Takehome: Findings like this are a challenge to those who insist that the mind is simply what the brain does. The mind may not be split or removed when the brain is.
Psychology
At Mind Matters News: We trust nonsense from lab coats more than from gurus
It’s hard to understand why the researchers take comfort from finding that, worldwide, people will believe absolute nonsense if it comes from scientists.
At ScienceNews: Statistical significance as a strange idea
Bower: To make matters worse, psychology journals began to publish papers only if they reported statistically significant findings, prompting a surprisingly large number of investigators to massage their data — either by gaming the system or cheating — to get below the P value of 0.05 that granted that status. Inevitably, bogus findings and chance associations began to proliferate.
L&FP, 48 – i: The conscience factor in consciousness
Conscience is a major aspect of our consciousness, one of the “first facts” of our embodiment in the world, thus part of the start-point for sound thinking. Hence, Cicero’s recognition that it was consensus even in his day that “[sound] conscience is a law”: Given word games that may crop up, let us note a Read More…
Study: Only 15% of psych papers rooted in theory
Reform, you say? But wait! What will we do without all the Sokal hoaxes. The righteous defenses of the current state of the discipline were always the best part of the hoaxes, of course.
What? A new “just the facts” journal in social sciences?
Focusing on media. Wow. They should try that in biology too. No Darwinism. Just facts.
When psychology tries to be a science instead of a mythology…
Gabriel encourages us to see psychology as a mythology and, of course, he is right: “Sigmund Freud’s theories were largely unfalsifiable, and the promissory note that the mind is the brain has yet to be cashed in.” The idea that the mind is just the brain is unfalsifiable too. Beliefs that do not originate in fact are impervious to evidence.
Busting the paradigm without busting your career?
A Cornell U psych prof warns against letting the career lardbellies know in so many words that you plan to shake things up a bit.
Protein chemist Doug Axe nails self-image problem in biology
Did Darwin make it intellectually fulfilling to be an egotist?
What happened when someone tried making “wisdom” a science
The problem with naturalizing wisdom is that wisdom isn’t natural. It necessarily comes from a perspective beyond our own troubles in our own time.
Apparently, canceling Jordan Peterson didn’t really work
Douglas Murray: Peterson watchers will also notice that he signed off by saying that “With God’s grace and mercy” he hoped to complete some of the tasks which he lays out in it.
Michael Egnor skewers claim that there is no continuity of the human self
Egnor: if Blackmore is not the same person now that she was a moment ago, then it makes no sense to call the YouTube video above an interview with Susan Blackmore. Perhaps it should be called interviews with Susan Blackmores or interviews with countless women, one of whom was Susan Blackmore. Or interviews with women formerly known as Susan Blackmore…
Researchers: Many published psych studies lack validity
ScienceDaily: Chester and Lasko investigated 348 psychological manipulations included in peer-reviewed studies. They found that roughly 42% of the experiments were paired with no validity evidence, and that the remaining psychological manipulations were validated in ways that were extremely limited.
Is the rubber hand illusion really a fake?
Like so many social science lecture room myths, it might be too good not to be true. Except it maybe isn’t. Anyway.
Anyone remember psychologist Hans Eysenck? There’s now a retraction frenzy on his papers
The rap? Among other things, “the implausibility of the results presented, many of which show effect sizes virtually unknown in medical science.”