Last October, I wrote that COVID-19 had created a stampede of shoddy research. Little has changed in the interim. Putting all hands to the pump might feel appropriate in a crisis, but during a global public health emergency, rushing headlong into the scholarly frontline is anything but okay. Frankly, it is […]
Vaccination
On risk perception and vaccine clots
I am a bit late posting this, but there you go. Watchyagonnadoaboutit. The other week I was quoted in the Irish Times on the matter of risk perception and vaccines: Proper risk assessments should combine two factors: impact and probability. In other words: “how bad something is” and “how likely […]
Podcasting about Lockdowns, Vaccines, and “Following the Science”
Here I am on the latest PSI Podcast, with Professor Luke O’Neill and host Breda Brown. Do have a listen… * * *
Who’s more deluded, the conspiracy nuts or the journalists who dismiss them?
Ireland often likes to see itself as a cosmopolitan kind of place, where the world’s tourists, investors, and bohemian artistes are promised the traditional hundred thousand welcomes. As the most recent example of our keenness to globalise, witness our incorporation of the latest intellectual trend: delusional-right-wing-conspiracy-theory-based anarchy! Last weekend’s violence […]
COVID-19 and vaccine hesitancy: Media round-up
The Psychological Society of Ireland have issued a report on vaccine hesitancy, Maximising the Benefit of a COVID-19 Vaccine: Getting the Psychology Right. I was part of the group that produced the report, which seeks to explain how psychological barriers to vaccine uptake can best be overcome. The report was […]
Keep away from camels; crowds (of humans) okay
Greetings from Riyadh Airport. Saudi Arabia is, well, different. And, moving on… Here in Riyadh the government have been having to deal with mass panic over an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which has taken the lives of over 70 victims. Typically MERS is associated with camels, and […]