“New Study Debunks Prior Belief” is a pretty common format for science news headlines, especially in any area of science that deals with how human beings behave, what they believe, and what values are important to them (psychology, in other… Read More ›
Time to reprint those fan t-shirts, folks, as a new date has been added to my world tour. Next Tuesday evening I’m giving the keynote lecture at Psych Fest 2013, the, er, psychology festival at Mary Immaculate College, University of… Read More ›
Here are the slides from my lecture from the other week to the Psychological Society at the National University of Ireland, Galway. It’s all about how psychologists — academics in the main — take up biased starting positions in processes… Read More ›
I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are ideally suited to giving another public lecture at the invitation of a student psychological society. This time it’s at the behest of the Psychology Society… Read More ›
So, I’ve concluded that we might as well give up on trying to spread the word about the correlation-causation fallacy. People just don’t seem to be getting it. I do appreciate that there are complexities (after all, causality causes, and… Read More ›
Here’s a famous football quote (out of the mouth of Satan himself): “Football, eh? Bloody hell!” Yes. Football and hell. Inextricably linked. So, it was always but a matter of time before intrepid photojournalists would capture occult goings-on at a… Read More ›
Here is an interesting article from Discover Magazine, about some recent research into the association between intelligence and social attitudes. The study was conducted by some psychologists from Canada, and published in the prestigious journal Psychological Science. It represents a… Read More ›
People who know me personally will know that I don’t take cancer lightly (for various reasons I won’t go into here). So I am always a bit reluctant to criticize people who make the fight against cancer their life’s mission. After… Read More ›
So here is even more scientific research into the non-obvious consequences of eating junk food. As regular readers will know, we’ve recently heard of a couple of studies claiming that eating chocolate either (a) helps you lose weight or (b) helps you… Read More ›
I am generally nonplussed by birthdays. And I realise that blog posts about blog posts can sometimes be boring. However, as I’m an obsessive hoarder and a data geek, in this case I am going to make an exception. You… Read More ›
![That's me in the corner [Photo: Alan B.]](http://thesciencebitdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/cs.jpg?w=120&h=120&crop=1)
Just over a week ago, I gave a public lecture for Cork Skeptics at the magnificent Blackrock Castle Observatory. Subject to technological issues (i.e., assuming it worked), a video of the talk will be available online soon. In the meantime you… Read More ›
Sometimes I actually feel sorry for politicians. There, I’ve said it. The other week, when wannabe-POTUS Governor Richard “Rick” Perry suffered his spectacular live-TV retrieval failure in front of millions of people he was trying to impress, I genuinely cringed on his… Read More ›
We already know that men are pigs, but now we also know that men are the kind of pigs who corrupt the morality of dogs. And how do we know this? Well, scientists have discovered it, and the media are… Read More ›
