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David Dobbs

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Moral judgments in adults: It would be very interesting if the excellent Crimson developed a detailed profile of these Hauser lab experiments in particular. A case in point: the Slate article Friday by David Dobbs. Dobbs links to the latest comment on Hauser by Gerry Altmann, but appears to misrepresent Altmann's qualified conjectures and conclusions:

Slate: A Rush to Moral Judgment
What went wrong with Marc Hauser's search for moral foundations.
By David Dobbs Posted Friday, Sept. 3, 2010, at 1:47 PM ET:

"In another, described in painful detail by Cognition editor Gerry Altmann, it appears Hauser simply made up the data altogether for one set of trials."

Gerry Altmann a psycholinguist's website (blog):

Harvard misconduct: setting the record straight, Part 2
Wednesday 01 September 2010 [conclusion]:

"It is time now, I believe, to step back, and allow due process to conclude. Most likely, neither of the parties involved (Harvard, Hauser) are able to say anything publicly if there are still federal investigations underway. My hope is that the investigationâs results will be published (I believe they will be), and that when he is able to, Hauser will himself given an account of what he did or did not do. But further conjecture is unlikely to yield new conclusions. My own interpretation may be wrong, in which case, with the right information, I will be the first to wish to correct it."

The language issues continue to be intractable, for Altmann, Dobbs, and psychology as a discipline. I recommend that NIH and the APA declare the COBUILD English Grammar and the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English official for their purposes. I also think that every undergrad in psychology should study the Oxford Dictionary of Psychology minutely, at least learning how to collate documents.

claytonburns@gmail.com

By Clayton Burns (not verified) on 04 Sep 2010 #permalink

"It is time now, I believe, to step back, and allow due process to conclude. Most likely, neither of the parties involved (Harvard, Hauser) are able to say anything publicly if there are still federal investigations underway. My hope is that the investigationâs results will be published (I believe they will be), and that when he is able to, Hauser will himself given an account of what he did or did not do. But further conjecture is unlikely to yield new conclusions. My own interpretation may be wrong, in which case, with the right information, I will be the first to wish to correct it."

"It is time now, I believe, to step back, and allow due process to conclude. Most likely, neither of the parties involved (Harvard, Hauser) are able to say anything publicly if there are still federal investigations underway. My hope is that the investigationâs results will be published (I believe they will be), and that when he is able to, Hauser will himself given an account of what he did or did not do. But further conjecture is unlikely to yield new conclusions. My own interpretation may be wrong, in which case, with the right information, I will be the first to wish to correct it."

PZ is making another mistake here. He is assuming that O'keefe's boat isn't always stocked like this. More than likely, O'keefe is a not unusual GOP operative, someone like Limbaugh who is into some weird BDSM stuff.

And where in the hell did he get a huge boat anyway, so young? I didn't know being a GOP slime mold paid so well.

Much is still to be answered about magazines and other media on this emerging class of devices, from the business and distribution models to the consumer response. But what is already clear is that they offer the opportunity to be beautiful, highly engaging and immersive, going beyond whatâs available on the web. I think tablets are going to sell like hotcakes, in part because they offer such an intimate, rich media experience. Weâre betting big on them, as you can see, but this is just a taste. Stay tuned for a full release this summer.

No argument with the second law of thermodynamics here, that one seems to be on pretty solid ground! But the train of logic above has a subtle problem in its over statement of the constraints this law places on energy flow. Given a warmer and a cooler body exchanging energy either through convection or through radiation, the fact is, energy is constantly being exchanged in both directions. The second law of thermodynamics does not apply to individual molecules, it applies to the net flow of energy in the entire system. How could it be otherwise?

It seems odd to me that a well versed crowd like yourselves, WATERHELMET, DRAUST, GIMPY and the rest of the gang will not know it.

The language issues continue to be intractable, for Altmann, Dobbs, and psychology as a discipline. I recommend that NIH and the APA declare the COBUILD English Grammar and the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English official for their purposes. I also think that every undergrad in psychology should study the Oxford Dictionary of Psychology minutely, at least learning how to collate documents.