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Look Who’s Talking
Slate: It can be startling when you first hear it: otherwise reasonable friends spouting their dogs' inner monologues, as if it’s only natural for them to speak out loud. Is that food stop choking me I need that food, the strange voice might say. I am a dog give me that OK thanks look a tree. ... “The first thing people do is treat their pets like people, so a precondition is that they perceive minds in their pets,” said Kurt Gray, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
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Free your eyes from the shackles of the shutter
The Boston Globe: MASSACHUSETTS NATIVE PAUL Theroux has roamed the world for decades, visiting countless countries and drawing on his experiences in dozens of published novels, short stories, and volumes of travel writing. He has been everywhere, or as close to everywhere as one man can manage in a peripatetic career. What Theroux doesn’t know about how to travel probably isn’t worth knowing. Here’s one lesson he has gleaned from a lifetime of roving: The best traveling is done without a camera. ... Having thousands of images on your cellphone doesn’t mean you’re remembering more.
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Effectiveness of Talk Therapy Is Overstated, a Study Says
The New York Times: Medical literature has overstated the benefits of talk therapy for depression, in part because studies with poor results have rarely made it into journals, researchers reported Wednesday. Their analysis is the first effort to account for unpublished tests of such therapies. Treatments like cognitive behavior therapy and interpersonal therapy are indeed effective, the analysis found, but about 25 percent less so than previously thought. Doctors have long known that journal articles exaggerate the benefits of antidepressant drugs by about the same amount, and partly for the same reason — a publication bias in favor of encouraging findings.
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Myth Busted: Conspiracy Theorists Do Believe Stuff ‘Just Happens’
Live Science: The sheriff of Douglas County in Oregon where a mass shooting occurred on Oct. 2 is in hot water after the discovery that he posted a "Sandy Hook truther" video to Facebook in 2013. Now, a new study casts doubt on the psychology blamed for belief in such conspiracy theories. Contrary to popular opinion, the research finds, people who think conspiratorially aren't more likely to assume everything happens for a reason, rejecting the likelihood of random chance, than people who don't hold conspiracy beliefs.
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A bad economy means more reasons to watch our mental health at work
The Globe and Mail: Traditional and social media scream bad economic news almost every day: The dollar is falling, oil prices have plummeted, the stock market is tumbling and Canada may now be in a recession. At the same time, uncertainty has increased, and no one can predict when oil will return to its former levels – indeed, whether it ever will. Few Canadians believe the economy will improve in the next 12 months. As unsettling and harmful as all this is, it is nothing new. Most countries have seen darker economic times. But something has changed.
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How Much Should Scientists Check Other Scientists’ Work?
The Wall Street Journal: A question is dividing the scientific community: Is there a value to public health in spending time and money to replicate long-completed, peer-reviewed studies? Two recent high-profile papers that scrutinize older research have raised questions about the fundamental reliability of scientific findings. One, a reanalysis of data from a study published in 2001 on antidepressant use in children, describes the original analysis as flawed. The new study, published in the journal BMJ, is prompting some scientists to call for the original study to be retracted. ...
