U.K. study
Golly gosh. I guess it was much ado about not very much http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/12/10/h1n1-pandemics-study.html Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] It's that time again - Dancing Psychologists!
Four? I only see three people. Is one hiding in the tree? :-) Chris Green York U. Toronto Britt, Michael wrote: I always get a smile out of this Elf Yourself tool. I hope you get a smile to. There are 4 famous psychologists in this quick video. Can your students identify them all? http://bit.ly/psychelves Michael Michael Britt mich...@thepsychfiles.com www.thepsychfiles.com Twitter: mbritt --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] TIPSTERS OF THE YEAR 2009
Gee Michael, that's positively anti-American of you: four Canucks, a Brit, and a Portuguese? And no women. You'll be hearing about that. Chris Green York U. Toronto == msylves...@copper.net wrote: STEPHEN BLACK CHRISTOPHER GREEN JAMES CLARK STUART McKELVIE ALLEN ESTERSON JOSE ALVES CONGRATS! Michael Sylvester,PhD Daytona Beach,Florida --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] News: Lincoln U. Ends Obesity Rule - Inside Higher Ed
Following up from an earlier discussion... http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/12/07/lincoln Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] YouTube - Report: Most College Males Admit To Regularly Getting Stoked
The Onion touches on our world... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgXObaM9i2Qfeature=sub Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Smart people can make dumb decisions, says Grawemeyer Award winner — University of Louisville
Two days. Two Canadian psychologists win the Grawemeyer. Keith Stanovitch today. http://grawemeyer.org/news-updates/smart-people-can-make-dumb-decisions-says-grawemeyer-award-winner Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Melzack wins Grawemeyer
From today's Inside Higher Ed: McGill Prof Wins Grawemeyer in Psychology Ronald Melzack, psychology professor emeritus at McGill University, in Montreal, has been named winner of the 2010 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Psychology. Melzack was honored for his work on how people experience pain. Grawemeyer awards, worth $200,000 each, are awarded each year in in the fields of music, political science, psychology, education and religion. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Peer review
That's a very funny one. There are a whole bunch of alternative subtitlings of this scene. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/magazine/26wwln-medium-t.html?_r=2 Chris Green York U. Toronto sbl...@ubishops.ca wrote: Ever had this problem? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=- VRBWLpYCPYfeature=player_embedded or http://tinyurl.com/yl5omvk (flagged from _Chronicle of Higher Ed_) Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Fake petition?
I thought it was Penn and Teller (or at least I heard about it from them) and the chemical was hydrogen hydroxide (water). The petition wasn't posted, as I recall. It was circulated in person at health fairs and the like. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == Helweg-Larsen, Marie wrote: A couple of years ago someone posted a fake petition that argued that we should stop using a harmful chemical. The harmful chemical was something innocuous (maybe water or salt) and the point is that you can make anything sound harmful and of course many chemical are safe and necessary. Does anyone remember this and have the survey/exercise? I've searched online and in my own archives unsuccessfully. Marie Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Department Chair and Associate Professor of Psychology Kaufman 168, Dickinson College Carlisle, PA 17013, office (717) 245-1562, fax (717) 245-1971 Office hours: Mon/Thur 3-4, Tues 10:30-11:30 http://users.dickinson.edu/~helwegm/index.html http://users.dickinson.edu/%7Ehelwegm/index.html --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Psychotherapy Can Boost Happiness More Than Money: Study - Yahoo! News
Class, please discuss the following findings (including possible conflicts of interest). :-) http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/psychotherapycanboosthappinessmorethanmoneystudy Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] gladwell.com: Pinker on What the Dog Saw.
Gladwell's reply to Pinker's nasty review. Pinker's saying it isn't so, doesn't make it not so. http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2009/11/pinker-on-what-the-dog-saw.html Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Brain Power - New Techniques in Brain Surgery Mix Hope With Risk - Series - NYTimes.com
Looks like psychiatric brain surgery is making a comeback. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/health/research/27brain.html?em Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Happy anniversary!
Today is, I believe, the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's /Origin of Species/. Naturally, everyone is selected. :-) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Views: A Defense of the Lecture - Inside Higher Ed
Maybe lectures aren't so bad after all, says this writer. Maybe they are better pitched (than discussion) at the typical level of student reading abilities. http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/11/20/kotsko Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] If Watson Twittered
Rosalie, u r 4 me! Chris Green = Tracy Zinn wrote: Of course, this doesn't include the follow up statement that most people don't know aboutOf course, I'm exaggerating. ** Tracy E. Zinn, Ph.D. Associate Professor MSC 7704 Miller Hall Room 1171 (Lab room 1209) Department of Psychology James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA 22807 540-568-6309 (Work) 540-568-3322 (Fax) zin...@jmu.edu ** -Original Message- From: Britt, Michael [mailto:michael.br...@thepsychfiles.com] Sent: Friday, November 20, 2009 9:14 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] If Watson Twittered Here's what I guess he might have twittered one lazy afternoon: giv me 12 infants my own wrld 2 bring them up in I'll take 1 at random train him 2 be dr, lawyr, rtist, merchant-chief, beggar or thief. Michael Michael Britt mich...@thepsychfiles.com www.thepsychfiles.com --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] teachable moment
Many thanks Marie. That is very helpful. Best, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == Helweg-Larsen, Marie wrote: Hi Chris I���ve attached the syllabus for the class. Marie Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Department Chair and Associate Professor of Psychology Kaufman 168, Dickinson College Carlisle, PA 17013, office (717) 245-1562, fax (717) 245-1971 Office hours: Mon/Thur 3-4, Tues 10:30-11:30 http://www.dickinson.edu/departments/psych/helwegm *From:* Christopher D. Green [mailto:chri...@yorku.ca] *Sent:* Tuesday, November 17, 2009 5:20 PM *To:* Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) *Subject:* Re: [tips] teachable moment John, Marie, I have often thought of teaching a course like this, but never have. May I see you syllabi and reading lists to get an idea of what you do? Thanks, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca mailto:chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == Helweg-Larsen, Marie wrote: Ditto! I'm teaching a senior seminar (Risk and Society) and we just finished reading the Gigerenzer et al (2007) monograph on Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics. It is an excellent read by the way - one of the most clearly written academic pieces I've read in a long time. I also highly recommend the piece for anyone who is interested in the many forces that cause us to be unable to make medical decisions in an informed way. Here is the NY Times article link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/health/17cancer.html?_r=1ref=us http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/health/17cancer.html?_r=1ref=us Marie Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Department Chair and Associate Professor of Psychology Kaufman 168, Dickinson College Carlisle, PA 17013, office (717) 245-1562, fax (717) 245-1971 Office hours: Mon/Thur 3-4, Tues 10:30-11:30 http://www.dickinson.edu/departments/psych/helwegm -Original Message- From: John Kulig [mailto:ku...@mail.plymouth.edu] Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 12:17 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] teachable moment What a coincidence, I have to share this. I had a test scheduled today in Measurement on Utility, making decisions about test use after cost/benefit analysis. On CNN this morning was the news that US Preventive Services Task Force is NOT recommending routine mammogram testing for women under 50 (unless otherwise high risk). This is based on new data and a cost/benefit analysis. There are benefits to under 50 testing(prevent 1 cancer death for every 1904 women tested), but also costs in terms of extra testing, psychological stress, biopsies, and the false positive rate. So I HAD to get it on the exam. I photocopied 3 articles on the recommendations (two from NYTimes, one from Washington Post) and tacked on a bonus question at the end - asking them to read the articles and see if the decision to reduce testing was made in a manner described in the test. -- John W. Kulig Professor of Psychology Plymouth State University Plymouth NH 03264 -- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu mailto:bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu mailto:bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] News: 'The College Fear Factor' - Inside Higher Ed
An interesting article, especially for those who prefer not to lecture, in favor of discussion/participation models of teaching. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/11/18/fearfactor Here area couple of tidbits: some students 'interpreted the absence of a lecture as the absence of instruction.' 'Students' firmly held expectations undermined the instructors' efforts to achieve their pedagogical goals,' Cox [the researcher] writes. 'Ultimately, students' pedagogical conception led to overt resistance and prevented them from benefiting from alternative instructional approaches, which they perceived variously as irrelevant 'b.s.,' a waste of time, or simply a lack of instruction.' Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] teachable moment
John, Marie, I have often thought of teaching a course like this, but never have. May I see you syllabi and reading lists to get an idea of what you do? Thanks, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == Helweg-Larsen, Marie wrote: Ditto! I'm teaching a senior seminar (Risk and Society) and we just finished reading the Gigerenzer et al (2007) monograph on Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics. It is an excellent read by the way - one of the most clearly written academic pieces I've read in a long time. I also highly recommend the piece for anyone who is interested in the many forces that cause us to be unable to make medical decisions in an informed way. Here is the NY Times article link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/health/17cancer.html?_r=1ref=us Marie Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Department Chair and Associate Professor of Psychology Kaufman 168, Dickinson College Carlisle, PA 17013, office (717) 245-1562, fax (717) 245-1971 Office hours: Mon/Thur 3-4, Tues 10:30-11:30 http://www.dickinson.edu/departments/psych/helwegm -Original Message- From: John Kulig [mailto:ku...@mail.plymouth.edu] Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 12:17 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] teachable moment What a coincidence, I have to share this. I had a test scheduled today in Measurement on Utility, making decisions about test use after cost/benefit analysis. On CNN this morning was the news that US Preventive Services Task Force is NOT recommending routine mammogram testing for women under 50 (unless otherwise high risk). This is based on new data and a cost/benefit analysis. There are benefits to under 50 testing(prevent 1 cancer death for every 1904 women tested), but also costs in terms of extra testing, psychological stress, biopsies, and the false positive rate. So I HAD to get it on the exam. I photocopied 3 articles on the recommendations (two from NYTimes, one from Washington Post) and tacked on a bonus question at the end - asking them to read the articles and see if the decision to reduce testing was made in a manner described in the test. -- John W. Kulig Professor of Psychology Plymouth State University Plymouth NH 03264 -- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] teachable moment
Shearon, Tim wrote: I���m using this one as part of a seminar on ���Stupidity as a model for human cognition���. This wins my vote for Best Course Title of the Year. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Student Comment that Made Me Smile
Oh, come on Sue. That was 8 years ago! :-) (Next year we find out that HAL problems were given him by the CIA.) Chris Green === Frantz, Sue wrote: Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. -Original Message- From: Bill Southerly [mailto:bsouthe...@frostburg.edu] Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 1:23 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Student Comment that Made Me Smile In my research methods class I am having a student redo their reference page since it was submitted originally as a bibliography. There are several sample papers a student is to compare their work to before submitting it and of course the discussions on the topic held in class. In any case, when it was resubmitted it was still a bibliography and I responded as such to the student and asked her to redo and to be sure to look at the sample papers. Here is her reply to my second request. My computer did it like that so I thought it was right but if you would like me to do the reference page over I will. Technology has finally taken over! Bill Bill Southerly, PhD Department of Psychology Frostburg State University Frostburg, MD 21532 301-687-4778 bsouthe...@frostburg.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Dropkicking Malcolm Gladwell: Steven Pinker Style
Allen Esterson wrote: Hey, folks. The article was a parody of Gladwell *written by Craig Brown*. Craig Brown would be amazed that it led to a serious exchange on the meaning of Christmas! http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/craigbrown.shtml Well, now, that's hilarious. It seemed obvious to me that it was intended by Gladwell not as a serious piece, but as as a sendup, (just look at the joke names of the people interviewed: Sanjive, Guff of Malarkey College, Bunquum). It also seemed odd to me that Mike didn't realize it was a sendup. But now Allen informs us that it was a sendup, OF Gladwell, not BY him. Guess I got had. Chris Green York U. Toronto == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Dropkicking Malcolm Gladwell: Steven Pinker Style
Mike, That's a little like comparing a scholarly treatise on life in neolithic times with the old Reiner Brooks 2000 Year Old Man routine with (We spoke Rock. Really, could you give me an example of Rock? Yeah. 'Hey you, don't throw that Rock at me'.) Of course, Mike has never had a cynical thought about Christmas, or (more to the point of this admittedly trite Gladwell piece) about the kind of overly obvious research conclusions that psychologists sometimes like to dress up as being Scientific Discoveries. :-) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == Mike Palij wrote: On Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:52:48 -0800, Allen Esterson wrote: Malcolm Gladwell discusses Christmas with Craig Brown. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/12/gladwell-200912 Perhaps what I like least about Gladwell's writing is when he comes off like a snarky intellectual version of Larry King, as he does in this throwaway article. A greater investment of time but with a much greater payoff would be Stephen Nissenbaum's The Battle for Christmas which provides an interesting history of the holiday from the setting of the date of Christman in 400 AD, its manifestation as misrule and rejection by some Christian sects such as the Puritains (Christmas was briefly legally banned in Massachusetts), and its reinvention by a number of New Yorkers into a child centered holiday (with borrowing from other cultures, especially German) that we continue to celebrate today. Nissenbaum is a professor of history which might be interpreted as implying that perhaps he has some idea of what he is talking about though, clearly, simply being a professor (as in Pinker's case) might imply to some the opposite. Nissenbaum's book is available in snippet view on books.google.com, see: http://books.google.com/books?id=-q6BMAAJdq=christmas+history+nissenbaumq=contents#search_anchor It also available in book form on Amazon (sadly, there is no version for Kindle gnawers or Kindle nibblers): http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Christmas-Stephen-Nissenbaum/dp/0679740384/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1258290808sr=1-4 or http://tinyurl.com/yzsa2vz -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Dropkicking Malcolm Gladwell: Steven Pinker Style
Lilienfeld, Scott O wrote: Although I enjoyed Pinker's review (and think more highly of Pinker than does Chris Green), I did find it a bit ironic that in an essay devoted to Gladwell's factual errors, Pinker (a) misspelled sagittal (it's sagittal, not saggital) and (b) confused clairvoyance with precognition (an all too frequent mistake) I actually had great respect for Pinker when he was a linguist. His turn to evolutionary psychology, however, has not been marked by great intellectual depth. It seems to have been an opportunity to write (doubtlessly lucrative) trade books rather than to conduct serious original research. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Dropkicking Malclom Gladwell: Steven Pinker Style
Mike Palij wrote: In this Sunday's NY Times Book Review, Steven Pinker reviews Malcolm Gladwell's new book What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures which is available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.html?_r=1nl=booksemc=booksupdateema1pagewanted=all or http://tinyurl.com/ygpb9yd Yes, Gladwell makes errors. Of course, being told this by the guy who claimed that evolutionary(!) purpose of fiction is to simulate various scenarios to ourselves so that we will have a plan when the time comes makes me think what we have here is a classic case of a very big pot calling a very small kettle black (and Pinker deriding Gladwell as a brand makes me LOL all over the floor). By the way, if you're inclined to believe Pinker on the purpose of fiction, here is Jerry Fodor's definitive (to my mind) reply: [H]ere's Pinker on why we like fiction: 'Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them. What are the options if I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father, took his position, and married my mother?' Good question. Or what if it turns out that, having just used the ring that I got by kidnapping a dwarf to pay off the giants who built me my new castle, I should discover that it is the very ring that I need in order to continue to be immortal and rule the world? It's important to think out the options betimes, because a thing like that could happen to anyone and you can never have too much insurance. (/In Critical Condition/, p. 212) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Cash for grades: US middle school sells test points to students for $20 as novel fundraiser
If a teacher takes money for extra test marks, it's a bribe. If a school district takes money for extra test marks, it's a fundraiser. http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/09/K02AU.html Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Our Brain Dead Country « NewsReal Blog
You probably know David Horowitz for his attacks on the academy in the US (The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America). What you may not know is that he is now blaming Barack Obama (and the left generally) for the mass murder at Fort Hood. He writes: The fifth column [of collaborators with America's enemies] formed out of the unholy alliance between radical Islam and the American left is now entrenched in the White House and throughout our government. http://newsrealblog.com/2009/11/06/our-brain-dead-country/ Just in case you thought he might be a reasonable person with whom we should open a dialog. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] NoNotes
*From:* Don Allen [mailto:dal...@langara.bc.ca] *Sent:* Saturday, November 07, 2009 7:24 PM *To:* Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) *Subject:* [tips] NoNotes Being a student (with money) just got a whole lot easier: http://nonotes.com/index.htm The company says that their service allows you to concentrate on the lecture rather that note taking. I think this is a red herring. I have argued elsewhere that note-taking is the first cognitive pass through the material of the lecture (http://www.yorku.ca/christo/papers/PablumPoint.htm). It forces one to quickly interpret and summarize what has been said. Without it, it is too easy to just let the words pass over one without really comprehending them, or to drift off entirely. In short, note-taking HELPS concentration, rather than distracting one. (Yes, of course there are exceptions.) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] CBC News - Canada - Hype can make us all ill
Still worried about the swine flu? Check out this interview: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/11/02/f-viewpoint-cassels.html The best line is: There is substantial evidence that the mortality rate from H1N1 flu is actually much smaller than seasonal flu. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet enables intimacy | Video on TED.com
This TED talk may lead you to take a slightly different view of students texting, etc. in your classes: http://tinyurl.com/ygvesnj Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] J R Kantor
Ken Steele wrote: One of my favorite Kantor stories comes from John Malone, UT-Knoxville. Kantor was visiting UT-K in the mid-1970's at the behest of Bill Verplanck, a strong supporter. Kantor was going about the department and talking to various faculty. Kantor and Malone were in Malone's office and the conversation turned to Dewey's Reflex Arc paper. Malone made a comment about the paper and Kantor replied I talked to Dewey about that... We are still a young science. We are indeed. I know a fellow who was once a student of Karl Dallenbach's. After Dallenbach got his PhD in Titchener's lab, he spent a term in Wuerzburg, taking courses from Oswald Kuelpe. Dallenbach used to tell a story about the day that Kuelpe was going on about the great philosopher, Wilhelm Yahmez. Dallenbach had never heard of this person. After a while of this, he turned to the student next to him and sheepishly asked who Yahmez was. The student turned to him in surprise and said, You know, the famous American pragmatist, Wilhelm Yahmez, and then spelled the surname: J-A-M-E-S. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Intro Statistics Text recommendation
Nancy, I am with you on learning how to computer statistics by hand before learning how to make a computer do it for you. I have used David Howell's big book (Statistical Methods for Psychology) for years now. I like it lots, but it goes beyond what most undergrads need to learn. Fortunately, Howell has a smaller book as well (Fundamental Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences) , which would be appropriate for a one-term undergrad course (at least that is how I have used it when I have taught our one-term course). Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == drna...@aol.com wrote: Hi, I have been asked to teach baby Stats (again) for psychology at a school where my teacher evaluations have been generally decent but the faculty evaluator, who looks at our course materials, does not like my choice of book. I use Bluman Brief Edition (4th) which is not a Psych Stats book. The examples and practice problems (of which there are a lot, that's why I like the book) cover a variety of social, educational, criminal justice and business applications...there are a few pure psych problems mixed in, not many. The course includes lecture time (during which I teach concepts and lots of by hand-solving of problems) and an SPSS lab. I would like to keep my job at this CSU (a concern in our current budget environment), but I am reluctant to part with my book. I like it. Other stats for psych books I've used have had far fewer practice problems available and emphasize teaching the concepts. I hate that. I know I can supply my own problems but I was hoping that someone out there knows of a stats for psych book that at least provides a balance between conceptual understanding and teaching students to grasp and perform the processes of statistical calculation with lots of real practice problems, related to psych and the social sciences closely allied to it. Before I go through the nuisance of doing this and having to learn someone else's way of doing some of the procedures (every book has a few of its own idiosyncratic presentations of formulae), I thought I might at least find a book, with your help, that provides a decent number of practice problems. PS. I don't want to discuss whether teaching the hand calculations is necessary. I could never learn mathematics by reading descriptions of how to do it. Before they learn SPSS, they need to learn at least a very basic version of what SPSS does. It's like teaching someone to use a calculator without teaching them to add, subtract, multiply etc. with his or her own brain first. Thanks for your help - and have a good weekend too. Nancy Melucci Long Beach CIty College Long Beach CA -Original Message- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] The Psychological Record
So does that mean it is interbehaviorist rather than behaviorist? :-) Chris == Paul Brandon wrote: J.R. Kantor was long an anonymous commentator for Psych Rec. On Oct 30, 2009, at 1:09 PM, sbl...@ubishops.ca wrote: On 30 Oct 2009 at 13:55, Wuensch, Karl L wrote: A colleague of mine asked the editor of The Psychological Record about page charges. In her reply, the editor made it clear that The Psychological Record does NOT have page charges, and never has. Thanks, Karl. It will be interesting to see how the discrepancy between this and Annette's experience of paying exorbitant page charges to the Record is resolved. Does false memory strike again? So, was I also right about _Psychological Record_ favouring a behaviouristic orientation? :-) (Reminds me of the joke about the rabbi mediating a dispute. He listens to the wife first, and concludes You're right. He then listens to the husband, nods wisely, and concludes You're right. A bystander protests, Rabbi, they can't both be right. The rabbi replies,You're right too! ) Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) Paul Brandon Emeritus Professor of Psychology Minnesota State University, Mankato paul.bran...@mnsu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Is vanity killing the social sciences?
At a conference in Europe on the future of the social sciences and the humanities, the idea is being floated that that, 'Academic narcissism' and a focus on self-promotion over scholarly substance are ... bringing the humanities and the social sciences to the brink Those who get to the top tend to be 'highly competitive, image-oriented, substance-avoiding, ultra-innovative, quotation-obsessed individualists,' said [Sasa Bozic, associate professor of sociology at the University of Zadar, Croatia]. He added that a lack of kudos for research that performed the valuable role of confirming existing work had resulted in a constant search for novelty, which made it hard for the social sciences to build up a solid body of knowledge. The full report on the conference by Times Higher Education can be read here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26storycode=408839c=2 Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Assessment of learning, not grades?
Rob Weisskirch wrote: Our university has jumped on the assessment bandwagon and those who have drunk the kool-aid talk about assessment of student learning and looking at student evidence. I continue to ask why looking at grade distribution is not an indicator of learning. Rob, Although I'm chiming in a little late on this one, I think that a little statistical test theory explains what is going on with crystalline clarity. First, allow me to introduce two technical terms: The *sensitivity* of a test is the degree to which is correctly identifies members of the category that it is intended to test for. (In a school grading system, the proportion of those students doing excellent work who get an A.) By contrast, the *specificity* of a test is the degree to which it correctly identifies non-members of the category that it is intended to test for. (In a school grading system, the proportion of students doing non-excellent work who get a non-A.) Tuition-paying parents decided a while ago that our grades weren't sensitive enough (i.e., that we were giving too many of their excellent Johnnys and Janes non-A grades). Our administrations (and we) gradually caved in to the pressure (fearing law-suits, non-contributing alumni, hard reputation, etc.). Because we could think of no better way to substantially improve our grading procedures (increasing both their sensitivity and specificity), we simply moved the goal posts, giving more student higher grades, and reducing failure to nearly zero. This probably increased the sensitivity slightly, but at the cost of massive decreasing the specificity. This process is called, in the vernacular, *grade inflation*. After a while, those very same tuition-paying parents, now in their alternative capacity as employers (and voters, don't forget), began to realize that lots of job applicants were coming at them with degrees and high grade averages, but without the actual skills that were once expected to accompany such degrees and grades. Now these tuition-paying-parent-employer-voters declared, in outrage (at, note, the very result of their own earlier demands), that our grades weren't /specific/ enough (i.e., too many (of other people's) non-excellent Johnnys and Janes were getting A grades). Since the grading system we were using (at their earlier insistence) didn't adequately distinguish between excellent and non-excellent students, they declared that we were incompetent, and that the government (or its proxy) should jump in and and see how well students learn specific things without, note!, those assessments being attached to particular students (thereby damaging their precious self-esteem and job prospects) but, rather, to their schools and teachers. In this way, they will be able to have the best of both worlds. The grades for *individual* students will remain highly sensitive (because many students will continue to get high grades), but the assessments done of the institutions and teachers will be highly specific (teachers whose student do not meet externally-developed criteria will take the bulk of the blame). See, it's easy! :-( Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] APA to replace early copies of style guide.
From today's Inside higher Ed: APA Will Provide Corrected Version of Style Guide Those frustrated by the numerous errors in the new edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association will be able to get a correct version. Until now, the association has insisted that it would be wasteful to issue new editions, and it urged those who bought the book to just use an online compilation of corrections. But on Tuesday, an organizer of a boycott movement for the error-laden version announced that the association had agreed to offer corrected versions. see also: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=155700389614 Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Teach both evolution and creationism say 54% of Britons | Science | The Guardian
More Brits than Americans now favor creationism in science classes... http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/oct/25/teach-evolution-creationism-britons Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Teach both evolution and creationism say 54% of Britons | Science | The Guardian
Serafin, John wrote: First of all, the 54% Brit positive response vs. the 51% US positive response is likely within the margin of error. Yes, but both well beyond the margin of horror. Secondly, the wording of the question is problematic. Methinks thou doth protest too much. But since Chris is in Canada, I feel justified in asking this question...what are the percentages to these types of questions iin Canada? Any big differences compared to Brits US? My guess is probably not far off. I wasn't making a claim for the superiority of Canadians. I was more concerned about the apparent trans-Atlantic infectiousness of High Ignorance. Sigh. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Was Freud fluent in English?
michael sylvester wrote: Just curious as to Freud's English skills.I imagine he had some since he practiced in England, He translated JS Mill into English for Brentano. He could also speak in English, but well. There is a audio tape available on the internet from late in his life in which he says a sentence or two about psychoanalysis in English. My recollection is that it is difficult to understand without a transcript. And didn't he give some lectures at Clark U with G Stanley Hall? Yes, but he gave them in German. And while on this subject,with all those psychologists (William James) going to Leipzig did the Americans know German? Must be tough listening to lectures in German. James had been raised in various places in Europe and was competent in several languages. Hall had already been to Germany on a previous study trip before he went to post doc with Wundt. Because there were virtually no graduate schools in the US at the time, anyone wanting graduate training pretty well had to go to Europe. German medical and scientific degrees were considered especially prestigious. Several other American psychologists who studied in Germany were not fluent. (At one medical school, there were so many Americans, they lobbied to have lectures delivered in English. The Germans refused, as I recall.) Cattell hired another (German) student to be his translator. (Wundt was considered to be a bit of a PhD mill by other German psychologist-philosophers for the number of international graduates he turned out.) However, it was still a time when Americans still felt having a familiarity with major European languages was a part of being an educated person. Also to those tipsters who have gone to international conferences , I would imagine your colleagues overseas know English.Do you get a translation of your presentations in various languages? I guess going to Israel to deliver a paper,English would be understandable. Sometimes international conferences in Europe are held in English in order to attract Americans. Sometimes they specify a range of acceptable language (e.g., English, French, German). (Canadian Psychological Association conferences are held in English and French.) In Europe (except the UK) it is generally expected that educated people will know more than one language (often English is the common second language). Generally speaking, the Dutch and Danes are most likely to be able to operate well in English. Germans next. The French are generally least accommodating. (I haven't been to Italy, Spain, or eastern Europe, so I am not sure on conventions there.) Is English the language of psychology? Btw,Mandler has a work titled The language of psychology in English.What are the reputable scientific psychology journals in other languages? Every major country has its own reputable psychology journal. Some of the cross-national ones (e.g., /European J. Cognitive Psych/.) are published in English. Still, it is my impression in areas of psychology that consider themselves to be experimental, English has strengthened its hold even further (as researchers from non-English speaking countries want to be integrated into an international scientific community. But, in areas of psychology in which cultural issues have come more to the fore, national traditions in psychology have started to strengthen somewhat in the past decade or two.) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] PhD language requirement
michael sylvester wrote: There used to be some kind of a language requirement as a part of the grad requirement. I am not sure if it was in lieu of stats.Anyway,what happened to that idea? Language requirements are still common in the humanities. I had to do French for my philosophy PhD just a few years back. Sometime after psychology decided that it was a natural science (and therefore, I suppose, spoke the language of nature) it dumped its language requirements most places. (I can remember some students attempting to argue that learning a computer programing language should count. I think I lost that argument because I was so busy laughing.) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Was Freud fluent in English?
michael sylvester wrote: . I imagine that this is also the case on the professional tennis circuit � all the even moderately successful tennis players are reasonably fluent in English. Allen Esterson And so are cricketeers. Is that what fans of Jiminy Cricket are called? Like fans of Micky Mouse are mouseketeers? :-) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Health stats trivia question
Allen Esterson wrote: �Chris: I note that the first online commenter suggests a solution to such modern health afflictions: During the plagues in Europe, the families that suffered the least were those that used silver utensils. As I'm sure you have already deduced, Allen, those who had silver utensils to use were probably also the wealthiest folks who lived in the most spacious and sanitary conditions to start with, and who could leave town for their country places when the plague arrived. Imagine that? Along the same lines, I bet that those who wore the fanciest hats also fared better against the plague, on average. I dug out my grandmother's set two years ago and have not had a cold. flu, sore throat, or other health problem and I work with cash and dirty dishes in a public setting everyday. Me, I use a dishwasher, which I like to think has as much effect on the bacterial condition of my utensils as whether or not they are made of silver. On the other hand, having silver utensil ready to hand is always useful for fending off surprise lycanthrope attacks. :-) Best, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] APA style and DOI numbers
Paul C Bernhardt wrote: APA could have several uses for DOIs. I didn't realize that there was any confusion about this. Someone from APA publishing explained it to me a couple of years ago during the question period of a talk I gave for Div 2. The reason APA decided to include DOI number is that more and more (and eventually all) journal articles will be online. However, over the years, the URLs for those articles will change (as companies are bought out by other ones, companies redesign their websites, etc.). The DOI numbers, however, will remain the same, enabling one to find the articles years later, when it has passed through a half dozen or more URLs, but always has the same DOI in the metadata. It is a little irritation from the author's end, but will become increasingly useful from the readers' end as the years go by. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] John Dewey: Education's Charles Darwin - thestar.com
A not-bad piece (for the popular press) about John Dewey's educational legacy. http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/715805--john-dewey-education-s-charles-darwin Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] APA style and DOI numbers
Here's some good news from those of you who were dreading having to cut and paste dozens of DOI numbers into your reference sections starting in January. It is a website that allows you to enter a list of reference, and if gives you back the references with all available DOI numbers appended: http://www.crossref.org/SimpleTextQuery/ Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Health stats trivia question
Are more people killed every year by antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections or by car accidents? Answer below. . . . . . . Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == Bacteria that develop resistance to common antibiotics mean trouble for more than a quarter million Canadians every year. Most develop infections while in hospital. About 8,000 of them die from those infections --- more than will die of breast cancer, AIDS and car accidents combined. (Source: From: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/02/12/f-superbugs.html) I presume the numbers are roughly the same (but 10 times larger) in the US. Of course, the 30,000+ gun deaths per year in the US may dwarf all of this. :-( --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Fechner Day! -- that darn date
A great psychophysics demonstration you can do in class uses money and hapiness (rather than calibrated lights or sounds). First, ask students to imagine that they have been given $100. Ask them to get a sense of how happy that would make them. Then ask them to imagine that they have been given $200. Ask them is the happiness of getting $200 is TWICE that of getting $100, or if it seems somewhat less than twice as happy. Most will answer the latter. Voila! The non-linear relationship between physical and psychological intensity. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == John Kulig wrote: I still do Fechner. I used to briefly do the DL and JND concepts when I taught intro (I believe Gleitman's text still covers him). When I taught History of Psych I did more, starting with Herbart and Leibnitz' concepts on petite perceptions, a few staged DL demos, then Weber Fechner. I used to have an essay question on whether he or Wundt founded psychology. He's hard to avoid in measurement classes (though the books ignore him). I tie him to the challenge of scaling brightness or loudness, and then discuss the challenge of scaling more ambitious things such as beauty or happiness. Fenchner's metaphysical ramblings as Dr. Mises and the 'day' and 'night' views are also worth doing, as I (after Boring) paint a picture of the Germans as struggling with the relationship between the objective/physical versus the subjective/psychological, hence the only country where psychology could have started. So you can still get a tremendous amount of mileage out of Fechner in undergraduate classes. btw right before Fechner I show my favorite Calvin Hobbs cartoon, doing pushups and counting (something like) 20 514 and then saying (something like) exercise is more gratifying when you count like it feels like -- John W. Kulig Professor of Psychology Plymouth State University Plymouth NH 03264 -- - Original Message - From: Karl L Wuensch wuens...@ecu.edu To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 10:25:56 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: RE: [tips] Fechner Day! -- that darn date I am probably the only faculty member at my institution who even mentions Fechner in the Intro class. When I refer to Fechner with my graduate students they give me that WTF are you talking about look. When I ask who has ever heard of Fechner, not a single hand is raised. So sad. A few will say they remember hearing of Weber, but none can comment on his contributions to the discipline. Cheers, Karl W. -Original Message- From: Gerald Peterson [mailto:peter...@vmail.svsu.edu] Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 8:20 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Fechner Day! -- that darn date Is psychophysics being taught at the undergrad level? I was introduced to Fechner in an undergrad Exper. Psych class and then in the capstone History and Systems class, but I don't see references to psychophysical methods in most Experimental psych texts. I would think it would be covered in our SP class. I do mention Fechner and Weber in Intro tho. Gary Gerald L. (Gary) Peterson, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Psychology Saginaw Valley State University University Center, MI 48710 989-964-4491 peter...@svsu.edu - Original Message - From: William Scott wsc...@wooster.edu To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 5:44:39 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [tips] Fechner Day! -- that darn date A long time ago an old friend introduced me to the tradition of serving cake in class on Fechner day. I recommend it. Some places can even put a photo in the icing. Fechner's mug makes everyone take a small piece so one cake can stretch through a large class. Bill Scott Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 10/22/09 5:28 PM The Zend-Avesta was a religious text (after a manner of speaking) by Fechner, in which he outlined his daylight view of science (a kind of pan-psychist, post-Romantic view of the world), as opposed to he called the twilight view (of materialism). (The Avesta is a sacred text of Zoroastrians, who (to a first approximation) worship the sun.) He also wrote abook about the soul life of plants. Neither has ever been translated to my knowledge, but Michael Heidelberger's biography of Fechner is an excellent source (if a bit dense). Chris --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Fechner Day! -- that darn date
Bill, Learning names and dates is not learning history. They are just the foundation to learning it. Similarly, learning basic math is not learning science, but it is a foundation upon which (much of) science rests. Just like one cannot really get started doing (modern) science without mathematics, one cannot really get started learning history without knowing names and dates. The real history comes when one is able to put those people and their arguments and evidence into a wider historical context that allows us to really get at what they were trying to do and why. I'm not surprised that most students don't know Donald Hebb (and I say that as one who attended McGill myself). What is more worrying to me is that most (even graduate) students only barely know the names of Wundt and James, and even when they do, can hardly tell you anything about who they were or what they did. Only rarely do they know names like Hull and Tolman. Watson typically fares a bit better (due to Little Albert). Skinner better still. After the 1960s, psychology splintered in so many different directions that students generally only know the names of the people most closely associated with their area. From the formative era of psychology, Weber, Fechner, Mueller, Stumpf, Hall, Cattell, Baldwin, Titchener, Angell, Dewey, Munsterberg, Jastrow, Scripture, Witmer, Goddard, Terman, Thorndike, Koehler, Koffka, Wertheimer, etc. all draw blank stares for the most part. (One of my favorites in this regard is David Shakow, who is probably the single most important person in the training of every (PhD) clinical psychologist in North America today, and virtually no one knows his name.) As you say, it is, of course, important for students of psychology to learn psychological facts (if one can say such phrase so baldly without giggling). And I don't think it is worthwhile getting into the ancient debate about how much history the working scientist need know. (There is a great, classic article by Stephen Brush called Should the History of Science Be Rated X? (/Science/, 1974) that addresses this issue: http://tinyurl.com/ykeug52 ). But it seems to me that knowing a bit (and we are only talking about a tiny bit here) of the history of the science that one undertakes can't do any harm (if only to prevent one from going down previously explored blind alleys, and making previously-exploded invalid assumptions about what one is doing. As Santayana said (almost): Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. Santayana didn't have a logical (well, statsitical) proof of this, but I think a sketch of one would look something like this: Most of the smart people in history have come up with highly plausible explanations of the phenomena they have studied. Most of those candidate explanations, plausible as they were, have turned out to be false. When people later in history contemplate the same phenomena, they are likely to set upon the same plausible candidate explanations just because of their very plausibility. Knowing history will allow one to dismiss such explanations relatively quickly, despite their initial plausibility. Those who don't know their history, however, are more likely to commit great time and resources to pursuing the same (false) candidate explanations time and time again. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == William Scott wrote: Fechner, schmechner. Ask the graduate students if they know who Donald Hebb was. You'll get the same response. Maybe it's the sign of a maturing science. It's more important to know the facts than the names of those who discovered them. Or maybe it's something else. Bill Scott Wuensch, Karl L wuens...@ecu.edu 10/22/09 10:26 PM I am probably the only faculty member at my institution who even mentions Fechner in the Intro class. When I refer to Fechner with my graduate students they give me that WTF are you talking about look. When I ask who has ever heard of Fechner, not a single hand is raised. So sad. A few will say they remember hearing of Weber, but none can comment on his contributions to the discipline. Cheers, Karl W. -Original Message- From: Gerald Peterson [mailto:peter...@vmail.svsu.edu] Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 8:20 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Fechner Day! -- that darn date Is psychophysics being taught at the undergrad level? I was introduced to Fechner in an undergrad Exper. Psych class and then in the capstone History and Systems class, but I don't see references to psychophysical methods in most Experimental psych texts. I would think it would be covered in our SP class. I do mention Fechner and Weber in Intro tho. Gary Gerald L
[tips] No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund - NYTimes.com
Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those Baby Einstein videos that did not make children into geniuses. They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect. For the rest, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/education/24baby.html?hp Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Fw: John Dewey's birthday
michael sylvester wrote: Most people probably know of John Dewey's by the mentioning the Dewey decimal library system but what else did he invent? The Dewey decimal system was invented by Melvil Dewey (1851-1931), not by John Dewey (1859-1952). What John Dewey invented, to a first approximation, was the modern US school system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvil_Dewey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Fechner Day!
Today is Fechner Day! It celebrates the day on which, according to legend, Gustav Theodor Fechner developed the psychophysical method by which an experimenter manipulates the intensity of a physical stimulus, and then asks (what we would now call) a participant what sort of change, if any, s/he perceives. By doing this repeatedly, one can build up a geometrical curve of the relationship between the physical and the psychological, and then fit a mathematical equation to that curve. Fechner found that the relationship is logarithmic. Smitty Stevens later decided that the relationship was a power function instead. The debate continues. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Fechner Day! -- that darn date
The Zend-Avesta was a religious text (after a manner of speaking) by Fechner, in which he outlined his daylight view of science (a kind of pan-psychist, post-Romantic view of the world), as opposed to he called the twilight view (of materialism). (The Avesta is a sacred text of Zoroastrians, who (to a first approximation) worship the sun.) He also wrote abook about the soul life of plants. Neither has ever been translated to my knowledge, but Michael Heidelberger's biography of Fechner is an excellent source (if a bit dense). Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == Ken Steele wrote: I have been wondering about the report of that dream, because it is repeated so often--but without attribution. I looked at the 1966 English translation of Elements of Psychophysics (Vol I) and no mention of the date or a dream occurs in the text. (The translation of the volume was NIH-funded to celebrate the centennial of the publication of E of P. I guess we will need to wait until 2066 to see the translation of Vol. II). E G Boring does the introduction to the translation and repeats the dream story--without attribution of course. Even more irritating is an article by Boring (1961), in which the date/dream story is higlighted several times, still without attribution. However, Boring (1929/1950) does provide an interesting bit of info in his Experimental Psychology. Fechner wrote a book, Zend-Avesta, oder uber die Dinge des Himmels und des Jenseits, which was published in 1851. Boring (1929/1950, p. 279) notes: Oddly enough this book contains Fechner's program of psychophysics... 1851 would be a year after the famous dream and the dream/idea would still be fresh. The Elements contains mainly the results of the program Google books has the Zend-Avesta online but my rusty knowledge of German and the old font system have managed to block my efforts to find the psychophysics section. Perhaps another scholar will have better luck. Happy Fechner's Day, Ken Boring, E. G. (1961). Fechner: Inadvertent founder of psychophysics. Psychometrika, 26, 3-8. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Reclaiming TIPS
In my humble opinion, this is a ridiculous thread that should be ended immediately. First of all, it only gives he who shall not be named more list attention than he could have possibly dreamt of. Second, things are not all that bad, given that this is the wild and woolly world of non-moderated listservs. The occasional (even daily) message that one finds silly, or even offensive, can be easily ignored. It takes, what?, two seconds to hit the delete key. The address of anyone who is a chronic offender can be put in a kill file so that their messages are not even received (as several people on TIPS have done with various other TIPSters). Anyone so overly sensitive that the traffic one typically sees here literally drives them off the list would be driven off practically any non-moderated list. I like the fact that this list is non-moderated (one of the reasons I post here rather than psychteach, with its arcane rules and arbitrary gatekeepers). The price one pays for non-moderation is the occasional ridiculous post. The benefit one gets is an actual discussion rather than a formal Roberts Rules meeting. Every community has its share of clowns and fools. We are no different. Stand tall. Set your eyes in the horizon. Keep you upper lip stiff. And be prepared to use you delete key before your send key. Regards, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == Claudia Stanny wrote: I am violating my policy of refusing to respond to any post initiated in response to an inappropriate off-topic post or posts that use offensive language. I am saddened that TIPS has devolved into a sandbox of abusive and semi-abusive posts. I am offended by the posts that initiate these threads. I am ashamed of the manner in which some members respond to these threads. I have been ashamed of some of my own responses to these threads. I may yet regret this response. However, if it serves to assist Bill in his efforts to restore civility and purpose to the culture of this list, I will take this risk. Thanks, Bill, for all you have done to create this community. It has been a beneficial component of my scholarly community over the years. If I can help contribute to sustaining that community, I will do what I can. At present, I've adopted silence as my strategy, but I realize that this strategy also creates some unpleasant unintended consequences. Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. Director, Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Associate Professor, Psychology University of West Florida Pensacola, FL 32514 -- 5751 Phone: (850) 857-6355 or 473-7435 e-mail:csta...@uwf.edu mailto:csta...@uwf.edu CUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/ Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] John Dewey's birthday
Tomorrow (Oct 20) is the 150th anniversary of John Dewey's birth. You can find his article The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology here: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Dewey/reflex.htm A complete copy of _The School Society_ can be downloaded here: http://www.archive.org/details/schoolsociety00deweiala Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] *Nature* on APA and clinical psychology
Allen Esterson wrote: Clinical psychology at least has its roots in experimentation, Hmm. I wonder what you mean by that. There are many roots to what has become clinical psychology, but the tap root (if I may extend the metaphor) was a group of Boston physicians and neurologists working with the Emmanuel Movement, a group of Boston clergy (one of whom had been a student in Wundt's Leipzig lab) holding private spiritual sessions (some talk, some prayer, probably some lingering Mesmerism) with some of their congregation (see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Movement). The movement quickly spread to several other eastern US cities, but eventually drew so much professional criticism that the physicians and neurologists were forced to drop out and denounce it. Still, the idea of talk therapy had been ignited. A few years later, in 1909, Freud made his famous visit to Clark U. The best historical account of these events is probably given in Eric Caplan's book _Mind Games_ (U. Cal, 1998). Eugene Taylor has written about them as well (most accessibly in 2000, Psychotherapeutics and the Problematic Origins of Clinical Psychology in America, /American Psychologist/, /55/ (9), 1029-1033). The traditional story of Lightner Witmer having founded clinical psychology is based on a misunderstanding of what he meant by that phrase. What he invented in Philadelphia in the mid-1890s was much more the basis of school psychology than of modern clinical psychology. Regards, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] *Nature* on APA and clinical psychology
Marc Carter wrote: I certainly don't want my doctor choosing a medicine on the basis of anything other than what's been shown to work. Why should we expect less of therapists? Marc, I think you've hit the nail on the head, though inadvertently. There are many, many physicians out there who, although they scraped through their initial medical training, are not able (or wanting) to read and evaluate new medical research as it is published. They rely mainly on their past experience, discussions with colleagues, and intuition (just like many clinical psychologists). The pharmaceutical industry figured this out a long time ago and exploits it to their advantage by sending physicians advertising in the form of easy-to-read read promotional literature that is thinly disguised as research summaries. And they send them a lot of samples to give to their patients (to get them in the habit of prescribing the brand), and they throw luxurious promotional parties that are thinly disguised as confernces. Do I think that the original training of physicians is more scientifically rigorous than that of clinical psychologists? Of course, but I also think that medical science, in general, is more rigorous then psychological science as well, so the difference in training regimens is hardly surprising. The real issue here, I think, is that there is a clinical ethos (whether in psychology or medicine) that is orthogonal to (or perhaps even somewhat negatively correlated with) the research ethos (and lets be clear -- there are lots of superior researchers who, despite their great knowledge, would make horrible clinicians). It is relatively rare to find an individual who brings the best of both together. That is where the problems lies. Regards, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] [Fwd: Re: [PSYTEACH] APA Publication Manual]
It has come to a petition. See below. Chris Green York U. Toronto Original Message Subject:Re: [PSYTEACH] APA Publication Manual Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:38:07 -0400 From: Aarre Laakso aa...@umd.umich.edu Reply-To: Society for Teaching of Psychology Discussion List psychteac...@list.kennesaw.edu To: psychteac...@list.kennesaw.edu References: 7763104.1255531164997.javamail.mjohn...@aug.edu 6a5113b25fc14b4fbbeea7539d55938f04fbd9a...@exch1.ads.nmu.edu If the quality of the first printing of the 6th Edition of the APA Publication Manual is interfering with your ability to teach psychology, then I would encourage you to sign the petition at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/apa6 requesting that the APA replace all copies free of charge. Aarre Laakso aa...@umd.umich.edu Lecturer I University of Michigan - Dearborn --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] APA pbu mnaaul :-)
On a history of psych list, Jim Goodwin (author of various psychology textbooks), noted that the earliest stylistic guidelines for psychology (long pre-dating the original APA Publication Manual) can be found in: Bentley, M., Peerenboom, C. A., Hodge, F. W., Passano, E. B., Warren, H. C., Washburn, M. F. (1929). Instructions in regard to preparation of manuscript. /Psychological Bulletin, 26/, 57-63. He then went on to quote the following passage form the 1929 article: The writer who is incompetent in spelling, grammar, and syntax should seek help. Authors ... are expected to be literate and self-critical. They should not be surprised or resentful when careless and illiterate manuscripts are declined and returned (p. 58). And then he suggested that perhaps this was the kind of writer who was employed to write the most recent Publication Manual. :-) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] News: Correcting a Style Guide - Inside Higher Ed
Debate over errors in the APA manual reaches Inside Higher Ed. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/13/apa Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Senator aims to de-fund Poli Sci
From today's Inside Higher Ed: Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, is proposing that Congress bar the National Science Foundation from supporting research in political science. While the NSF is best known for its support for the physical sciences, computer science and engineering, it has a long history of also supporting work in the social sciences. A statement from the senator said: The purpose of this amendment is not to restrict science, but rather to better focus scarce basic research dollars on the important scientific endeavors that can expand our knowledge of true science and yield breakthroughs and discoveries that can improve the human condition. While such an amendment is unlikely to be enacted, the American Political Science Association is organizing letter-writing efforts against the measure. I wonder how long before they try to de-fund psychology. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Nobel laureates and us
michael sylvester wrote: But Chris they award prizes for literature and I am sure that there must be some psychologist who can come up with creative novels with the underpinnings of psychological ideas and discoveries to impress the world wide community.We as psychologists have lots of stuff about human nature. Freud was once nominated for the literature prize (after being unsuccssfully nominate for the med/phys prize several times). Wundt was nominated once for the med/phys prize, by Munstergberg, and during WWI. Not surprisingly, he didn't get it. (Germany was not in many people's good books that year, and Wundt and Munsterberg had both openly supported the German cause in the war.) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Alison Gopnik on Colbert Report
Alison Gopnik was on the Colbert Report last night (or will be tonight, if you live west of the eastern time zone). She is plugging her new book, _The Philosophical Baby_. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Darwin Movie Creation Finds a U.S. Distributor
Allen Esterson wrote: Mind the gap: Did Darwin avoid publishing his theory for many years? http://tinyurl.com/cobvtn It is by John van Whye, historian of science at=2 0Cambridge University, and Director of The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. http://darwin-online.org.uk/people/van_wyhe.html A brief (though inadequate) summary of Whye's views is given here: Contrary to the beliefs of many Darwin scholars, the great evolutionist did not delay publishing his theory for fear of professional ridicule or social shame. According to a new analysis of Charles Darwin's correspondence, the real reason was much more prosaic - he was snowed under with work. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/mar/28/uk.books Allen, I've read van Wyhe's article. Although it cleared out a lot of underbrush (like the Bowlby stuff), I must say that I didn't find his too many other important things to do account to Darwin's delay wholly convincing. The urgency of the barnacle book can't really be made to bear quite so much weight, IMHO. The issue, it seems to me, was not so much whether he was afraid of religious authorities but, rather, that he knew the theory would be extremely controversial, and he wanted to collect in advance as many lines of evidence as possible in order to be able to most effectively defend his position (having seen all too well what happened in the /Vestiges/ controversy of the late 1840s). The issue of his wife's conventional Christianity seems to have been played up a lot recently in order to personalize the matter (making for better drama, but perhaps not for better history). That said, I, too, was a little underwhelmed by the trailer for the PBS show: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darwin/program-q-300.html Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Improbable Research
The IgNobels for 2009 are out! http://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2009 The most psychological (though it is formally for veterinary medicine) went to Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless. The funniest, hands down, was the literature prize, which went to Ireland's police service (An Garda Siochana), for writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country --- Prawo Jazdy --- whose name in Polish means Driving License. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] JND,Absolute thresholds etc
Wow Mike P! That was SO divergent! :-) Chris = Mike Palij wrote: On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:40:54 -0700, Carol DeVolder wrote: Elaborative and deep processing such as the following? [Michael Sylvester channeling Khadafy/Gaddafi/Whatever wrote:] There is some evidence that auditory instructional manuals are more effective when recorded by females than males-something about the female voice that commands attention.However,there is the exception that the male voice is best for training a door. I heard that this really depends upon the door. The male voice seems to work best when training METAL doors while female voices seem to work best when training WOOD doors. There may be 3-way interaction between gender of trainer, type of door, and what exactly the door is being trained to do, but one really doesn't hear enough about what doors are being trained to do these days. As for females voices commanding attention, I find this might be true for statement like OOh! BAABY! or What the hell do you think you're doing??!?? but I could be wrong. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Cervical cancer vaccine and death
Right Paul. According to CBC tonight, cervical cancer kills 900 women per year in the UK. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == Paul C Bernhardt wrote: This is Kahneman and Tversky framing of decisions stuff: Doing something that is known to kill a certain number of people is less preferred decision compared to doing nothing knowing that some people might die. If the news article focused on the tens of thousands saved by the vaccine compared to the tends of thousands who have morbidity and mortality from getting cervical cancer the discussion about the unfortunate few who (allegedly) die from the vaccine might shift away from outrage. -- Paul Bernhardt Frostburg State University Frostburg, MD, USA On 9/29/09 10:19 AM, Beth Benoit beth.ben...@gmail.com wrote: Just after Mike Palij posted the suggestion that we take a look at the article discussing the fact that there /will/ be deaths following flu vaccines, but they are likely to be deaths that would have occurred naturally, this just came in to Google News: the death of a girl in England after she was given the cervical cancer vaccine. The vaccination programs has been halted while the situation is being examined. It should be interesting to see if this is yet another correlation-without-causation situation, or what factors are actually involved. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/sep/29/cervical-cancer-vaccinations-postponed I imagine that even though the news that there have been over a million doses given without anything like this happening, the program will face huge challenges now. Beth Benoit Granite State College Plymouth State University New Hampshire --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] JND,Psychoacoustics,and the UN
michael sylvester wrote: It was,I think,SS Stevens and his psychophysics stuff who might have introduced the notion of absolute threshold and just noticeable differences in the field It was much earlier, with Weber and Fechner. and I find myself trying to see how those constructs could be applied to interpreters at the United Nations. I don't know about the UN, but if you are inclined to think that psychophysics is one of those highly abstruse topics without many real-world applications, Malcolm Gladwell's TED talk on spaghetti sauce may change your mind. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] TED talks video on the impact of false memories
My current favorite TED talk is John Lloyd Inventories the Invisible: http://www.ted.com/talks/john_lloyd_inventories_the_invisible.html But for a couple of passing references, it doesn't have much to do with psychology. He may not even be correct about a couple of items. Nevertheless, (IMHO) it models approximately the correct attitude toward our current state of knowledge. :-) Chris Green York U. Toronto (or so I believe at present) Britt, Michael wrote: A recent TED talks video might be of interest when you talk to students about false memories. Photographer Taryn Simon interviewed and photographed men who were put in jail because of false memories on the part of their accusers. In some cases these false identifications were the results of manipulations by the attorneys and in other cases because of the natural processes that occur when we try to recall events. The most relevant part of this video begins around 11:36 in: http://www.ted.com/talks/taryn_simon_photographs_secret_sites.html Michael Michael Britt mich...@thepsychfiles.com www.thepsychfiles.com --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Psychological research involving food
Britt, Michael wrote: I'm noodling with an idea and I was wondering if anyone in tips land can help. Do you recall any research studies involving food in any way? There was the study (perhaps someone can help with me tha author) in which bowls of soup were rigged to automatically refill in order to see whether participants used their own feeling of fullness, or the height of the soup in the bowl, as the cue to stop eating. I think Peter Herman and Janet Polivy (of U Toronto) have done a number of studies in which the incidental eating for snacks during a distactor task was the dependent variable. My old MA supervisor (Bernard Lyman of Simon Fraser U) wrote a book called (I think) _The Psychology of Food: More than a Matter of Taste_ back in the mid-1980s. Regards, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Gadhafi,memory,and cell assemblies
michael sylvester wrote: Although Gadhafi's speech to the UN was quite extensive,the speech itself was quite an example of the Hebbian concept of cell assemblies,and contained virtually everything we know about memory processes especially encoding and storage.He seemed to have covered all the nodes that compare and contrast historical events. I personally and Christopher Green could not give an elaborative history of psychology without missing an event as Gadhafi did in recalling world events. If I ever get a chance to speak for 95 minutes (to anyone, much less the UN), I'll be sure to bring notes. :-) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Random Thought: Notions Of Students
Louis Schmier wrote: We academics have some the most unrealistic notions about students that have nothing to do with who they truly are. And the reverse, times ten (because we've been them, but they've never been us). Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Dead salmon detects human emotion
Formerly known as Voodoo correlations before the editor made him tone it down. http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/12/voodoo_correlations_.html Chris = Bourgeois, Dr. Martin wrote: This is awesome, and it reminds me of a debate at the upcoming Society for Experimental Social Psychology: Puzzlingly High Correlations in Cognitive/Affective Neuroscience Matthew Lieberman, University of California at Los Angeles vs. Piotr Winkielman, University of California, San Diego, with David Kenny as moderator The debate is organized around a paper that just came out in Current Directions in Psychological Science (Piotr Winkielman is one of the authors), which argues that the methods of a great many fMRI studies lead to spurious correlations (the original title of the paper was Voodoo Correlations in Cognitive/Affective Neuroscience) because researchers selectively define the brain regions of interest after looking at the data. From: sbl...@ubishops.ca [sbl...@ubishops.ca] Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 6:08 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Dead salmon detects human emotion Remarkable new experiment, a fMRI study by Bennett et al reported at the 15th annual meeting of the Organization for Brain Mapping in June this year in San Francisco. Meeting announcement at http://www.meetingassistant3.com/OHBM2009/index.php From the Methods section of the abstract: Subject: One mature Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) participated in the fMR study. The salmon was...not alive at the time of scanning. Task: The task administered to the salmon involved completing an open-ended mentalizing task. The salmon was shown a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations with a specified emotional valence. The salmon was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing. http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.jpg for the abstract of the poster presentation (the poster itself, actually) And if that doesn't make itself clear, try this: http://tinyurl.com/mww9tj Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Any guesses on the probability?
In 2007, 9% of the US's (enormous) prison population was female: http://hdrstats.undp.org/indicators/266.html It may not be the case that no women commit heinous crimes. It is certainly the case that they do it at a much lower rate than men. Regards, Chris Green York U. Toronto = Don Allen wrote: Well no actually. In a previous life I spent about ten years as a prison psychologist. I worked in both male and female federal and provincial correctional centres so I have a fair amount of experience to draw on. I can assure you that women have committed acts that were as heinous (and more) than did their male counterparts. These crimes ran the gamut from homicide to sexual assault. One story that was frequently presented was: I copped to the plea so my girlfriend could walk. I have no way of verifying those claims but I suspect that a number of them were true. The notion that women are less capable of vile acts than men fits well with a view of women as the fair sex but I don't think that it is well supported by the data. -Don. - Original Message - From: sbl...@ubishops.ca Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 5:29 pm Subject: Re: [tips] Any guesses on the probability? To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) On 16 Sep 2009 at 13:04, Michael Smith wrote: However, that doesn't answer my main question as to whether there is a bias in the legal system and society in general that women are considered less capable of vile acts than men, and why this might be Because it's true? Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada - -- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) Don Allen Dept. of Psychology Langara College 100 W. 49th Ave. Vancouver, B.C. Canada V5Y 2Z6 Phone: 604-323-5871 --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Early Spankings Make for Aggressive Toddlers, Study Shows - Yahoo! News
Apropos of the earlier debate on spanking here. http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20090915/hl_hsn/earlyspankingsmakeforaggressivetoddlersstudyshows Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Any guesses on the probability?
She didn't play the victim card and get off lightly. It was a straight plea bargain. They had no hard evidence against Bernardo, and she offered to testify in exchange for a shortish sentence. (Then, after her trial was over, they discovered a video tape which would have be sufficient to convict him without her testimony, but it was too late.) Chris Green York U. Toronto == Bourgeois, Dr. Martin wrote: From: Michael Smith [tipsl...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 8:18 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Any guesses on the probability? There was a horrendous case in Canada a few years ago (Carla Homolka and Paul Bernardo). She played the victim card and 'got off lightly' compared to Barnardo. Are people less willing to believe that a woman could be so vile? Why would this be the case? --Mike Because men are far more likely to commit violent crimes, and people are attending to base rates? On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 7:15 PM, Shearon, Tim tshea...@collegeofidaho.edu wrote: Mike 98.92496%. Seriously, I think it is almost certain. The alternative would be to admit something rather likely to put you away for about. . . . forever! That does leave a small chance she'll take the stiff upper lip defense, 'It's a fair cop! Tim ___ Timothy O. Shearon, PhD Professor and Chair Department of Psychology The College of Idaho Caldwell, ID 83605 email: tshea...@collegeofidaho.edu teaching: intro to neuropsychology; psychopharmacology; general; history and systems You can't teach an old dogma new tricks. Dorothy Parker From: Michael Smith [tipsl...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 5:57 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Any guesses on the probability? Anyone have a guess on the probability that Nancy Garrido the wife of Phillip Garrido (the couple accused of the abduction, rape, and confinement for 18 years of Jaycee Dugard) will be pleading that she is just another victim of the bad man? --Mike --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Creation
sbl...@ubishops.ca wrote: I've been waiting for Chris Green to post this here, as he did on the History of Psychology list, but as he doesn't seem to be going to, allow me. Believe it or not, I tried to do exactly that yesterday afternoon, but had run out of posts for the day. Here's what I attempted to post: We are all, by now, used to the idea that there are a lot of people in the US who find Darwin's theory of evolution anathema to their firmly held religious beliefs. But the new feature film about the impact that the 1851 death of Darwin's daughter, Annie, had on both his own religious beliefs and his scientific work has apparently been unable to even find a distributor in the US and, so, will probably never be seen in the major theaters there. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6173399/Charles-Darwin-film-too-controversial-for-religious-America.html (Thanks to new York grad student Eric Oosenbrug for pointing this article out to me.) I would have thought that the revenues from major coastal cities alone would have been enough to entice a distributor to pick it up, but (apparently) the anticipated backlash (boycotts, etc.), presumably against other movies or products sold by the same company, has caused them to decline one of the major releases of the year. Quizzical. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] The Science Wars
this has been due to the reasons of distrust mentioned earlier in this paragraph. More importantly, however, psychology is seen (rightly, for the most part) as adopting a number of individualist assumptions about the practice of science (and of human behavior more broadly) that are not shared by sociology and anthropology (whether those assumptions are right or wrong is a separate matter). So there would be farily little overlap in interests between the two groups. Regards, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] The Science Wars
Mike Palij wrote: Historians are much more likely to circle around a topic for a little while, exploring its nooks and crannies (perhaps this is why the book, rather than the journal article, is still the preferred vehicle of historians and other humanists). Thank you clearing this up for me. I thought going the book publishing route for academics was to avoid having to face peer review prior to publication. As with Herrnstein Murray's The Bell Curve, sometimes it's better to just put a book out and deal with the criticism afterwards because it is possible that the prior peer review would point out that the book is a piece of trash, to put it nicely. You are mistaken if you believe that scholarly books are not peer reviewed. Peer reviewers for history books are every bit as rigorous as journal reviewers, probably more so because journal articles are considered by humanists to be (more or less) dry runs for chapter in an eventual book . As for HM, that book was published by Free Press, hardly a well-respected scholarly press. Maybe that's why one finds all that junk in the psychology section in books stores -- psychologists can't tell scholarly publishers from trade publishers. :-) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] The Science Wars
Mike Palij wrote: Wait a second while I check this book. *searching* Hmmm, I have David McCullough's John Adams and I can't find any indication that it was peer-reviewed. His Acknowledgements on pages 653-656 identify a number of people who provided information, read chapters, made suggestions, etc., etc., but nothing saying peer review. Is McCullough's John Adams considered not be a true scholarly work? It is published by Simon Schuster, not by a scholarly press. That doesn't mean it isn't good (nothing *prevents* trade books from being good). It just means that it isn't published by a scholarly press and, thus, went through a different process. Try the major university presses. The best history of science press out there is University of Chicago. Johns Hopkins Press is good too. Harvard as well. Oh boy, Stephen Pinker and Robert Sternberg are both going to kick your butt! ;-) I suspect they both know exactly what they've been doing. Cashing in. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Hero Worship and the Confirmation Bias
Mike Palij wrote: ... I am actually thinking about psychologists who are held in high esteem and presented as a type of hero for other psychologists to be proud of and as an example to be emulated. One can think of many examples, old and recent, of people who are seen as having made a significant contribution in some form, for example, William James is often spoken as a founding father of American psychology but this is usually done with a selective presentation of his activities and beliefs, that is, those activities of James that psychologists might be proud of are promoted and emphasized that those activities and beliefs that they may be embarassd by, such as his belief in spiritualism and his promotion of it, not so much. Indeed. I found that Louis Menand's _The Metaphysical Club_ was a wonderful antidote to William James hero-worship. And he does it without bashing James so much as just showing how his mental foibles (esp. his chronic indecisiveness) were as much a part of his philosophy as were his mental strengths. In the case of Sir Ronald Fisher, Stephen Jay Gould tried to reconcile the apparent genius of his contribution to statistics and genetics with his sincere beliefs in and promotion of eugenics as a solution of society's problems (i.e., promoting scientific racism). Are they comparable cases involving psychologists? A lot of them. For instance, James McKeen Cattell was a strong eugenicist. Indeed, the reason he opposed conscription so adamantly during WWI (so adamantly that it got him fired from Columbia, to a first approximation), was based on his belief that it would result in a high kill-off of genetically superior youth, thereby undermining the American gene pool in the long term. The case of Terman is well-known too. Lashley and Watson were both deeply (though not often publicly) racist. The only prominent early American psychologist I can think of who strongly and publicly opposed eugenics was John Dewey. By the way, Karl Pearson so admired the Germans that he changed the spelling of his first name (from Carl). The question then arise: Why to psychologists, especially teachers, seem to engage in a form of the confirmation bias in presenting psychologists whom someone or group has considered significant? This is an critical issue for historians of science, who are chronically horrified by what typically passes for historical scholarship among scientists. The problem is, of course, that when scientists turn their hand to writing about the past of their discipline, they almost always do it in an intellectualist and celebratory mode. That is, first, the main aim is to cover the intellectual developments, but little else (except perhaps a bit of mythologized biography -- like Newton's falling apple), because, as they like to say, it is the *ideas* (usually the discoveries) that matter, not whether the scientist was married or single, liberal or conservative, good or evil, etc. But it also serves to hide away aspects of a scientist's life that might not seem so praiseworth today (such as, e.g., Newton's alchemical and religious obessions, Darwin's apparent hypochondria, James' spiritualism, or [to take a more recent example] R. B. Cattell's white supremacism). Second, scientists who write history almost always do it in order to inspire younger scientists to emulate the greats of times past, so they extol (and often exaggerate) the singular nature of their genius. That is to say, when a scientist tries to write history it is often more of a moral exercise than a scholarly one. Over the past 25 years or so, history of science has become a more or less independent discipline, conducted mostly by professional historians, rather than by scientists. And historians traditionally pay great attention to the contexts (intellectual, personal, social, cultural, political) in which various scientific ideas (among other events) arise. But in the process, modern historians of science have alienated a lot scientists who have mistaken their activities for having the primary aim of criticizing scientists and science itself (where not being sufficiently adulatory counts is regarded as being overly critical). This misunderstanding of intentions precipitated the very nasty Science Wars of the 1990s. Thankfully, we are mostly over the worst of that silliness now, but it still rears its ugly head from time to time. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] CCross-cultural: British Parliament
michael sylvester wrote: British parliamentary debates and proceedings must be the most uncivilized affair on the planet. Members of parliament disrupt,laugh,boo and throw all types of verbal assaults at the Premier and cabinet ministers.It continues outside of the building where members of parliament can be pied and egged. Good question. The answer is deeply historical. Prime ministers are not presidents. Traditionally they were just the leading members of governments and, more importantly, of cabinets. Each minister had primary responsibility for his portfolio (war, treasure, home, etc.) and, while they all worked together with the Prime Minister, they did not work for him in quite the way that an (unelected) Secretary in the US works forthe President. (You may recall that Margaret Thatcher was thrown out *not* by a vote of the opposition, but by a vote of her own Tory caucus.) That old division-of-labor system among cabinet ministers has deteriorated over the years, and one of the primary complaints that is heard in countries using the Westminister (e.g., UK) model of Parliament is that they are becoming too presidential. (Think of the way Blair acted, or Chretien in Canada, or Howard in Australia -- as though they alone ran the place, promoting and demoting ministers on the basis of personal loyalty rather than in an effort to maintain representation of various factions within the party.) Still, because of that history, Prime ministers are not conventionally accorded the same reverential treatment as presidents. Why is the US President accorded such reverence? One has to the remember that the US constitution was emphatically NOT written to advance popular democracy. It was written, by contrast, to leaven the perceived instabilities of democracy with the virtues of other forms of government. The US constitution was modeled on John Adams' Massachusetts constitution, which attempted to combine the three Classical forms of government -- monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy -- with the hope that they would each be able to prevent the other forms from falling into their (again Classical) degenerate forms: tyrany, oligarchy, and anarchy. The president was to be the analog of the (constitutional) monarch. Originally, you may recall, the president was not selected by popular vote of the nation (indeed, it still isn't) but rather by a vote of Electors representing each state (thus the origin of the current Electoral College). As a quasi-monarch, he was to be accorded the (some of the) respect due a monarch. The Senate was the analog to the classical governmental form of aristocracy -- rule by the nation's most superior citizens. Senators were not elected in the early US, but were appointed by the governors of the states, a tradition that carried on up into the 1920s, as I recall, and still continues in muted form in the right of governors (in many states) to appoint replacement senators when one resigns or dies, as was recently made infamous by the Blagojovich scandal. Only the House of Representatives was intended to be analogous to the democratic form of government (the rabble), and, you will notice, that the House remains more raucous than the Senate to this day, and that Senators still like to distinguish their chamber from the House by pointing to its superior decorum, and to their own elevated gentlemanliness. The US House of Reps is the direct descendant of the Westminister House of Commons (where shouting at the Prime Minister continues to this day). And who shouted You Lie! at the President? Was it a senator? No. It was a representative of the House. Just like you would expect historically. Do I think that Wilson explicitly knows all this history, and the very conventional role that he played in it? Of course not. I think that he (and most of the rest of us) absorbed it through cultural osmosis and it resides tacitly in his very bones. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] The Science Wars
Jim Clark wrote: First, it was not primarily historians of science who were anti-science (see more below), although historians like Kuhn were much misused by the critics of science. Kuhn was quite explicit in his writings that he did NOT see his ideas as incompatible with the standard view of science (i.e., search for truth, objectivity, use of evidence, ...). He did NOT see his views as supporting the relativism that was central to the unfounded attacks on science by others. It is important not to confuse historians of science and sociologists of science when discussing this matter. Although they briefly thought they were doing similar things, it eventually became clear that they were engaged in rather different projects. Lorraine Daston has recently written explicitly on this matter in an article which is now being much discussed among both groups: (2009) Science Studies and the History of Science, /Critical Inquiry, 35/, 798-813. It is also important not to make definitive statements about what Kuhn believed. Kuhn's beliefs migrated quite a way from where he began over the years. In one famous paper, he later said that he thought science was just another form of hermeneutics. Rather than the science wars being over, I believe a more accurate characterization is that Snow's Two Cultures are even more sharply delineated today than in the past, although the fault line would not fall sharply between the Sciences and the Humanities (probably did not in his day either), but rather between most sciences (some social sciences appear to have gone over to the Dark Side ... sorry my son is into Star Wars right now) and a good chunk but not all of the humanities. I hope I am wrong and Chris is right! Far from thinking that you're wrong about this, I think that the problem Snow identified has intensified greatly over the years. Far form there being two cultures (of academic thought) there are a dozen or more. They divide both what we used to call the humanities and what we used to call the sciences. The rift between the natural and the social sciences is only the most obvious. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Milgram rides again
The BBC presented (another) successful replication of Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiment back in May, 2009. It is written up (with video excerpts) in The Situationist: http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/replicating-milgrams-obedience-experiment-yet-again/ Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
