The newly released draft NICE guidelines for the management of “myalgic encephalomyelitis (or encephalopathy)/chronic fatigue syndrome” continue to cause a stir. And rightly so. The new guidelines not only repudiate a heretofore favoured treatment approach for a particular illness, they also threaten to discredit an entire (albeit quirky) branch of […]
Psychology
Make Nostalgia Great Again
Here is a blast from the not-so-distant past: the Republican president speaks the day after the Democrats win a bitterly contested presidential election. Take it away, George W.: No matter how they cast their ballots, all Americans can be proud of the history that was made yesterday across the country. […]
COVIDxHalloween: The Psychology of Wearing Masks
[A version of this article appeared in Psychology Today on 28 October 2020 ] Boo! Scared you. Yes, it’s Halloween. That season when children wear masks and we all pretend to be terrified of them. But as with just about everything else this year, COVID has turned convention on its head. Now, […]
You’re so vain, you probably think this global pandemic is about you
[A version of this article appeared in the Irish Examiner on 22 October 2020 ] The challenges of COVID-19 have been well reported. Death, disease, and debilitation are the scariest. Discombobulation also makes the list — nobody likes it when the entire world (more or less) gets turned upside-down. And […]
Is the stampede of COVID-19 science encouraging substandard research?
It seems that just about everyone is doing COVID-19 research these days. To date, more than 3,500 COVID-19 trials have been registered with ClinicalTrials.gov this year (compared to, for example, just 263 trials on “testicular cancer” in the entire history of the site). Meanwhile, the social sciences are also experiencing […]
COVID conspiracies and the psychology of vaccine hesitancy
There’s a lot of talk about a vaccine for COVID-19. However, vaccines only work if people take them, and for that we require people to think cogently and coherently about the coronavirus. But if that were actually happening, there might not actually be a pandemic in the first place. Take […]