Links for 2012-01-16

I recently had an interesting discussion with someone who is interested in science, but without training or experience as a scientist. The question was, basically: Why don't we (scientists) all just lie to each other? i.e. what compels scientists to truthfully share their research results? It's a fair question -- we're human and competitive to some degree, and at first blush there would seem to be a lot to gain from keeping competitors off-balance by feeding them false clues. I will draw a distinction here between non-cooperation, i.e. secrecy, and deception. Certainly there are endeavors where information sharing is limited -- corporate and military research have their secrets, and I suppose that some endeavors might actually try and mislead the competition. This secrecy is (in my experience) rare in the more open environment of academia. Why is this? There a couple of factors.

[T]here was one area of literature he hadn't tried yet: the young-adult novel. Handler rectified that in late December with Why We Broke Up, an illustrated novel written in the form of a break-up note from a teenage girl named Min to her boyfriend Ed, centering on a series of mundane objects she's returning to him--items artistically rendered by Handler's 13 Words collaborator, Maira Kalman--and using each item to illustrate how they came together, and how he failed her, leading to the breakup. While gearing up for the Why We Broke Up book tour, Handler called The A.V. Club to talk about surrounding himself with teenagers, unwittingly being a high-school "playa," his next Lemony Snicket series, and getting dissed by his own mom.

A 2011 study from the University of Texas at Austin's Department of Psychology called "Manifestations of Personality in Online Social Networks: Self-Reported Facebook-Related Behaviors and Observable Profile Information" published in the academic journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking found that Facebook users are no different online than they are offline. The study also revealed strong connections between real personality and Facebook-related behavior. Social and personality processes, the study says, accurately mirror non-virtual environments.