Well, that escalated quickly. Or, rather, slowly. Because when democracies start to fray, the corrosion is usually incremental. Few regimes are overthrown overnight. The first few inflammatory statements are dismissed as innocuous, even idiotic, but gradually norms are shifted, tribes moulded, and scapegoats identified. Out-group hostility is the fulcrum of […]
[A version of this article previously appeared in TheJournal.ie] In the 1930s, US President Calvin Coolidge made the following observation on the annual yuletide festivities: “Christmas is not a time nor a season,” he said, “but a state of mind.” This year, the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a radical rethink of our […]
An invited, non-peer-reviewed guest editorial in the BMJ has claimed that behavioural interventions for “complex conditions” (such as ME or CFS) should not be judged using the customary criteria — and that the relevant studies should not be evaluated as though they were proper randomised controlled trials — because, among […]
From the Archives [A while back, I wrote this piece about academic exaggeration for The Psychologist magazine. See what you make of it…] Not another article about the crisis in psychology, you might complain. Déjà vu all over again? You thought we reached peak crisis some time ago, didn’t you? […]
Event announcement:– Next week I will be speaking at a virtual seminar organised by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties to mark World Human Rights Day, December 10 (from midday, Dublin time). I’ll be part of a panel discussing the challenges of balancing emergency public-health guidelines with human rights. How […]
If you have ten minutes to spare, here is an audio recording from my remarks at last week’s annual conference of the Psychological Society of Ireland: I was speaking on a panel on the psychological impact of COVID-19. The panel itself arose from a PSI policy statement issued in August, […]
