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How the curveball fools you: Illusion of the Year

Koufax, bringing the four-seamer. God save the guy at the plate. I always look forward to the Illusion of the Year contest, but this year brings a special treat: a new explanation of how the curveball baffles batters. Just a few days ago, during BP, my friend Bill Perreault threw me one of those really nasty curves of his, and though I read it about halfway in, I was still ahead -- and still unprepared for the sudden slanting dive it made at that last crucial moment. The good curves do that: Even when you have that millisecond of curveball detection beforehand, they still seem to take a…

You can't make this stuff up.

I'm often reminded of what Rich Cook said about the nature of the universe. Sure, he wrote about programming, but the principle stands in all fields. Here are a few perfect examples. #1. A man has fled the country (or "willingly relocated to south america to help the poor") due to legal issues with his plastic surgery practice. Sure, that sounds normal enough, until you hear the issue: he was turning human fat into biodiesel (which, apparently, is against the law in California - something about medical waste and fueling vehicles). The Beverly Hills doctor, one Craig Alan Bittner, claimed…

Eli Lilly Pushes the Envelope

Image from the "For Family and Friends" page of Eli Lilly's Xigris website. _________________________________________________________ Even among the other scandals the drug industry has produced lately, the behavior described in the latest New England Journal of Medicine stands out as particularly stunning. According to a Perspective written by Peter Q. Eichacker, a National Institute of Health senior investigator in critical care, the drug giant Eli Lilly, seeking to incrrease sales of an anti-sepsis drug, Xigris, that had fallen short of its blockbuster expectations (in 2002, e.g., Lilly…

An honest appraisal of evo devo

In a review of a new book edited by Alan Love, The evolution of “evo-devo”, Adam Wilkins makes a few telling criticisms of the sub-field I enjoy. Evo-devo has come a long way since 1981 though the Dahlem Conference laid some of the important groundwork for what followed and was, indeed, widely appreciated as having done so. Yet, troublingly, the field remains, for many evolutionary biologists, something of a side-show, a “boutique” subject within evolutionary biology as a whole. Several of us, in the 1990s, warned that this might happen. This is in contrast to some of the early expectations,…

This Week's Sci-Fi Worthy Parasite: Schistosoma spp.

Yeah, those caterpillar mimicking trematodes were impressive. But we humans have our own trematodes which are pretty nasty, too. One group of trematodes which uses humans as a final host is the genus Schistosoma, like Schistosoma masonii on the right. Like other trematodes, Schistosoma spp. have very complex live cycles involving multiple hosts. Here's a quick overview image:So: the schistosome's life cycle. They start out as little eggs which leave the adult's host (humans) through the waste systems in urine or feces. These eggs then hatch into the first larval stage, which is called a…

Helping teachers teach the next generation

The ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose raise-money-to-help-science-classrooms-a-thon! Those of us who blog here at ScienceBlogs think science is cool, important, and worth understanding. If you're reading the blogs here, chances are you feel the same way. A lot of us fell in love with science because of early experiences in school -- teachers who made science intriguing, exciting, maybe a little bit dangerous. But tightening budgets are making it harder and harder for public school teachers to provide the books, equipment, and field trips to make science come alive for kids. DonorsChoose.org gives us…

FREE middle-school science teaching modules from NIH

A renowned, non-profit curriculum development organization in Colorado Springs, CO, called BSCS (Biological Sciences Curriculum Study) has developed for NIH three FREE teaching modules for middle school teachers. The first is called, "Doing Science: The Process of Scientific Inquiry," and helps students in grades 7-8 to develop and refine their critical-thinking skills. The complete press release and info on the two other modules is below the fold. BTW, have I mentioned that these modules are FREE? I'm obviously committed to doing what I can to reverse the tide non-scientific intrusions…

Learn about a Sb newbie (the Sb 2.0 "pi" meme)

Sb 2.0 pledgemaster Prof Janet Stemwedel (Dr Free-Ride) has set forth a meme for others to learn more about the new wave of ScienceBloggers. Quite interesting queries, and the last one makes me look forward to a SciBloggerCon (or YearlySB?) that is open to the general public. I also appreciate that Janet asked about the nine non-SB blogs we read; the move to Sb has certainly been exciting but I hope all the e-hoopla isn't perceived as too incestuous or exclusionary. There are some really terrific science blogs that aren't here but should be...perhaps in version 3.0? On to the meme, from…

Charlie Rangel Says Don't Tax AIG Bonuses - And He's Right. (Updated - but he didn't mean it)

Update: My praise for Charlie Rangel in this post was, sadly, premature. Politico is now reporting that Rangel has gotten behind a 91% tax bracket for AIG bonuses. When it comes to the AIG bonuses, I'm about as angry as any other taxpayer who has been paying attention. This morning, I was absolutely undelighted to read that quite a bit of the "retention" money is going to people who have, in fact, not been retained. The look I just took at AIG Chariman Edward Liddy's opening statement for today's Congressional hearing did absolutely nothing to improve my mood. When he says, "I share that…

Why Salazar's Wolf Delisting Decision Is Good - Or At Least Not All Bad

A couple of weeks ago, Interior Secretary Ken "Cowboy Hat" Salazar went ahead with a decision to remove endangered species protections from grey wolves in several western states. The decision in question was first proposed by the Bush Administration, and was extremely controversial. Needless to say, there are quite a few people who are unhappy with Salazar's decision to approve the delisting. To be honest, I'm not thrilled with it myself. I looked at the issue last year, and there certainly seemed to be some very good reasons to think that the delisting is not a good idea. Salazar's…

Precious bodily fluids

Last night, I finished reading Paul Offit's Deadly Choices(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), his new book about the history of anti-vaccination movements. It's very good and very thorough and very convincing, and I found it informative because it also takes a broad view, looking everything from the campaigns against Jenner to the crazy talk of Jenny McCarthy. I had never really seen where these opponents of a simple life-saving procedure were coming from, but seeing a few centuries worth of their rhetoric lined up and put on display was helpful, and I finally realized what was wrong with the anti-…

The Joy of Science

I promised my friend Bill Hooker at the Science Blogging Conference that I would attempt to conduct a course of sorts on the blog. What I mean is that I am actually going to be teaching myself the course and discussing it on the blog; you are all invited to follow along if you like, or just listen in on my discussion of course material if you like. The course syllabus is one I designed for a course called Feminist Theory and the Joy of Science. I never got to teach this course so I'm pleased to now enroll myself as a student. Hopefully I will complete the assigned readings on time. I…

Evolution and the conservation of biodiversity

A paper out in Nature 15 February, uses a novel technique devised by one of the authors, Dan Faith, called Phylogenetic Diversity (PD), to assess the biodiversity and conservation value of endangered species and regions in terms of how unique they are in evolutionary history. The summary article says this: When seeking to preserve biodiversity, simply trying to count and protect every species may not be enough. A new study suggests that conservationists should also consider the extent to which the mix of species in an area has the genetic potential to adapt to change. In the past, many…

America has no atheists

How sad. There are atheists everywhere else, but here in the United States, Robert Putnam says there are almost no atheists. It used to be, in the 1950s, that most Americans were kind of in a moderate, not very intense religious middle. And we have moved toward the extremes of being either very religious — this is the sort of evangelical Protestant part of the religious spectrum — or very non-religious. This is the more secular, not really atheist. Almost no Americans say that they're atheist, but they're certainly not churched. That's especially true for younger people. Oh, dear. There is…

Microbial species 3: Quasispecies and ecology

The second main approach to a natural conception of microbial species (by which I mean, as opposed to operational, practical or conventional ones, collectively called "artificial" conceptions) is what I will call the Quasispecies Model. According to the concept developed by Manfred Eigen for viral species, a quasispecies ("as-if-species") is a cluster of genomes in a genome space of the dimensionality the number of loci. A quasipecies is in effect a cloud of genomes, clustering around a "wild-type" coordinate (that is, genome) that may or may not actually have an extant or extinct instance…

Evolution is not enough

Really, it isn't enough to simply "believe" in evolution: it's more important to understand it and more deeply, to have an intellectual commitment to reason. There's a beautiful example of this principle in Iowa right now. Iowa allowed gay marriage in the state a while back, and good for them…only now there's a bit of pushback and the offended conservatives are lashing out at the judges responsible. Look at this fallacious reasoning from one opponent of gay marriage. Randy Crawford of Iowa City said he intends to vote for the removal of the justices because he is concerned about the judiciary…

Does "counting your blessings" really help?

In celebration of Thanksgiving in the U.S., I'm reposting this piece, originally posted in April, 2008. How often do you take time to reflect on the things you're grateful for? Once a month? Once a week, at church, perhaps? Maybe you say "grace" at mealtime every day. But even prayers that do express gratefulness, such as a traditional mealtime prayer, are often expressed by rote. Growing up, my family wasn't very religious, but when we had dinner with family or friends, we'd usually say grace. I was probably well into my teens before I understood what "…

Casual Fridays: Who says "hi" to you, part II

Almost three years ago, we conducted our first-ever Casual Fridays study, where we asked who says "hi" to you while you're outside exercising. The results confirmed my suspicions: Runners report that they say "hi" to walkers 57.1 percent of the time. But looking back at the other graph, walkers claim runners only say "hi" only 31 percent of the time. That's a massive difference -- a statistically significant one. A similar -- and also significant -- disparity holds for bikers and walkers. But there were some unanswered questions back then. Are the people who answered our survey just…

Does rewarding altruism squelch it?

Imagine your neighbor has a dog that regularly escapes her yard. One day you see the dog escape and return it to her. She thanks you by giving you a piece of delicious home-made apple pie. This happens several days in a row. Then one day when you return the dog, there's no pie, no thanks, and no explanation. Would you return the dog the next time it escapes? You might be disinclined. But what if there had never been any reward? Wouldn't returning her dog be the right thing to do? Children as young as 14 months old will spontaneously help others for no reward. But a 1973 study of 3- to 5-year-…

CSE: Not crazy enough for Joshua Joscelyn

Joshua Joscelyn is a fellow who, once upon a time, worked within Kent Hovind's creation science ministry. No more, though; he has just posted his resignation letter on facebook. Has he finally seen the light of science? Has he at last seen through the fact that Kent Hovind was a deluded and not-very-bright con artist? No, of course not. He's still a true believer. I first came to work with CSE in mid 2007 as a park guide at Dinosaur Adventure Land, swiftly moving into my roles as head of publications and the apologetics departments as well as producer for the popular series, Creation in…

La raison I had to learn gendered articles in French class

One of the most exciting moments of my junior-high-school career was stepping into my first-ever foreign-language classroom. While foreign language studies had a reputation for being tedious, I was nonetheless thrilled at the idea of being able to communicate with people from a different, seemingly more exotic part of the world. We were allowed to choose between French and Spanish, and I picked French because it seemed more "glamorous." Excited as I was to learn a new language, I was still shocked to find out that every word was either "masculine" or "feminine." Livre, "book," was masculine…

How are numbers related to your body movements? Depends on how you read words

The SNARC effect is a fascinating phenomenon (and no, it has nothing to do with cheeky one-off blog posts). When asked to recognize numbers, people react faster with their left hand for low numbers, and faster with their right hand for high numbers. Take a look at this graph: This shows the results of an experiment led by Samuel Shaki: Twelve Canadian university students were shown a series of single-digit numbers. Their task was simple: as quickly as possible, press one button if the number is odd, and another button if the number is even. This graph charts reaction time of the right hand…

Popper peeps papally at UD

I normally don't respond the to IDiocy of Uncommon Dissent, but John Lynch, may he rot in purgatory for a thousand years, has made me. As usual, I won't dignify it with links. If you are that interested you can find it. There are two items: one is by DaveScot, who argues (!) that because Popper's falsification hypothesis means that until we find non-white swans, a hypothesis that swans are white stands, we should somehow assume that Intelligent Design stands as a scientific view. This is silly for a couple of reasons. One is that we have got counterinstances to the need for ID to explain…

A Thursday Sermon

Ordinarily, sermons should be reserved for holy days, such as when football and cricket is being played, but this is occasioned by some Scibling conflicts... When I were a young lad, me ol' mam told me to keep a civil tongue in me 'ead. [Actually, she told me something else, but this is a family post.] Have you ever wondered about the notion of civility? Etymology is something of a guide here - it comes from the Latin civis, meaning "city". That is, it is the mode of behaviour, the manners, of the city. In Greek, the term is polis, which means "city" also. From these two words we get…

The Minnesota Anti-Texan Act of 2011

I would like to propose a new law for consideration by our legislature, which I am calling The Minnesota Anti-Texan Act of 2011. I need to work on the formal language for it, but I can give the gist of it here. If any person within the boundaries of the fine state of Minnesota exhibits any of the signifiers of a Texas origin — wearing a cowboy hat, for instance, or Big Hair, or having a drawl, or chewing tobacco — you can shoot them. You catch someone listening to Clint Black on the radio, bang, blow them away, you've got a justifiable defense. Someone says "sheeeeeee-it" instead of "uff-da…

The World's Fair and the Science Creative Quarterly, together, in the most exceptional, illustrious, splendiferous challenge of the second half of June.

This is what happens when an individual is comfortable with the sciences... Einstein's EEG The World's Fair, in collaboration, with the Science Creative Quarterly is pleased to participate in The ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose raise-money-to-help-science-classrooms-a-thon!. In our case, donations $10 and above via the World's Fair Challenge, will guarantee publication of a science Haiku of your composition over at the SCQ. As Janet over at Adventures in Ethics and Science says: Those of us who blog here at ScienceBlogs think science is cool, important, and worth understanding. If you're reading…

Who's being naive? Yet more from J. Curry

One last look at Judith Curry, before I shut down the Island of Doubt and launch my new blog tomorrow. I, and many other climateers, remain fascinated by what she has to say, largely because we've never seen a respected climatologist be so publicly critical of her peers and so tolerant of the pseudoskeptics, but also because what she's talking about goes straight to the heart of the battle. The latest volley comes in the form a comment at Keith Kloor's Collide-a-scape blog: The people slagging off on McIntyre, Watts et al. have probably spent no time over at their blogs or made an effort to…

"Racing toward a cliff"

On the advent of this 40th Earth Day, nine climatologists from Germany take a look at the range of likely scenarios if we do nothing more to reduce the causes of global warming than is called for by what the world agreed to at Copenhagen last year. The bottom line: "it is equivalent to racing towards a cliff and hoping to stop just before it." Here's the summary, as laid out in an opinion essay in Nature (subs req'd, although with something this important, it really shouldn't be: Nations will probably meet only the lower ends of their emissions pledges in the absence of a binding…

Stereology reveals that human infants have same number of neurons as adults

There has been a big debate over the last couple years about whether the adult human brain is capable of generating new neurons. A new study in Neuroscience by Larsen et al. provides some relevant new evidence to that debate. It used rigorous stereological measurement -- a technique called the optical fractionator -- to show that in newborn humans there are the same number of neurons as in the adult brain. This result would lend credibility to the notion that large numbers of new neurons are not being produced in the postnatal human brain. This is the first time the total number of…

New work on lateral transfer shows that Darwin was wrong

A new study into the transfer of genetic material laterally, or across taxonomic divisions, has shown that evolution does not proceed as Darwin thought, and that in fact the present theory of evolution is entirely false. Instead, it transpires that lateral genetic transfer makes new species much more like Empedocles' "random monster" theory over 2000 years ago had predicted. Publishing in the Journal of Evolutionary Diversions, the major journal in the field, Professor Augustus P. Rillful and his colleagues of the paragenetics laboratory at the University of Münchhausen in Germany have shown…

Genetic engineering and organic farming

The heir apparent to some minor European royal family has again demonstrated his lack of knowledge and trust in scientific matters. The Prince, who has previously said that he talks to plants and consults gurus, apparently failed to talk to any actual, you know, scientists who might clear up a few confusions he has. Of course the environmental extremists have leapt all over it. He has now said this in the august paper of record in Britain, the Daily Telegraph: The mass development of genetically modified crops risks causing the world's worst environmental disaster, The Prince of Wales has…

Contingency, not-quite-asexuals, and phylogeny of continuous characters

This is a kind of scattered post on a few things that have caught my eye, while I am avoiding boring work. Paeloblog reports that a paper in Nature has done a phylogeny on continuous rather than discrete characters, using morphometric criteria to do a hominin phylogeny. This is not the first such attempt to use continuous characters in cladistics, and I would be interested if those who understand this topic comment on this attempt. It seems to me that the main difference between discrete and continuous data would be that the continua are an ordered set of otherwise discrete data points, so…

Gaskell confirms my opinion that he is a crank

Martin Gaskell, the astronomer who wasn't hired at the University of Kentucky (my words were chosen carefully; that really is the only 'crime' against him), has won an out-of-court settlement in his discrimination suit, and has gone on to give an interview which confirms my opinion of him: Kentucky is better off not having this credulous guy on the staff. He now insists that he is a supporter of evolution, a fact not in evidence in his writings about the field, and also not evident in his answers to his dodgy replies to specific questions in the interview. But the real problem is his complete…

Casual Fridays: Music fans' favorite drugs don't quite match the stereotype

Music has been associated with drug use for decades -- from the flower children smoking weed at Woodstock to jazz great Charlie Parker getting hooked on heroin, it seems that every type of music has a drug that we associate with it. Last month we discussed a study where college students were asked what type of substances they thought music fans of 14 different genres of music were likely to use. Here are the results: But are these stereotypes accurate? Rentfrow and Gosling ran into an ethical barrier when they tried to confirm whether the stereotypes they found were true: They didn't want…

Body position affects memory for events

When we see a familiar face, or even a photo of a favorite car or pet, we're often flooded with memories from our past. Sometimes just seeing a person or object that's similar to the ones in our memory will trigger recollections we never knew we had. Maybe you've had a memory triggered by a scent or the texture of an object. Sometimes emotions such as happiness or anger will spur vivid memories, too. A new study adds an unexpected method to the list of ways to spur memories about our past: body position. That's right: just holding your body in the right position means you'll have faster, more…

Should college admissions be random?

It seems that students (and their parents) are more stressed than ever about whether they'll get into the right college. Admission to places like Harvard, Stanford, and Duke is getting more competitive each year, with less than ten percent of applicants actually admitted. Because attending the best high schools increases chances of admission, the stress doesn't start in senior year -- the competition to get into high school can be almost as stressful. And, of course, getting into the right high school requires the proper elementary education, so many kids are subjected to intense competitive…

Casual Fridays: Christmas procrastinators' edition

So it's December 22, and you are one of the few people who hasn't already bagged out of work to get ready for the holidays. You've been absolutely deluged -- swamped with work -- the entire month of December. You've hardly had time to think about Christmas, let alone shop. But now, with the holiday just a couple short days away, you're faced with the shocking truth. You'll be attending three different Christmas parties (or whatever alternative you prefer). Gifts will be exchanged. What's an overworked procrastinator to do? Would gift certificates be appropriate? What about cash? Everyone can…

"I'm not a racist, but...", or why automatic stereotyping happens: Part 1

Very few of us can avoid stereotyping others. When we're actively trying to avoid racial stereotyping, we often end up looking ridiculous. But the very fact that we can try to avoid it suggests that there's something more to racial stereotypes than a "stereotype center" in the brain. If stereotyping was completely automatic, we'd be no more able to resist stereotypes than we are able to stop seeing. So if we can try to resist stereotyping, why doesn't resisting always work? The article I just linked points to a study showing that people -- even police officers -- are more likely to mistakenly…

More on "tone-deafness"

There was some doubt as to whether the "tone-deafness" test I linked to Monday really tests for amusia. The defining trait of amusia is the inability to discern the difference between different musical pitches. So here's a test that might generate a more clear-cut result. The following track plays five sequences of five notes. In every case, four of the notes are the same. The only note that ever varies is the second-to-last note. Ideally, these sequences would be played in a random order, but for a quick-and-dirty test, I'm going to gradually increase the pitch of the fourth note in the…

Violent video games increase hostility in aggressive individuals

Click on the "Video Games / Technology" category over to the left and you'll see that we've covered many, many studies on the subject of video game violence, almost all of them demonstrating a link between playing violent games and real-world aggressive behavior. Nearly every time we do, we receive an influx of comments from gamers claiming that video games don't make them more aggressive. Quite the contrary, they argue, the games help them wind down, releasing pent-up anger harmlessly in a virtual world rather than causing real harm. Offering counterexamples (such as the fact that games…

Is "Dumb Jock" an accurate stereotype?

When Jim and Nora talk about the social groups in their school, they matter-of-factly categorize almost every fellow student into stereotyped pigeonholes. There are the nerds, the rockers, the cools, the goths, and of course, the jocks. The assumption, naturally, is that none of these groups intersect. Jocks are dumb, nerds are smart, and cools could be smart if they cared about grades. But what of this "dumb jock" stereotype? Does it actually pan out in real life? Herbert Marsh and Sabina Kleitman have conducted an exhaustive study of the records of over 12,000 American students, following…

Love, happiness, and arranged marriage

Greta and I -- and the kids -- had fun watching the movie Bride and Prejudice, which told the story of Jane Austen's renowned novel Pride and Prejudice, only Bollywood style: the "Elizabeth Bennet" character's angstings about her parent's plans to arrange her marriage with an intolerably dull cousin were punctuated with colorful Indian-pop dance numbers. As in the 1813 novel, her parents wanted her to marry for long-term companionship and security, not flash-in-the pan romantic love. While arranged marriages seem a quaint relic in twenty-first century America, they are still quite common in…

Vancouver, Stanley Park, and the Politics of Global Warming

We had a great panel discussion last night. Except for the fact that the moderator confused me with the other Chris Mooney at the outset, I really got a lot out of it. One thing that I learned, however, troubled me. On December 15, 2006, Vancouver's Stanley Park got hit by a powerful windstorm (technically an extratropical cyclone or winter storm) which caused tremendous destruction, felling a large number of trees and damaging a sea wall. I saw the aftermath of the storm myself (see image above), and it's really quite stunning. However, it seems to have been exploited for political reasons…

Farewell, September; My October Vanishing Act

I have had a very, very good September. I traveled across the country, and back, twice (with offset credits for my carbon). I gave fifteen speeches, to (I would guess) over a thousand people in total. At many of my stops I made new friends, or was able to get reacquainted with old ones. I even got to speak in the Phoenix area where I was born, where my mother grew up, with three of my uncles in the audience. I did umpteen radio interviews, and even caused a radio station to fold (that's the interpretation if you're superstitious, anyway). I signed probably hundreds of books. I had not one,…

Ernesto and John and Ioke, Oh My!

Here in DC, Ernesto's outmost bands seem to have moved in overnight. It's much cooler than it has been in ages and I expect the rain will be getting steadily worse. Which is fine by me: I plan on staying indoors and getting work done, both on the current book project and in anticipation of the upcoming RWOS paperback book tour. This Labor Day weekend seems the perfect one for it. By contrast, last night I met a group of folks who said they were heading down from D.C. to the Outer Banks today to enjoy a more traditional Labor Day weekend--which means, driving into the heart of Ernesto. Good…

Early Praise for Written in Stone

Even though I sometimes feel quite anxious about the publication of Written in Stone, the positive comments the manuscript has received so far have helped to relieve my apprehension. Professional reviews will not show up for another few months, of course, but during the process of composing the book - from pitching to my agent to asking my wife to read the completed copyedit-ready draft - I am glad to say that the early responses have been overwhelmingly positive. Nevertheless, when the time came to ask scientists and science writers for blurbs, my nervousness spiked again. These are people…

Casual Fridays: Turns out, we're not so good at influencing your thoughts

Last week's study generated plenty of interest: it was the fastest we've ever gotten 400 responses. The study was based on a claim by this web site that they could influence your thoughts with 98 percent accuracy using a simple math quiz. If you haven't tried it yet, unfortunately I'm going to spoil it for you right now: you're supposed to think of a red hammer. We wanted to answer a few questions about the claim. First, 98 percent? Really? Having done a survey or two, I'd be impressed with a survey that could predict 98 percent of the responses to "what is 2 + 2?" Second, to the extent that…

Seeing emotions in dots

Point-light displays can tell us an amazing amount about other people. Looking only at a few glowing spots corresponding to joints and set in motion, we can tell what people are doing, whether they are over- or underweight, and even identify a friend among strangers. We can also identify animals or determine the emotional state a dancer or actor is conveying. But some emotions are more difficult than others. Take a look at the following two animations (click on the image to view a quicktime movie): Now, which emotion does each animation convey? Your choices are Anger, Joy, Sadness, Love,…

Reassessing the "Mozart Effect"

The "Mozart Effect" hit the mainstream media by storm in the mid 1990s, in the form of a bestselling book by the same name. A Google search for the topic still reveals a slew of products designed to exploit the effect—to increase IQ, or overall well-being, or even physical health. The psychological basis for the effect is a 1993 study by a team led by Frances Rauscher, which found a much more limited effect: scores on a spatial IQ test were 8 to 9 points higher after listening to a Mozart sonata, compared to testing following exposure to relaxation stimuli. The result was astounding: simply…

Another perspective on flashbulb memory

We've reported on flashbulb memory before, with the Talarico and Rubin study and the MacKay and Ahmetzanov study. First observed in 1977 by Brown and Kulik, flashbulb memories—memories about shocking events—were supposed to be more vivid and long-lasting than normal memories. Jennifer Talarico and David Rubin seemed to have put a damper on the whole concept of flashbulb memory with their finding that while flashbulb memories are more intense and people are more confident about them, they are no more accurate than normal memories. Donald MacKay and Marat Ahmetzanov, using an experimental test…