In study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.. a few hundred participants took a self-guided tour through the Stanford Memorial Church. On the tour, the participants were supposed to take note of details like “the cruciform shape of the church” and make sure they checked out the bronze angels that “greet you from the massive entry doors.”

Some of these participants had iPods equipped with cameras and were instructed to take photos (either to print out later or to post on Facebook). Other participants went in empty-handed.

A week after the tour, the participants were given a surprise quiz, with questions about details they should have learned on the tour. In one arm of the study, those without a camera got around 7 out of 10 questions right. Those who had a camera scored closer to 6. That’s like going from a C to a D, a small but significant difference.

“Just taking photos in general was enough to decrease scores on a memory test,” says Emma Templeton, a Dartmouth psychological researcher who was a co-author of the study.

Why? The simple answer is that the camera is a distraction. “It could just be that we’re using these devices, distracting ourselves from the experience, and because of that distraction, we don’t remember the thing we’re supposed to be paying attention to,” says Templeton.

And because of the ubiquity of smartphones, “we’ve just inserted into our daily lives potentially a giant source of distraction.

Brian Resnick writing in Vox

March 31, 2018

the life that is waiting for us

March 31, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

We must be willing to get rid of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

-Joseph Campbell

March 30, 2018

Strengthen your Alliances

March 30, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

The best way to engage with new people is not by cold calling or by "networking" with strangers at cocktail parties, but by working with the people you already know. Of the many types of professional relationships, among the most important are your close allies. Most professionals maintain five to 10 active alliances. What makes a relationship an alliance? First, an ally is someone you consult regularly for advice. Second, you proactively share and collaborate on opportunities together. You keep your antennae attuned to an ally's interests, and when it makes sense to pursue something jointly, you do. Third, you talk up an ally. You promote his or her brand. Finally, when an ally runs into conflict, you defend him and stand up for his reputation, and he does the same for you. An alliance is always an exchange, but not a transactional one. A transactional relationship is when your accountant files your tax returns and you pay him for his time.

An alliance is when a co-worker needs last-minute help on Sunday night preparing for a Monday morning presentation, and even though you're busy, you agree to go over to his house and help.

Reid Hoffman, The Start-Up of You

March 29, 2018

the clock and the calendar

March 29, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery. - H. G. Wells

March 28, 2018

How to justify revoking a person's status as a human worthy of dignity

March 28, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

The “No one to blame but themselves” rule “implies that once someone breaks a rule, you can do whatever you want to them and you cannot be blamed. We need that one mortal sin which will let us revoke a person's status as a human worthy of dignity, respect, empathy or anything else.” -David Wong

March 26, 2018

Articles of Interest - March 26

March 26, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

***TECHNOLOGY

12 Things Everyone Should Understand About Tech LinkedIn

***JOURNALISM

L.A. County has repeatedly violated state open records laws, L.A. Times lawsuit alleges LA Times

Snopes has its site back. But the legal battle over its ownership will drag on for months Poynter

The best practices for interviewing children Columbia Journalism Review

How to Build a Digital Newsroom with Developers and Journalists Working Together PBS Media Shift

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Local news isn’t dying out: It’s being killed off by corporate greed Salon

***FAKE NEWS

The New Threat of 'Leak-Flavored' Propaganda: A reporter lost his job when real documents told a false story Bloomberg

Google News Initiative will fight fake news with new subscription, security features Mashable

Can “Extreme Transparency” Fight Fake News and Create More Trust With Readers? Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Can AI solve the internet's fake news problem? A fact-checker investigates Popsci

Fill in the blanks: What’s still missing from the study of fake news? (A whole lot) Harvard’s Nieman Lab

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

Is tech finally killing radio? Don’t let iHeart’s bleeding fool you Digital Trends

***BIG DATA & AI

What training one of YouTube's video moderation machine learning tools looks like at the ground level WIRED

Applying analytics/data mining/machine learning to the semiconductor design and manufacturing Semi-Engineering

How do the different machine learning platforms stack up from a performance perspective Datamai

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Emoji are being used as evidence in court—and people are confused Daily Dot

***FACEBOOK

Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica Debacle: Why This Data-Privacy Storm Is Different, And What’s Next Variety

How To Change Your Facebook Settings To Opt Out of Platform API Sharing Electronic Frontier Foundation

Facebook’s New Data Restrictions Will Handcuff Even Honest Researchers WIRED

Former Facebook Insider Says Company Cannot Be Trusted To Regulate Itself NPR

The Best Alternative For Every Facebook Feature WIRED

Facebook Admits It May Collect Data About Your Calls and Text Messages. Here’s How to Turn It Off TIME

***MOBILE

Desktop dies on weekends Axios

***PERSONAL GROWTH

The green fig tree Becoming (my blog)

What People Find Most Charming About You, Based On Your Myers-Briggs Type Bustle

***GRAMMAR

‘Elected to lead, not to proofread’: Typos, spelling mistakes are commonplace in Trump’s White House The Washington Post

***WRITING & READING

Who doesn’t read books in America? Pew Research

***LANGUAGE

The phrase “useful idiot” seems to be everywhere Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE

Readings of Maya Angelou’s poems inspire gathering at Providence’s First Baptist Church in America Providence Journal

***GENDER

Women’s-Studies Students Across the Nation Are Editing Wikipedia The Chronicle of Higher Education

A feminist glossary because we didn't all major in gender studies USA Today

Female presidents now in the majority at Cal State LA Times

Parents protested a 'pornographic' assignment. Now Billings schools may change how teachers pick outside materials Billings Gazette

More States Move To End 'Tampon Tax' That's Seen As Discriminating Against Women NPR

Asexuality is still hugely misunderstood. TV is slowly changing that Vox

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

“Implicit bias” tests help people feel morally superior, even when their results show bias Quartz

What's the Difference Between a Frat and a Gang? The Atlantic

Sympathy for white Austin bomber stirs debate about race PBS

Alaska’s Unique Civil Rights Struggle Daily Jstor

***FREE SPEECH

First Amendment Free Food Festival: Students sign away their First Amendment rights in exchange for a free meal The Times-News

Are liberal college students creating a free speech crisis? Not according to data NBC News

***LEGAL ISSUES

"Blurred Lines" Verdict Upheld by Appeals Court in Win for Marvin Gaye Family Hollywood Reporter

Section 230: A Key Legal Shield For Facebook, Google Is About To NPR

Justices Skeptical About California Law Being Challenged By Anti-Abortion Clinics NPR

Advertising in a Digital Age: The Do's and Don’ts of Attorney Websites Law.com

***RELIGION

Memphis megachurch pastor resigns following sexual abuse investigation USA Today

Hollywood's big bet on Christian movies The Week

Pope backs tattoos as they can help priests connect with the 'culture of the young' Telegraph

Brainwashing May Sound Like Fiction, But This Is How It Works In Real Life Digg

How evangelicals became an anxious minority seeking political protection The Atlantic

Animated Map Shows How the Five Major Religions Spread Across the World (video)

After years of inquiries, Willow Creek pastor denies misconduct allegations Chicago Tribune

The ‘Father Of Christian Rock’ Larry Norman’s Battles With Evangelicalism WAMU

***ART & DESIGN

Netflix created their own font, and it’s going to save the company millions Ad Week

The Crazy Stories Behind 6 Of The World’s Rarest Colors Co.Design

Logical Fallacies In Design Critiques Prototypr

***MUSIC

CDs and vinyl are more popular than digital downloads once again The Verge

The music business had its second year in a row of big-time growth, thanks to streaming Recode

***FILM

The Geometry Of Emotion: How Paul Thomas Anderson Uses Hot Dog Shapes In His Films To Create Mood (video)

***STUDENT MEDIA

Washington New Voices bill officially signed into law, becoming 14th state to protect rights of student journalists Student Press Law Center

Study Abroad Student Who Claims $7K Lost in JFK Bag Fiasco Gets Back Single Boot, Bikini Top NBC New York

Student Newspaper Retraction for Plagiarism Observer

***JOBS & INTERNSHIPS

How to design a career you want Millie Tran

How to Negotiate…When You’re Already Getting That Promotion Girl Boss

This Is What An A+ LinkedIn Summary Looks Like Girl Boss

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

Ex-student suing Univ. of Illinois over dismissal based on sex-assault allegations News-Gazette

Rape victim accuses Cerritos College leaders of negligence Press Telegram

What To Know About The Terrible Anti-Trafficking Bill That Forced Craigslist To Shut Down Its Personals Section Digg

Predictive Analytics and the War on Human Trafficking Enterprise Tech

Dean of Students Jokes About Sexual Assault Inside Higher Ed

***HEALTH

American Adults Just Keep Getting Fatter New York Times

Paper used to support WHO guidelines on preventing infections “has no scientific validity” Retraction Watch

***FAMILY

Some Simple Advice For Figuring Out How Much Screen Time To Give Your Child Digg

***SCIENCE

Infographics Show How the Different Fields of Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics & Computer Science Fit Together Open Culture

***PSYCHOLOGY

Brainwashing May Sound Like Fiction, But This Is How It Works In Real Life Digg

The Noisy Fallacies of Psychographic Targeting WIRED

***PHILOSOPHY

I and Thou: Philosopher Martin Buber on the Art of Relationship and What Makes Us Real to One Another Brain Pickings

Philosophy for Beginners: A Free Introductory Course from Oxford University Open Culture

***SOCIAL ISSUES

As Pedestrian Deaths Spike, Scientists Scramble for Answers WIRED

***ETHICS

Cambridge Analytica Scandal Raises New Ethical Questions About Microtargeting NPR

***RESEARCH

The domination of English-language journal publishing is hurting scholarship in many countries (opinion) Inside Higher Ed

Is fake peer review today's leading cause of retractions? Publons

On ‘lower impact’ publishing – it’s better than you might think Occam’s Typewriter

***HIGHER ED

Chinese Companies Are Buying Up Cash-Strapped U.S. Colleges Bloomberg

Schools are moving toward a model of continuous, lifelong learning in order to meet the needs of today’s economy The Atlantic

Machine Learning, Big Data and the Future of Higher Ed Inside Higher Ed

More poor students are going to college than in the past. And yet the number who graduate is falling even further behind New York Times

Washington College fires its president following harassment of faculty members The News Tribune

***HUMANITIES & STEM

A University of Wisconsin campus pushes plan to drop 13 majors — including English, art, history, sociology, philosophy, French, German and Spanish The Washington Post

UW-Stevens Point students occupy administration buildings in "Save Our Majors" Protest Stevens Point Journal

***STUDENT LIFE

University of Alabama expels student after video of racial slurs ALcom

University police surveil student social media in attempt to make campus safer The FIRE

Looking for ways for students to do more self-assessment of their work Chronicle of Higher Ed

March 26, 2018

The green fig tree

March 26, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

March 24, 2018

The Author knows

March 24, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

We keep on assuming that we know the play. We do not even know whether we are in Act I or Act V. We do not know who are the major and who the minor characters. The Author knows. – CS Lewis

March 23, 2018

The Shackles of Convenience

March 23, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

In the developed nations of the 21st century, convenience — that is, more efficient and easier ways of doing personal tasks — has emerged as perhaps the most powerful force shaping our individual lives and our economies. This is particularly true in America, where, despite all the paeans to freedom and individuality, one sometimes wonders whether convenience is in fact the supreme value.

We need to consciously embrace the inconvenient — not always, but more of the time. Nowadays individuality has come to reside in making at least some inconvenient choices. You need not churn your own butter or hunt your own meat, but if you want to be someone, you cannot allow convenience to be the value that transcends all others. Struggle is not always a problem. Sometimes struggle is a solution. It can be the solution to the question of who you are.

Tim Wu writing in The New York Times

March 22, 2018

judging ourselves

March 22, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior. -Stephen Covey

March 21, 2018

The multitude Books is a great evil!

March 21, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

Flash back to the year 1455. German Johannes Gutenberg prints his first book, the Latin Vulgate Bible. As Gutenberg’s press reaches across Europe, the Bible is translated into local languages. Poorly-produced copies of the Bible and mediocre literature soon thrive, leading to claims that the printing press must be controlled to avoid chaos and loss of intellectual life. Martin Luther complains, “The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no measure of limit to this fever for writing.”

Comparisons are being made between the effects of the printing press to the advent of the internet.

Stephen Goforth

March 20, 2018

enough religion

March 20, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. .-Jonathan Swift

March 19, 2018

Articles of Interest - March 19

March 19, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

***FAKE NEWS

A Game That Lets you Make Your own Fake News NPR

YouTube Will Link Directly to Wikipedia to Fight Conspiracy Theories Wired

A guide to anti-misinformation actions around the world Poynter

Susan Wojcicki on YouTube's Fight Against Misinformation Wired

Facebook Announces Plan To Combat Fake News Stories By Making Them Actually Happen The Onion

How governments are trying to fight misinformation Poynter

DC councilman apologizes for promoting conspiracy theory that weather is controlled by Jews The Hill

5 takeaways from First Draft’s identifying misinformation course Journalist’s Resources

***MOBILE

Eight things your phone's camera can do—other than snapping selfies PopSci

Clicking is dead; long live scrolling RTDNA

***PRODUCING MEDIA

Nearly one-in-five Americans now listen to audiobooks Pew Research

How to Write a Clear Video Production Brief Video Strategist

How to make your product photography shine Tech Republic

***INTERNET

Why Wikipedia Works New York Magazine

Roughly one in four Americans is online ‘constantly’ Recode

The Best Time of Day to Send Email Life Hacker

***SOCIAL MEDIA

WeChat Exceeds a Billion Users Fox Business News

Five ways social media can be good for teens Washington Post

There's a Healthier Way to Consume Your Media How Stuff Works

***FACEBOOK

50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach The Guardian

How to see all the weird apps that can access your data on Facebook Mashable

How Facebook likes could profile voters for manipulation Associated Press

Cambridge Analytica: Warrant sought to inspect company BBC

Is Your Data Safe on Facebook? Not Really CNN

How to Turn Off Apps in Facebook That May See your Personal Data USA Today

***TECHNOLOGY

Microsoft starts testing voice dictation in latest Office apps Zdnet

Hooked on Hardware? Tech Giants Face Tough Questions Over Device Addiction Variety

VR is still a novelty, but Google’s light-field technology could make it serious art MIT Technology Review

Google is opening up Maps so game developers can create the next Pokémon Go The Verge

FBI releases catalog of Nikola Tesla’s writings seized after his death MuckRock

***PRIVACY

Critics Concerned About Privacy Issues As Biometric Scanning Increases NPR

The latest Cambridge Analytica scandal shows it may be too late to stop them The Atlantic

***JOURNALISM

Welcome to Newscycle: The World’s Most Exhausting Cycling Workout McSweeneys

Shep Smith Has the Hardest Job on Fox News TIME

New EU regulations will have serious implications for newsrooms worldwide Columbia Journalism Review

The Internet Isn’t Forever: When an online news outlet goes out of business, its archives can disappear as well. The new battle over journalism’s digital legacy LongReads

Layoffs Hit 'Chicago Tribune' Newsroom NPR

Why off-the-record is a trap reporters should avoid Poynter

See bottom of article for one of the most-memorable correction notes New York Times

Q&A with Lisa Tozzi of BuzzFeed News The Editor's Desk

New 'dialogue journalism' project will immerse itself in gun debate Poynter

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

How Digital News Startups Choose Between For-Profit and Non-Profit Status PBS Media Shift

Is this strip-mining or journalism? ‘Sobs, gasps, expletives’ over latest Denver Post layoffs Washington Post

***TEACHING JOURNALISM

Rise of ‘fake news’ producing more journalism majors Market Watch

***BIG DATA & AI

Generative adversarial networks will make hoaxes/doctored video/ forged voice clips easier to execute than ever before Quartz

Tech's Next Big Wave: Big Data Meets Biology Fortune

Deep learning algorithms about to descend from the clouds and get into your gadgets Spectrum

Why the age-old problem of siloed data persists and some concrete advice to CIOs on how to break down the walls Search CIO

If the US Gov wants to Modernize Fed Tech then working with Startups & Innovators means Agencies must get rid of Barriers NextGov

***PERSONAL GROWTH

The I’m-not-biased bias Becoming (my blog)

We Asked Experts How to Let Go of Grudges Vice

The person who’s best at lying to you is you Quartz

What Do Personality Quizzes Really Tell You? Daily Jstor

Some people with A.D.H.D. may be naturally suited to our turbocharged world New York Times

***TEACHING

‘How Much Do You Want Your Final to Count?’ Chronicle of Higher Ed

How Technology Can Equalize Learning Differences Chronicle of Higher Ed

Rethinking Laptop Bans (AGAIN) and Note Taking Chronicle of Higher Ed

***WRITING & READING

Why Reading Books Should be Your Priority, According to Science Inc.

How a professional book aficionado packs reading for a trip. Yes, there's strategy Chicago Tribune

How do you talk about gender when the words ‘simply don’t exist’ in your language? PRI

***SOCIAL ISSUES

The Destructive Dynamics of Political Tribalism New York Times

80 percent of mass shooters showed no interest in video games, researcher says CBS News

App to record Police Conduct sends the video directly to an ACLU server so even if the police illegally confiscate your phone they won’t be able to delete the incriminating video ACLU

***LANGUAGE

Asian-American Author Explains The Beautiful Struggle Behind ‘Chinglish’ Huffington Post

Language is the last frontier for Hollywood film-makers Economist

***LITERATURE

A John Oliver spoof of the Pence family’s new children’s book is an instant Amazon bestseller Quartz

Harper Lee's Estate Sues Aaron Sorkin Over 'To Kill A Mockingbird' Broadway Adaptation NPR

Madeleine L’Engle’s granddaughter helps explain how a strange error had gone uncorrected over innumerable printings of ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ The Daily Beast

America's Most Widely Misread Literary Work The Atlantic

***GENDER

Women Lose Out to Men Even Before They Graduate From College Bloomberg

How do you talk about gender when the words ‘simply don’t exist’ in your language? PRI

A State-By-State Guide To The Top Women's History Landmarks In America Forbes

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys New York Times

1963 Loyola Ramblers remembered for NCAA championship and inspiring social change Chicago Tribune

***FREE SPEECH

ACLU sues Georgia city over sign ban; city reverses decision AP News

Arizona State University on-campus event will continue despite lawsuit KTAR

The Campus Free Speech Crisis is a Myth (opinion) Washington Post

Some Pundits Say There's No Campus Free Speech 'Crisis.' Here's Why They're Wrong Reason

***LEGAL ISSUES

Electronics-recycling innovator faces prison for trying to extend computers' lives LA Times

School district charges Newspaper $500 for public records—to pay the attorney who had to review them first Magnolia Sate

Charlottesville witness files defamation suit against InfoWars and other far-right figures CNN

***RELIGION

A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Worshipers Are Leaving White Evangelical Churches New York Times

Film Review: This story of Christian band MercyMe's breakout song ‘I Can Only Imagine’ Variety

70,000+ Religious Texts Digitized by Princeton Theological Seminary, Letting You Immerse Yourself in the Curious Works of Great World Religions Open Culture

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

After Alignment With Trump, Some Evangelicals Are Questioning Movement's Leaders NPR

The Governor Of Mississippi Just Signed The Most Restrictive Abortion Law In The Country BuzzFeed News

***HISTORY

The Passionate Photo Colorizers Who Are Humanizing the Past Atlas Obscura

***ART & DESIGN

Beautifully Designed Map Shows the Literal Translations of Country Names Open Culture

Linda Nochlin on “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists” Daily Jstor

The Comics Crusader: How ComiXology’s David Steinberger is taking the art form out of hobby shops, onto the iPad—and into the mainstream Traffic

How AI and machine learning are changing the arts Venture Beat

***MUSIC

How the rise of voice activation devices is changing the music industry and adland The Music Network

SXSW: Music Journalism Panel Illuminates Streaming’s Impact on Editorial Decisions Variety

***VIDEO GAMES

A treasure trove of handheld video games from the '80s added to the Internet Archive Mashable

Someone is making a multiplayer trash robot you steer through an actual river The Verge

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

Radio giant iHeartMedia files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, its apps and events play on USA Today

***STUDENT LIFE

How Millennials today compare with their grandparents 50 years ago Pew Research

Students at Marshall University, in West Virginia, are using dating apps to solicit votes in student-government elections Marshall Parthenon

All the Insane Ways Millennials Handle Their Snail Mail MEL Magazine

Teens Get ‘Corporal Punishment’ in Rural Arkansas for joining the nationwide student walkout against gun violence The Daily Beast

***JOBS

Candidacies Killed by a Typo Chronicle of Higher Ed

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

Campus rape victims often find more justice in college than in court The Guardian

Congress demands Pentagon, DOJ investigate child sex assault Associated Press

Education Dept. Stops Providing Details on Resolved Title IX Cases Chronicle of Higher Ed

Rutgers professor, 75, accused of sexually harassing 29-year-old student NewJersey.com

***ACADEMIC LIFE

The Professor Is In: The Ethics of Backing Out Chronicle of Higher Ed

At California’s top public universities, why a dearth of Latino professors matters Cal Matters

How Not to Be an Academic Snob Out Chronicle of Higher Ed

Inequality in Academic Disciplines Inside Higher Ed

***BUSINESS

How to Motivate Your Employees: Give Them Compliments and Pizza The Cut

Google makes push to turn product searches into cash Reuters

***ENVIRONMENT

The patterns of migratory birds in an Amazing Visualization National Geographic

Using hair, makeup and skincare to make Cape Town’s water crisis relatable for Americans Glamour

***HEALTH

AI can spot signs of Alzheimer’s before your family does MIT Tech Review

Americans are exercising more, but the obesity rate is growing The Atlas

A New Documentary About Adults On Adderall — And Not Just For ADHD NPR

Tech's Next Big Wave: Big Data Meets Biology Fortune

Many common drugs, not just antibiotics, may kill off gut microbes State News

***FAMILY

How Missouri is the nation’s leader in child marriages Kansas City Star

There is such a thing as the favorite child Fatherly

Babies Think Logically Before They Can Talk Scientific American

***SCIENCE

Is science really facing a reproducibility crisis, and do we need it to? (opinion) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

5 Ways to Defend Science in 2018 TIME

***PSYCHOLOGY

There’s an Upside to Being Sad and Lonely: A Talent for Reading People Mental Floss

A history of loneliness The Conversation

A Neuroscientist Explains: psychology's replication crisis – podcast The Guardian

The Long History of Computer Science and Psychology: Understanding that legacy can help us stop the next Cambridge Analytica Slate

***RESEARCH

The Augmented Researcher: What Does 2018 Hold for AI in Publishing? RD Mag

Statistical errors may taint as many as half of mouse studies Spectrum

Preprints and Citations: Should Non-Peer Reviewed Material Be Included in Article References? The Scholarly Kitchen

A famed archaeologist faked several of his ancient findings and may have run a "forger's workshop" Live Science

Peer Review Fails to Prevent Publication of Paper with Unsupported Claims About Peer Review Scholarly Kitchen

March 19, 2018

The I’m-not-biased bias

March 19, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

People outperformed their friends at predicting how anxious they’d look and sound when giving a speech about how they felt about their bodies. But they did no better than their friends (or than strangers who had met them just eight minutes earlier) at forecasting how assertive they’d be in a group discussion. And when they tried to predict their performance on an IQ test and a creativity test, they were less accurate than their friends.

People know themselves best on the traits that are tough to observe and easy to admit. Emotional stability is an internal state, so your friends don’t see it as vividly as you do. With the most evaluative traits, you just can’t be trusted. You probably want to convince everyone—and yourself—that you’re smart and creative.

This is why people consistently overestimate their intelligence, a pattern that seems to be more pronounced among men than women. It’s also why people overestimate their generosity: It’s a desirable trait. And it’s why people fall victim to my new favorite bias: the I’m-not-biased bias, where people tend to believe they have fewer biases than the average American.

Adam Grant writing in the Atlantic

March 18, 2018

the chains we wear

March 18, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

We forge the chains we wear in life. - Charles Dickens

March 16, 2018

Defeating Procrastination

March 16, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

Procrastination is a side effect of the way we value things. Task completion (is) as a product of motivation, rather than ability. In other words, you can be really good at something, whether it’s cooking a gourmet meal or writing a story, but if you don’t possess the motivation, or sense of importance, to complete the task, it’ll likely be put off.

Getting something done is a delayed reward, so its value in the present is reduced: the further away the deadline is, the less attractive it seems to work on the project right now.

People who characterize themselves as procrastinators…discount the value of getting something done ahead of time even more than other people.

Procrastination, in psychological terms, is what happens when the value of doing something else outweighs the value of working now.

This way of thinking suggests a simple trick to defeat procrastination: find a way to boost the subjective value of working now, relative to the value of other things. You could increase the value of the project, decrease the value of the distraction, or some combination of the two.

Elliot Berkman and Jordan Miller-Ziegler writing in The Conversation

March 14, 2018

The way forward

March 14, 2018/ Stephen Goforth

It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. -Stephen Hawking