We aren’t becoming more cynical, we’re becoming more dependent on authority and simplistic views of the truth

Ben Goldacre, writing about a week ago in “Comment is Free,” the blog network of the British newspaper The Guardian, mentioned an interesting study into the way the media handle science stories (“Why reading should not be believing”).

The researchers found that 65% of stories didn’t correctly deal with “the study methodology and the quality of the evidence.” Obsessed with giving out eye-catching ‘truths’ from authority figures in white lab-coats, these reporters skidded over any drawbacks or uncertainties and reduced the numerical information in the studies to simple headlines, preferably with big numbers in them. Continued

More of the odd and fascinating from a week’s perusal of the blogosphere

According to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, Adolf Hitler took time out from running Nazi Germany to make jokes at the expense of his henchmen. That’s the claim of a new book by the last surviving member of his bunker anyhow (“Adolf Hitler told bad jokes about Nazi friends”). His favorite victim was the Luftwaffe chief Herman Goering; a notoriously vain and pompous bully even by Nazi standards. On this showing, Hitler made about as good a job of being a comic as he did of winning the war.

Anti-corruption investigators in China city have taken to questioning the mistresses of suspected corrupt officials to get compromising information, according to a report by Reuters (“Corrupt officials betrayed by pillow talk”). The report doesn’t explain what questioning techniques are used — or why these ladies are so willing to betray their lovers. Perhaps it’s another case of “Hell has no fury . . .” Continued

It seems the canny cephalopods are brighter than you think

Slate Magazine has a fascinating article summarizing research on the brain power of the octopus (“How Smart Is the Octopus?”). Why, I’m not sure, but it makes for more fun reading than all the articles at the moment prophesying doom and collapse for the economies fo the Western world. Besides, on this showing, an octopus seems smarter than a good many people I’ve met.

Not only can octopuses learn, they can process complex information in their heads, and behave in equally complex ways. On available evidence, a good many people seem incapable of learning quite simple things, like not taking on debt they can never pay off or investing their life savings in some get-rich-quick scheme pushed by a slick salesperson. If you look at the media, it’s quite evident that they assume their mass audiences aren’t able to absorb or process complex information of any kind, and are willing to exist on an endless diet of simple lies and titillating trivia. As for complex behavior, the banks — who claim to employ the best and brightest — seem to have learned their business strategies from watching sheep and lemmings. Continued

. . . now we have health issues linked to personality traits

It seems that just about every personality trait comes with its own characteristic type of disease, according to an article in Britain’s Daily Mail (courtesy of The Huffington Post>)(“Your personality type could decide what makes you ill”).

The article, by Roger Dobson, lists research that suggests personality traits are more significant than previously thought in future health. Quite how the mechanism works is unknown, though it may be a mixture of behavioral pressures and genetic tendencies.

The article then helpfully lists a series of personality traits and the diseases linked to them. Here are some examples Continued

Too much safety may be bad for you

Human beings have an odd tendency to evaluate risk as much by whether they feel safe before they start as by the inherent nature of the risk, or the chances that something will go wrong. We evaluate risk intuitively, and intuition is often a poor guide in this area.

That’s the conclusion of research by Clifford Winston, an economist at the Brookings Institution and the author of the 2006 book “Government Failure versus Market Failure,” as reported in The Washington Post (“Taking More Risks Because You Feel Safe”).

“The research consistently finds that, in fact, government efforts to correct market failures have little effect, or actually make things worse.”

“There is a tendency for people to say, ‘If things are safer, then I will take more risk,’ ” he added. “It does not have to involve government interventions: Drugs are developed to reduce blood pressure, so people say, ‘Okay, I can eat more, and it does not matter if I gain weight, because I can take this pill.’”

Continued

Coaching and counseling may be getting out of hand in Australia

The ‘Modern Times’ blog for The Age, an Australian newspaper, has an article weighing in against the rise in counselors and the situations where their help is invoked. As the author says: “Is there a counsellor in the house? Bleeding well hope so because the counsellor is the new apple. You need at least one a day.”

Is the increase in the use of counseling a sensible response to the stresses of modern times? Or is it like the euphemisms everyone uses to get around saying things that sound ‘nasty’: a way of sending unhappy, feckless or angry people far, far away, where they can’t upset us; while managing at the same time to convince ourselves that we’re helping them — just so long as we don’t have to deal with them ourselves, naturally. Continued

You can’t avoid the truth by avoiding plain speaking

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

George Carlin, the American comedian, died recently. He was famous for his no-nonsense, sometimes crude attacks on all kinds of hypocrisy in society. One of his strongest dislikes was the use of euphemisms to avoid speaking the truth about aspects of life people don’t like to think about. Life, he proclaimed, is sometimes nasty and brutal. Sometimes it sucks. Pretending it doesn’t won’t help you avoid the bad times or find a way out of the difficulties.

Whether it was the indignities of aging, the rich manipulating the poor, the hilarious oddities of sex, or that ultimate taboo, death, Carlin pushed his audiences’ noses into the creative muck that life is made of — and most of them loved it. Continued

In tough financial times, the traits of the chronic under-earner carry as heavy a penalty as those of the continual over-spender

Continental Congress Lottery Ticket
Source: Wikipedia

Over-spending is never a good idea and we’ve heard a great deal recently about the ways that people have been tempted into spending far too much by cheap and easy credit. Cutting back on your spending is certainly one way to cope with the financial downturn; one that many people are obviously taking, given the howls of anguish from industries facing lower sales. But what about under-earning? What if you find yourself in continual financial straits, not because you spend too much because you don’t earn enough?

Writing in BusinessWeek, Michelle Conlin suggests that “for every obscenely piggish ceo pay package, there’s legions of underearners crawling all over Corporate America. ” She bases her article on the book by Jerrold Mundis, Earn What You Deserve: How to Stop Underearning & Start Thriving. There’s also Barbara Stanny’s book, Overcoming Underearning: Overcome Your Money Fears and Earn What You Deserve.

In summary, under-earners may do great work, but they rarely get the financial recognition they deserve for it, mostly because they don’t believe their employers will pay them more. A few have the idealistic idea that money goes only to people who compromise their essential humanity or sell out their creativity to get it. Many simply won’t take responsibility for the problem or are too fearful to stand up for themselves. Continued

Things are as they are, not as you want them to be

You may already have come across an article by Charles J. Sykes called: “Some rules kids won’t learn in school”. The whole article is worth reading, but here are some extracts that seem appropriate for a Monday morning.

The original was printed in The San Diego Union Tribune in 1996. In the intervening 12 years, nothing has altered the truth of what Mr. Sykes wrote. That’s a little depressing, but I guess social revolutions take a good deal longer than that and the next one to affect us hasn’t even started. Continued

Your sexual orientation may be linked to brain configuration

According to Healthzone.ca (part of the website of The Toronto Star), a study has found similarities in MRI scans both between the brains of gay men and straight women and between the brains of lesbians and straight men (“Gayness linked to brain”).

A new Swedish study shows significant similarities between the brains of homosexual men and straight women and between the brains of lesbians and heterosexual men. Some researchers are saying this provides important proof that people are born gay and don’t choose to act that way. Continued