Peer review is an important part of the academic publication process. All scholarly articles undergo peer review from at least one other person familiar with the field (plus an editor of the journal), although two is the more common number of reviewers, and sometimes may be more if there is disagreement amongst the reviewers or a strong appeal from the author of a rejected paper. [Read more…]
Some time ago, I discussed the question of whether Sherlock Holmes could be classed as a psychopath based on his behavior in the stories. In pursuing this question a little more, I came across an article in the Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders that elaborated on how psychopathy manifests itself. [Read more…]
As Halloween approaches, parents will take the usual precautions to prevent their children from being harmed by dangerous psychopaths who they fear will try to use the treats as vehicles for their attacks. But all that fear is based on myths. [Read more…]
In an earlier post yesterday, I mentioned the ‘house effect’ of polls. These are the size of the effects that a given polling outfit produces in favor of one or the other party. They are not necessarily biases in the sense of the polling firm deliberately distorting the results. It is often the result of methodologies that produce different effects such as sampling only likely voters vs registered voters, cell phones vs. landlines, robocalls vs. human calls, weighting by party affiliation, etc. Simon Jackman has an article explaining it in more detail. [Read more…]
Every time that there is a major doping scandal associated with sports, like the recent one in which Lance Armstrong was portrayed as essentially a drug kingpin who “didn’t just take drugs: he was the enforcer of a small mafia within professional cycling that moved ruthlessly against anyone who threatened to expose him or his collaborators. He bullied and threatened team-mates, journalists and fellow cycling professionals and officials”, calls emerge that maybe we should simply allow it. [Read more…]
As The Daily Show points out, there does seem to be any limit on how insane your views can be and still get elected to federal and state government. [Read more…]
The Neanderthals are an interesting species though unfairly treated. They are frequently portrayed as knuckle-dragging idiots, serving as a metaphor for people with retrograde views, especially with respect to gender and sexuality, though there is no reason to think that they were any worse than the ancestors of our own species at that time. [Read more…]
I have been writing about the problems of misconduct in research with academics having to resign as a result of misconduct. [Read more…]