Opinion
February 12, 2008
Category: Opinion
Cognitive Daily readers know that we generally shy away from political issues on our blog. The goal of this blog is to show readers what science is all about, through the example of the fantastic research being done cognitive psychology.
But when James Watson made his most recent comments about race and intelligence, we took notice. James Watson, renowned for his role in discovering the structure of DNA, is also the adviser to the Seed Media Group Board of Directors. The Seed Media Group owns ScienceBlogs.com, which hosts Cognitive Daily.
That's why were troubled last fall, when Watson was reported as saying that
he is inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa because all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours whereas all the testing says not really, and I know that this hot potato is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.
Watson has apologized for the remarks, and indeed, if the remarks hadn't been a part of a long pattern of biased and ignorant statements, perhaps his apology would have been enough.
This time, we don't think it's enough.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:19 PM • Comments (28)
December 28, 2007
Category: Opinion
Over at BPR3, a reader brought up an interesting question about the nature of peer-reviewed research, which I thought was relevant to our readers here as well. I'm reposting my entire response below.
The system of peer review, the bulwark of academic publishing, has served scholars for centuries. The principle behind the system is simple: If experts in a field find a research report noteworthy, then that report deserves to be published.
But who is an "expert"? And who decides who the experts are? Couldn't a group of individuals committed to promoting their own research -- which may or may not be well-founded -- get together to form their own "journal," which they could legitimately claim publishes "peer-reviewed research"?
They can, and they do.
BPR3 Danny Chrastina asks:
What if it's a pseudoscience paper which has been peer-reviewed by other pseudoscientists? I'm thinking of the reviews I've written of papers published in Homeopathy or J. Alt. Complement. Med. which point out their glaring misuse of quantum mechanical ideas.
Would a blog post citing such "research" qualify to use the BPR3 icon? There are a couple possibilities to consider:
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 10:31 AM • Comments (14)
December 21, 2007
Category: Opinion
I just finished reading Jonah Lehrer's book Proust was a Neuroscientist.
Quick review: good book, very fun read, and I'm happy to recommend it to almost everyone. I just have one small quibble.
For the quibble to make any sense, you need to know something about my teaching. Students in all my psychology classes have to write a few paragraphs to earn "culture points." They must consider how psychology connects to art, though the social context surrounding the event is also fair game for analysis. So my students attend a concert, visit a museum, or go to a play or dance performance and then write a paragraph connecting some aspect of psychology to their experience. I get a lot of discussion of the Gestalt grouping principles with paintings, but every semester several students make more interesting connections: noticing how a theatrical production manipulated their attention using a sudden movement, or positive reinforcement at work between live performers and their audience, or discussing how a particular aspect of memory may explain a very surprising emotional reaction to a sculpture.
Read on »
Posted by Greta Munger at 11:47 AM • Comments (6)
December 20, 2007
Category: Opinion
Last year, a friend of Greta's died tragically young. He was a pillar of the community, and Greta was honored to learn that he wanted her to play the oboe at his memorial service, which would be attended by hundreds of people. Greta has performed in countless concerts, with audiences just as large, but the thought of flubbing up at a ceremony honoring the life of a great man was absolutely nerve-wracking. The problem was compounded by the fact that Greta herself was in mourning for her friend.
In the end, she was able to summon up the courage to play beautifully, and received dozens of compliments after the service. One friend, a professional musician, asked about how she handled her nerves. She honestly told him that she didn't know: she just started playing and hoped for the best. He said that for high-pressure performances like that, he always used a beta-blocker -- a prescription medication for clinical anxiety. Indeed, the International Herald Tribune reports that using such drugs is becoming routine for musicians, whose reputation can be shattered by an ill-timed crack or bobble.
I certainly wouldn't have faulted Greta if she had sought out a prescription for such a drug when she learned of her friend's request in the weeks before he died. It's an exceptional situation, and if a little medication could help, wouldn't it be better for all concerned? But if musicians routinely depend on such drugs for everyday performances, then where does it stop? Should we prescribe the drugs for students? At what age should they start?
This is just one facet of a broad debate opened up by a recent commentary in Nature magazine. Barbara Sahakian and Sharon Morein-Zamir argue that there are certain situations where cognitive enhancing drugs are perfectly reasonable. When someone suffers from a truly debilitating disorder, then if a drug can return some semblance of normal functioning, there's little question that it should be used, especially if there's no effective alternative treatment. But what about borderline cases?
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 8:36 AM • Comments (29)
November 28, 2007
Category: Opinion
I've just finished reading fellow ScienceBlogger Chris Mooney's new book Storm World, and I highly recommend it -- not only to people interested in hurricanes and global climate change, but also to fans of cognitive psychology.
Why psychology? Because the book offers an excellent case study of how scientific research becomes part of the popular consciousness. Hurricane Katrina was a devastating storm, and its repercussions are still being felt. There's also little doubt that global warming is occurring. While there's a great deal of scientific uncertainty about the precise relationship between global warming and hurricanes, the coincidence of these two news stories made it seem to many people as if increased hurricane activity was a necessary consequence of global warming.
Mooney's book starts by showing how controversial hurricane science was even in the 19th century, when James Espy and William Redfield debated whether hurricanes were more like "spirals" or "chimneys." The tremendous cost of these storms, both in terms of lives lost and property damage, seems to have always created a scientific debate as turbulent as the hurricanes themselves.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:42 PM • Comments (1)
November 24, 2007
Category: General / Site news • Opinion
That's right, you can now get the full text of every Cognitive Daily post via RSS. There's just one catch: You must buy a $399 Amazon Kindle and pay 99 cents (per month, I assume) to subscribe to Cognitive Daily.
I don't know if this subscription will allow you to view images, and I'm pretty certain video, polls, and other interactive features won't be available, but for some people this might be a very attractive way to get Cognitive Daily. You can also get the amazing ScienceBlogs Select feed, which includes the best CogDaily posts as well as the best from dozens of other ScienceBlogs for $1.99.
[Update: This isn't meant to be a pitch for Kindle or for subscribing to our feed. We're not getting paid by anyone to support these ventures; I'm simply intrigued by Amazon's attempt at an ebook reader. I'd actually be shocked if many people decided to pay to get this blog, since they can get it for free online.]
There have been dozens of reviews of the Kindle across the blogosphere. Most of these reviews share two traits: they are negative, and the reviewer has never used the device. I'm skeptical about this thing too, but I'm willing to suspend judgment until I actually have one in my hands.
The Kindle is being hyped in some quarters as the iPod of reading, which also strikes me as a bit over the top -- although Newsweek's Steven Levy has at least used the thing. Even without having used it, I'm certain that it's not quite an iPod; it doesn't have the seamless integration of your existing library, your computer, and your future online purchases that the iPod has.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 10:44 AM • Comments (26)
November 8, 2007
Category: Opinion
Regular CogDaily readers know that I don't usually harp relentlessly on a single issue. Believe me, I'd much rather be talking about things like this, but it's not very often that I get a chance to make an impact in the blogosphere. Thanks to a link from Fark (via BoingBoing) it looks like today might just be that chance.
If you voted in the Weblog Awards Best Science Blog Contest yesterday when I first posted about it, you can now vote again. If you didn't get a chance to vote because the site was down, it looks like it's up again. I'll post the poll below as well for your convenience. This is your last chance to vote -- polls will be closing at 5 p.m. EST today.
But first, I did want to address some of the issues brought up by commenters in yesterday's post.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:18 PM • Comments (7)
November 7, 2007
Category: Opinion
Update: Thanks to everyone who voted. The contest is over; it has been declared a tie. That's a little odd because at last count, Bad Astronomy was ahead. But it's likely there were trickerations on both sides. Oh well.
Thousands of Google Reader users subscribe to Cognitive Daily's feed via the Google Science bundle. This means you've chosen to seek out the best science content on the internet. Most Google Reader users never click through to this site to read our posts -- and that's fine with us. You're busy people.
However, I would like to ask you do one thing for us in the name of promoting good science on the internet. Vote for Bad Astronomy in the Weblog Awards Best Science Blog Contest. You can vote as often as once a day, and I encourage you to take advantage of that option.
Why? Because several influential political blogs are advocating voting for a denialist website ("Climate Audit") to win the award. Climate Audit is a pseudoscience blog that promotes political ideas as "science." Bad Astronomy has a slim lead, but Climate Audit is gaining. Even if you're not a fan of astronomy, you should still vote for this blog (a great blog, by the way). It's the best chance for a genuine science blog to win the award.
For more, see PZ Myers and Tim Lambert's posts.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 12:46 PM • Comments (44)
October 17, 2007
Category: Opinion
John Mashey made a comment over at Deltoid that was so incisive, Tim Lambert decided to turn it into a post of its own. In the comment/post, Mashey outlines several steps scientists can take to pressure reporters to do a better job reporting science. Indeed, the list is a little daunting. Among other things, he recommends that you
Pick a modest handful of reporters with which to build up rapport, even if it takes a couple years, and half a dozen emails. In particular, try to take good care of any reporter who actually replies (non-negatively) to an email.
That's a pretty big commitment. A more common response to bad reporting is something like this one from T. Ryan Gregory:
This is not science, it is not news, and it is not something I want cluttering up my aggregator feed. So long, LiveScience, it's been a slice.
It pains me to say it, but in light of other complaints from scientists in the blogosphere (e.g., here and here), I am actually beginning to wonder if, despite the efforts of some excellent writers, science reporting on the whole does more harm than good. I despise the ivory tower approach to academia (hence this blog), but in my opinion misinformation is worse than missing information.
You might note that the article that sparked Gregory's tirade is one I blogged about a couple days ago.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 9:44 AM • Comments (22)
October 1, 2007
Category: Opinion
To me, few things are more annoying than someone who nitpicks about grammar. Grammar is important, to be sure, but how much does it really matter if your sentences are grammatically "correct," as long as your message is communicated clearly?
Michael Bach recently emailed me lamenting that often reviewers comment that "the English could be improved" in his papers. That comment could be made about at least 99 percent of all papers published, but what does it help? If a reviewer can't point to a specific instance where the language is unclear, why make the observation in the first place?
But even when comments are specific, they're often not useful at all. Case in point: "data." Is "data" a singular or a plural noun? Purists say that data is the plural of datum, but Mike Kellerman questions that notion:
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 8:57 AM • Comments (44)
August 29, 2007
Category: Opinion
Apropos of the Chess/AI discussion that's going on on the front page of ScienceBlogs today (and here at CogDaily), I noticed this little gem in a book I'm currently reading for a review (Sandra and Michael Blakeslee's The Body Has a Mind of Its Own):
Meaning is rooted in agency (the ability to act and choose), and agency depends on embodiment. In fact, this is a hard-won lesson that the artificial intelligence community has finally begun to grasp after decades of frustration: Nothing truly intelligent is going to develop in a bodiless mainframe. In real life there is no such thing as disembodied consciousness.
That's a bold assertion. But is it true? Can't agency occur in a disembodied environment? Isn't that what Second Life is all about? We can have online discussions, play online games, even make and lose real fortunes, all online. Why couldn't an "intelligent" computer do the same thing?
The authors do offer some compelling reasons why physical presence is needed for consciousness. Consider this thought experiment:
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:36 PM • Comments (28)
August 27, 2007
Category: News • Opinion
The blogosphere is abuzz with reports about a new initiative by commercial scholarly publishers to discredit the open access movement.
Prism describes itself as an organization to "protect the quality of scientific research", which it hopes to do by opposing policies "that threaten to introduce undue government intervention in science and scholarly publishing." What policies are they opposed to? Why, this one, which recommends that NIH-funded research results be freely available to the public when they are published.
In short, they want to protect science by locking it up under copyright. They want to restrict access to publicly-funded research results by requiring that everyone pay a fee to see it. There are plenty of reasons why PRISM's logic falls apart (see here for a thorough bashing), but I wanted to point out just one: they're hypocritical. While their entire web site advocates strict enforcement of copyright laws, the images they've used on their front page are a violation of copyright law. Take a look at this screenshot from their front page:
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 11:59 AM • Comments (46)
Category: Opinion
It's been a decade since world chess champion Garry Kasparov was first defeated by a computer. Since then, even after humans retooled their games to match computers, computers have managed draws against the world's greatest players. It seems only a matter of time before computers will win every time -- if humans are willing to play them, that is.
But each time computers have shown their remarkable abilities, detractors have claimed that the computers are really inferior because they apply brute-force tactics: methodically tracing every possible move instead of creatively reasoning toward a solution. Daniel Dennett says we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the computers. After all, human chess champions study and memorize sequences of moves, encyclopedically sorting through thousands of variations as they play. Isn't this the same thing the computer is doing?
Vaughan at Mind Hacks points out that these detractors are using a classic denialist tactic:
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 9:32 AM • Comments (21)
August 1, 2007
Category: Opinion
Eric Schwitzgebel has been doing a lot of thinking about the relationship between thinking about ethical behavior and actually behaving ethically. In his most recent post, he takes on a meta-analysis claiming that religious belief correlates negatively with criminal activity:
I found a 2001 "meta-analysis" (Baier & Wright) of the literature that shows all the usual blindnesses of meta-analyses. Oh, you don't know what a meta-analysis is? As usually practiced, it's a way of doing math instead of thinking. First, you find all the published experiments pertinent to Hypothesis X (e.g., "religious people commit fewer crimes"). Then you combine the data using (depending on your taste) either simplistic or suspiciously fancy (and hidden-assumption-ridden) statistical tools. Finally -- voila! -- you announce the real size of the effect. So, for example, Baier and Wright find that the "median effect size" of religion on criminality is r = -.11!
Schwitzgebel, as you might expect, doesn't buy Baier & Wright's conclusion. Not having read the study, I can't really comment on it. I'm also not an expert on meta-analysis, but it does strike me that a few of the points Schwitzgebel makes about meta-analysis might not be as solid as he suggests. I'll discuss those below.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 10:42 AM • Comments (8)
July 17, 2007
Category: Opinion
Let's suppose you're the proprietor of a European tourist attraction. We're not talking about a Louvre or Uffizi here, or even a Leaning Tower of Pisa. No, you're in charge of a hidden gem: the scenic Church of the Saint No One Has Ever Heard Of, or the lovely little Museum of the Famous Artist Which Possesses None of His Famous Works.
Your job is to show why this Saint really is someone important, or why the lesser-known works of the Famous Artist should get broader recognition. You also need to preserve your attraction for future generations, and (most importantly) give yourself a nice salary. How would you go about doing this?
Let me first start by presenting the typical approach in most such places.
- Charge three separate admissions fees. Make people pay once to get inside. Make them pay again for a map or guide. If they want to take photos, they'll have to pay once again. Alternately you can restrict photography altogether. Then they'll have to pay for a post card depicting the item of interest in the gift shop (that is, in the unlikely event that a post card depicting that item is available).
- Don't label anything. That way if people want to know about the items on display in your collection, they'll have to hire a tour guide. Since tour guides bring in larger groups of people, that's more revenue for you!
- Alternately, you could make descriptions available in an audioguide (usually for a fee equal to or greater than the admissions charge). That way patrons will spend more time admiring each item in your collection as they listen to the lengthy description of what they're seeing. Well, they would if you'd labeled the items in your collection, which you haven't (see #2 above).
- Light your collection poorly. It adds to the "mystery" and will keep people coming back -- perhaps with a tour guide and a larger group!
- Have your docents follow patrons around to each room of your exhibit. Obviously you don't have the budget for a separate docent in each room, and nothing makes tourists feel more comfortable than a hovering guard, especially one who doesn't speak their language and/or knows nothing about the exhibits.
- Rope off the most interesting rooms in your facility. Tourists prefer to view items by leaning precariously into cordoned off areas.
- Allow stray animals to wander around your facility, especially in cordoned off areas. It adds to the "charm." The larger the animal, the more charming. It makes tourists feel special to know that feral dogs are allowed in places they aren't.
- Synchronize your closings with every other attraction in town. If everything is closed on the same day, then no one "steals" your business. Monday seems to be the universal closing day across Europe. Tourists will eventually learn not to visit Europe on Mondays.
- Demand silence and respect from all of your patrons -- except tour guides, who are allowed to be as loud and obnoxious as they please.
I admit, this seems like a pretty airtight strategy. Your monument is preserved, and you've got a cushy job for life! But let me humbly suggest a different approach, based on your respect for the visitor, instead of the visitor's respect for you.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 9:55 AM • Comments (9)
June 8, 2007
Category: Opinion
We've spent an exciting week in Paris, seeing all the fabulous sites, from the Louvre to the Tour Eiffel.
Today we decided to do something different and headed for the Georges Pompidou Center, where the national galleries of modern art are housed. Some fascinating stuff there, including some works which attempted to question the very nature of art itself. Jim was particularly perplexed by this piece:
The work consisted of three panels, painted completely white. The artist insisted that the color white represented nothing at all. Is this art?
And what about this?
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 9:53 AM • Comments (113)
Cognitive Daily reports nearly every day on fascinating peer-reviewed developments in cognition from the most respected scientists in the field.
