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Why Lies Often Stick Better Than Truth
The Chronicle of Higher Education: There is no good reason to believe vaccines cause autism. A 1998 paper in The Lancet that championed the link was immediately pilloried and later withdrawn as fraudulent. Its author, the British physician Andrew J. Wakefield, was found guilty of dishonesty and abuse of developmentally disabled children by the British General Medical Council. He has been stripped of his medical license. No other researcher has been able to replicate his work, and journals have retracted his other papers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Academy of Sciences, and many other groups found no evidence of a link.
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Stress, depression may affect cancer survival
CNN: "A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ," John Steinbeck once wrote. Now we are closer to understanding why. A disease like cancer can be a mortal battle, often fraught with overwhelming stress. Given that stress management can be difficult even under ordinary circumstances, elevated feelings of anxiety and depression in cancer patients are certainly understandable. Yet, several recent studies underscore how critically important it is for those fighting illness to learn how to combat stress.
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Q & A With Psychological Scientist Stephan Lewandowsky (Part 2)
Stephan Lewandowsky is a cognitive psychologist at the University of Western Australia. His research investigates memory and decision making, focusing on how people update information in memory. We asked Stephan Lewandowsky questions based on his recent paper on misinformation, published in the December issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest. The report, "Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing", is co-authored by Ullrich Ecker of the University of Western Australia, Colleen Seifert and Norbert Schwarz of the University of Michigan, and John Cook of the University of Queensland.
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The Peak Time for Everything
The Wall Street Journal: Could you pack more into each day if you did everything at the optimal time? A growing body of research suggests that paying attention to the body clock, and its effects on energy and alertness, can help pinpoint the different times of day when most of us perform our best at specific tasks, from resolving conflicts to thinking creatively. Most people organize their time around everything but the body's natural rhythms. Workday demands, commuting, social events and kids' schedules frequently dominate—inevitably clashing with the body's circadian rhythms of waking and sleeping.
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What price spying?
Chicago Tribune: Using technology of any kind to keep tabs on older children can improve or damage the parent/child relationship. It depends how you use it, says Patrick Kelly, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. There's a good way to keep tabs on youngsters, and a bad way. The bad way: installing a keyboard tracker to steal your teen's facebook password and check without her knowing, Kelly says. A better way, for those parents who are anxious about online activity, is for parents and kids to agree beforehand that Facebook is allowed if parents have passwords, and the child knows they're monitoring it. Read the whole story: Chicago Tribune
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Inside the Mind of Worry
The New York Times: WE make all sorts of ostensibly conscious and seemingly rational choices when we are aware of a potential risk. We eat organic food, max out on multivitamins and quickly forswear some products (even whole technologies) at the slightest hint of danger. We carry guns and vote for the candidate we think will keep us safe. Yet these choices are far from carefully considered — and, surprisingly often, they contravene reason. What’s more, while our choices about risk invariably feel right when we make them, many of these decisions end up putting us in greater peril.
