There are so many ways to go wrong in evolutionary psychology. Kate Clancy does us the tremendous favor of specifying how to do evo psych right. Invaluable reading. Here’s the pith: For something to be an evolutionarily stable strategy it has to fit a few conditions: You need clear evidence it is an adaption, which […]
Continue reading →“Happiness is a warm gun.” – John Lennon “You are different with a gun in your hand; the gun is different with you holding it.” – Bruno Latour I’ve been on an Elmore Leonard tear of late. Right now I’m reading his Split Images, in which a good cop and a good magazine journalist (heh) try […]
Continue reading →As the fallout over DSM-V continues, UK psychologist Graham Davey probes the question: Once scientists establish a paradigm in a particular area this has the effect of (1) framing the questions to be asked, (2) defining the procedures to answer them, and (3) mainstreams the models, theories and constructs within which new facts should be […]
Continue reading →Over at Slate I have a story, “The New Temper Tantrum Disorder,” about the “Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder” I wrote about more briefly here a couple weeks ago, when DMDD was still a proposed diagnosis. Last week the DMDD diagnosis was approved for inclusion in the American Psychiatric Association’s forthcoming Diagnostic Statistical Manual, Fifth Edition — […]
Continue reading →I’m pleased to be going to the land of Deborah Blum, John Hawks, Siri Carpenter, and other illustrious types to spend a week talking with classes and giving public lectures about writing, science, music … and pretty much whatever anyone wants to talk about. If you’re in Madison, love to see you at one of […]
Continue reading →Earlier this week, I wrote a post criticizing Naomi Wolf’s use of science in her book “Vagina: A New Biography.” (See Naomi Wolf’s “Vagina” and the Perils of Neuro Self-Help, or How Dupe-amine Drove Me Into a Dark Dungeon.) My complaint was that Wolf treated an incredibly complex and ambiguous body of science — the neurobiology of […]
Continue reading →Someone should have warned Naomi Wolf what slippery material she’d get encounter by taking a neuro angle into Vagina: A New Biography. As Zoe Heller explains in her smart, raucous, ripping review in The New York Review of Books, [Wolf’s] original plan was to write a book surveying cultural representations of the vagina through the ages. […]
Continue reading →I got the honors of being guest editor this past Saturday at The Browser, one of my favorite aggregators of good reading. My assignment: Pick a half-dozen of my favorite online pieces from the last month or so. I narrowed this brutal task by focusing on pieces that would add to the great picks the […]
Continue reading →Spurred by Adam Scott’s collapse today at the British Open, where he bogeyed the last four holes to lose by a stroke, I’m reposting this feature that I originally published here in September, 2010, as “The Tight Collar: The New Science of Choking.” It was selected the following summer for inclusion in The Best American Sports […]
Continue reading →When a researcher fudges data or engages in other fraudulent behavior, among those most wronged are the collaborators who did nothing wrong. Often there are many. Their reputations and careers can suffer horribly; they experience a horrible betrayal by someone they put enormous trust in; and they feel compelled to remain silent, lest they court […]
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