Re: Your Thoughts [about make-up exams]
Payam Heidary wrote: how do most of you handle situations where students are absent on the day of exams and when assignments are due. For examinations: I always allow a student to take exams BEFORE the scheduled time. That way, if they know something is coming up for them, they can plan on taking the exam a day or two early. I also do not worry if a student comes late to an exam (I have no times limits on my exams anyway), even if they come an hour or two late. Usually, in such a case, I tell them to take the exam in a later section (for intro psych, I have several sections during the day). I rarely have students do this consistently and, when they do, it is often because of work-related problems. It is very unlikely, with my tests, that they can talk with a student who has already taken the exam and get enough information to make a difference on their scores. I also allow students to make up ONE exam...for ANY reason (I give between five and seven exams during the semester, depending on the course). I don't even want to hear the excuse--but they often seem to feel compelled to tell me anyway. I have one day set aside during the last week of regular classes for all make-ups. When students realize that they will have to wait until the end of the semester to take the exam, many opt to rearrange their schedules or take the exam even with a sore throat rather than wait until the semester's end when other assignments are coming due. I explain to students that taking the make-up option should be reserved for major emergencies since they probably don't want to take the make-up during a very busy period of the semester. Perhaps a quarter of the class takes a make-up exam. The distribution of scores is no different than those taking the test on the assigned date. For homework assignments: I do something similar. They can always hand in assignments early. And I let them hand in ONE assignment late, for ANY reason. If there were a large number of assignments, I might even extend this to two, or I might drop a small number of the lowest scores (such as zeros on missed assignments). Students seem to find these policies very fair and I almost never have any complaints. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Law of Parsimony, Reductionism, and Complexity
In addition to what I stated and the article I included in my last post, I also wanted to send you links to two other articles relevant to Phillipe's questions: Lloyd Morgans Canon: A History of Misrepresentation by Roger K. Thomas (2001) http://htpprints.yorku.ca/documents/docs/00/00/00/17/htp0017-00/MCWeb.htm Razor in the Toolbox: The history, use, and abuse of Occams Razor by Robert Novella (2001) http://www.theness.com/newsletter.html (You'll have to scroll down the page a bit to get to this one.) Philippe Gervaix wrote: Hello y'all from overseas, In a recent post, someone mentioned the law of parsimony. My intervention has implications on two levels (at least, and as far as we are concerned on this list): epistemological and pedagogical. Of course both are intertwined -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
RE: Richard Dawkins on Suicide Bombings
Here was an interesting response to the Dawkins' article on the PESTS listserve. Because this article also is being discussed on TIPS, I thought some of you might like to see the response. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html Jeff Ricker forwarded the following article by Richard Dawkins to the list: Religion's misguided missiles: Promise a young man that death is not the end and he will willingly cause disaster http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,425,00.html Dawkins' contention appears to be that religious belief in an afterlife, and especially the variant he appears to attribute to all or part of Islam, renders the holder especially prone to committing suicide attacks: If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life highly and be reluctant to risk it. This makes the world a safer place, just as a plane is safer if its hijacker wants to survive. At the other extreme, if a significant number of people convince themselves, or are convinced by their priests, that a martyr's death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and zooming through a wormhole to another universe, it can make the world a very dangerous place. Especially if they also believe that that other universe is a paradisical escape from the tribulations of the real world. Top it off with sincerely believed, if ludicrous and degrading to women, sexual promises, and is it any wonder that naive and frustrated young men are clamouring to be selected for suicide missions? However, an article in 'Jane's Intelligence Review' provides the following breakdown of the number of suicide bombings between 1980 and 2000: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka and in India 168 Hizbullah and pro-Syrian groups in Lebanon, Kuwait and Argentina 52 Hamas in Israel 22 The Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) in Turkey 15 The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Israel 8 Al Quaida in East Africa 2 The Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) in Croatia 1 The Islamic Group (IG) in Pakistan 1 Barbar Khalsa International (BKI) in India 1 The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria 1 http://www.janes.com/security/regional_security/news/usscole/jir001020_1_n.sht ml If this information is correct, the large majority of the suicide attacks in the last twenty years have been carried out by the Tamil Tigers. And, as far as I am aware, the Tamil Tigers is a secular organisation of ethnic nationalists and not a religious organisation: see their publication 'A Struggle For Justice' http://www.eelam.com/freedom_struggle/ltte_publ/strug_for_just and the news item at http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_591000/591864.s tm. Wayne Spencer
The (possible) myth of the vestigial appendix
As I was going through the Sci Am web site, I stumbled across the following discussion about a possible function of the human appendix. That is, we may be wrong when we say that the appendix is a vestigial part of our anatomy. Since we sometimes discuss common scientific myths on this list, I thought that some of you might be interested in reading the discussion. Jeff --- http://www.sciam.com/askexpert/biology/biology54/ Does the appendix serve a purpose in any animal? N. Roberts, London Julie Pomerantz, wildlife veterinarian and program officer for the Wildlife Trusts North American Conservation Medicine Initiative, offers the following explanation: As a specific anatomic structure, the appendix has been described in only a few species. In humans and apes, it is a thin, tubular structure (hence the name vermiform, or worm-like, appendix) located at the apex of the cecum, a blind pouch near the beginning of the large intestine. Scientists have also identified appendix-like structures in other species of primates, but these structures have not been well characterized. Rabbits and some rodents have appendices, and it is research on these species that has begun to shed some light on the mystery of the organs function. Previously it was thought that the sack-like rabbit appendix served primarily as a reservoir for the bacteria involved in hindgut fermentation. That explanation, however, did not account for the absence of an appendix in other animals with similar digestive systems or for its presence in humans. When researchers examined the appendix microscopically, they found that it contains a significant amount of lymphoid tissue. Similar aggregates of lymphoid tissue occur in other areas of the gastrointestinal and are known as gut-associated lymphoid tissues (GALT). The functions of GALT are poorly understood, but it is clear that they are involved in the bodys ability to recognize foreign antigens in ingested material. Thus, although scientists have long discounted the human appendix as a vestigial organ, there is a growing body of evidence indicating that the appendix does in fact have a significant function as a part of the bodys immune system. The appendix may be particularly important early in life because it achieves its greatest development shortly after birth and then regresses with age, eventually coming to resemble such other regions of GALT as the Peyers patches in the small intestine. The immune response mediated by the appendix may also relate to such inflammatory conditions as ulcerative colitis. In adults, the appendix is best known for its tendency to become inflamed, necessitating surgical removal. FURTHER READING: Dasso JF. Howell MD. 1997. Neonatal appendectomy impairs mucosal immunity in rabbits. Cellular Immunology. 182(1):29-37. Dasso JF. Obiakor H. Bach H. Anderson AO. Mage RG. 2000. A morphological and immunohistological study of the human and rabbit appendix for comparison with the avian bursa. Developmental Comparative Immunology. 24(8):797-814. Fisher, RE. 2000. The primate appendix: a reassessment. The Anatomical Record (New Anatomist) 261:228-236. Panaccione R. Sandborn WJ. 1999. The appendix in ulcerative colitis: a not so innocent bystander. Gastroenterology. 117(1):272-3. Weinstein PD. Mage RG. Anderson AO. 1994. The appendix functions as a mammalian bursal equivalent in the developing rabbit. Advances in Experimental Medicine Biology. 355:249-53. Answer posted August 24, 2001 -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Gallup data on effects of NYC disaster
Given the discussion of the last several days, I thought the following item of information from the Gallup organization (http://www.gallup.com/tuesdaybriefing.asp) might be of general interest: A majority of Americans favor having Arabs, even those who are U.S. citizens, being subjected to separate, more intensive security procedures at airports. About half of Americans favor requiring Arabs, even those who are citizens of the United States, to carry special ID. Other poll data regarding American's attitudes about the attacks, the likely perpetrators, US response to the attacks, etc., can be found at this site. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Student Question (sleep disorder)
Nancy, This sounds like Kleine-Levin Syndrome. According to information on the "Kleine-Levin Syndrome Foundation" web site (http://www.KLSFoundation.org/), the disorder is defined in the following way: "Kleine-Levin Syndrome is a rare disorder characterized by the need for excessive amounts of sleep. The patient becomes progressively more drowsy and sleeps for most of the day and night, (hypersomnolence), and in some cases requires excessive food intake (compulsive hyperphagia). The disorder primarily strikes adolescents. When awake, affected individuals may exhibit irritability, lack of energy (lethargy), lack of emotions (apathy) and they may appear confused (disoriented). Many patients report a hypersensitivity to noise. Some patients show an abnormally uninhibited sexual drive. Symptoms of Kleine-Levin Syndrome are cyclical. An affected individual may go for weeks or months without experiencing any symptoms, with perfect health and no evidence of behavioral or physical dysfunction. When present, KLS symptoms may persist for days to weeks or even months. The exact cause of Kleine-Levin Syndrome is not yet known. It is thought that symptoms of Kleine-Levin Syndrome may be related to malfunction of the portions of the brain (hypothalamus) that help to regulate functions such as sleep, appetite, and body temperature. It appears to be self limiting with cessation of episodes by early adult life." I don't know anything about the disorder other than this. But there are links to articles and other information at this web site. Jeff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello Colleagues: I am cutting and pasting the following student question about a sleep disorder because I am clueless: There is a disorder that somepoeple have (i've seen it on television a few months ago. As i remember it mainly affects people 18-25, and it is something where people have been knoen to be asleep for several months. They get restroom use and food by help usually it was the parents who take care of them, so in a severly drowsy state they get food given to them like babies, and wabbly they walk to the restroom. They showed a girl who had been in this state of sleep for 6 months or so, and even her brother got the same disorder a few years after her. It's something that comes ang goes, they can be fine and the next minute just literaly fall and be asleep. The girls parents had to withdraw her from college, and she lost her friends because they all moved on. They even showed some home video footage that the parents recorded and it looked the person is in a transe, they are asleep but can answer sometimes, it was a really weird thing to see. And i was wondering does this have anything to do with the "reticular activating system" in our brains, in class you have menssioned that if a person has that damaged they might not wake up. However the disorder that those poeple have, comes and goes. It be got 2 months of sleeping constantly, and then be absolutely fine for 2-3 years, then there can be a relapse Thanks for your help folks. Nancy Melucci LACCD -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd. FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department [EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Spectacles and IQ
Here are some other articles I have just found on this topic. Some of them reproduce the ones that Stephen Black cited. Jeff --- Belkin, M. and M. Rosner. Intelligence, Education, and Myopia in Males, Archives of Opthamology (November 1987) 1508-11. Benbow, C.P. Physiological Correlates of Extreme Intellectual Precocity, Neuropsychologia (1986) 719-25. Bower, Bruce. Retardation : The Eyes Have It, Science News (August 27, 1988) 140. Cohn, S.J., C.M. Cohn, and A.R. Jensen. Myopia and Intelligence : A Pleiotropic Relationship? Human Genetics (September 1988) 63-8. Edwards, Diane. Boring Reading and Nearsightedness, Science News, July 11, 1987, page 23. Grosvenor, Theodore. Refractive State, Intelligence Test Scores, and Academic Ability, American Journal of Optometry and Archives of American Academy of Optometry 47(5) (May 1970) 355-61. Heron, Elizabeth and Adrain Zytkoskee. Visual Acuity and Test Performance, American Journal of Optometry and Physiological Optics 58 (1981) 176-8. Karlsson, J.L. Genetic Relationship Between Giftedness and Myopia, Hereditas 75 (1973) 85-9. Karlsson, J.L. Genetics of Myopia and Associated Mental Traits, Hereditas 105 (1986) 205-8. McManus, I.C. What Makes Some Children Shortsighted? The Lancet (1987) 1267-8. Miller, Edward M. On the Correlation of Myopia and Intelligence, Genetic, Social and General Psychology Monographs 118(4) (1992) 361-83. Peckham, C.S., and P.A. Gardinier, and H. Goldstein. Acquired Myopia in Eleven Year Old Children, British Medical Journal (1977) 542-5. Raviola, Elio and Torsten N. Wiesel. The Mystery of Myopia, The Sciences (November/December 1986) 46-52. Teasdale, T.W. and E. Goldschmidt. Myopia and its Relationship to Education, Intelligence, and Height, Acta Opthamologica - Supplementary Copenhagen 185 (1988) 41-3. Teasdale, T.W., E. Goldschmidt, and J. Fuchs. Degree of Myopia in Relation to Intelligence and Educational Level, The Lancet (1988) 1351-3. Williams, Sheila M. Refractive Error, I.Q., and Reading Ability, Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology (December 1988) 735-42. Wong, L., et. al. Education, Reading and Familial Tendency as Risk Factors for Myopia in Hong Kong Fishermen, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 47(1) (February 1993) 50-3. Zylbermann, R., D. Landau and D. Berson, The Influence of Study Habits on Myopia in Jewish Teenagers, Journal of Pediatric Opthamology and Strabismus 30(5) (September-October 1993) 319-22. Stephen Black wrote: On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, Michael Sylvester wrote: does the correlation still hold that students and profs that wear glasses tend to be above average in intelligence than those who don't? I am not sure about contact lenses? Surprisingly, yes. We discussed this back around the end of July last year, and I posted a note on July 24th, 2000 about it. There's a significant relationship between myopia (nearsightedness) and variables such as IQ, educational attainment, and amount of time spent reading. The smarter you are, or the greater your education, or the more time you spend studying, the more myopic you are. And vice versa. Me, I'm so nearsighted I can only see behind me. And for once the correlation seems to be causal. Nerdish activities promote elongation of the eyeball, a primary cause of myopia. This was established in studies where rats were forced to read the speeches of George Bush and Jean Chretien until they could no longer see well enough to solve mazes. Predictably, animal rightists protested, not because of the harm to vision but because no animal should be subjected to that kind of abuse. The references I gave last time around: Wiesel, T. Raviola, E. (1988?) The mystery of myopia. The Sciences, p. 46 [sorry, still missing a proper reference for this] Kolata, G. (1985). What causes nearsightedness? Science, 229, 1249-- Teasdale, T. et al (1988). Degree of myopia in relation to intelligence and educational level. The Lancet, 1351-- Kinge B., Midelfart, A. [love that name], et al. (2000). The influence of near-work on development of myopia among university students. Acta Ophthalmologica Scandinavica, 78, 26-- -Stephen Stephen Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470 Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661 Bishop's Universitye-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Department web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy Check out TIPS listserv for teachers of psychology at: http://www.frostburg.edu/dept/psyc/southerly/tips/ -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College
Schools' Backing of Behavior Drugs Comes Under Fire
August 19, 2001 Schools' Backing of Behavior Drugs Comes Under Fire By KATE ZERNIKE and MELODY PETERSEN Children return to classrooms this fall amid an increasingly pitched battle over Ritalin and other drugs used to treat millions with behavioral and emotional problems in school. Some of Ritalin's competitors are breaking with 30-year-old international marketing restrictions to advertise directly to parents, selling the idea that drugs may be the answer to their children's problems in school. At the same time, state legislatures are moving to prevent schools from recommending or requiring that parents put their children on medication. (for rest of article, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/19/health/children/19RITA.html) -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Scientology Web Sites
Harry, I believe that this may be one such site: Say No To Psychiatry: The Dangers and Harm of the Modern Sham Pseudoscience Known as Psychiatry http://www.sntp.net/ Jeff Harry Avis wrote: This semester I am trying something new (for me). In addition to using Infotrac, I am requiring that students in my abnormal psych class search the internet for information about treatment of psychological disorders. I am aware that the Church of Scientology has strong reservations about psychological treatment and use of psychopharmacological agents. I would assume that some of the Church's ideas would appear on various web sites (note that I am being cautious here). Does anyone know of any such websites? I want to inform my students of the sponsors of all of the websites they access. Some sponsors make their affiliation clear others do not. Read carefully between the lines. Harry Avis PhD Sierra College Rocklin, CA 95677 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Life is opinion - Marcus Aurelius There is nothing that is good or bad, but that thinking makes it so - Shakespeare _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
The Quantitative Study of Dreams
I found a web site on dream research at http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/ called, The Quantitative Study of Dreams. After a brief look, it seems to be a very good site. I found the following article on this site. It describes research on a subject that has come up on TIPS before: what people who have been blind since birth dream about. Jeff --- Hurovitz, C., Dunn, S., Domhoff, G. W., Fiss, H. (1999). The dreams of blind men and women: A replication and extension of previous findings. Dreaming, 9, 183-193 Abstract Drawing on a sample of 372 dreams from 15 blind adults, this paper presents two separate analyses that replicate and extend findings from previous studies. The first analysis employed DreamSearch, a software program designed for use with dream narratives, to examine the appearance of the five sensory modalities. It revealed that those blind since birth or very early childhood had (1) no visual imagery and (2) a very high percentage of gustatory, olfactory, and tactual sensory references. The second analysis found that both male and female participants differed from their sighted counterparts in the same ways on several Hall and Van de Castle (1966) coding categories, including a high percentage of locomotion/transportation dreams that contained at least one dreamer-involved misfortune. The findings on sensory references and dreamer-involved misfortunes in locomotion/transportation dreams are interpreted as evidence for the continuity between dream content and waking cognition. Full Text at: http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/Articles/hurovitz_1999a.html -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
More College Students Drop Out Than Graduate
Wednesday August 15 More College Students Drop Out Than Graduate By Leslie Gevirtz BOSTON (Reuters) - Fewer than half of U.S. college students make it to graduation, which means that Americans have a better chance of getting an accurate weather report than they have of getting a university degree. Less than 50 percent of students entering four-year colleges or universities actually graduate, Council for Aid to Education (CAE) researchers said in a report. ''And that's a conservative estimate,'' said Richard Hersh who co-authored the report on the quality of higher education for the National Governors Association [for rest of article, go to http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010815/ts/life_college_dc_1.html] -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
The secret to academic success: hours--and hours--of study
The secret to academic success: hours--and hours--of study COLUMBUS, Ohio - Improving a lackluster grade point average takes more than a few extra hours of study each week. In fact, a study of 79 college students found that a one-letter-grade increase in quarter GPA was associated with a 40-hour increase in weekly study time. A lifestyle change has to happen before an impact is made on a student's grades, said Carl Zulauf, a study co-author and a professor of agricultural, environmental and developmental economics at Ohio State University. A few extra hours of study each week isn't going to do it. Overall, the study found that every additional hour spent studying per week meant only a 0.025 increase in GPA. This finding raised the question of whether educators should be resigned to this small relationship between effort and reward, Zulauf said. Or perhaps changes need to be made in how educators evaluate a student's efforts. The study appears in a recent issue of the Journal of College Student Development. Zulauf conducted the study with Amy Gortner Lahmers, a former student of Zulauf's who is now with the Ohio Soybean Council. The researchers asked 79 college students to keep a time diary for one week in the middle of a 10-week quarter. Each day was broken into half-hour intervals, and students were required to indicate how much time they spent on activities such as attending class, studying, working, socializing, watching television and sleeping. The students - freshmen through seniors - were enrolled in one of three agricultural economics classes at Ohio State. Researchers also had access to both the participants' cumulative GPAs, as well as the students' GPAs for the quarter during which the study took place. Each student also completed the Time Management Behavior (TMB) scale, a 34-question scale that measured time management ability. The questions were rated on a scale of 1 to 5. Each one-point increase in total TMB score was associated with a 0.3 increase in GPA, Zulauf said. The ability to use time is positively related to academic performance, Zulauf said. But it takes a lot of commitment by a student to significantly increase the number of hours he studies. The students in the study spent an average of 17 hours in class per week, and about 20 hours of study time outside of class during the week. This kind of schedule is equivalent to a full-time job, Zulauf said. And the current recommendation is two hours of study for every hour of time spent in class. So conventional wisdom says that the students in our study should be spending at least 34 hours studying outside of class, Zulauf said. Either this is an unreasonable recommendation, or students are taking too many courses. If a student devoted more time to studying during the quarter, chances were good that his cumulative GPA increased, Zulauf said. The researchers looked at the effect that holding down a job had on time spent studying. On average, each additional hour spent working reduced the amount of time spent studying by 14 minutes per week. But having a job didn't seem to have a serious impact on a student's GPA at the end of the quarter, unless the student was also carrying a heavy course load, Zulauf said. If a student can properly manage his time, a part-time job has little impact on GPA, he said. The researchers also found that the higher a student scored on the ACT - a college admissions test - the more time he spent in class, and the less time he spent studying. But fewer hours of study didn't mean a lower GPA for these students. Each one-point increase in ACT score meant a 0.095 increase in the GPA for the quarter, Zulauf said. Contact: Carl Zulauf, (614) 292-6285; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Written by Holly Wagner, (614) 292-8310; [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Damaged Brains and the Death Penalty
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/21/arts/dailyarts/21LEWI.html JUL 21, 2001 Damaged Brains and the Death Penalty By LAURA MANSNERUS You don't have to be a psychiatrist, Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis says, to know that something was terribly wrong with Ricky Ray Rector, who before his execution in Arkansas ordered his last meal and asked that the pecan pie be set aside so he could have it later. But Dr. Lewis is a psychiatrist, and the Ricky Ray Rector story makes a point that she has spent many years documenting: the worst criminals are not a very crafty lot. Almost without exception, Dr. Lewis has found in evaluating dozens of death-row inmates, they have damaged brains. Most were also the victims of vicious batterings and often sexual abuse as children. Psychotic symptoms, especially paranoia, are common. A professor of psychiatry at New York University, Dr. Lewis is among a handful of researchers who are rethinking the etiology of violence. Her studies focus on some of the most violent criminals; she has interviewed 150 to 200 murderers, sorting through their medical histories and, as much as it can be done, their brains. Dr. Lewis has revolutionized the way people think about criminal behavior, said Elyn R. Saks, who teaches forensic psychiatry at the University of Southern California Law School. And while no revolution is at hand in the criminal justice system, legal scholars say new findings on brain dysfunction are finally gaining attention, at least where they matter most: in death penalty cases. Just this year, 4 states banned executions of the mentally retarded, bringing to 17 the number of the 38 death-penalty states that have made that exception, and the Supreme Court will hear arguments in one such case this fall. Some of the stories Dr. Lewis has heard are told in her 1998 book, Guilty by Reason of Insanity. Other stories emerge through raw data in articles published over 15 years in medical journals. Her latest article, a study of murderers who were adopted, was accepted this month by the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, though until publication, Dr. Lewis says, she cannot discuss her findings. Her longtime collaborator, Dr. Jonathan H. Pincus, the chief of neurology at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Washington, sets out the neurologist's perspective in his book, Base Instincts: What Makes Killers Kill?, published last month. Dr. Pincus administered the neurological examinations, from simple reflex tests to EEG's and brain scans, that supplemented the interviews. The researchers also combed whatever medical records they could find. In 1986 Dr. Lewis and Dr. Pincus published a study of 15 death row inmates that found all had suffered severe head injuries in childhood and about half had been injured by assaults. Six were chronically psychotic. Far from invoking an abuse excuse, Dr. Lewis said, all but one had minimized or denied their psychiatric disorders, figuring that it was better to be bad than crazy. Many, she said, had been so traumatized that they could not remember how they had received their scars. The answers had to come from childhood medical records and interviews with family members. In another study, of 14 juveniles sentenced to death, the researchers found that all had suffered head trauma, most in car accidents but many by beatings as well. Twelve had suffered brutal physical abuse, five of those sodomized by relatives. No one suggests that abuse or brain damage makes a murderer, but Dr. Lewis says that while most damaged people do not turn into killers, almost every killer is a damaged person. She concludes that most murderers are shaped by the combination of damage to the brain, particularly to the frontal lobes, which control aggression and impulsiveness, and the even more complex damage visited by repeated, violent child abuse. These findings, Dr. Lewis says, cast doubt on legal definitions of insanity. Many legal experts agree, while others say the law should be in no hurry to apply new theories in the debate, older than Western thought itself, between free will and determinism. Many psychiatrists and psychologists, too, see evil and con artistry where researchers like Dr. Lewis see disease. Barbara R. Kirwin, a forensic psychologist who recounted her examinations of violent murderers in her book, The Mad, the Bad and the Innocent, questions Dr. Lewis's studies because, like many medical studies with small samples, they are not controlled. And if unusual brain activity can be interpreted, Dr. Kirwin said, I want to find out what subcortical firing Mother Theresa has. Dr. Kirwin's findings on the incidence of child abuse among homicide defendants differ wildly from Dr. Lewis's. Dr. Kirwin estimates that of the 300 or so defendants she has studied, 10 percent have been abused, or about what you'd find in the general population. One way of stating their differences is that Dr. Lewis says she has never seen a mere sociopath
Misconceptions about abnormal psychology
I was wondering if anyone had some examples of common student misconceptions about the field of abnormal psychology. I would like to address some of these misconceptions when I teach the course. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Hollywood puts the 'psycho' in psychologist
I don't recall seeing anything about this study on TIPS when the following report came out last year. This news item describes an interesting investigation of the way that psychologists are often portrayed in the popular media. Jeff --- http://www.trustmed.com.tw/news/2000/06/14/2614005e.html Hollywood puts the 'psycho' in psychologist MIAMI, Jun 12 (Reuters Health) - Would you like fava beans and a nice Chianti with that therapy session? According to a new study, Dr. Hannibal Lecter has plenty of company when it comes to Hollywood's portrayal of unethical, demented and downright murderous psychologists in popular films. In a survey of characters in 45 recent films, over half of the psychology professionals engaged in some type of unethical behavior, according to Dr. Angela Lipsitz of Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, Kentucky. She noted that 22% of psychologist characters in films killed another character--I would say that's far different from what you find in (real-life) psych professionals, she mused. Lipsitz presented the findings here Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society. Speaking with Reuters Health, she said she first got the idea for the study after deciding to use film clips as a method of illustrating common psychological concepts for her students. But, as I was preparing for the course what struck me was all the mis-images and misconceptions surrounding psychology. She and her colleagues examined the use of psychology professionals as characters in a slew of recent films, including hits like Silence of the Lambs, The Prince of Tides and Good Will Hunting, and lesser-known works such as Body Chemistry III. Besides having a decided penchant for murder, 22% of cinema psychologists ignored standard professional ethics and had sexual relations with either a patient or a patient's close friend or relative. This weakness for bloodshed and illicit sex may have been due to the fact that a very large percentage of Hollywood psychologists appear to suffer from psychoses themselves. Half the time it was multiple-personality disorder, which is very rare and a controversial diagnosis, Lipsitz pointed out. Many others seemed helpless in the face of their own dysfunction. In 'What About Bob?' the therapist (played by Richard Dreyfuss) talks to his kids with puppets because he can't relate to them, Lipsitz said. Or take Barbra Streisand in 'Prince of Tides'--her husband is having an affair, her kid hates her. Movie psychologists and psychiatrists tend to become very intimately involved in their patients' lives--to an extent frowned upon by real-world professionals. If you got your knowledge of psychology professionals from film you would think 'oh, they are going to get really involved in my life, they're going to talk to my family members, and meet me for a drink occasionally, or go watch my choir practice or my sports team to get a better feel for what I'm like, Lipsitz said. But, she noted, that's not true. Most therapists just see their patients in their 50-minute therapy hour and that's it. Many movies also present viewers with a warped or outdated view of psychology itself. Lipsitz cited numerous examples where busts or pictures of Freud--whose theories have lost favor with most of today's professionals--are prominently displayed in doctors' offices. Lipsitz is particularly put off by films that imbue 'reclaimed' memories with miraculous healing power. Many films show you the situation where someone can't remember something, she explained. And usually something is done to help the person recover the memory--hypnosis, or taking them back to the scene of the event. The result? An immediate catharsis, a dramatic, defining moment when the cure happens and the person is mystically better. Unfortunately, Lipsitz said, that is not how it works in the real world. Memory, for one thing, is notoriously unreliable, and therapy is usually a slow process, improvement is incremental, and there's not usually just one day when there's this dramatic breakthrough and everything's okay. Lipsitz is concerned that big screen psychology may raise false expectations in viewers. I think that some people may be disappointed in their therapist--that they can't call their therapist at midnight and expect the therapist to cheerfully answer and talk to them, she said. Worse still, Hollywood's take on psychologists may keep some people from seeking help at all. I mean, we see that nearly a quarter killed another character or many were engaging in inappropriate sexual activity, she pointed out. So people may think 'wow, I don't think I want to see this person.' The Kentucky researcher is aware that Hollywood requires dramatic scripts to lure and hold its viewers. But Lipsitz believes the psychology professional has played the bad guy for far too long. I would say, consider at least doing something differently, she said. It would be
Personal Life Towel Boy
I'm offering my services as a Personal Life Towel Boy. When those everyday hassles are getting you down, I'll be there to hand you a quick drink of water and something to wipe your brow. If grown-ups playing children's games need a towel boy, shouldn't you, playing the more serious game that I call Big-League Life, also have the services of your own personal life towel boy? Jeff Ricker Personal Life Towel Boy (in training) Certified Member of AAPLTB -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Question #2
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have seen demonstrations of those word lists that are organized around a central theme, but lack the most obvious word. They are read to a subject who then tries to recall them, usually giving the theme word as one of those read aloud, even though it wasn't. I have tried to make up versions of these lists, but mine are never very good. Does anyone here have some better versions of this "false memory" task?" If you go to the PESTS Teaching Activities page (http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/demos.html) and read Teaching Activity #2, you will find some information and links on this. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd. FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department [EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Accurate dream recall unlikely
I thought some of you might be interested in the following article. Jeff http://neurology.medscape.com/reuters/prof/2001/06/06.12/20010611clin002.html Accurate Dream Recall Unlikely CHICAGO (Reuters Health) Jun 11 - Individuals are not very reliable witnesses to their own dreams, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the Associated Sleep Societies. Dr. William H. Moorcroft said that a person's recall of the details of dreams is as rife with errors as eyewitness reports of actual events. Our dream recall, even immediately after the dream is experienced, is not as accurate as we think it is and we may not capture as much of the original dream as researchers who try to understand dreams had assumed, Dr. Moorcraft said. Furthermore, our dream recall changes with time, so it's the same psychological process that happens when we're awake. Dr. Moorcroft and colleagues at the Sleep and Dreaming Laboratory at Luther College, Decorah, Iowa awakened 14 subjects from early morning rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when dreams are most numerous and vivid. They asked subjects to recall, and record on audiotape, the dream they were having when awakened. The subjects were asked to recall the same dream the next morning, a week later and a month later. Comparison of the components of the four tape-recorded recall sessions revealed that, on average, only half of the dream components were recalled in any one of the four sessions, the investigators found. Of the dream elements recalled immediately following REM sleep awakening, thought by most researchers to be the most accurately recalled, subjects were able to recall fewer than 44% in any of the subsequent sessions. We're convinced, in taking a look at these four recalls for each dream, that you can recognize the essential story in each of these, Dr. Moorcroft said. So, it's not that the changes are so dramatic...but rather the changes are in the specific components, and these...components do vary over time: some are recalled, some are added and some are lost. Dr. Moorcroft concluded that these data should prompt researchers and therapists and others who work with dream interpretation to exercise a level of caution, and not to assume that the recall is the dream...and realize that we can't be as exact about our theories about what dreams are for and about. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Malnutrition
I'm glad to be contributing to TIPS (haven't done so in a while). Probably someone else will send in the answer even before I finish typing this, but here goes anyways (I just won't read my mail until after I hit the send button). Jean Edwards wrote: I was asked by a student why kids who are malnourished have large bellies. I couldn't really provide a good answer. I've done a tentative search but can't find anything addressing this. Anyone know? Thanks to any and all who reply. According to Tortora Grabowski (1996; Principles of Anatomy Physiology--8th ed): One of the major types of undernutrition is known as protein-calorie undernutrition, which occurs when there is inadequate intake of protein and/or calories to meet a person's nutritional requirements. Protein-calorie undernutrition may be classified into two types based on which factor is lacking in the diet. In one type, called kwashiorkor..., protein intake is deficient despite normal or nearly normal calorie intake The diet of many Africans consists largely of cornmeal [which lacks essential amino acids found in many protein-rich foods]. As a result, many African children develop kwashiorkor. It is characterized by EDEMA OF THE ABDOMEN, enlarged liver, decreased blood pressure, bradycardia, hypothermia, anorexia, lethargy, dry and hyperpigmented skin, easily pluckable hair, and sometimes mental retardation. (p. 842; emphasis added) The other kind of undernutrition is called marasmus. It results from inadequate caloric AND protein intake. It is characterized by retarded growth, low weight, muscle wasting, emaciation, dry skin, and thin, dry, dull hair. Jeff JL Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Culture and mental illness
Here is an article from the most recent NY Times Magazine you may find interesting. Jeff - http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/06/magazine/06LATAH.html May 6, 2001 Regional Disturbances By LAWRENCE OSBORNE Americans get anorexia. Nigerians get 'brain fag.' Malaysians suffer from 'hyperstartle syndrome.' How culturally specific is mental illness? The little house looks like most of the others in the Malaysian jungle hamlet of Kampung Sebiris. The louvered windows are trimmed with heavy curtains, the tiled floor is immaculate and cushioned chairs line the walls. Even though it is over 90 degrees, there is no fan; outside, humid forest spreads out beneath a mist-wrapped mountain. As in many rural Malay homes, in the front room there is an ornate display cabinet filled with knickknacks: teapots, wooden pineapples, gaudy silk flowers. The jungle comes right up to the glass slats, and the whistling of insects is deafening. But this is no typical home. Sitting on a woven mat in the center of the room is a gray-haired woman named Dibuk ak Suut. Wrapped in a pale green sarong, the slender 59-year-old matriarch is comfortably surrounded by her husband, daughter and grandchildren -- but her eyes flash nervously from side to side. Her husband, Sujang, has just served us cups of weak hot chocolate. He is in a playful mood. Watch this, he whispers to me in Malay. Standing up, he suddenly claps his hands. Dibuk gives a start, shudders and leaps to her feet. Everyone roars with laughter. Dibuk's delicate, slightly lopsided face goes into a glassy trance. She begins shrieking: Grasshopper! Grasshopper! GRASSHOPPER! Sujang then winks like Popeye, and Dibuk does the same. The family howls in merriment. Sujang goes into a comical dance, shaking his shoulders slinkily and wiggling his hips. Still locked in her seeming trance, Dibuk does likewise. She waves her hands in front of her face and mops her cheeks with a small cloth. She sweats profusely and bares her teeth in hysterical laughter. After a few minutes, Sujang goes up to her and taps her firmly on the shoulder. The mimic-trance is over. Dibuk sits down and mops her face. Are you O.K.? her daughter, Catherine, asks. Was I talking nonsense again? Dibuk asks. Not too bad this time, Catherine says. You didn't say anything obscene. The family recomposes itself, and we drink our lukewarm chocolate. Then, a few minutes later, a cat creeps up to Dibuk from behind. Suddenly noticing it, she gives another violent start and begins pawing the air in front of her. Cat, she cries. Cat! Cat! She then starts screaming a Malay slang word for penis. Sujang leans over to me. It's cats that get her the most, he murmurs. They make her more latah than anything. The Suuts are farmers living in the hills behind the tiny trading town of Lundu in Sarawak, the Malaysian side of Borneo. The kampungs, or villages, here are incredibly isolated, connected by a solitary road winding through plots of coconuts and pineapples. Outsiders rarely visit. Yet in recent years, Western scholars have become intrigued by women like Dibuk. She is a latah, suffering from an intriguing mental disturbance known in the West as hyperstartle syndrome... [For rest of article, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/06/magazine/06LATAH.html] -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Capgras Delusion
Some of you might find the following article to be of interest. Jeff http://www.dallasnews.com/science/columnists/346200_tomcol_23liv.html Scientists learn how familiarity breeds delusion 04/23/2001 By TOM SIEGFRIED / The Dallas Morning News The next time the Earth is invaded by pod people, it might be a good idea to call a psychiatrist. Sure, your spouse and neighbors may be acting strangely because aliens have taken over their bodies. But it's also possible that you may be suffering from an obscure psychiatric disorder known as Capgras delusion. Victims of this delusion, say psychologists Hadyn Ellis and Michael Lewis, are seized by the firm and sometimes dangerous belief that some people are no longer who they were: Instead they have been replaced by doubles, impostors, robots, aliens and so forth. First recognized more than a century ago in Germany, Capgras delusion takes its name from a French doctor who studied the notorious Madame M. in the 1920s. She insisted that her husband, children and neighbors had all been replaced by doubles. And then she believed that the doubles were replaced, as well. After a while she was on husband No. 80. Mme M. had other symptoms of mental illness, and Capgras sometimes occurs in schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. But it can also be caused by brain damage. In one recent case in Wales, a man injured in a car crash contended that his wife had been killed and then replaced. Sometimes, the impostor may be a favorite tool or pet. In most cases, though, the victim believes that some emotionally close person has been replaced by a doppelgänger of some sort, possibly an evil twin. In any event, even though the replacement looks the same, it doesn't feel the same ? the way that Alec Baldwin could tell something was wrong with Meg Ryan in Prelude to a Kiss. Sometimes the delusion is so strong that the victim begins plotting to kill the impostor. Capgras delusion could provide a clever twist for the next remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but that's not why scientists are interested. When something in the brain goes so wrong, it's an opportunity to find out how the brain works normally ? in this case, in recognizing familiar faces. Capgras delusion ... can provide us with a fascinating clue as to the very nature of normal face recognition, Drs. Ellis and Lewis write in the current issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Right away, the delusion suggests that recognizing someone's identity involves more than one brain process. Patients with Capgras delusion simultaneously recognize a face and, at the same time, deny its authenticity, note Drs. Ellis and Lewis, of Cardiff University in Wales. Therefore the normal brain must use one method for recognizing that a face is familiar and another for attaching an identity to it. Further clues come from another odd disorder, known as prosopagnosia, in which patients do not recognize familiar faces at all. (Victims of this disorder can, however, recognize familiar voices.) Prosopagnosia patients have no conscious recognition of familiar faces. But even while denying that a face is familiar, the patient's skin sweat increases just as when seeing familiar people. So it seems that the brain uses both a conscious and unconscious system for recognition. The conscious system decides whether the face looks like somebody familiar; the unconscious system confirms that the familiar face really does belong to the person it's supposed to. If that view is correct, the conscious system is damaged in prosopagnosia while the unconscious system is intact. In Capgras delusion, the problem is the opposite. The conscious system works, but no confirmation comes from the unconscious system. And recent studies show that skin sweat levels do not change for familiar faces in Capgras patients. Piecing together all this evidence, brain scientists have proposed that recognition involves two nerve pathways in the brain ? a lower path for recognizing familiarity in a face, and an upper path for assessing the face's significance. Capgras delusion disrupts the upper path. Of course, as Drs. Ellis and Lewis point out, it can't be all that simple. Even if the upper path does not confirm a face's identity, why is the result the delusion of a double? There must be some third part of the brain that is also disrupted ? whatever part compares the results of the two other processing paths. Some studies do suggest that there are different aspects of unconscious recognition involved in assessing faces. Some parts of the unconscious system do work right in Capgras, but others don't. Somehow the brain has to put all that information together correctly. If it doesn't, then delusions may result when the brain tries to create an explanation for why the pieces of the picture don't mesh. In any case, the study of Capgras delusion makes it clear that recognizing faces is not a simple mental process. It is
Re: the face of a tipster
OK, since there seems to be so much interest in this topic, here's the most recent photo of me. I'm a bit embarassed: the photo was taken just after I had jreturned home from a party in which I had had a little too much to drink. I'll never forgive my wife for taking it. http://members.nbci.com/uforelie/0roswell3.gif Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: the face of a tipster
People tell me that I somewhat resemble a cross between the Elephant Man and Mickey Rooney, with just a dash of George Clooney thrown in (only my left nostril). I hope this helps you get a better idea of what I look like. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Exorcising the Homunculus
A good article in the current issue of Free Inquiry: Exorcising the Homunculus: Theres no one behind the curtain by David C. Noelle http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/noelle_21_2.html From the conclusion: The traditional view of the will as a kind of little man in your head needs to be replaced by a detailed account of how neural tissue gives rise to controlled behavior. Preliminary attempts to understand the mechanisms of executive control have found that they do not form an isolated psychological faculty, but are heavily dependent on other psychological processes, including emotional response. Initial attempts to dissect the mental executive have identified critical roles for a frontal working memory system and a limbic reward-prediction system. The scientific exorcism of the homunculus continues, hoping to produce a clear view of how mere flesh can give rise to our most deliberate and considered actions. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Why Johnny Can't Read, Write, Multiply or Divide
An interesting article on educational standards from the NY Times. Jeff --- http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/15/weekinreview/15ZERN.html April 15, 2001 Why Johnny Can't Read, Write, Multiply or Divide By KATE ZERNIKE The book I would like to write about is called Of Mice and Men and there were two main real characters but the character I want to write about the character his name is Lenny, he really issn't the main character of the book Of Mice and Men. But in the story he played a keyrole. Lenny wassn't the smartest person but he was a real good worker. But nobody really listened to him cause everybody thought that he was stupid, but Lenny is just a little slow so nobody would pay attention to Lenny everybody would make fun of him. THIS stew of misspellings and bad grammar was composed recently by a Massachusetts high school student. It was an answer on the state's new graduation proficiency exam, which, starting this year, everyone must pass to earn a diploma. The student had been asked to identify and explain the importance of a secondary character in a work of literature or, in the words of another future grad, a charicter in a storey. The excerpt above met the criteria for proficient, and Massachusetts is considered to have some of the most rigorous high school standards in the country. State education officials, reacting to complaints that the test was too hard, posted this and other examples of student work on the state's Web site to show what it takes to pass the new test. The answers (at www.doe .mass.edu/mcas/student/2000/) range from amusing (one high-scoring student cited a James Bond novel as literature) to alarming (44 percent of those who passed did not know that 21 is 75 percent of 28). Taken as a group, they expose the dirty little secret of the standards movement sweeping the country: schools may be demanding more of students, but they still aren't demanding much. Most of the high school graduation tests are actually written to 10th-grade standards, but most people would be hard-pressed to say this is what a 10th-grade education should look like, said David T. Conley, a professor of education policy at the University of Oregon. Still, he said, Even starting out with low standards, just putting them in place has been a tremendous shock to kids who can't even do ninth-grade work. Most of the 28 states that now have graduation exams actually give them to students in the 10th grade. They do so for fear of lawsuits, since the courts have ruled in several cases that students must be given several chances to pass the test. This means that tests assessing a high school education really measure a 10th-grade education. And since the states set fairly low bars for passing, that level more accurately reflects what an eighth grader should have learned. States are well aware of this. Michael W. Kirst, a professor of education at Stanford and a member of the board that determined that the California exit exam should be given in 10th grade, said the panel was told to set the test to the standards for seventh and eighth grades. In the recent court case charging New York State with shortchanging students in New York City, the state defended itself by arguing that all it had to provide was an eighth-grade education, because that was what was needed to pass the Regents Competency Tests. Most states require anywhere from 18 to 24 course credits as well as the test to graduate. But there is no telling how rigorous those courses may be. There are still more states (29) that require physical education for high school graduation than there are those that require algebra (13) or biology (8). I'd stress that it's higher than it was before, said Wayne Martin, director of the state assessment center for the Council of Chief State School Officers. New York State is raising the demands on new Regents tests, and North Carolina is now phasing out a graduation exam that was set at an eighth-grade level. Under its Passport tests, Virginia used to test students for graduation at the sixth-grade level. Recognizing that this was a passport to little more than seventh grade, the state is now phasing in tests that will be taken at the end of high school courses in six subject areas. Partly, the defining downward of competence reflects the fact that a state politician wishing to remain in office might prefer a test that graduates a lot of students, rather than one that genuinely assesses how well schools are doing. In Nevada, Professor Conley says, the state simply looked for what cutoff score would allow about 80 percent of students to pass, and set the passing mark there. In Virginia, parents and teachers recently pressured the state into softening the standards needed to pass the tougher new tests, because even state officials conceded that they were so high that few students could meet them. BUT there is also a concern for students' self- esteem, as well as a reluctance to prevent
Re: That's it...we're done
I wrote: A silly question occurred to me after I finished reading another paper... As I re-read my post, I realize that I meant the question more seriously than this statement suggests. A characteristic of science is that we express tentativeness regarding our conclusions because we understand that any evidence used in support of a particular conclusion can be interpreted in other ways. In addition, we understand that evidence gathered in the future may fail to support the claim. In other words, we understand that knowledge is fallible and that conclusions are accurate only in a probabilistic sense. But, as I'm sure we've discussed before on this list, our tentativeness and explicit discussions of the fallibility of knowledge claims result in a public-relations problem for psychology. For example, my students sometimes express dismay at the difficulty of evaluating evidence and reaching a valid conclusion. Because it seems that it is mostly behavioral scientists, such as we psychologists, who express much uncertainty about their conclusions, I suspect that many students eventually think of psychology and these related sciences as not really science: we too often express tentativeness regarding our claims. That is why I like to show videos such as the Nova episode on facilitated communication. It seems to be one of the rare examples when we can say with much certainty: There...we've answered THAT question. It's a good example, I think, of a critical experiment in psychology. Are there any other easy-to-understand examples (critical experiments) in psychology that can demonstrate to students that psychologists can make conclusions that are very likely to be true? Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: The Lucifer Principle - redirect
Beth Benoit wrote: I still think the topic would be good for TIPS but it sounds as if it's going to go off on a religious tangent again. Sorry everybody! It's alright, Beth, it's not your fault. In fact, maybe we can put all this religious talk to our advantage! Perhaps the Templeton Foundation will give each of us an award or provide some type of funding for us to continue our discussions. In fact, it might be a good idea to start a new list, along the lines of TIPS-METHODS and TIPS-DEVELOPTIPS-RELIGION, which deals with the interface between psychology and religion. This certainly should draw a large number of subscribers, I would think. Waiting for the lightning to strike, Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd. FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department [EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Nonacademic jobs for psychology Ph.D.s
A recent Ph.D. in cognitive psychology is interested in looking for nonacademic positions. She asked me the following question: You don't happen to know a headhunter who works with PhDs out there, do you? Does anyone have an answer? Or is there any other relevant advice you can give to her? Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Summer reading recommendations
Somebody wrote: Whatever happened to summer reading list recommendations? I guess someone finally saw the light and is no longer recommending this type of bourgeois (sp) activity. Nope, your spelling is just fine. In fact, it suggests that, at some point in your life, reading may not have been a neglected activity (or perhaps you just used your spell checker). You would have looked more like a working-class hero if you had spelled it "boor jaw." Anyway, it's a great idea. Thanks for reminding us. In no particular order, here are a few of the books waiting for me this summer. (And, oh how I wish that the middle class actually did read more...and I don't mean just the stuff next to the supermarket check-out line.) Jeff - Dawes, R. M (2001). Everyday Irrationality : How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally Feder, K. L. (1998). Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries : Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. Mayfield. Spitz, H. H. (1997). Nonconscious Movements : From Mystical Messages to Facilitated Communication Hess, D. J. (1993). Science in the New Age : The Paranormal, Its Defenders and Debunkers, and American Culture Kleinman, A. (1991). Rethinking Psychiatry : From Cultural Category to Personal Experience Nuland, S. (2000). The Mysteries Within : A Surgeon Reflects on Medical Myths -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up. Lily Tomlin Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Suicide, dentists, and psychiatrists
I think that it was someone on TIPS (probably Stephen Black...that's my recollection, at least) who turned me on to Cecil Adams and "The Straight Dope." Here is a recent column on a topic that may be of interest to some of you. Jeff - http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010420.html Dear Cecil: I've always heard that dentists have the highest suicide level of any of the medical professions, but I've never believed it. Is there any truth to it? --Terey Allen, Trenton, Michigan Cecil replies: This is one of those dodgy things that "everybody knows." And not just the uninformed public, either--dentists themselves believe it. Since the 1960s dental journals have been carrying articles with headlines like "The Suicidal Professions." Dozens of studies have looked at suicide not only among dentists but among health-care workers in general. With few exceptions, research over the past 40 years has found that dentists (and doctors) take their own lives at a higher-than-average rate. But how much higher? To hear some tell it, you'd better not leave these guys in a room alone. Dentists' odds of suicide "are 6.64 times greater than the rest of the working age population," writes researcher Steven Stack. "Dentists suffer from relatively low status within the medical profession and have strained relationships with their clients--few people enjoy going to the dentist." One study of Oregon dentists found that they had the highest suicide rate of any group investigated. A California study found that dentists were surpassed only by chemists and pharmacists. Of 22 occupations examined in Washington state, dentists had a suicide rate second only to that of sheepherders and wool workers. But the sheer diversity of results has to make you suspicious. I mean, which is it--dentists, chemists and pharmacists, or sheepherders and wool workers? (What, the bleating gets to them?) And what about psychiatrists? One school of popular belief holds that they have the highest suicide rate. Read the studies and you begin to see the problem. Suicide research is inherently a little flaky, in part because suicides are often concealed. Equally important from a statistical standpoint is the problem of small numbers: dentists represent only a small fraction of the total population, only a small fraction of them die in a given year, and only a small fraction of those that die are suicides. So you've got people drawing grand conclusions based on tiny samples. For example, I see where the Swedes think their male dentists have an elevated suicide rate. Number of male-dentist suicides on which this finding is based: 18. But you aren't reading this column to hear me whine about the crummy data. You want the facts. Coming right up. All we need to do, for any occupation of interest, is (a) find a large, reasonably accurate source of mortality statistics, (b) compute suicides as a percentage of total deaths for said group, and (c) compare that percentage with some benchmark, like so: PERCENTAGE OF DEATHS DUE TO SUICIDE U.S. white male population 25 and older (1970): 1.5 U.S. white male dentists (1968-72): 2.0 (85 of 4,190) U.S. white male medical doctors (1967-72): 3.0 (544 of 17,979) U.S. white male population 25 and older (1990): 2.0 U.S. white male medical doctors (1984-95): 2.7 (379 of 13,790) I know what you're thinking. Percentages! They're so primitive! What about the Poisson distribution, the chi-square test, the multivariate regression analysis? Not to mention the fact that I don't express suicides relative to 100,000 living population; that I haven't corrected for age distribution, socioeconomic status, etc; and that I couldn't find any current data for dentist mortality in the readily available literature. Sue me. We've got enough here to draw some basic conclusions. Suicide among white male American dentists is higher than average but not as high as among white male American doctors. (Sorry to limit this to white men, but that's all the data I had to work with.) Don't fret, though. Dentists' death rates from other causes are lower, and on average they live several years longer than the general population. Ditto for doctors. What's the most suicidal occupation? I won't venture an opinion for the world of work overall, but among health-care types it may well be shrinks. In a study of 18,730 physician deaths from 1967 to 1972 (men and women), psychiatrists accounted for 7 percent of the total but 12 percent of the 593 suicides. Even more alarming is the rate of suicide among female doctors. A recent study found that 3.6 percent of white female doctors' deaths were suicides--higher than the rate for male doctors and many times the average for U.S. women (0.5 percent for 1990). Women have entered medicine in huge numbers in recent decades, but progress has come at a price. --CECIL ADAMS -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX
Brain activity and religious experiences
Given the extent to which religion gets discussed on TIPS in recent years, I thought that some of you might be interested in reading the following article from the current New Scientist. I have reproduced the first few paragraphs below. Jeff --- http://www.newscientist.com/newsletter/features.jsp?id=ns22871 New Scientist April 21, 2001 IN SEARCH OF GOD Are our religious feelings just a product of how the brain works? Bob Holmes meets the researchers who are trying to explain our most sacred thoughts EINSTEIN FELT IT. It's what draws people to church, prayer, meditation, sacred dance and other rituals. Chances are you've felt something like it too--in the mountains, by the sea, or perhaps while listening to a piece of music that's especially close to your heart. In fact, more than half of people report having had some sort of mystical or religious experience. For some, the experience is so intense it changes their life forever. But what is "it"? The presence of God? A glimpse of a higher plane of being? Or just the mystical equivalent of dj vu, a trick the brain sometimes plays on your conscious self? At some level, of course, all our thoughts and sensations--however unusual--must involve the brain. Indeed, experiments on the brain have led neuroscientists to suggest that the capacity for religion may somehow be hardwired into us. If so, why do people's religious experiences differ so profoundly, moving some so deeply while leaving others cold? Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, has been fascinated by the neurobiology of religion for more than a decade. He admits it's an awkward role for a scientist. "I always get concerned that people will say I'm a religious person who's trying to prove that God exists, or I'm a cynic who's trying to prove that God doesn't exist," he says. "But we try to approach it without bias." Earlier this month he published a book, which lays out the most complete theory to date of how mystical or religious experiences can be generated in the brain. Together with the now deceased Eugene d'Aquili, a colleague from Penn, Newberg was keen to study the sensations that are unique to religious experiences but shared by people of all faiths. One of these is the sense of "oneness with the Universe" that enthralled Einstein. The other is the feeling of awe that accompanies such revelations and makes them stand out as more important, more highly charged, and in a way more real than our everyday lives. [For the rest of article, go to: -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up. Lily Tomlin Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Faith-based TIPS? (Transpersonal Psychology)
Jim Clark wrote: [B]elow are a small sampling of the readily attainable quotes that critique the methods of science. Having spent far too much time over the past 20 years reading critiques of science like this, I can affirm that the challenges are very deep (although vacuous) Although coming at this issue from a slightly different (but closely related) approach, we should not forget the views of those who promote "alternative ways of knowing" (AWKs). My favorite book promoting AWKs is _Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Sciences: Honoring Human Experience_ by William Braud and Rosemarie Anderson (1998). In some ways, it represents a more subtle critique of science than some of the people Jim quotes. This is because the book's authors claim to accept the methods of conventional science when the goal is to answer questions about the natural world. When studying human experience, on the other hand, they believe that we need to expand our view of what we consider to be acceptable research methodology. With such an expanded view, they argue, we could study "scientifically" various phenomena associated with spirituality and other specifically human activities and experiences. Nevertheless, regardless of their claim to appreciate traditional scientific methodology for certain questions, when taken as a whole, their advocation of AWKs represents a fundamental critique of science. One could choose virtually any page for examples of this. Here are some: "Any and all sources of evidence, ways of knowing, and ways of working with and expressing knowledge, findings, and conclusions can be brought to bear on the issues being researched There is an epistemological stance of what William James...called _radical empiricism_--a stance that excludes anything that is not directly experienced but includes _everything_ that is directly experienced, by anyone in the research effort. Thus, the research participants' subjective experiences and self-perceptions are treated as valid data, as are the experiences and perceptions of the investigator. There is an important place for intuitive, tacit, and direct knowing; for various ARATIONAL ways of processing information; and for a variety of forms of creative expression in conducting and communicating research." (emphasis added; p. 241) "Largely abandoned by the psychologies of quantification in particular, vast domains of rich human experiences [examples would be love, imagination, intuition, altered states of consciousness, and mystical experiences] seem ignored by conventional psychology Psychology is, after all, the study of human behavior and experience, including their fullest expressions. Methods falling short of including 'the farther reaches of human nature' fail to explore the fulness of being alive here and now in this extraordinary experience called daily life Regrettably, research in transpersonal psychology has often seemed stymied by reliance on the experimental methods it inherited from the dominant psychologies of the 1960s and 1970s [With respect to research methods, the] essential qualities proposed here place attributes such as intuition, compassion, immediate apprehension of meaning, and service to society's disenfranchised persons as central to scientific or empirical inquiry in psychology. [New Paragraph] It is recommended that investigators-researchers incorporate the features, skills, and procedures of intuitive inquiry into other forms of research, including conventional behavioral research. Much of what is proposed here is simply good science (if only we would do it)" (p. 70) "The principle of sympathetic resonance introduces resonance as a validation procedure for the researcher's particular intuitive insights and syntheses. The principle suggests that research can function more like poetry in its capacity for immediate apprehension and recognition of an experience spoken by another and yet (surprisingly and refreshingly, perhaps) be true for the researcher, as well. The procedures, insights, data analysis, and synthesis of transpersonal research may begin to approach the borders of understanding and communication that seem more like poetry than like conventional empirical science as we have known it in the 19th and 20th centuries. Describing the richness and fullness of human experience may require the use of metaphors, similes, and symbols." (p. 73) That may be true, but should we call that "science"? Well, I could go on like this all day. Let me just present to you their comparison of the "prevailing scientific paradigm" with their "alternative scientific paradigm"--the latter being the one they would like science to incorporate (I have adapted the following from a table that they present on page 12). Note, by the way, that when the word "truth" is used, it appears in scare quotes: PREVAILING SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM: (1) Monolithic, "truth" viewed as universal and singular (i.e., "one truth"); denies the validity
Belief, Faith, and Science
These discussions about religion that have arisen often on TIPS over the last year or so are always fascinating for any number of reasons. The latest discussion seems to be focused on the instrumental value of religion (specifically, the association of religious belief with moral behavior). Religious belief may or may not have such an instrumental value; but for me, the crux of the matter always comes down to the reasons that one believes something to be true in the first place. And I think that this question is what keeps this issue alive on TIPS: there is a fundamental disagreement among people on this list regarding the issue of what is a good reason for believing something to be true. In our scientific work, virtually everyone on this list would agree that one must have adequate evidence in support of a claim before one can give one's assent to it, although we might disagree over what we consider to be adequate evidence as well as other related issues. Some people on this list, however, seem to compartmentalize this scientific principle: it pertains to their scientific work and to practical questions they may want answered in their everyday lives (such as why their car wouldn't start this morning). In other areas of their lives, faith (believing without the need for evidence) as well as "alternative ways of knowing" seem not only sufficient reasons for believing something to be true, but perhaps even virtuous. Then there are those, such as I, who do not compartmentalize the scientific principle that adequate evidence is required before one can give one's assent to a claim (not that one always lives by this ideal, but that one always strives to do so). These people often cannot understand why someone would believe something on faith: such a reason is often incomprehenible to them (even for those of us who used to have similar faith-based beliefs). To argue that faith has an instrumental value is irrelevant to such people: there seems to be a fundamental philosophical divide between those who are able to accept beliefs on faith and those who are unable to. Even if the evidence were incontrovertible that faith leads to increases in measures of moral behavior, health, happiness, sexual vigor, physical attractiveness, wealth, success, and so on, a person who cannot accept a belief on faith will be unmoved. For me, the teaching message I have learned from these many threads is this: for many of our students (as well as for many of our teachers), there are strict limits to the lesson that one must collect and evaluate evidence before one can accept a claim as likely to be true. For certain claims, evidence is seen as unnecessary. For those of us who believe adequate evidence is always necessary regardless of the nature of the claim, we must ask ourselves to what extent we need to challenge the faith-based perspective in order to teach our lesson about the need for supporting evidence. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up. Lily Tomlin Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: class questions
I just got back from the local convenience store where I invested a quarter of my pay check in lottery tickets: just preparing for my retirement. With my "9-commandments plaque" (there's one that I still have some questions about) firmly affixed to the wall next to my computer terminal, I now am ready to respond to some teaching-related questions. Gerald Peterson wrote: I have noticed at various times that students having the most difficulty in class also have trouble locating material in the text and understanding questions I was wondering if others have found that students having difficulty in class really do not seem to understand the questions being asked? Is this just a problem in how questions are worded, or are their confusions tied to reading/listening comprehension? It struck me because those in the class having test difficulty were especially prone to such confusions. When students first enroll for courses at my school, they are supposed to take placements tests for writing, math, and reading classes. Whenever a student comes to my office and tells me that he/she has studied for the tests in just the way I have discussed during class and still they are getting D's and F's, I typically will look up their scores on the reading-placement test. In the vast majority of cases, they have scored in the range that places them into remedial-reading courses. In other words, the little evidence I have suggests to me that students who enter schools that have minimal selection criteria tend to have substandard reading abilities. When I question these students, they often tell me that much of the book is near-gibberish to them as are many of my test questions. I first noticed how difficult it is for someone to study from a textbook while I was helping my daughter (who was in fourth grade at the time). It is very difficult to learn to identify important points in a textbook reading, even when one's comprehension is good. It must be even more difficult when one's comprehension of written material is poor, as it seems to be for many of my students. When they take a test on this textbook material, their poor reading skills make it difficult for them to determine the meaning an intent of the questions. This is a "double whammy": they aren't understanding well the textbook and they aren't understanding well the test questions about the textbook material. I have written an intro-psych textbook that, I believe, should be understandable to people with relatively low reading skills; and I take care when writing my test questions not to use words that are too complex. But I am constantly surprised by poor vocabulary among my students. For example, I no longer use the word "adolescence" in my courses unless I specifically define it several times during class: many students have no idea what it means. It may be illuminating to give your students a reading-comprehension test and correlate scores on that test with scores on textbook material. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up. Lily Tomlin Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Using the number of Internet hits as data
Jim Clark wrote: Personally, I am skeptical as to the need for religion in order to promote moral living, but other far more notable figures than I appear to believe otherwise. Below is a link to a paper by David Myers on the subject. http://www.christianityonline.com/ct/2000/005/6.94.html An interesting article. There was one point that grabbed my attention. An argument was made that claimed that there is a growing "spiritual hunger" in the US and other countries. Of course, it is difficult to provide supporting evidence for this argument since most of the relevant evidence, it seems to me, can be interpreted in various ways. Although I believe that this claim is a plausible one (and I even suspect that it is true), I don't know how credible it is. One piece of evidence in support of it was stated as follows: "This spiritual hunger is manifest all about us: [a number of observations are provided here]; on the Internet, where Alta Vista finds 'God' on 3.6 million pages." This seemed to be an interesting type of evidence--one I decided to think about further. I am serious about this: I wanted to consider the value of this type of evidence because I have seen such data used before to support arguments. (To be fair to David, this was a very, very minor part of what he was trying to say; so this post should not be seen as implying anything about his argument, even though I was not convinced by it.) My suspicion was, however, that this type of datum generally is uninterpretable. I think that what I present below supports this conclusion. Intrigued by the large number of hits for "God," I searched Alta Vista for other words that deal with broad areas of interest to people. Here are my results in order from highest to lowest number of hits: education--37,611,800 entertainment--34,742,390 science--29,882,895 money--21,443,855 sex--15,131,880 literature--8,676,995 religion--8,499,610 politics--8,129,545 philosophy--5,369,865 spirituality--1,533,065 If we interpret these results in the manner typical for those who use such results as evidence, then it's good to know that education is the thing that people are most concerned with in life, although it is not far ahead of entertainment. (It probably would be best if we could combine the two in some way. We'd really have something then.) Science has a very respectable showing, it seems to me. Money is a distant fourth and is even ahead of sex. Religion seems to be somewhere down in the muck with politics; and spirituality, the newest buzz word, is not even in the running. I then thought I would examine actual entities, since this was the original evidence referred to. Again, from highest to lowest number of hits: Jesus--5,787,445 God--5,022,040 Buddha--1,112,750 Beatles--474,215 Madonna--354,290 Backstreet Boys--318,989 Britney Spears--266,052 Allah--240,370 William Shakespeare--164,241 Plato--145,950 Marilyn Monroe--117,186 Socrates--112,347 Richard Nixon--83,023 Oprah Winfrey--65,890 Sigmund Freud--60,331 George Bush (both father and son together)--57,379 Albert Einstein--50,302 James Dewey--23,337 Hugh Hefner--10,653 James B. Conant--7,771 Monica Lewinsky--5,834 Soupy Sales--2,413 Jeffry Ricker--42 (and not all the sites listed were about me, which is true of some of the people listed above, too) So here, when we focus on actual entities, religion comes to the forefront, way ahead of educators, entertainers, and scientists (and me). Jesus edged out God for the top spot. Interesting to see that the Beatles are not bigger than Jesus. I guess burning all those records worked. Educators and scientists now are down in the muck with politicians. Well, I'm not sure what to make of all this except to say that I think I'll refrain from collecting such "data" in the future whenever I try to support a position. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up. Lily Tomlin Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Interesting NY Times book review
For those of you interested in sociological analyses of life in the US--especially those focused on issues of individualism and morality (which are of much interest to me)--then there is a NY Times book review for you: "Have a Nice Life: Alan Wolfe finds that in matters of morality, Americans are surprisingly nonjudgmental". By WENDY KAMINER April 8, 2001 http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/08/reviews/010408.08kaminet.html Plus, I like the way Wendy Kaminer thinks. An added bonus. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up. Lily Tomlin Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
An update on John Gray's alma mater
Students occasionally ask us about John Gray ("Men are From Mars, Women
are From Venus"). Thus, his name has come up on TIPS before. At those
times, we discussed Columbia Pacific University, the school where John
Gray is said to have obtained his Ph. D. I thought that you might want
an update on Gray's alma mater. I got from the following from the
Skeptic's Dictionary (go to:
http://skepdic.com/refuge/funk.html#diploma):
"March 14, 2001. Columbia Pacific University (CPU) has been shut down by
California state officials who called it a "diploma mill." It has been
operating without state approval since June 1997. According to an
Associated Press article in the Sacramento Bee, the state has been
trying to shut down the school almost from the day it opened, saying CPU
"had virtually no academic standards." Dr. John Gray (or John Gray,
Ph.D.) got his right to put Dr. in front of his name (or Ph.D. after it)
by getting a diploma from CPU: a doctorate in psychology.
"Gray claims to be a leading authority in communication and
relationships between men and women. He is the author of several popular
books such as Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. He is also one of
the New Age darlings of public television. He is obviously well-trained,
but not in the academic discipline of psychology."
For an interesting description of the "academic standards" at CPU, go
to:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/women_rebuttal_from_uranus/school.htm
If you would like to see John Gray's web site, go to:
http://www.marsvenus.com/cgi-bin/link/home/index.html?id=VmsR3HQo
Jeff
--
Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213
9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298
Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Scottsdale Community College
Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626
"Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths"
Karl Popper
No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.
Lily Tomlin
Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Walloonphobia--fear of geography
Yesterday, I wrote: Walloonphobia- Fear of the Walloons. (I don't know what a Walloon is, but I shrieked when I read the word.) Both Joe Hatcher and Philippe Gervaix informed me that Walloons are French Belgians. This makes sense to me since I also diagnosed myself with Dutchphobia and, geographically speaking, there is some slight similarity. Philippe wrote: Wallonia is the French speaking part of Belgium, and of course, the Walloons the inhabitants thereof. In Belgium, it is one of the linguistic minorities, pretty much like the French-speaking population of Quebec, with all the political sociological implications of cohabitation (jokes included)... Philippe Gervaix French-speaking minority citizen of Switzerland (Minor but not the smallest non-german speaking part of the population: beside German French, we have Italian and Romantsch speaking minorities). PS. I wonder what would be the equivalent of Walloonphobia overseas ! Good question! I nominate Cajunphobia (fear of the French-descended inhabitants of Louisiana). But this probably would not be politically correct in the US, and it's Eurocentric to boot!! Thus, I nominate "offenderaphobia," the fear of saying something offensive (a major problem in the US). Jeff P.S. My offenderaphobia requires me to inform you that I just did something very offensive: I attached a Latin word, "offendere," to the Greek, "phobos." I know that this is probably offensive to all you "phobophiles" out there, but I don't have a Greek dictionary handy. Perhaps I need to sign up for some sort of diversity-training course . . . or maybe a class in Greek. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up. Lily Tomlin Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Be afraid . . . be VERY afraid
I found a site that lists the terms for hundreds of phobias as well as their definitions (go to: http://www.phobialist.com/). I thought that it might be fun to hand out in your courses when you discuss anxiety disorders. Being someone who suffers from many anxiety problems, I examined the list carefully and discovered that I suffer from polyphobia (the fear of many things). For example, I diagnosed myself with the following: Arachibutyrophobia- Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth. Defecaloesiophobia- Fear of painful bowels movements. (Isn't everybody?) Dutchphobia- Fear of the Dutch. Dextrophobia- Fear of objects to the right side of the body. Levophobia- Fear of things to the left side of the body. (I stare straight ahead at all times.) Geniophobia- Fear of chins. (I can't watch any movie with Kirk Douglas in it.) Walloonphobia- Fear of the Walloons. (I don't know what a Walloon is, but I shrieked when I read the word.) Zemmiphobia- Fear of the great mole rat. (Well, of course!) And I'll bet that some of you wish that I had the following: Cyberphobia- Fear of computers or working on a computer. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper (THE MYTHOPHOBIC) No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up. Lily Tomlin Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
A student is not an input
Here is an interesting commentary on the business model of higher education by Michele Tolela Myers, the president of Sarah Lawrence College. Jeff -- http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/26/opinion/26MYER.html March 26, 2001 A Student Is Not an Input By MICHELE TOLELA MYERS BRONXVILLE, N.Y. Attend a conference of higher education leaders these days, and you will hear a lot of talk about things like brand value, markets, image and pricing strategy. In the new lingua franca of higher education, students are "consumers of our product" in one conversation or presentation and "inputs" a part of what we sell in the next. It's easy enough to see why academia has gotten caught up in this kind of talk. We borrow the language of business because we are forced to operate like businesses. Higher education has become more and more expensive at the same time it has become increasingly necessary. As we look for ways to operate efficiently and make the most of our assets, we begin learning about outsourcing, for-profit ventures, the buying and selling of intellectual property. And as the public is well aware, colleges and universities are now in conscious and deliberate competition with one another. We "bid for student talent," as the new language would put it, because we know that "star value" in the student body affects the "brand value" of the university's name: its prestige, its rankings, its desirability, and ultimately its wealth and its ability to provide more "value per dollar" to its "customers." But there is something troubling about the ease with which these new words roll off our tongues. I pay attention to words and how we speak about things because language tells us a good deal about how we think and feel, and ultimately, how we act. What are the implications of thinking of a college or university as a brand? We know that some people will pay anything for prestige brand names. And as a result, some children are under unhealthy pressure from the time their parents begin panicking about which nursery school they will go to. Yet, prestige sells, prestige provides value; we know it, parents and students know it. We at the colleges scramble to get up on that ladder. A business professor told a group of us at one recent conference that to run a successful organization you had better make decisions on the basis of being "best in the world," and if you couldn't be best in the world in something, then you outsourced the function or got rid of the unit that didn't measure up. Have we really come to believe that we can only measure ourselves in relation to others, and that value and goodness are only measured against something outside the self? Do we really want to teach our children that life is all about beating the competition? As we in the academy begin to use business-speak fluently, we become accustomed to thinking in commercialized terms about education. We talk no longer as public intellectuals, but as entrepreneurs. And we thus encourage instead of fight the disturbing trend that makes education a consumer good rather than a public good. If we think this way, our decisions will be driven, at least in part, by consumers' tastes. Are we ready to think that we should only teach what students want or be driven out of business? Physics is hard, it is costly, it is undersubscribed. Should it be taught only in engineering schools? I don't think so. Should we not teach math because everyone can get a cheap calculator? Should we stop teaching foreign languages because English has become the international language? And what about the arts, literature, philosophy? Many might think them impractical. I think we have a responsibility to insist that education is more than learning job skills, that it is also the bedrock of a democracy. I think we must be very careful that in the race to become wealthier, more prestigious, and to be ranked Number One, we don't lose sight of the real purpose of education, which is to make people free to give them the grounding they need to think for themselves and participate as intelligent members of a free society. Obsolete or naive? I surely hope not. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
The myth continues
We have had discussions before on TIPS about the origins of what seems to be a myth regarding the need to drink eight glasses of water per day. For those who may discuss various myths in their courses, you may want to take a look at page 61 of the New Yorker. A cartoon on this page shows a man sitting at a bar and saying to the bartender: "Water, Al--six to eight glasses." For you Powerpointers among us (yes, I mean you, Stephen), it could provide a nice introduction to a discussion of myths in general. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: The myth continues
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jeff: Do you know if it's [the cartoon is] available online? thanks annette Yes, you can find it at: http://www.cartoonbank.com/cartoon_closeup.asp?pf%5Fid=45285dept%5Fid=1001mscssid=0K2LWUDDR6S92M5000GPBQXDM6E6B579 I'm thinking that you may have to register on the New Yorker web site before you can get to this page, but I am not sure. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
The purpose of education
I have been thinking about the question posed by Pat Cabe the other day regarding the theme of a speech he is to give at his school's commencement: I've been thinking that it might be nice to talk about some of the correlates of obtaining a college education. Some of the possible correlates he mentioned were income, divorce rates, mental health, physical health, longevity, criminal convictions, and delinquency. In other words, he was asking about the possible effects of an individual's education on what we might call "the good life." It seemed to me that Pat's question reflected a common view of the purpose of an education: that it should help the individual live a successful life with regard to things such as occupational functioning and health--that education should lead the individual to become a successful member of society , as our society currently defines success. Call me idealistic, but I often cringe when I hear such questions because I have never looked at the purpose of education in this way. I suppose that, to be brief, I see the purpose of education as the development of wisdom rather than the development of skills leading to success. I think of wisdom as involving a deep understanding of the world--an understanding that results from a broad knowledge of the universe as well as from a critical examination of values (of what should be of fundamental importance in life). Wisdom should allow one to make decisions "wisely"--to make decisions informed by good judgement and a well-developed sense. An education with wisdom as the goal cannot be gained in four years of college: it is a life-long process. But one's undergraduate education should help one to develop some habits of thought and knowledge that can assist in the process. These are the sorts of things I would emphasize in my commencement speech. In fact, I can give an example of such a speech (go to: http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC27/Orr.htm) by David Orr, a faculty member at Oberlin College and the founder of the Meadowcreek Project, an environmental education center in Fox, AR. As you might expect, environmental issues are an important focus of his speech. But, for me, the more general message he is sending out is much more important. I have quoted below a couple passages that point to this more general message. Jeff Excerpt from: What Is Education For? Six myths about the foundations of modern education, and six new principles to replace them David Orr http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC27/Orr.htm "...there is a myth that the purpose of education is that of giving you the means for upward mobility and success. Thomas Merton once identified this as the 'mass production of people literally unfit for anything except to take part in an elaborate and completely artificial charade.' When asked to write about his own success, Merton responded by saying that 'if it so happened that I had once written a best seller, this was a pure accident, due to inattention and naivet, and I would take very good care never to do the same again.' His advice to students was to 'be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success.' "The plain fact is that the planet does not need more 'successful' people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these needs have little to do with success as our culture has defined it." And: "The goal of education is not mastery of subject matter, but of one's person. Subject matter is simply the tool. Much as one would use a hammer and chisel to carve a block of marble, one uses ideas and knowledge to forge one's own personhood. For the most part we labor under a confusion of ends and means, thinking that the goal of education is to stuff all kinds of facts, techniques, methods, and information into the student's mind, regardless of how and with what effect it will be used. The Greeks knew better." -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: The purpose of education
I noticed that my last message was missing an important word, which I have placed in brackets, in the following sentence: Wisdom should allow one to make decisions "wisely"-- to make decisions informed by good judgement and a well-developed [MORAL] sense. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Ig Noble prize for MRI coitus photos
What a title! Some time ago, I believe it was Stephen Black who mentioned an article by W. W. Schultz, P. van Andel, I. Sabelis, and E. Mooyaart in the British Medical Journal (Vol. 319, 1999, pp 1596-1600) called, "Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Male and Female Genitals During Coitus and Female Sexual Arousal" (go to: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/319/7225/1596). Apparently, these authors won the 2000 Ig Noble Prize in Medicine for this report. Ida Sabelis, one of the co-authors, was one of the two people pictured in the MRI photos (I'll let you guess which one). Although she did not attend the ceremony, she wrote an acceptance speech for the prize, which you can read at http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume7/v7i1/sabel-speech-7-1.html. In the speech, she describes (in broken English) the events leading up to the event as well as what happened while they were in the MRI machine. I hope that I am not repeating something that has already been mentioned on TIPS. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Correlates of a college education
How about emphasizing the enormously positive effects on the economy of having a group of young people with a great deal of disposable income stuck at school for four years with little to do but spend money (assuming that their studies take up little of their time)? Also, how about mentioning the economic benefits associated with big-time college sports and all the products constantly hawked during televised games and commercial breaks, as well as all the beer and other alcoholic beverages sold and consumed during games? I need a vacation. Feeling cynical, Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Oliver Sacks on autism
Jeff Ricker wrote: ...there is an article by Oliver Sacks in which he reviews a book written [BY] an autistic person I meant to say ABOUT instead of BY. The book was written by the person's mother. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Oliver Sacks on autism
Hello all, In the current issue of the NY Review of Books, there is an article by Oliver Sacks in which he reviews a book written by an autistic person. I have excerpted the first paragraph, but I just noticed that you can get the entire article at http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWfeatdisplay.cgi?20010329004F Jeff P.S. And I'm swearing off any cynical attempts at humor from this point on. Starting now, I never again will post a frivolous message! They all will exhibit complete seriousness (or is it seriosity?). --- March 29, 2001 Leaving Nirvana OLIVER SACKS "In 1967, a remarkable book was published, The Siege, by Clara Claiborne Park, an account of her daughters first eight years. It was remarkable on several counts. It was the first inside (as opposed to clinical) account of an autistic childs development and life; and it was written with an intelligence, a clearsightedness, an insight, and a love that brought out to the full the absolute strangeness, the otherness, of the autistic mind. It also brought out how much an empathetic understanding could help to lay siege to autisms seemingly impregnable isolation."... -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Article on evolution and creationism
Here is an article from The Scientist 15[6]:1, Mar. 19, 2001. I send this because of the discussion that occurred recently here on TIPS regarding this topic. Jeff - http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2001/mar/russo_p1_010319.html Fighting Darwin's Battles Symposium marks evolutionist victory, anti-evolution growth By Eugene Russo For the past 80 years, the teaching of evolution has flirted with extinction several times in several states. From the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, to the recent debate in Kansas, Creationist challenges to the teaching of Charles Darwin's theory have persisted despite mounting evidence in support of it. According to a panel of scientists and historians speaking at a symposium at last month's American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, such challenges, often involving proposals to give "equal time" to Creationist and evolutionist theories, will continue both nationally and internationally. The AAAS symposium took place four days after the February 14 decision by the Kansas State Board of Education, which reinstated evolution in that state's public school curriculum as mandatory, reversing a previous board's decision from August 1999. The symposium itself was held to mark the 20th anniversary of another important battleground for the teaching of evolution: the landmark McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education trial. In 1981, five scientists, four of whom spoke at the symposium, helped invalidate an Arkansas statute requiring equal classroom time for evolution and Creationism. "I don't think we could possibly have lost that trial," said trial witness and Harvard University professor of zoology Stephen J. Gould. "But it had to [take] place." He pointed out that he and his colleagues were not trying to prove evolution, only show that "Creationism, whatever it is, is not a science." Gould, along with other McLean trial veterans--biology professor Harold J. Morowitz of George Mason University, biology professor and ordained priest Francisco Ayala of the University of California at Irvine, and dean emeritus of Oregon State University's College of Oceanic Atmospheric Sciences G. Brent Dalrymple--discussed advances in their respective fields in the past 20 years that have helped reinforce the theory of evolution. Florida State University professor of philosophy and zoology Michael J. Ruse, also a witness in McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, did not attend. Gould suggested that paleontology has had a "very fruitful" 20 years. He cited findings that have helped "fill the gaps" in the fossil record, such as the 1994 discovery of the skeleton of the "walking whale" (Ambulocetus) in northern Pakistan, an apparent intermediary between aquatic and land mammals.1 Ayala noted that mitochondrial DNA evidence from recent years lends support to the "out of Africa" theory for how human ancestors migrated among the continents. Dalrymple pointed to research out of western Australia from earlier this year reporting mineral evidence for the existence of continental crust and oceans 4.4 billion years ago, an important contrast to "Young Earth Creationist" claims of a much younger planet.2 The recent human genome papers have also elucidated human evolution by highlighting humans' high number of nucleotide repeats, and the numerous protein domains that humans share with other species.3 "The genome has now a fossil record, a paleontological record, of the last billion years of genome evolution," maintains Eric Lander, director of the Whitehead Center for Genome Research in Cambridge, Mass. Nevertheless, Creationist movements have increased budgets and bases of support. The Young Earth Creationists (YEC), who believe, in part, that God created Earth and all types of living things in six days 10,000 years ago, have two organizations with $5 million budgets: the Santee, Calif.-based Institute for Creation Research, and the newer Answers In Genesis. A February 2001 Gallup poll suggests that more Americans favor some form of Creationism than they do any theory of evolution (See www.gallup.com/Poll/releases/pr010305.asp for poll results). Public opinion on the topic, according to annual poll results, has not deviated significantly since Gallup first started asking about evolution and Creationism in 1982. According to Ron L. Numbers, an historian of science at the University of Wisconsin, symposium discussant, and author of The Creationists,4 Creationist movements, though typically considered a uniquely American phenomenon, have bloomed internationally as well. Numbers noted well-established YEC movements in Australia, Korea, Russia, and Turkey. Recently, a new facet of anti-evolution has surfaced in addition to YEC. In the last 10 years, "Intelligent Design (ID) Theory," or "Intelligent Design Creationism" as it's known by its critics, has captured much attention.5 According to symposium participant and
Re: abnormal psychology
Jim Guinee wrote: Jeff Ricker wrote: I have had several students develop psychotic episodes during the semester (and sometimes show up for class during them) How do you know they had developed a psychotic episode? Doesn't that sound more like the power of suggestion -- what kind of students do you teach? What have you [said??] when this has occurred? Jim, Although I believe that suggestion (which perhaps we might define, in part, as uncritically acting upon the ideas of another) is a very powerful influence on various mental events and behavior (especially those involving anxiety, depression, and pain), I have seen little evidence that it can lead to psychotic episodes outside of the intense and prolonged interactions that sometimes lead to shared psychotic disorder. But perhaps I simply have not heard of the relevant studies. But you ask for examples. Last year, I had a student stop me just before I entered my abnormal-psych class (he was a student in that class). He discussed with me all sorts of bizarre delusions and was overtly psychotic at the time. Just last week I found out that he had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder (and he is still a student here). I also have had several students develop manic episodes during which they became psychotic and sometimes would come to see while experiencing psychotic episodes. They would tell me afterwards that they had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. What have I said? I have attempted to get them help in any way I could. For several years, I worked with seriously mentally ill people (mostly schizophrenics) at a community mental health center here in the Phoenix area. So, I am very used to talking with such people. I also know that a large number of these people enroll, at times, in the ten local community colleges; so it is not unusual that, in teaching a course such as abnormal psychology, I would see a very large number of seriously mentally ill people over the years. Lastly, my students are in the prime age ranges for developing various psychotic disorders (especially schizophrenia) as well as disorders that often involve psychosis (such as bipolar disorder). Given that several percent of the general population develop such disorders at some point during their lifetimes, and also given that they tend to want to find out more about their problems (if they have begun to experience some already) and, thus, tend to enroll in abnormal psychology, it would be more surprising if I had never come across students experiencing psychotic episodes. But then, perhaps I somehow DO cause the development of psychotic symptoms in vulnerable students simply by talking about them. It would be an interesting research project, don't you think? Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: pests-l need critical thinking video
Annette Taylor wrote: So I'd like to know what all of you tipsters and/or pests use for teaching critical thinking. Which videos have you seen/shown that were good, and which were not so good. Annette, You can find on the PESTS web site a listing of videos that subscribers have found useful for teaching critical thinking about psychology. Go to the "Teaching Activities" page on the site (http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/demos.html). Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Abnormal Psychology
Beth Benoit wrote: I worry a lot, when teaching abnormal psych., that having the students attempt to apply abnormal psychology concepts to themselves can be dangerous. They don't have the expertise, of course, and they're very vulnerable. My comments are somewhat tangential to the original message sent out by Rod Hetzel (which probably is a reflection of my own formal thought disorder). Instead, I want to reinforce the point made here by Beth. One lesson I have had to learn again and again over the years as I teach abnormal psychology is that a number of the students in each class are very concerned about their own mental functioning. Just this morning, I received a message from an abnormal-psychology student that had the following header: "I need to talk." She told me that she is very worried that she might have one of the mental disorders, which she left unmentioned, discussed in class. Since we have discussed mostly various disorders typically characterized by psychotic episodes, I suspect I know the source of her fears (although I hope I'm wrong). I have had several students develop psychotic episodes during the semester (and sometimes show up for class during them) as well as many more students who complain of more "mundane" problems (such as obsessive-compulsive symptoms, depression, and eating disorders). Many students seem to take abnormal psychology because they or a member of their families are suffering from serious emotional difficulties and they would like to learn more. Thus, a great deal of sensitivity is required when teaching such a course. Because I have a very dry (and often dark) sense of humor that people often misunderstand, I have to be very careful in a course like this. It seems that there is no mental disorder I discuss that at least one student in class either fears having him-/herself or believes a family member to have. I have nothing more to say than simply to make this cautionary point. Teaching abnormal psychology, as well as several other psychology courses, is a completely different experience from my former job teaching biology courses such as human genetics. In the latter courses, there was almost always a detachment from the material being discussed that made it much easier to let one's guard down. That is definitely not the case now. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Abnormal Psychology
Regarding an assignment she gives to students in her abnormal-psychology course, the ever-informative Beth Benoit wrote: So I often have them select a character from a book or movie (preferably with an obvious diagnosis, such as Glenn Close's "Fatal Attraction" character, who was a borderline, or Sigourney Weaver's agoraphobic/panic disorder character in "Copycat"). And the definitely nonhysterical but still infamous Dr. Nanjo wrote in response to another post: I would speculate that Blanche in "Streetcar" is a pretty good fictional representation of a person with histrionic personality disorder, and perhaps a co-existing depression or bipolar illness. Let me tell you about my experience of synchronicity! Just after I read these messages, I saw the following in a book I currently am reading by Elaine Showalter (1997): "[A]fter centuries of serving as the wastebasket diagnosis of psychiatry and medicine, hysteria has now become the wastebasket category of literary criticism, into which any excitable heroine from Jane Eyre to Blanche DuBois [yes...Blanche DuBois!] can be tossed. The label has been applied to stories in which heroines become mute or nervous invalids but also to stories in which they are merely unhappy, histrionic, rebellious, or shaky. Critics see George Eliot's sexually repressed heroines as the paradigmatic nineteenth-century hysterics: the jumpy Maggy T., the 'incipiently hysterical' Dorothea B., or the frigid Gwendolen H." (p. 91) The point being made here is that one could take almost any female character appearing in a novel, short story, or play (or the movies based on them) published from 1895 to the present and she probably could be diagnosed with one or more "hysterical disorders" (especially histrionic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, one of several anxiety disorders, and/or one of several somatoform disorders; and let's not forget the recent favorite: multiple personality disorder). This tendency to portray female fictional characters as hysterical could be used as the starting point for a discussion of possible gender biases in diagnosis as well as a discussion of criticisms made over the last several decades regarding gender typing and the pathologizing of so-called "feminine personality traits." I have been so frightened by this experience of synchronicity that the entire right side of my body has become numb and I have become mute (just temporary, I hope). I have cancelled classes and am sending an emergency message to my therapist. See you soon. Jeff Reference: Showalter, E. (1997). Hystories: Hysterical epidemics and modern media. New York: Columbia University Press. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Nobel prize; psychologists [and others]
Dap Louw wrote: I'm looking for info on psychologists who have made important research contributions . For example, as far as I know two trained psychologists have received the Nobel Prize: Roger Sperry for his split-brain research, but I don't know who the other person and what his contribution was. Do you know what their qualifications in psychology are? I'm not going to answer Dap's question (because I don't know the answer) but I did want to mention the only psychiatrist who ever won a Nobel Prize: a former classmate of Sigmund Freud, Julius Wagner von Jauregg, who won the prize for his fever treatment of general paresis. Another reason for recommending Wagner (in my opinion, at least) was that he was highly critical of Freud's work. According to Roazen (1984): "Although Wagner may have admired Freud personally, ... as a leading psychiatrist [he had a chair in psychiatry at the University of Vienna] Wagner had to take a position vis--vis psychoanalysis. What to Freud seemed like great discoveries were so much nonsense to him [although] Wagner was more mocking than aggressively hostile to Freud's ideas." (p. 225) Freud had a great desire to win the Nobel Prize himself. According to Gay (1988), Freud was first nominated for the Prize in 1917 (in physiology and medicine) by a Nobel laureate, Robert Barany, but he did not win. Others continued to nominate him often in the years following 1917. In the late 1920s, for example, a psychoanalyst by the name of Heinrich Meng mounted an intense campaign to get the Prize awarded to Freud, but in literature this time, not medicine, because a consultant for the latter prize viewed Freud to be a "fraud and a menace." Many distinguished people supported Freud's candidacy for the Nobel Prize in literature: "He [Meng] collected an impressive outpouring of prestigious signatures; those responding included such prominent German admirers as the novelists Alfred Dblin and Jakob Wasserman, and also eminent foreigners--philosophers like Bertrand Russell, educators like A.S. Neill, biographers like Lytton Strachey, scientists like Julian Huxley Eugen Bleuler, too, though he had after some years' flirtation eluded Freud's wooing, joined the signatories." (Gay, p. 456) Albert Einstein refused to sign, stating that he was unable to offer an authoritative opinion of Freud's work. The fact that he never was awarded a Nobel Prize seemed to rankle Freud, even though he was awarded many other prestigious awards throughout the last several decades of his life. I, too, have been passed over for the Nobel Prize many times. Freud and I have that much in common. I did, however, once receive a "World's Best Dad" trophy. Did Freud?? I thought not! Jeff Reference: Roazen, P. (1984). Freud and his followers. Washington Square, NY: New York University Press. Gay, P. (1988). Freud: A life for out time. New York: Anchor. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Student goals, expectations
Back on Feb. 21st, I sent a post to TIPS relevant to this thread. Among
other things, I said the following:
One thing that has struck me this semester is that many of my students
seem to take little pride in their work in my courses. I began to
wonder
about what it is that causes us to take pride in something. It seems to
me that we take pride in something when we consider it to be a valued
activity--when either we ourselves personally value that activity or
members of an important reference group value it (I think that often
these two overlap a great deal). Furthermore, we feel proud when we
believe we have performed that activity well.
Thus, it seems to me that the relative lack of pride that I perceive
many of my students to have with respect to their educational
activities
may have one of two sources:
(1) they don't feel that they have the resources (intellect, time,
etc.) to
perform their educational activities well (i.e., self-efficacy);
(2) education is not personally valued by them nor is it valued by
important reference groups.
After this point, the discussion degenerated. (By the way, I noticed
that my personal rant, as well as a supporting rant by David Campbell,
have both been removed from the TIPS archives. I guess this would make
the archives an abridged version of what is discussed on TIPS.) But my
intention was to start a discussion on the same issues being brought up
in the present thread.
As some have noted, students (as well as all of us) are constantly
engaged in a cost/benefit analysis. They consider their goals, they
evaluate their resources, and they make a decision about how much effort
they should invest in a particular activity. Thus, in addition to
looking within ourselves and attempting various self-transformations
(perhaps a worthwhile goal, in general; but self-analysis is neither the
only intervention we need to be performing nor probably the most
important one, in my opinion), I think we need to be examining students'
evaluations regarding their available resources as well as their
development of short-term and long-term goals. And at least as important
as individual self-examinations, I think that we need to be aware of the
societal and cultural influences that inform students (and us) of what
is to be valued in life.
As for goals, as much research has shown, the majority of students are
enrolled in post-secondary educational institutions because they desire
to have a prestigious and well-paying job. Thus, credentialing is a
major goal of most students. I believe that this desire is due to
pervasive societal and cultural forces: they have learned from such
sources that it is important to obtain such a job and that a
baccalaureate (and often higher) is required if they are to do so.
Nevertheless, because they are human beings, I think that most students
are also very curious about their lives, about others, and about the
rest of the universe. Thus, I believe that most are motivated to learn
about various issues that they could be learning about in their
schooling. Perhaps previous and present experiences, however, have led
them to conclude that school is not be the best place to find answers to
interesting questions (I am not trying to be ironic here). Furthermore,
I think that many of them have obtained from the culture the idea that
one should not appear too eager in school; and that those who teach are
either less competent in their chosen field ("those who can't do,
teach") or are otherwise unsuccessful (students can't help but notice
the very low salaries and prestige of most teachers). Thus, many of
them, I think, have learned neither to value what goes on in an
educational institution nor to respect those who work in such
institutions. Previous experiences as well as the norms/values they have
learned from the surrounding culture often conspire to place a negative
value on what goes on in educational institutions.
As for resources that students perceive themselves to have: some on the
list have mentioned the great demands placed on the time of students.
Most students have full-time or nearly full-time jobs. Again, I think
that this is a reflection of what they have learned from their culture.
They have learned that it is very important to have money so that one
may buy vast quantities of consumer goods. At this point, teenagers and
young adults have the largest amount of disposable income of any age
group in the United States (at least, this is what I learned on
Frontline the other night). For this reason, the advertising campaigns
of major and minor corporations focus predominantly on this age group.
Students have learned (just as we all have learned here in the US) that
it is important to consume and to impress others with what they (we) buy
and consume.
Furthermore, many students feel (for good reasons) that they are not
prepared to perform the kinds of complex intellectual activities that
are (or should be) required in college courses. If they feel that
Preventive lobotomies?
Last night, a student mentioned that a previous psychology teacher
("Professor Bob") had told his class that, during the 1940s, people
without any mental disorder sometimes had lobotomies done as a sort of
preventive measure--or perhaps to improve their mental functioning, I
wasn't sure from her description. I have read some on the history of
biological treatments (such as Elliot Valenstein's book, "Great and
Desperate Cures..."), but I don't recall ever coming across this claim
before. It sounds somewhat outrageous to me, but given that some people
are performing trepanations nowadays in order to expand their
consciousness, you just never can tell what people might do to
themselves in the name of "personal development."
I know that we have some marvelous historians on this list, either by
vocation or avocation. Does anyone know whether or not preventive
lobotomies were ever performed?
Jeff
--
Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213
9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298
Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Scottsdale Community College
Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626
"Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths"
Karl Popper
Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Student question
The infamous Dr. Nanjo wrote: "Is it true that when someone is asked a question and they look up and to the left, that they are accessing the visual cortex of their brain indicating that they are telling the truth, and that if they look up and to the right that they are accessing the creative side of their brain otherwise indicating that they are lying?" I'm sorry, but I have never heard of this claim before. The more fundamental claim--the one on which this one seems to be based--involves the idea that eye movements reflect the particular hemisphere, right or left, that is most active at the time. This idea has some initial plausibility, it seems. According to Springer Deutsch (1993), the "hypothesis is based on the well-established fact that eye movements to one side are controlled by centers in the frontal lobe of the contrlateral hemisphere" (p. 85). The studies on this have typically asked either "left-hemisphere questions" (especially those involving primarily verbal analysis) or "right-menisphere questions" (especially those involving spatial analysis) and observe the direction of eye movement. After briefly discussing such studies, however, they concluded: "In the absence of independent verification that eye movements are related to differential hemispheric cognitive activity, it would be wise to interpret the results of LEM [lateral-eye-movement] studies cautiously. A review for which [Paul] Bakan [the person who first suggested the hypothesis that LEMs were associated with hemispheric activity] was a coauthor claimed that converging evidence from a variety of techniques support the LEM model. The evidence is weak, however, leading us to conclude that it is premature to postulate conclusions about brain asymmetries and the processing of different kinds of questions on the basis of the direction of eye movements." (p. 86) The problem is that this reference is 8 years old. Does anyone know of more recent studies? Jeff Springer, S. P. Deutsch, G. (1993). Left brain, right brain (4th ed.). N. Y. Freeman Company. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd. FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department [EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Brain-Net
It sounded to me as if this was a form of patterning therapy, but I am not sure. If this is a form of "patterning," then yes, there are reasons to be very wary: "Patterning is a series of exercises designed to improve the 'neurologic organization' of a child's neurologic impairments. It requires that these exercises be performed over many hours during the day by several persons who manipulate a child's head and extremities in patterns purporting to simulate prenatal and postnatal movements of nonimpaired children." (from a policy statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics) There are two policy statements you should read, one from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the other from the National Congress on Down Syndrome. I provide the links below: http://www.aap.org/policy/re9919.html http://www.members.carol.net/~ndsc/doman.html Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Pride in education
One thing that has struck me this semester is that many of my students seem to take little pride in their work in my courses. I began to wonder about what it is that causes us to take pride in something. It seems to me that we take pride in something when we consider it to be a valued activity--when either we ourselves personally value that activity or members of an important reference group value it (I think that often these two overlap a great deal). Furthermore, we feel proud when we believe we have performed that activity well. Thus, it seems to me that the relative lack of pride that I perceive many of my students to have with respect to their educational activities may have one of two sources: (1) they don't feel that they have the resources (intellect, time, etc.) to perform their educational activities well (i.e., self-efficacy); (2) education is not personally valued by them nor is it valued by important reference groups. (What does seem to be highly valued by many students are the things that they perceive an education can get for them, especially jobs paying large amounts of money that will allow them to buy vast quantities of consumer goods; but education itself is not valued in this case.) Lest one thinks I am picking on students, I also see the same problem with some of my colleagues regarding teaching--not so much, though, as I have seen at other places I have worked (especially at major research universities where teaching seems to be considered by many to be one step above janitorial duties). But I am not concerned here with such colleagues (I'll just continue to glare at them and mutter obscenities under my breath): I am trying to figure out what I might do to help my students to take pride in their work in my courses. I'm not sure what or if I am asking anything of you. I was just thinking about this issue as I rode my bicycle in to work this morning. I should have titled this "random neural firings." Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
RE: Pride in Education
Louis, This answer is much more useful to me. Thank you for sending it. I accept your apology and understand that you meant no offense. I am sorry if I misunderstood your original intentions. Jeff Ricker -- Original Message -- Dave, thank you for your words. I can understand what you are saying. I don't mean to detract from the importance of Jeff's question, and it is important. As he said, it is a question that relates to each of us as well as to each of them. Maybe there aren't straight forward answers and concrete suggestions. That may be what many of us want, but to think they are may only exacerbate the situation. Sure, I can offer a host of "this is what I do," but they all are rooted in who I am and in my vision
Re: psychology vs philosophy
Philippe Gervaix wrote: The definitons given have all been given in the singular, as though there was one recognised and admitted definition of what psychology and what philosophy is. It would be clearer to me if we admitted that the definitions given are those of scientific psychology on the one hand and of analytic philosophy on the other. There are, beside these, other definitions, referring to different fields, traditions, trends, schools, in each of these disciplines. I had been thinking along lines similar to Philippe's but I just hadn't had the time (and probably the background) to try to craft a cogent response. I still don't have time but I wanted ro point to another possible problem in our thinking about the philosophy/psychology distimction: the assumption apparently made by many that psychology emerged from philosophy. Edward Reed (1997) has argued that a case can be made that academic philosophy in the US emerged during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries because of the success of psychology coupled with philosophers' fears that the "new science" would displace philosophy in academic institutions. Because I have little time, I will just quote from his book, "From Soul to Mind: The Emergence of Psychology from Erasmus Darwin to William James" (Yale University Press): "Although it is common enough to read about how psychology emerged from philosophy, one rarely reads about how modern philosophy emerged from psychology. Yet the two most fundamental methods of modern philosophy [he is referring here to symbolic logic and phenomenology]...both developed in response to the perceived successes of the new psychology Both modern psychology and modern philosophy--as academic disciplines comprising professional scientists or scholars--began to emerge toward the end of the nineteenth century. Psychology in this sense preceded philosophy by at least ten years, although it tended to be housed within philosophy departments. Obviously, a great deal of jockeying for position, power, prestige, and influence took place Small wonder that the new professional philosophers latched onto the most provocative antipsychological methodologies available, phenomenology and lofic, as defining the activity of members of their emerging discipline." (p. 200) Reed's argument suggests that the ready answers we have seen here regarding the distinction between psychology and philosophy have emerged from this institutional battle between psychology and academic philosophy--a battle that began during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. On the side of philosophy, logicians may have had an easy answer of their own: "psychology studies the causes of how the mind actually works whereas we study how the mind should work," or something like that. Because of the diversity with respect to what psychologists do and what philosophers do, no simple answer to the question, "what distinguishes psychology from philosophy," tells us very much, I think. As always, things are more complex than that. Sorry for being so cryptic but I gotta go, Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Psychic parrot
The following is from Michael Shermer's e-skeptic list. I send it because the subject of the "psychic parrot" recently came up on TIPS. Jeff E-SKEPTIC MAGAZINE FOR FEBRUARY 14, 2001 Copyright 2001 Skeptic magazine, Skeptics Society, Michael Shermer Permission to print or distribute without permission. For further information go to www.skeptic.com PSYCHIC PARROT I just filmed a short interview for Wednesday morning (February 15) on ABC's Good Morning America on N'Kisi, the psychic parrot, a Congo African gray parrot who Cambridge University biologist Rupert Sheldrake says is additional evidence for his theory of morphic resonance, a sort of "force" that pervades the cosmos and allows everything to "remember." N'Kisi's owner, Aimee Morgana of Manhattan, read Sheldrake's latest book, "Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals," and sent him videos of her amazing Parrot. N'Kisi, she claims, has a vocabulary of 560 words, which the parrot repeats with such frequency that occasionally the very thoughts that Morgana has, by chance match the words being parroted by the parrot. Of course, that's not how Morgana or Sheldrake see it, so they ran an experiment in which N'Kisi got 32 correct hits out of 123 trials, which, Sheldrake says, is a one in a billion probability of happening by chance; ergo, the parrot is psychic. I pointed out that N'Kisi missed 91 times, which doesn't sound all that impressive to me, not to mention the protocol for determining what constitutes a hit was rather fuzzy. For example, Morgana was looking at a photograph of a couple embracing, and N'Kisi allegedly says "Can I give you a hug?" THAT was counted as a hit. Of course, we are not told how often N'Kisi blurts out that particular phrase, or other phrases for that matter, nor how many different photos were used by which Sheldrake arrived at his billion to one odds calculation. One reporter who visited N'Kisi had recently lost her cat. When she met the parrot, it apparently blurted out "Remember the cat?" Of course, we are not told what else the parrot said, or what else the reporter was thinking that day. In other words, the sum of the coincidences equals certainty. Plus, this all sounds like a case of "remember the hits, forget the misses." In science we have to consider the misses as well as the hits. As Frank Sulloways likes to say, "anecdotes do not make a science." Check it out Wednesday morning, February 15, on ABC's Good Morning America, possibly the first hour they said. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Cheesy debate
Oh, no!! I'm having a paradigmatic identity crisis! I am a boomer (born 1957: rock on, dead Elvis) and the parent of a 12-year-old daughter. You would think that this is all you'd need to know about me to know where I stand on the issue of "The Nurture Assumption." Blaming my daughter's genes, friends, etc., for her oh-so-difficult nature sure makes a lot of sense to me.Let any contrary evidence be damned. On the other hand, we boomers grew up blaming our parents for everything (thank you, you neo-Freudian dears, so very, very much!). It seems as if I've always known that it's my parents' fault I turned out this way (in fact, if you're tired of these public displays of self-indulgent blather, I'll give you my parents' home phone number). A pox on you, Judith Harris!! What is a guilt-free boomer parent to do??!! Ad Hominemally Yours, Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Netiquette and introductions
Stephen Black wrote: While introductions are interesting and welcome, there`s nothing either in the the TIPS guidelines (see the TIPS website at the url in my signature file) or in our general practice which requires this. Many of us (ahem!) have never done so. So the blunder concern is unfounded. And if everyone who never introduced now rushed to do it, we`d really be in trouble. Well, Stephen, I personally like the idea and now realize that I have never told you much about myself. So let me get started. I was born in Massachattakatapequa, New York on February 29th, 1980. Having attained the Ph.D degree at the University of South Central North Dakota (Visa and Master Card accepted) at the tender age of nine, I worked briefly at Cornell, then Yale, and finally Harvard. (As you probably have guessed, I purposely avoided working at any school that belonged to a sports conference with a "Big" in its name.) Desiring a real challenge, however, I applied to the Maricopa County Community College District (Slogan: "We Put the Community in Community College") in the Spring of 1994. I was overjoyed when I was hired on as an assistant grounds keeper at Scottsdale Community College (home of the Fighting Artichokes), and immediately set to work trying to move up the hierarchy. Instead, the school quickly hit hard times (a summer brush fire wiped out most of the grounds) and I was forced to take a job as an instructor. Since all the real sciences already had enough instructors (the other grounds keepers had more seniority than I), I was forced to teach psychology. Because I never had taken a psychology course before, I prepared for my first teaching assignment by reading everything ever written by Dr. Joyce Brothers, as well as watching any appearance that Abigail Van Buren had ever made on the Mike Douglas Show. With a solid background in psychology now under my belt, I felt confident that I would tbe a great teacher. And boy, was I right! Now, I can't wait to run into that classroom each and every day (including Saturdays and Sundays) unless the room is full of students. Then, I try to show a video and trudge back to my office to have a cigarette or two until it's over. We then spend the rest of the class period mostly watching highlights from Jerry Springer and trying to figure out what kinds of trauma the guests probably experienced in their past lives. I like to think that I am helping my students to get in touch with their inner lost children. Hey, somebody's got to do it. Peace and Love, Jeff P.S. Just in case anyone is wondering, I'm only having fun with this. I definitely intended no disrespect to Bruce. In fact, I quite enjoyed reading his introduction. Thanks, Bruce. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: The 5% solution
I received several replies to my post yesterday, both on- and off-list, that contained references. I thought that some of you might be interested in getting the complete list. Thanks to all who responded; and especially to those who provided the following references (Paul Smith, Ken Steele, and Steve Prentice-DunnI hope that I didn't forget anyone). Jeff McKeachie, W. J. (1960). Changes in scores on the Northwestern Misconceptions Test in six elementary psychology courses. Journal of Educational Psychology, 51, 240-244. Ellis, N.R., Rickard, H.C. (1977). Evaluating the teaching introductory psychology. Teaching of Psychology, 4, 128-132. Vaughan, E. D. (1977). Misconceptions about psychology among introductory psychology students. Teaching of Psychology, 4, 138-141. Gutman, A. (1979). Misconceptions of psychology and performance in the introductory course. Teaching of Psychology, 6, 159-161. Gardner, R. M., Dalsing, S. (1986). Misconceptions about psychology among college students. Teaching of Psychology, 13, 32-34. Griggs, R.A. Ransdell, S. E. (1987). Misconceptions tests or misconceived tests? Teaching of Psychology, 14, 210-214. Rickard, H.C., Rogers, R.W., Ellis, N. R., Beidleman, W. (1988). Some retention, but not enough. Teaching of Psychology, 15, 151-152. Messer, W. S. Griggs, R. A. (1989). Student belief and involvement in the paranormal and performance in introductory psychology. Teaching of Psychology, 16, 187-191. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
The 5% Solution
I just finished reading a paper by Camac (1995) titled "Public perceptions of psychology" (an interesting paper: I recommend it). In a section in which she was discussing difficulties that arise in the teaching of psychology, she mentioned a finding reported in Ellis Rickard (1977): "Even if we cannot dispel all the myths, surely students are learning _something_ about the field [in our courses]. Well, perhaps not: Ellis and Rickard (1977) gave a general test in psychology to introductory psychology students four months after they had taken the course. The students answered an average of 30% of the questions correctly. A control group who had not had the course answered 25% of the questions correctly" (p. 33) On the surface, this finding is fascinating (although, strangely, I am not terribly surprised). I wish to order the Ellis Rickard paper so that I can get the details: things are probably more complicated than such a brief summary suggests. The problem is that the citation is missing from Camac's reference list. Can anyone give me the citation? And does anyone know if similar kinds of studies have been done by anyone else (and more recently than 1977)? Jeff Reference: Camac, M. K. (1995). Public perceptions of psychology. Virginia Social Science Journal, 30, 20-36. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: mind/body/spirit
It seems like ages ago that Kitty Jung posted the following message: A student looking towards research in mind/body/spirit asked which universities would be best for her to apply to in terms of who(m) is doing the most work in this area. I suggested doing a focused web search in the meantime while I asked around. Any ideas? I thought I would do a little research on the science of "Mind Body Spirit." My first goal was to understand better to what this phrase might refer. Hence, I did a search using the terms "mind body spirit." Web sites popped up that dealt with alternative medicine, holistic approaches to healing, wellness, and counseling psychology, as well as others that focused on topics such as astrology. Extrapolating from this, mind-body-spirit research would seem to involve the testing of scientifically untested (or even pseudoscientific) treatments such as spiritual counseling, aromatherapy, crystals, and Feng Shui, as well as apparently related interests in paranormal topics such as tarot cards and astrology. On a web site called the "Mind Body Spirit Directory" (http://www.mindbodyspirit.org/index.html) there was a page for "Colleges, Training and Organisations" that listed only one training organization--an organization that offered training in "EM-Power Therapy." (I suspect that "EM" stands for electromagnetic.) It seems that this organization offers training in something called the EM-Power Healing Disc and offered the following description: "The Em-Power Disc has been created and designed by Israeli born healer, Coby Zvikler. After many years of studying his own psychic and paranormal abilities he accidentally found a way to trigger a unique connection between the body and mind that can cause the body to spontaneously heal itself. Coby discovered that he was able to transfer and record his unique healing abilities onto magnetic tape and various alloys (such as aluminum) so that anyone can tap into them. Now you too can heal yourself and others by using the Em-Power Disc" In a section titled "Science and Technology," there were advertisements for the "3rd International UFO Conference," "SC- The Monthly Journal of Crop Circles and Beyond," and our old friend "EM-Power Therapy" (in fact, there was a link to EM-Power Therapy on each page I had a chance to look at). As for another training organization, I found a web site for "Eo Omwake's Mind Body Spirit Academy for Martial Arts and Self Cultivation" (http://www.flowinghands.com/). I then decided to do a search for "mind body spirit research." The site for EM Power Therapy came up again, but so did a site for "The Fetzer Institute" (http://www.fetzer.org/). In their "Programs in Science" section, they describe their research in "Information and Energy in Biological Systems": "Electromagnetic fields are all around us, emanating from natural phenomena such as the Earth's magnetic field and from artificial sources such as electrical devices in our homes. The human body is also continuously generating these information-rich fields of energy from the electrical impulses that control the beating of our hearts to the flow of thoughts in our brains. Little is known about how these fields work and what effect, if any, they might have on our health. In pursuit of theories for understanding these fields, the Fetzer Institute has engaged in a number of efforts." An associate professor of medicine who is affiliated with the Harvard Medical School, Herbert Benson, has opened the Mind/Body Medical Institute (http://www.mindbody.harvard.edu/index.htm). The Institute advocates the use of what has been called "integrative medicine"--the practice of medicine in a way "that selectively incorporates elements of complementary and alternative medicine into comprehensive treatment plans alongside solidly orthodox methods of diagnosis and treatment" (go to the on-line site for the British Medical Journal for a recent issue devoted to this area: http://bmj.com/current.shtml). To quote from the Mind/Body Medical Institute's web site: "Dr. Benson, a graduate of, and Mind/Body Medical Institute Associate Professor of Medicine at, Harvard Medical School, is an internationally-respected leader in this rapidly growing branch of medicine. Mind/body medicine integrates mind and body by combining relaxation-response techniques, nutrition, exercise, and cognitive therapy with standard medical practice. Mind/body medicine is an interdisciplinary field, comprised of physicians, nurses, psychologists, exercise therapists, and nutritionists." Notice that the word "Spirit" does not appear in this description. This change seems to be associated with a more medically oriented approach to the topic. Thus, if one finds that a student is interested in the area of "Mind Body Spirit", one may wish to inform them that there is a medical area called "integrative medicine" that seems to be more attuned to scientific research (although time will tell), but that there are also
Re: Alzheimer's question
The infamous Dr. Nanjo wrote: Does aluminum in drinking water really have an effect on Alzheimer's? Does it effect ACH levels? Or is it a myth that the environment can have much to do with this disease? There is an article on Alzheimer's in the December issue of the Scientific American. I read the article on the Sci-Am web site (go to: http://www.sciam.com/2000/1200issue/1200Stgeorge.html). It stated the following: "The few risk factors identified so far are intriguing but not entirely illuminating. It appears that poor early-childhood education, serious head injury and--albeit much less definitively--exposure to aluminum in drinking water correlate with higher risk. Correlation, however, does not mean causality, and it may turn out that these factors are actually indicators of other agents or events. For instance, head injury might simply reduce the number of neurons, thereby causing the symptoms of Alheimer's to appear earlier than they otherwise would have." Genetics is apparently very important in some families: there appears to be an autosomal dominant gene associated with the disorder in those families. In the rest, genetic variance is related to variance in the development of the disorder to some extent; but variance in environmental factors is also thought to be very important. You might wish to send your student to the web address I gave above. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd. FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department [EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
An educational premonition?
I am reading a book by Walter Gratzer (2000) called "The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion, Self-deception and Human Frailty" (Oxford University Press). In a chapter on Lysenko and Soviet "science" of the Stalin era, Gratzer gave an example of one of the effects of the promotion of pseudoscience (as well as of relativistic ideas that sound vaguely "postmodern," but which were promoted in the Soviet Union over 50 years ago) by those who should have known better: "The effect of such vapourings [i.e., the pseudoscientific nonsense spouted by Lysenko and others] on teaching and research in the biological sciences was catastrophic. Here are two examples of the level to which scholarly discourse had sunk in the universities A member of the Lenin Agricultural Academy, M. I. Khadzinov, who taught at the Plant Breeding Institute in Leningrad, was summoned before the local party committee and interrogated thus: 'Is Shundenko [a student at the Institute] under your supervision?' 'Yes.' 'Why hasn't he presented his thesis yet?' 'Shundenko is illiterate, he doesn't want to study and he is quite incapable of writing a thesis.' 'But it's your business to see that he gets his degree, If you haven't been able to teach him, you must write the thesis yourself.' Khadzinov dictated the thesis to his recalcitrant student, who was duly awareded his doctoral degree and appointed academic deputy to the director of the institute." (p. 188) A nightmare vision of one possible future for higher education in the United States? Perhaps I'm just feeling pessimistic, today. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper "Nothing is more dangerous than active ignorance" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: teaching brain parts/functions
Marcia McKinley-Pace wrote: I'm preparing for next semester and am trying to figure out how I want to present brain parts and functions. In the past, I have lectured (briefly) about this and then asked the class to play neuroscientist and identify damaged brain parts from Sacks' work. The class usually seems to be bored by lecture, but does perk up for the activity. Does anyone have any ideas for how to present this? (Or other quick demonstrations, activities, movies, etc.?) I'm playing with the idea of presenting vignettes as we cover a brain part, but I also like the re-cap of doing an activity. Marcia, Many of my students find the section on the brain to be among the most interesting in intro psych. I think the major reason for this is that, as I discuss each part of the brain, I present case studies of people who have damage to that part and other concrete examples. In addition, I use brief clips from the Brain series and the Mind series to illustrate the functions of several parts. (If I am not mistaken, both of these series has recently--the last couple years--come out in a 2nd edition: there is a slight updating of each segment in most cases, but major revisions in other segments.) It seems to me that the more concrete you can make your discussion of the brain (especially by presenting interesting vignettes), the more interested your students should be in this section. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper "Nothing is more dangerous than active ignorance" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Cross-cultural Abnormal Psychology
Joe Hatcher referred me to an interesting textbook called "Social Psychology: Exploring Universals Across Cultures" by F. M. Moghaddam (1998). The text integrates cultural issues well with the traditional subject matter of social-psychology courses. I wondered if there might be a similar kind of textbook for abnormal psychology. I am not asking for a text that includes cultural issues within a few isolated boxes in a traditional chapter. Instead, I wondered if there might be an abnormal-psychology text that extensively integrates cross-cultural examinations of mental illness with the traditional subject matter of abnormal psychology. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper "Nothing is more dangerous than active ignorance" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Head Physician
A couple years ago, a question was asked about whether or not the head remains conscious for a time after an execution by beheading. David Likely provided an example from the history-of-psych textbook by Hergenhahn. The other day, an article from the New Scientist was posted on the BP/BNnews list. That article had a shortened version of the following example (go to: http://www.metaphor.dk/guillotine/Pages/30sec.html). Jeff -- Read this report from 1905. The report is written by Dr Beaurieux, who under perfect circumstances experimented with the head of Languille, guillotined at 5.30 a.m. on June 28th, 1905 " I consider it essential for you to know that Languille displayed an extraordinary sang-froid and even courage from the moment when he was told, that his last hour had come, until the moment when he walked firmly to the scaffold. It may well be, in fact, that the conditions for observation, and consequently the phenomena, differ greatly according to whether the condemned persons retain all their sang-froid and are fully in control of themselves, or whether they are in such state of physical and mental prostration that they have to be carried to the place of execution, and are already half-dead, and as though paralysed by the appalling anguish of the fatal instant. "The head fell on the severed surface of the neck and I did not therefor have to take it up in my hands, as all the newspapers have vied with each other in repeating; I was not obliged even to touch it in order to set it upright. Chance served me well for the observation, which I wished to make. "Here, then, is what I was able to note immediately after the decapitation: the eyelids and lips of the guillotined man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about five or six seconds. This phenomenon has been remarked by all those finding themselves in the same conditions as myself for observing what happens after the severing of the neck... "I waited for several seconds. The spasmodic movements ceased. The face relaxed, the lids half closed on the eyeballs, leaving only the white of the conjunctiva visible, exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to see every day in the exercise of our profession, or as in those just dead. It was then that I called in a strong, sharp voice: "Languille!" I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractions ? I insist advisedly on this peculiarity ? but with an even movement, quite distinct and normal, such as happens in everyday life, with people awakened or torn from their thoughts. Next Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves. I was not, then, dealingwith the sort of vague dull look without any expression, that can be observed any day in dying people to whom one speaks: I was dealing with undeniably living eyes which were looking at me. "After several seconds, the eyelids closed again, slowly and evenly, and the head took on the same appearance as it had had before I called out. "It was at that point that I called out again and, once more, without any spasm, slowly, the eyelids lifted and undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on mine with perhaps even more penetration than the first time. The there was a further closing of the eyelids, but now less complete. I attempted the effect of a third call; there was on further movement ? and the eyes took on the glazed look which they have in the dead. "I have just recounted to you with rigorous exactness what I was able to observe. The whole thing had lasted twenty-five to thirty seconds. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper "Nothing is more dangerous than active ignorance" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Professor (?) Freud
David Likely wrote: History Question: Was Freud a Professor? It's long been textbook wisdom that some professions, including the academic, were "closed to Jews" in Austria and other European countries in the 19th century. That's why Freud, a relatively poor man, took a medical degree and went into practice. Therefore I was surprised to see, in a Freud chronology posted by the Austrian National Tourist Office: "1902: Freud is appointed professor at the University of Vienna." ... I think, but I'm not sure, that the resolution of this is that while a Jew might become a Privatdozent (which the Austrian Tourist Office translates as "professor," small "p"), there would be very little chance to become a Professor (capital P) I have an idea that salaried Professors didn't lecture very often or "cover" courses very systematically, so that the students, in order to pass their exams (perhaps one set of exams only after several years of study), hired Privatdozenen and perhaps tutors. The University had to approve these teachers, perhaps, but they were not regarded as real members (fellows?) of the University, so could sometimes include Jews. Alternatively, I'm wrong and Freud and perhaps other Jews were regarded as so exceptional that they really did get appointments as professors or Professors, or the textbooks are wrong, and the academic profession, including a reasonable salary, wasn't entirely "closed to Jews." In 1885, Freud was given the position of Privatdozent. In 1897, Hermann Nothnagel and Richard von Krafft-Ebing nominated Freud for Ausserordentlicher Professor ) Professor Extraordinarius). It was a position that carried more prestige and higher fees but it still was not a position within the council of the medical faculty. Freud wanted it for the prestige and the greater impact this prestige would have on potential patients. There were all sorts of machinations that went on behind the scenes for several years because, apparently, Freud's appointment was held up by various officials. Freud eventually became actively involved in maneuvering to gain the appointment, even enlisting the aid of a couple of former patients of some prominence (one of these patients bribed the minister of education by donating a painting to a gallery the minister was establishing). Freud finally achieved his goal in 1902. Let me quote from Peter Gay (1988), _Freud: A life for our time_ (Anchor), the book in which I found the above information: "One thing is plain from the record: Freud's academic career was markedly--it seems deliberately--slowed down. A fair number of physicians were promoted from being _Privatdozent_, some even to full professorships, after five or four years, or even after only one. From 1885 on, during Freud's time of waiting, the average span between appointment to a _Dozentur_ and appointment to a professorship was eight years Freud had to wait for seventeen. Apart from the handful who never secured a professorship at all, only four of the roughly one hundred aspirants who were appointed _Privatdozent_ in the last fifteen years of the nineteenth century were held back longer than Freud. Exner was right; there was some tenacious prejudice against Freud in official circles. "Certainly anti-Semitism cannot be ruled out. While Jews, even those who refused the profitable refuge of baptism, continued to rise to positions of eminence in the Austrian medical profession, the spreading infection of anti-Semitism did not leave influential bureaucrats untouched. In 1897, when Nothnagel had informed Freud that he and Krafft-Ebing had proposed him for promotion, he had also warned him not to expect too much." (pp. 138-39) He told him not to expect too much because of the growing anti-Semitism in Vienna during the 1890s. Hatred of Jews was being used for political purposes during this time and, as Gay stated, that "this atmosphere had effects on the professional careers of Jews in Austria was not a secret" (p. 139). Thus, it seems that while Jews may have been appointed to professorships before the 1890s, it was becoming increasingly difficult for this to happen during this decade. But Gay also noted that Freud's "scandalous" theories may have also held him back. I am not so sure about this reason since, as I understand it, the perceived "scandalous" nature of Freud's theories was somewhat overblown and probably more of a myth promoted by Freud's followers than an actual difficulty for Freud in his career. But others perhaps can address this point better than I since it has been a while since I have been conversant with this literature. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and
If only there were extra credit for everything
I know that I haven't been a very good teacher this semester. I've been having some personal problems, my car got a flat tire just before an important lecture, I graded one of the tests after drinking a few glasses of wine, and, well, I guess I just wasn't trying as hard as I could have. Is there any extra credit I can do to improve my student evaluations? Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper "Nothing is more dangerous than active ignorance" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Professor (?) Freud
Stephen Black wrote: The actor who plays Freud has lines which I'm certain are taken verbatim from his writings, although there are no references. At one point the video has this (exclusive transcription I've just made exclusively for the benefit of TIPS): Voiceover: It was not until he was almost 50 that Freud finally was given the rank of professor, an appointment that required the approval of the Austrian Emperor. The appointment seldom went to Jews or to radical thinkers. Freud: "It was as though the role of sexuality had suddenly been realized by his Majesty, the importance of dreams confirmed by the Council of Ministers, and the necessity of treating hysteria by psychoanalytic therapy accepted in Parliament by a 2/3 majority. I had become respectable again. Those who recently avoided me now greeted me from afar in the street" Isn't that a great quote? Can anyone locate a source for it? Stephen, It is from the Freud-Fliess letters (Masson, 1985). In one of his last letters to Wilhem Fliess. Freud wrote sardonically: "The _Wiener Zeitung_ [a newspaper, I believe] has not yet publicized the appointment, but the news that it was imminent quickly spread from the official headquarters. Public acclaim was immense. Congratulations and flowers already are pouring in, as though the role of sexuality has suddenly been officially recognized by His majesty, the significance of the dream certified by the Council of Ministers, and the necessity of a psychoanalytic therapy of hysteria carried by a two-thirds majority in Parliament. "I have obviously become reputable again; my most reluctant admirers greet me in the street from afar." (p. 457) Jeff Reference: Masson, J. M. (1985) (Trans.) (Ed.). The complete letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilheml Fliess: 1887-1904. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper "Nothing is more dangerous than active ignorance" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: office hours
Dr. Joyce Johnson wrote: 2) Arrange the office furniture so that the student's (visitor's) chair is on the same side of the desk as the teacher's (authority's) chair. Be aware that the desk is seen as a fortress or barrier. Place the desk in such a position that it does not separate you from the student. Try this. Stand in your doorway and try to look at your office arrangement objectively. Where could you place your desk, computer, phone, files, chairs, etc., so that these items are both convenient efficient for your work habits AND communicate the silent message that visitors are welcome? Does this mean that I should get rid of my guard dog? Our lawyers have suggested that male (and even female) instructors place barriers between the instructor and where students are to sit in the office. They especially targeted the desk. The reason involves possible accusations of sexual harassment. It's sad that we have to worry about such things. I think that Joyce's suggestions, however, were very good. I may try some of them I suggested to Mike Kane that he install a wet bar and start a Happy Hour. Students seem to be strongly motivated to go to places that have such things. I thank those who responded to my query of yesterday. The responses were very helpful to me. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper "Nothing is more dangerous than active ignorance" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: culture-bound mental disorders
Jean Edwards wrote: Does anyone have any info regarding culture-bound mental disorders? I've found TKS, Koro, and Windigo but would like a few more examples. Any help would be appreciated. The DSM-IV has a glossary of culture-bound syndromes that begins on page 844. There also is a good book on cultural issues called, _Culture and mental illness: A client-centered approach_ (1996) by Richard J. Castillo. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper "Nothing is more dangerous than active ignorance" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Yawning and its function(s)
The infamous Dr. Nanjo wrote: 1) What exactly is the role of yawning in the course of human physiological functioning? Is there any truth to that "yawning is contagious" business? According to Baenninger (1997), yawning probably functions to increase arousal in situations of low stimulation, especially when decreased arousal is costly. He argued that, contrary to popular belief, yawning probably does not function primarily to get oxygen to the brain: there is little evidence for this claim and it seems that yawning delivers less oxygen to the brain than would simply breathing faster or more deeply. In fact, one study had subjects breathe air that was higher in carbon dioxide levels than normal air: these subjects breathed more quickly but yawning was not affected. The same was true when oxygen levels were increased. Some have argued that there is a biological rhythm associated with yawning. For example, college students seem to yawn most frequently during the hour after waking and the hour before sleeping, as well as perhaps a smaller peak during the early afternoon. Baenninger suggested that a more parsimonious explanation was the following: "If yawning occurs in anticipation of regular daily events that require increased arousal, we would expect yawning after sleeping, during sedentary activities that require arousal or vigilance..., and as a way of maintaining wakefulness in the late evening" (p. 199). It may be that yawning helps to increase cerebral blood flow. For example, in thrombosis patients, yawning seemed most likely to occur when cortical activity was low (as measured by EEG) and when "partial pressure of oxygen in the carotid artery decreased" (p. 203). Yawning may do the following: "inhaling stretches bronchial muscles and stimulates vagus nerve terminals that bring about dilation of arterioles via cholinergic pathways. This decreases resistance to peripheral circulation and enhances blood flow. Gaping of the jaw contracts the lateral pterygoid and soleus muscles, which empties rich venous plexuses contained in them This action of the jaw muscles enhances venous return, which promotes blood hyperoxygenation and thus stimulates cerebral blood flow (including the ascending reticular activating system)." (p. 203) But he also noted that, although plausible, there still was little evidence for this theory. Baenninger also examined cross-species evidence for his claim that yawning has an arousal function. It was amazing to me the number and diversity of species that show behavior that looks like yawning: it seems to occur in all classes of vertebrates. One also can increase yawning through artificial selection. A strain of rats has been bred that yawns, on average, about 25 times an hour. Of course, yawning in other species may involve different functions than yawning in humans; but Baenninger provided some evidence for the arousal hypothesis in at least some species My students can beat this strain of rates hands down. In fact, I often tell them that I appreciate their yawns. If Baenninger's claim is correct, the fact that they are yawning during class is a sign of their respect for me: they are trying to remain vigilant and to increase their arousal levels. However, once one person begins to yawn (or even when simply talking about it: I'll bet some of you are yawning right now), others begin to yawn. Baenninger mentioned that it is obvious that yawning is contagious (even blind people yawn when they hear others yawning) but that this has been difficult to study in the lab because subjects are reluctant to yawn in front of researchers (it is seen as impolite). Almost anything you might want to know about yawning is in this article. I don't know if he has continued this research. Perhaps someone else knows about more recent articles? Jeff Reference: Baenninger, R. (1997). On yawning and its functions. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 4, 198-207. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Here I go again
I constantly am disturbed by what I see to be a conflict in the goals held by many of us teachers, on the one hand, and many of our students, on the other. As we have discussed in the past, many students are in college because they have been told that this is the path to a career that will give them what they want (which often, but not always, involves the desire to earn a great deal of money). Many of us teachers, on the other hand, are trying to help our students learn something about a discipline, about the field/area in which we specialize, and about how to think well, in general (although I don't think the last is emphasized nearly as much as it should be by most of us, including me). We tend to use a model of education that was developed in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries--a model in which the professor professes his/her knowledge about a subject area to a group of young and typically elite acolytes. In other words, the educational system we now work within seems to have been set up for a different time when people who went to college had different goals from what many of our students now have. In those earlier times, few people went to college, and those who did were expected to learn things that would allow them to take on special (and often elite) roles in society. Now, most people in the US enter college without the expectation that this experience will prepare them for any special role. Instead, college is meant to put them on the starting line with others who want "valued" jobs (by which I mean, "jobs that pay a lot of money"). In general, American colleges and universities now serve a very broad "gate-keeper" role in American society. None of this is meant to imply that we have nothing to offer our students. I only mean to suggest that the model of post-secondary education most of us have incorporated and use in our day-to-day teaching is not the model that our students have been taught by various segments of modern society (e.g., by our marketing depar um, admissions offices, in those handy little brochures and advertisements that they produce). In fact, the whole accountability issue, it seems to me, is being pushed by many in the wider society who want to make certain that we are performing adequately the expanded role that we have been assigned. Thus, given that my analysis is correct (and I am not at all certain that it is, by the way), I often wonder just what should I be teaching in my courses and how should I be teaching it? Given the role that we have been assigned, what should we be trying to accomplish in our courses? Again, this may be more of a problem for me and my "ilk" (i.e., those of us who teach in colleges and universities with no or very minimal admissions standards) than it is for those of you at more selective schools; yet, I think it is a problem that all of face to some extent. Just sitting here thinking out loud, Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Tickling question
Dr. Nanjo wrote:
Is there any comprehensible explanation available for why it is impossible to tickle
oneself?
Not that I am aware of. There was an article last summer in the American Scientist by
Christine Harris entitled "The mystery of ticklish laughter." One
possibility that she considered is that the laughter response to tickling may have a
social function (and, thus, it is not something that can occur when one
tickles one's own body). There are some testable predictions one can derive from this
idea. An experiment that Harris performed with a colleague was to make
people think that they were being tickled by a machine. In this study, participants
observed a "tickle machine" when they entered the lab ("complete with a
robotic-looking hand, a vacuum-cleaner hose and a nebulizer...to provide convincing
sound effects. The hand did not move"). They were told that they would be
tickled twice by the machine and twice by a human, and were then blindfolded. All
tickling was done by a person, however. The researchers found that just as much
laughing occurred when participants thought that they were being tickled by the
machine as when they thought they were being tickled by a person (even when they
thought that they were alone in the room). Interestingly, participants reported that
the tickling of the "machine" was different from the tickling of the person
(actually, the same tickler, hidden under a table, also played the part of the
"machine").
As for explanations involving the idea that tickling-laughter is a reflex, Harris
stated the following:
"One might think that if the response is a reflex, capable of being elicited by a
machine, we should be able to stimulate ourselves into paroxysms of laughter.
We can, after all, produce a perfectly respectable knee-jerk reflex by tapping our own
knees. There is, however, another phylogenetically ancient reflex that one
definitely cannot elicit in oneself: startle. The violent startle reaction produced by
a loud sound requires unpredictability It may be that ticklish
laughter, too, requires appropriate and vigorous stimulation that cannot be
anticipated in advance." (p. 349). A related notion involves the idea that tickling
involves a species-typical fixed-action pattern. Fixed-action patterns involve
all-or-none responses that occur to specific releasing stimuli (i.e., if laughter
to tickling was a FAP, there would be no gradient of increased laughter with increased
tickling). There apparently are no good studies testing this idea.
Harris also considered the idea that the inability to tickle oneself involves a
neurological process analogous to the one that keeps the visual field from
jumping around each time we move our eyes: "perhaps when the brain issues the comman
to tickle, it cancels out the sensation of ticklishness" (p. 349). A study
using fMRI showed different patterns of activity in the somatosensory cortex when a
subject was being tickled on the hand by another versus tickling the hand
him-/herself. The problem with this study is that the researchers used only a light
tickle that did not produce laughter (laughing would have made it impossible
to interpret the scans).
Harris concluded the following:
"In sum, the results from the handful of studies done on tickle suggest that the
inability to tickle oneself may reflect the inhibition of neural impulses at a
relatively low physiological level--although the mechanism is undetermined. Our
machine-tickle experiment hints that this inability does not have a merely
interpersonal explanation, making physiological explanations more intriguing." (p. 349)
In essence, she is saying that no one knows the answer to your question.
Jeff
Reference: Harris, C. R. (July/August, 1999). The mystery of ticklish laughter.
American Scientist, 87, 344-351.
--
Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213
9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298
Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Scottsdale Community College
Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626
"The truth is rare and never simple."
Oscar Wilde
"Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths"
Karl Popper
Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: sneezing
In order to get to the page that Mike Kane mentioned, you'll need to add an "l" at the end of "htm,": http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_304.html There are also a couple of other interesting columns on sneezing at this site: (1) Why do I sneeze after every orgasm? http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_191.html (2) Why do some people sneeze when going out into bright light? http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_303.html It's funny but, for some reason, I usually sneeze each time a message from TIPS is received by our server. Strange! Jeff "Michael J. Kane" wrote: Nope, your eyes won't pop out. See: www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_304.htm Best, Mike "J L Edwards" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/17 7:03 PM Tipsters: why do people close their eyes when they sneeze? A student also asked me if it is true if one sneezes while one's eyes are open that the eyes would pop out. I didn't have an answer for the first question but assured them their eyes won't fly out of their heads if they keep their eyes open (now watch me be wrong!) JL Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Research on happiness
Stuart Mckelvie wrote: You may or may not be aware of fellow-tipster Dave Myers work in this area (see his introductory text, book on the psychology of happiness and recent contribution to the American Psychologist special issue. He shows that when income level and subjective happiness are correlated in different countries, there is very little relationship (except perhaps at the very low end where necessities are involved). There also is a new book that talks about this and other research involving happiness and moods in general: Braun, S. (2000). The science of happiness: Unlocking the mysteries of mind. John Wiley Sons. I just read last night a review of the book by Kristin Leutwyler (Spring, 2000. Reaching for the happiness throttle. _Cerebrum_, 2 [No. 2], 120-129). The reviewer stated that the book spends a lot of time discussing depression and the use of drugs to increase mood, but it does examine research on happiness at the beginning. She referred to the work of a former teacher of mine at the University of Illinois--UC, Ed Diener, who "discovered the same trend [mentioned by Stuart with regard to David Myers' work] within borders: the rich Americans he surveyed were, on average, only marginally happier than their poor neighbors--and many were, in fact, much less buoyant" (p. 121). Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Observational learning (and those damned cetaceans confuse me)
I see that I was wrong: I believed that the number of species having the ability to learn through observation was fairly small. Probably a vestige of my desire to believe in some version of a "chain of being," with us, of course, being near the top (just below the angels). Thank you all--Susan Morton, Kathy Morgan, Paul Smith, Deb Brihl, Linda Walsh, Stephen Black (twice, or was it thrice?), and David Likely (God, I hope I haven't forgotten anybody)--for enlightening me and showing me once again that I have not become the all-knowing being I had always suspected I could be (there's that chain-of-being idea sneaking in again. I blame it on being raised Catholic. I WAS a cute alter boy, though, even if I never could get the Latin right). Now my question (inspired by Stephen): what is the difference between dolphins and porpoises? I know that there is one, but I can't remember. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
[Fwd: observational learning]
Dan Willingham had difficulty sending the folowing message to TIPS Jeff Ricker Jeff tried to send this to the list and it got bounced back. . . Marc Hauser's book "Wild Minds" has a chapter full of interesting cases of observational learning, including the classic of of some species of bird (forgotten which) learning to tear the foil top from delivered bottles of milk in order to get the cream inside. the book is well worth a look. Cheers, Dan Daniel B. Willingham, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, 102 Gilmer Hall, P.O. Box 400400, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400 (804) 982-4938 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.people.virginia.edu/~dbw8m/ "If your friends suggest that you write a book, get new friends." Bill Hensler, author of "Sex, Lies, and Video Games"
What's in a name?
TIPSies, I'm not sure why I'm sending you this. It just seems like such a silly story, I couldn't resist. -- http://chronicle.com/daily/2000/06/261407n.htm Beaver College to Change Its Name and Seek University Standing By VASUGI V. GANESHANANTHAN After months of discussion, Beaver College's Board of Trustees voted Friday to jettison the institution's 147-year-old name, which has been a source of some ridicule. A committee of administrators, faculty and staff members, students, and alumni has been formed to consider a new moniker for the Pennsylvania institution, but no possibilities have been discussed yet, according to William P. Avington, the college's spokesman. The group will meet this summer and decide what to present to the Board of Trustees at its September meeting, he said. The name change should go into effect before the 2001-2 academic year, he added. The decision comes in the wake of research by the college that found that 30 percent of prospective students would not even consider attending Beaverbecause of its name, which has made it the target of jokes referring to female genitalia and the mammal. The college sends out nearly three times the mailings of comparable schools in order to obtain the same class size, Mr. Avington said. (See an article from The Chronicle, March 2.) Mr. Avington also noted that the Beaver name no longer describes the college very well, since it moved from Beaver, Pa., to Glenside, a Philadelphia suburb, about 80 years ago. The institution's image overhaul may not stop at the first half of its name. With 2,700 students and undergraduate and graduate degrees in more than 30 fields, Beaver officials also plan to petition Pennsylvania officials to let the college become a university. But changing the college's name doesn't necessarily mean changing its mascot, said Mr. Avington. The institution's mascot is not a buck-toothed rodent, but a scarlet knight. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
Re: Let's help Beaver College find a new name
Stephen Black wrote: So I suggest they advertise that fact with the following trend-setting name for their proud institution: Inter-Course College They'll never be subject to ridicule again. Well, I think that they should keep the animal motif. Perhaps a fish that is common in the area. I know, how about: Crappie University Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
James Braid did not coin the term hypnosis?
In virtually every book I have ever read that has discussed hypnosis, it has been stated that James Braid coined the term. In a book that I have just about finished (Macmillan, 1997), it seems that another claim is being made. Let me quote from Note #1 on page 666 of Macmillan (1997): "Like many others, I attributed the first use of the word hypnosis to James Braid. I am glad to acknowledge Dr. Melvin Gravitz's correction of the historical record in his identification of the antifluidist, but splendidly named follower of Mesmer, Etienne Félix d'Hénin de Cuvillers, as the person through whose use the term became popular (Gravitz, 1993)." (p. 666) Thus, Macmillan is claiming that Braid did not coin the term: d'Hénin de Cuvillers did. I plan on ordering the reference he gives as support, but I just don't want to wait that long to get a definitive answer. Does anyone know the story here? Jeff References: Gravitz, M. A. (1993). Etienne Félix d'Hénin de Cuvillers: A founder of hypnosis. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 36, 7-11. Macmillan, M. (1997). Freud evaluated: The completed arc. Cambridge: MIT Press. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
Why did Freud lie?
I saw an interesting review of a book about Sigmund Freud in The _London Review of Books_ (go to: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n08/borc2208.htm). The review, entitled "How a Fabrication Differs from a Lie" was written by Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen. He reviews a book by Han Israëls, which was published seven years ago in Dutch and recently translated into German (and apparently soon to be translated into English), that asks the grand question, "Was Freud a liar?" Below is an excerpt from the review. Jeff --- "One after another, historians of psychoanalysis have come forward to show us that things did not happen in the way Freud and his authorised biographers told us. No, Anna O.'s 'talking cure' never was the 'great therapeutic success' later vaunted by Freud. No, Breuer in no way denied the role of sexuality in the neuroses. No, Freud was not as intellectually isolated as he claimed, and the reactions of his colleagues were far from being unfavourable at the beginning. On the contrary, many of them - notably his friend Fliess - had a deep interest in sexuality, including infantile sexuality. Wrong again that Freud's patients ever spontaneously told him pseudo-memories of infantile sexual seduction: it was Freud himself who extorted these scenes of perversion, despite the patients' vehement protests. Freud had lied to us; we could no longer trust him. The era of suspicion had begun. Suddenly, scholars started to notice that he disguised fragments of his self-analysis as 'objective' cases, that he concealed his sources, that he conveniently antedated some of his analyses, that he sometimes attributed to his patients 'free associations' that he himself made up, that he inflated his therapeutic successes, that he slandered his opponents. Some even go so far as to suggest - supreme lèse-majesté - that Sigmund cheated on his wife with his sister-in-law Minna. The defenders of psychoanalysis are indignant and speak of gutter-press journalism, of paranoia, of 'Freud bashing', but they are obviously on the defensive. "It is one thing, however, to plumb the depths of Freud's rewriting of history, another to understand its motives. Why on earth did the founder of psychoanalysis feel the need to tell all these fibs? Was it sheer boastfulness? A childish desire to establish his originality and intellectual priority? A shrewd marketing strategy? A way of promoting a personality cult within the movement he had created? In a book published in Dutch in 1993 and now translated into German as Der Fall Freud (it could be translated into English as The Freud Case: The Birth of Psychoanalysis out of Lying), the historian Han Israëls proposes an explanation that has at least the merit of simplicity. Freud, Israëls claims, was so confident in his first theories that he publicly boasted of therapeutic successes that he had not yet obtained. When they did not materialise, forcing him to revise his theories, Freud had to explain why he had abandoned them without being able to give the real reason: that would have entailed admitting that he had committed serious scientific fraud. Just like a child who has been caught in the act, he resorted to further lies, accusing the others of having lied to him. It was all the fault of that Victorian, Breuer, who had concealed from him Anna O.'s 'transference love' and its disastrous outcome. Or again, it was the fault of his female patients, who had told him all this nonsense about their daddies. By blaming it on convenient fall guys, Freud even allowed himself the luxury of changing his failures into victories. After all, was it not he who had managed to unearth the secret reason for all the lies he had been told? The myth of the hero was launched." -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
Hypnotherapy for smoking
I often get questions from students about the use of hypnosis as a treatment for smoking and as an aid in weight loss. Given that I present the "Spanosian" social-cognitive view of hypnosis in my courses, I often tell them that, based on what I have read, there is no controlled research consistently providing evidence that hypnosis helps in the treatment of such problems beyond a placebo effect. If this is incorrect, I would like to know. In this vein, I found the following article interesting (I plan on ordering the original article). I was most interested in the following line: "Many times, hypnosis is packaged with other, more comprehensive treatments," [Joseph] Green [the study coauthor] said. "So it's extremely difficult to tease apart and determine which individual therapy got the smoker to quit." The article is on the ScienceDaily Magazine website, which you can get to at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/05/000529092716.htm Jeff Hypnosis As Smoking Cessation Therapy Needs Further Scrutiny COLUMBUS, Ohio - Smokers who are hopeful that hypnosis will help them kick their habit need to temper their expectations, according to new research. A review of nearly five dozen studies showed that while hypnosis may have some effect as an anti-smoking treatment, it is by no means an end-all and be-all treatment for smoking cessation. "Giving hypnosis the stamp of a well-established treatment for smoking cessation is premature," said Joseph Green, a study co-author and associate professor of psychology at Ohio State University's Lima campus. The research appears in a recent issue of the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. Green conducted the research with Steven Jay Lynn, of the State University of New York at Binghamton. The researchers compiled the results of 59 studies. They concluded that smokers who underwent hypnosis fared better in terms of abstaining from smoking than did smokers who had no intervention. However, it was difficult to determine whether hypnosis had any benefit above and beyond other treatments - such as behavior modification - that were often of considerable benefit to patients. "Many times, hypnosis is packaged with other, more comprehensive treatments," Green said. "So it's extremely difficult to tease apart and determine which individual therapy got the smoker to quit." Besides, Green pointed out, many of the studies failed to use biochemical measures - physical markers that indicate carbon monoxide levels in the body - in conjunction with the smoking cessation treatments. Biochemical measures are important to researchers who are trying to determine the effectiveness of specific treatments. "These markers can help verify treatment outcomes," Green said. According to Green, one of the key problems in determining the effectiveness of hypnosis as a smoking cessation treatment is a lack of a standard way to conduct hypnosis. Across the studies, hypnosis treatments varied in the types of questions that were asked; the number of treatments each subject underwent; and the inclusion of other smoking-cessation interventions. "There is little reason to believe that hypnosis is any more effective than a number of other approaches to smoking cessation," Green said. Approaches range from self-help therapy to taking medication, and include nicotine replacement therapies, acupuncture, and individual and group counseling. "A smoker who wants to quit should be offered a variety of potentially effective interventions," Green said. "That way, a person can choose the treatment or treatments that best suit him." Editor's Note: The original news release can be found at http://www.acs.ohio-state.edu/units/research/archive/hypsmoke.htm Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Ohio State University for journalists and other members of the public. If you wish to quote from any part of this story, please credit Ohio State University as the original source. You may also wish to include the following link in any citation: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/05/000529092716.htm -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
Re: Psychology and the Unabomber
Jeffrey Nagelbush forwarded something from (I believe) _The Chronicle of Higher Education_ about Ted Kaczynski's participation in a study by Henry Murray at Harvard. I wrote the following this morning while reading the original article published in _The Atlantic Monthly_ --- There is an article in the most recent issue of _The Atlantic Monthly_ by Alston Chase entitled "Harvard and the making of the Unabomber" (June 2000, Vol. 285, No. 6, pp. 41-44, 46-50, 52-56, 58-59, 62-65). Ted Kaczynski (the "Unabomber") murdered three people and wounded over twenty with mail bombs sent from 1978 to 1995. His main targets were those he felt represented the technological and scientific elite, whom he felt were reducing the rest of us to mere cogs in a technological machine. According to Chase, during and soon after Kaczynski's undergraduate years at Harvard University, he "began to put together a theory to explain his unhappiness and anger. Technology and science were destroying liberty and nature. The system, of which Harvard was a part, served technology, which in turn required conformism. By advertising, propaganda, and other techniques of behavior modification, this system sought to transform men into automatons, to serve the machine." (p. 63) In this article, Chase tried to make the argument that a significant influence on Kaczynski's actions was his participation, as an undergraduate, in a study performed by the psychologist Henry Murray. Murray, along with Christiana Morgan, is perhaps most famous for developing the Thematic Apperception Test (published in 1935). During the late 1950s and early 1960s, he and his co-investigators performed a study in which they looked at Harvard undergraduate's reactions under stress: "Murray subjected his unwitting students, including Kaczynski, to intensive interrogation--what Murray himself called 'vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive" attacks, assaulting his subject's egos and most-cherished ideals and beliefs" (p. 42). Although the study contained many components and continued over the course of three years, the focus of the study was a situation that took place during the second year in which the participants were given a kind of "stress test." First, the participants wrote essays on their "personal philosophy of life." They also wrote autobiographies in which they were asked to reveal very intimate details (including sexual fantasies). They then were asked to debate their views with another person (this event was filmed). This other person, however, was a confederate who was instructed to aggressively attack the participant's ideas. This verbal attack was so severe that many participants became enraged. For example, twenty-five years after the study had been completed, one participant recalled: "I remember him attacking me, even insulting me, for my values, or for opinions I had expressed in my written material, and I remember feeling that I could not defend these ideas, that I had . . . not intended for them to be the subject of a debate... I remember being shocked by the severity of the attack, and I remember feeling helpless to respond So what I seem to remember are feelings (bewilderment, surprise, anger, chagrin) sensations (the bright lights used for the filming, the discomfort of the arrangements) reactions (how could they have done this to me; what is the point of this? They have deceived me, telling me there was going to be a discussion, when in fact there was an attack)." (p. 59) For many participants, this "discussion" was a very distressing and even traumatic event. And it did not stop there: "During the year following this session each student was called back for several 'recall' interviews and sometimes was asked to comment on the movie of himself being reduced to impotent anger by the interrogator" (p. 56). This is a study that, it should be obvious, would be considered unethical today by any institutional review board. Chase proposed that it could have had strong effects on a young and immature undergraduate such as Kaczynski (who was only 16 years old when he entered Harvard). Chase argued that this study, along with what he was learning at Harvard in his general-education courses, represented a turning point in Kaczynski's life. He argued that the beginnings of Kaczynski's belief that modern technological and scientific society is evil (and that it should be forcibly destroyed) was determined, in part, by his participation in the Murray study: "When, soon after [the end of the Murray study], Kaczynski began to worry about the possibility of mind control, he was not giving vent to paranoid delusions. In view of Murray's experiment, he was not only rational but right. The university and the psychiatric establishment had been willing accomplices in an experiment that had treated human beings as unwitting guinea pigs, and had treated them brutally. Here is a
Re: test anxiety
Rod Hetzel wrote: What DSM-IV diagnosis would you give for test anxiety that has been impairing academic performance? Specific Phobia? Anxiety Disorder NOS? V-Code? I'm going to give this a try (I'm bored with working on other things and I want a diversion). I'm not a clinician although my students think that I play one in the classroom. I am very familiar, however, with the anxiety disorders. In general, I do not think that a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder would be appropriate in most cases. If the person fears failure because he/she is unprepared (hasn't studied well) or has learning difficulties, I would not give either diagnosis: the fears are reasonable. In general, I would be vary wary of giving either diagnosis because test anxiety often results (in my "clinical judgement") from past experiences of failure in school and, thus, seems to be reasonable in many cases (given how important school success often is viewed by students and their family members). The most essential questions to ask are: (1) what specifically is the person fearing; (2) does the person (nonchild) realize that the anxiety is excessive or unreasonable? If the person fears that poor performance will lead others (such as the teacher) to think that he/she is stupid, then a social phobia may the best diagnosis to make, but only if the person realizes that the anxiety is excessive AND if the person knows the material (if the person doesn't know the material, then the fear is a reasonable one). If, on the other hand, the person fears that not doing well on tests means that something bad will happen (e.g., will not succeed in life), then perhaps a specific phobia might be a better diagnosis (I am really resisting this one, though), but again only if the person realizes that the anxiety is excessive AND if the person knows the material. A V code (V62.3 Academic Problems) may be assigned either alone (when it is the focus of clinical attention) or in combination with an Axis I diagnosis (such as social phobia) when the academic difficulties are "sufficiently severe to warrant independent clinical attention" (DSM-IV, p. 685). How's this sound? Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
Re: test anxiety
Sorry, I sent the last post off before I was done with it. Chapter 9 of Beck and Emery (1985; _Anxiety disorders and phobias: A cognitive perspective_) classify test anxiety as an "evaluation (or social) anxiety" and seem to distinguish it from phobias/anxiety disorders in general. For example, they state: "Unlike the phobias described in the previous chapters, a major feature of the social anxieties is that the actual fear . . ., prior to entering a situation, appears plausible and indeed seems to have a reasonable probability of being realized. . . . [A]n individual who is afraid of becoming tongue-tied when trying to carry on a conversation with a 'blind date', or that his mind will go blank during an examination or interview, can reasonably expect these events to occur. The most interesting feature is that actually having the fear seems to bring on the undesirable consequence." (p. 151) Thus, test anxiety would be seen as being more reasonable than the fears of the phobic disorders. I have not looked carefully at this book in a long time. But if you want to know more about test anxiety, this would be a good place to look. Jeff Ricker wrote (an incomplete post that he sent off by accident): I was looking through Beck, et al. (19) for more information on Rod Hetzel's question about the relation of test anxiety to anxiety disorders. It seems that these authors distinguish test anxiety from the phobias proper. "Hetzel, Roderick" wrote: What DSM-IV diagnosis would you give for test anxiety that has been impairing academic performance? Specific Phobia? Anxiety Disorder NOS? V-Code? -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
Re: test anxiety
I was looking through Beck, et al. (19) for more information on Rod Hetzel's question about the relation of test anxiety to anxiety disorders. It seems that these authors distinguish test anxiety from the phobias proper. "Hetzel, Roderick" wrote: What DSM-IV diagnosis would you give for test anxiety that has been impairing academic performance? Specific Phobia? Anxiety Disorder NOS? V-Code? ___ Roderick D. Hetzel, Ph.D. Assistant Professor and Attending Psychologist Department of Anesthesiology University of Rochester Medical Center Pain and Symptom Treatment Center 2337 Clinton Avenue South Rochester, New York 14618 716-275-3524 (phone) 716-473-5007 (fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (email) -Original Message- From: Jim Guinee [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, May 19, 2000 10:52 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Girl Dies After Controversial Therapy Hi, Not sure my purpose in posting this -- this is clearly far far outside of the norm of what psychotherapists do, but the fact that there are people out there who seem to have little regard for science and common sense just drives me crazy. --- Forwarded Message Follows --- Girl Dies in Colorado After Controversial Therapy DENVER (Reuters) - Police on Thursday arrested three people for conducting a controversial ``rebirthing'' therapy on a 10-year-old girl who died after being wrapped in a blanket despite telling them she could not breathe and was going to die. The procedure, aimed at helping children who cannot form bonds with their parents by making them ``relive'' birth, was captured on closed circuit television on April 18 while the girl's horrified mother watched in a nearby room, according to the Jefferson County sheriff's office. The girl, Candace Newmaker of North Carolina, told the therapists seven times that she could not breathe and said six times that she was going to die. But instead of unwrapping her, the therapists said ``you got to push hard if you want to be born -- or do you want to stay in there and die?'' The girl, who was adopted four years ago and had been treated for Attention Deficit Disorder and depression, lost consciousness during the procedure and was rushed to a local hospital where she died the next day. Blanket Is Supposed To Represent The Womb In the procedure the child was completely wrapped in a blue, flannel blanket that simulated the womb. Large pillows were placed around her. Counselors then pressed in on the pillows to simulate contractions and to motivate the girl to push her way out of the blanket through a twisted end of the blanket at the top of the girl's head. Brita St. Clair, Jack McDaniel and Julie Ponder, employees at Connell Watkins and Associates, a counseling office in Evergreen, Colo. were arrested for ``child abuse resulting in death,'' the sheriff's office said. An arrest warrant was issued for a fourth person, Connell Watkins, who ran the counseling office that specialized in attachment therapy for children. Attorneys for Ponder and Watkins were not available to comment. According to an investigator who viewed the tape there was a 20-minute lapse between the time the girl's last breath could be heard to the time she was unwrapped. -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
Re: Conventional view of placebos
I wrote: Because I was in a rush, I was not careful to describe precisely what Harrington was arguing. Sorry. She is arguing that it is science that has created an unnecessary dichotomy between the body and the mind. That is, she states that the conventional view has been that placebo effects are inert substances that affect ONLY the mind and not the body (which is what we mean when we say that the effect is "in the mind"), whereas a "real" treatment affects the body snip And, Stephen Black responded: This is actually a misrepresentation of the "conventional view" of science concerning the placebo effect, at least for recent research on its mechanism of action in relieving pain. Stephen is correct, of course;. Again, the fact that I was rushing caused me to write with little care. The conventional view of which Harrington speaks is not that of scientific researchers of placebo effects but that of many medical doctors. In fact, a recent article posted on BP/BNnews (the wonderful service provided by Marc Breedlove and advertised on TIPS by Stephen Black himself) provides evidence for this claim. On May 7th, in a post entitled "The power of placebos," (the original article was entitled, "A question of ethics: Giving placebos," by Ulysses Torassa, published in the _San Francisco Examiner_), the following was stated about the practice of giving placebos: "A surprising number of doctors believe placebos can distinguish 'real' from 'imagined' pain. Sometimes they are given to people doctors suspect of faking pain in order to get narcotics, or to people who have symptoms the doctor can't explain. . . . Doctors are most likely to use a placebo when they suspect a patient's report of pain isn't real, the patient has a history of substance abuse or the patient has an underlying psychiatric illness that may be triggering pain sensations. . . . When the patient reports feeling better after getting the sham medicine, doctors feel their suspicions about the patient's truthfulness are verified, even though placebos routinely provide relief even to people who are known to be suffering serious organic disease. The presumption is that 'anyone who responds to a placebo must be faking the pain, even though there is a placebo response to everything', [Betty] Ferrell said [a pain-management expert]." Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
Re: Defining placebo
Speaking of placebos, there is a very interesting article in _Cerebrum_ (Vol. 2, No. 1, Winter 2000) by Anne Harrington entitled "The whiteness of lies: Swallowing the placebo effect" (pp. 71-86). The theme of the article involves the following: "What placebo effects challenge us to ask is: How does the force of human cultural imagination, on the one side, and the energy of human sociability, on the other, interact to affect our biology and literally make us sick or well? How does the brain function as a translator between events we experience supposedly outside ourselves, in our society and culture, and events we experience inside our bodies, in our physiology and biochemistry?" (p. 72) -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
Re: Defining placebo
Sorry, I sent my previous post off by accident. I hadn't finished writing it, yet. Let me try again. Speaking of placebos, there is a very interesting article in _Cerebrum_ (Vol. 2, No. 1, Winter 2000) by Anne Harrington entitled "The whiteness of lies: Swallowing the placebo effect" (pp. 71-86). The theme of the article involves the following: "What placebo effects challenge us to ask is: How does the force of human cultural imagination, on the one side, and the energy of human sociability, on the other, interact to affect our biology and literally make us sick or well? How does the brain function as a translator between events we experience supposedly outside ourselves, in our society and culture, and events we experience inside our bodies, in our physiology and biochemistry?" (p. 72) She goes through a history of the placebo effect and ends up by criticizing the conventional way we conceive of it within modern medical and psychological science: "If placebo effects challenge us with the possibility that culture and context are within the body as well as without, then many assumptions guiding biomedical and neuroscience research will need rethinking. We may find ourselves beginning to think differently about the historical rationale for banishing meaning from biology. We may question some conventional distinctions that see natural facts as one thing (necessary, universal, and objective), and sociocultural facts as another (contingent, value-oriented, and subjective)." (p. 85) I haven't read the article carefully enough yet to fill in the gaps here. But I love when someone develops an argument that is contrary to my own approach. It looks like it is a good assumption-questioning article. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
Re: Defining placebo
Gary, Because I was in a rush, I was not careful to describe precisely what Harrington was arguing. Sorry. She is arguing that it is science that has created an unnecessary dichotomy between the body and the mind. That is, she states that the conventional view has been that placebo effects are inert substances that affect ONLY the mind and not the body (which is what we mean when we say that the effect is "in the mind"), whereas a "real" treatment affects the body. Her counterargument to this view can be summarized in the following: "the rituals and stories of our society (teaching us what it means to be sick, how we might expect to feel better, who are the people endowed with the power to help) are not neutral; they are important parts of a process with real physiological action that gets right 'under our skin'. We swallow culture along with our capsules." (p. 85) And: "all known clinical effects of placebos appear to be compatible with, and therefore potentially explicable within, an emerging view of our physiology: the view that the central nervous system exists in a subtle dance of communication with other systems in our body--autonomic, endocrinological, immunological--that are essential to health and healing." (pp. 78-79) Thus, the meaning inherent in a medical context (the doctor, the tools, the medications, etc.), because it involves CNS activity, has effects throughout our body. Placebo effects ARE biological ultimately. I hope that this clarifies somewhat Harrington's argument. But I have to leave, now, so I can't explain it any more than this. Jeff Gary Peterson wrote: The problem I have with this (and of course it bears a more careful reading) is that she talks about experiencing outside of our bodies? How is this done? Shouldn't she say that we perceive the world _as out there_, but that perception and conscious experience is felt, and indeed, made possible by the lived body? She seems to create a needless separation--very Cartesian of her--but it is an illusory perception of inside and outside. What we experience as outside does not mean that it is outside...this is the problem many a clinoid therapist has learned painfully. Gary Peterson Sorry, I sent my previous post off by accident. I hadn't finished writing it, yet. Let me try again. Speaking of placebos, there is a very interesting article in _Cerebrum_ (Vol. 2, No. 1, Winter 2000) by Anne Harrington entitled "The whiteness of lies: Swallowing the placebo effect" (pp. 71-86). The theme of the article involves the following: "What placebo effects challenge us to ask is: How does the force of human cultural imagination, on the one side, and the energy of human sociability, on the other, interact to affect our biology and literally make us sick or well? How does the brain function as a translator between events we experience supposedly outside ourselves, in our society and culture, and events we experience inside our bodies, in our physiology and biochemistry?" (p. 72) She goes through a history of the placebo effect and ends up by criticizing the conventional way we conceive of it within modern medical and psychological science: "If placebo effects challenge us with the possibility that culture and context are within the body as well as without, then many assumptions guiding biomedical and neuroscience research will need rethinking. We may find ourselves beginning to think differently about the historical rationale for banishing meaning from biology. We may question some conventional distinctions that see natural facts as one thing (necessary, universal, and objective), and sociocultural facts as another (contingent, value-oriented, and subjective)." (p. 85) I haven't read the article carefully enough yet to fill in the gaps here. But I love when someone develops an argument that is contrary to my own approach. It looks like it is a good assumption-questioning article. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think
History of ADD
The most recent issue of _The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (Vol. 36, No. 2, Spring 2000) has an article by Andrew Lakoff entitled "Adaptive will: The evolution of attention deficit disorder." The abstract: "The increasing prevalence of attention-deficit disorder among American school children was a source of significant controversy in the 1990s. This paper looks at the social and historical contexts in which ADD evolved in order to understand its emergence as a coherent and widespread entity. Changes in expert models of child behavior interacted with the formation of new identities around disability to shape a milieu in which the disorder could thrive. The pattern of affect control, of what must and what must not be restrained, regulated, and transformed, is certainly not the same in this stage as in the preceding one of court aristocracy. In keeping with its different interdependencies, bourgeois society applies stronger restrictions to certain impulses, while in the case of others aristocratic restrictions are simply continued and transformed to suit the changed situation (Elias, 1994, p. 125). © 2000 John Wiley Sons, Inc." Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
Re: History of ADD
Louis_Schmier wrote: So, Jeff are you saying that there are cultural influences at work that influence our understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of ADD that operate on all involve? No, I'm saying this (i.e., I wrote): The most recent issue of _The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (Vol. 36, No. 2, Spring 2000) has an article by Andrew Lakoff entitled "Adaptive will: The evolution of attention deficit disorder." The abstract: [at which point, I reproduced the abstract] Although I would like to take credit for the article (hell, I wouldn't mind another publication on my CV), I don't think that Professor Lakoff would appreciate this. An interesting article though. Perhaps you might read it, Louis, and give us your thoughts. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper LISTOWNER: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
Grandmother back in town, please excuse my absence
Dear TIPSters, I'm sorry to say that I will not be able to send any messages to TIPS for the rest of today and probably tomorrow, too. My grandmother has risen from the dead and we are busy preparing a welcome-back party. Since she has been dead for quite a long time, I'm sure you can understand how excited we are. Sorry, but it couldn't be helped, now that she has become one of the undead. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd.FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department[EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "The truth is rare and never simple." Oscar Wilde "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS)
