July | 2012 | Counterbalanced

Monthly Archives: July 2012

A brief history of eye movements, or why NLP sucks

Posted 31 July 2012 by Pete Etchells

Psychology's having a bit of a hard time of it at the minute. Social Psychology is reeling from high-profile resignations and paper retractions by Stapel, Smeesters and Sanna (we'll be moving onto the 'T's soon). There are worries about how you pick the right sort of analysis in neuroimaging (and what 'right sort of analysis' even means). Jonah Lehrer's been caught being a bit too creative with some of the quotes in his recent book 'Imagine'. Claims that eye movement... Read more

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Beginnings – three simple words

Posted 27 July 2012 by Pete Etchells

Thursday 26th July saw the launch of SciLogs.com, a new English language science blog network. SciLogs.com, the brand-new home for Nature Network bloggers, forms part of the SciLogs international collection of blogs which already exist in German, Spanish and Dutch. To celebrate this addition to the NPG science blogging family, some of the NPG blogs are publishing posts focusing on “Beginnings”. Participating in this cross-network blogging festival is nature.com’s Soapbox Science blog, Scitable’s Student Voices blog and bloggers from SciLogs.com, SciLogs.de, Scitable and Scientific American’s Blog Network. Join us as we explore the diverse... Read more

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Eye evolution made easy

Posted 20 July 2012 by Pete Etchells

The National Trust hit the news recently over the controversial inclusion of creationist theory in a new exhibit looking at the history of the Giant’s Causeway. The exhibit claimed that: “Like many natural phenomena around the world, the Giant’s Causeway has raised questions and prompted debate about how it was formed. This debate has ebbed and flowed since the discovery of the Causeway to science and, historically, the Causeway became part of a global debate about how the earth’s rocks... Read more

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Olympic Health Legacies

Posted 17 July 2012 by Pete Etchells

Over the course of 17 days this summer, an estimated 14,000 athletes will take part in over 300 Olympic events in the UK, mostly centered on London. Such a mammoth event takes time to plan, and while we hear lots in the news about stadiums being built, controversial security plans being put into action, and athletes being trained, we don’t hear much about a less obvious, yet hugely important factor in any major event – how to keep everyone healthy... Read more

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Quality over quantity

Posted 9 July 2012 by Pete Etchells

Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection. Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Watson and Crick’s description of the DNA molecule. All of these, and many more, are easily classed as some of Science’s Greatest Discoveries. But with modern pressures to publish high-impact papers as often as possible, are the opportunities to find the next Great Scientific Discoveries being stifled? As I’ve mentioned before, last year one of the academic heavyweights of social psychology, Diederik Stapel, was found guilty of faking data in... Read more

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Lord of the Files, part 2

Posted 3 July 2012 by Pete Etchells

Back in November, I wrote about the Diederik Stapel affair that was rocking the psychological community. Now, it’s all happening again – recently, Uri Simonsohn has found evidence suggesting that another Dutch social psychologist, Dirk Smeesters, has been tinkering with data to produce more desirable outcomes in his research. We’re still waiting on Simonsohn’s paper on the matter to be published, so I think it’s a little too soon to speculate on how he came across Smeesters’ work – some... Read more

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