An interesting thing happened on the way to verifying claims that an emerging technology can assist in concussion prevention and recovery: a resulting phone call with the CEO of BrainHQ delivered clarity, transparency and admission of a PR misstep that served to cast his company in a better light than previously thought.
Mental Health & Society
Politics makes utter fools out of otherwise rational people. The vitriol aimed at President George W. Bush by his political opponents caused psychiatrist and political commentator Charles Krauthammer to coin the tongue-in-cheek term "Bush Derangement Syndrome." It caught on. Pundits subsequently seized upon the terms "Obama Derangement Syndrome" and "Trump Derangement Syndrome."
If the average person is asked to assess their own driving skills, most will give themselves an above average rating. By definition, half of all drivers are below average, but most people lack the self-awareness to realize this due to a cognitive bias known as illusory superiority.
Every year since 2008, the American Automobile Association (AAA) has conducted a survey in which they determine drivers' attitudes and behaviors in regard to traffic safety. They have confirmed what most of us already suspected: You're a terrible, hypocritical driver.
The report summarizes its findings bluntly:
The Brookings Institute recently released a study on what it terms the "Privacy Paradox," in that officials believe that our concerns about privacy are not monolithic, but contextual. Privacy involves withholding information from others to protect a social image, either for a person or the community he/she inhabits.
Self-righteousness, gratitude, sympathy, sincerity, and guilt – what if these social behaviours are biologically influenced, encoded within our genes and shaped by the forces of evolution to promote the survival of the human species? Does free will truly exist if our genes are inherited and our environment is a series of events set in motion before we are born?
Dogs are versatile — they may be herders, guard dogs, guide dogs and even therapy dogs. But not all dogs are suitable for every task. One can test them, to be sure, but there may be another way to determine at least some of their personality characteristics — has a dog's muzzle become prematurely gray? If so, he or she may not be suitable for activities that require a calm outlook on life.
Even with the hot-button topic of abortion, there's one thing that nearly everyone can agree upon: having as few abortions as possible. And recent data from the Centers for Disease and Control states that the abortion rate in America has fallen by roughly one fifth from 2004 to 2013.
Research shows that when a teacher is being bullied, the bully is often the head teacher.
In the study of human behavior, individuals gravitate towards familiar things. That idea also extends to the realm of facial recognition. A new study indicates that those who observe and come into contact with a wider range of different faces are more prone to instantly accept an unknown person based solely by their facial features.
Anyone remotely familiar with the scientific method understands that just like a ruler or a telescope, statistics is a tool. Scientists use the tool primarily for one purpose: To answer the question, "Is my data meaningful?" Properly used, statistics is one of science's most powerful tools. But used improperly, statistics can be highly misleading.
Nate Silver, statistician and election forecaster, told ABC News that election forecasts that gave Hillary Clinton a 99% of chance of winning didn't "pass a common sense test." That is certainly true. What he left unsaid -- possibly because it wouldn't be good for his career -- is that all election forecasts that provide a "chance of winning" don't pass the science test.