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With PSA Testing, The Power Of Anecdote Often Trumps Statistics
NPR: Millions of men and their doctors are trying to understand a federal task force's recommendation against routine use of a prostate cancer test called the PSA. The guidance, which came out last week, raises basic questions about how to interpret medical evidence. And what role expert panels should play in how doctors practice. About 70 percent of men over 50 have gotten a PSA blood test. Some are convinced it was a lifesaver. Tom Fouts of Florida is one of them. He and his doctor had been watching his PSA (prostate-specific antigen) creep up for almost two years. Fouts was losing sleep over it, wondering if it meant a silent killer was incubating in his prostate gland.
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Political Polarization ‘Dangerous,’ Psychologist Says
LiveScience: CHICAGO - For the first time in American political history, Democrats and Republicans have sorted themselves into a perfect left-right split, a prominent political psychologist said this week, calling the result a "dangerous era" in U.S. politics. Traditionally, political parties have been coalitions of broad groups of people, based more on industry, region and interest group than basic morals, University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt said here during a lecture at the annual meeting of the Association of Psychological Science. Read the whole story: LiveScience
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The Mobile App Is Back!
The APS Convention App is ready for download! Attendees can stay tuned with up-to-the-minute information at the convention: For information on sessions you may want to attend, click on the events or poster sessions tab. To add a session to your itinerary, click the desired event and then click the star in the upper right hand corner of your screen. This will add the event to the My Schedule tab. (To remove an event, simply click the star icon again to delete) Want information on a speaker or author?
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Imagining the Future Invokes Your Memory
Scientific American: I remember my retirement like it was yesterday. As I recall, I am still working, though not as hard as I did when I was younger. My wife and I still live in the city, where we bicycle a fair amount and stay fit. We have a favorite coffee shop where we read the morning papers and say hello to the other regulars. We don’t play golf. In reality, I’m not even close to retirement. This is just a scenario I must have spun out at some point in the past. There are other future scenarios, but the details aren’t all that important. Notably, all of my futures have a peaceful and contented feel to them.
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Advice urges wider sharing of heart care decisions
USA Today: A heart device might save your life but leave you miserable. That awful possibility is the reason for new advice urging doctors to talk more honestly with people who have very weak hearts and are considering pumps, pacemakers, new valves or procedures to open clogged arteries. Too often, patients with advanced heart failure don't realize what they are getting into when they agree to a treatment, and doctors assume they want everything possible done to keep them alive, says the new advice, published Monday by the American Heart Association and endorsed by other medical groups.
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Facebook and Smartphones: New Tools for Psychological Science Research—News Brief
WASHINGTON -- Whether you’re an iPerson who can’t live without a Mac, a Facebook addict, or a gamer, you know that social media and technology say things about your personality and thought processes. And psychological scientists know it too – they’ve started researching how new media and devices both reveal and change our mental states. Two recent articles in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science, explored how trends in technology are changing the questions psychological scientists are asking and the ways they ask them.
