Science, Reporters, Teaching, and More Coffee: Part II

Every year, or most every year at least, I head off to Eastern Washington University to teach and counsel at Satori, a summer camp for kids who like to learn stuff—and learn them we instructors do. But in between learnings, there’s a lot of time for conversation and a lot of time for a lot of coffee. Seeing as I’m a reporter now, I have an excuse to talk to anyone about anything, so I asked Thomas Hammer barista-manager Abby* whether she’d talk with me about science. She cheerfully obliged, though she also had to work. When she was off doing that, Satori director and Spokane school teacher Mike Cantlon filled in, making for an interesting back-and-forth that ranged from—well, this to that and a number of places in between.

Science, Reporters, Teaching, And More Coffee: Part I

Every year, or most every year at least, I head off to Eastern Washington University to teach and counsel at Satori, a summer camp for kids who like to learn stuff—and learn them we instructors do. But in between learnings, there’s a lot of time for conversation and a lot of time for a lot of coffee. Seeing as I’m a reporter now, I have an excuse to talk to anyone about anything, so I asked Thomas Hammer barista-manager Abby* whether she’d talk with me about science. She cheerfully obliged, though she also had to work. When she was off doing that, Satori director and Spokane school teacher Mike Cantlon filled in, making for an interesting back-and-forth of sorts that ranged from—well, this to that and a number of places in between.

Seeing the Forest for the Splotchy Green Blob

Lesson for today: statistics is hard. Specifically, it's hard to sort out real patterns from random noise, especially when you don't have a lot of data. Nonetheless, people sure do their darndest.

These are a few of my favorite sciences.

What's your favorite thing about the natural world? There are lots of things to choose from. The profound tension between natural selection and biological diversity. The fact that no matter how fast you're going, you'll never catch up with a beam of light. The way snowflakes form.

Errol Morris usually says it better.

Nathan Explains Science has spent a fair amount of resources to convince you that politics doesn't work quite the way that pundits would like you to believe. Among the topics: the many reasons — sometimes arguably legitimate — not to vote. Among them, your vote is unlikely to count, and even if it counted  toward deciding your state's electoral college votes in a presidential election, your state's choice might not ultimately matter. Who gets elected might not matter — though Nathan Explains Science emphatically denies that assertion as it applies to recent presidential elections.

On the other hand, if no one votes, then anybody who does makes the decision for everyone. Thus, in an incremental sort of way, the fact that you vote makes democracy just a little bit safer.

I'm bringing this up because Errol Morris, innovative director of the documentaries The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War, just shot a short film on the subject of why we don't vote. You can view it here:  11 Excellent Reasons Not to Vote. It's about seven and a half minutes, and Morris does not disappoint.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Politics, Decline, & Stress Balls

In my last post, I wrote about how important it was to pursue seemingly odd social and political science, and I cited as an example a study that showed squeezing a stress ball can make you more likely to believe random strangers were Democrats.

Weird (Social) Science, and Why We Need It

Social psychologists in particular are fond of what Lee Ross once called "demonstration experiments," that is, experiments that show in more or less dramatic fashion the weird things you can get people to do if you try hard enough. Even social scientists have derided demonstration experiments as goofy, sometimes useless, but they have their value.

Nathan Explains Science on Santa Fe Radio Cafe

Sadly, my real job has kept me from doing my real avocation, blogging, and it's especially unfortunate this week since the Republican National Convention is in full swing just in time for hurricane season.

But fear not!

The lovely and talented Mary-Charlotte over at Santa Fe Radio Cafe interviewed me recently on matters political, and you can listen here:

http://www.santaferadiocafe.org/podcasts/?p=2961

Jesus? He's On Your Side

A string of attacks on religious institutions including Muslim and Sikh houses of worship got me thinking about the sort of psychology that justifies these things. That led me indirectly to one of the more significant questions of our time: What would Jesus do?

Brain Regions, Errors of Logic, and Willie Horton

Though the past few decades have yielded a wealth of information about how the brain works, there is much that remains mysterious. It therefore came as a surprise to many a neuroscientist when the hallowed New York Times published an editorial by "marketing expert" Martin Lindstrom claiming that we loved our iPhones in much the same way we love our families and our dogs.

More political knowledge in the news...

...plus a hint about why it matters. A new Gallup poll indicates that about 80 percent of Americans have some roughly correct idea of why July 4th is significant in American history. Scroll down to some of the demographics for a bit of a surprise regarding men, women, whites, and blacks.

Bonus: about as many Americans as Germans or British people know that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

Happy 4th, everybody! Now please don't burn the country down.


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Remember that thing about framing?

Fox News headline this morning: "Obama's Debt Reduction Plan: TAX HIKES". (Caps theirs.)

Nathan Answers Questions: What About Manipulation?

Over on Facebook, reader Jonathan Wang asks,

"…how about cases where politicians or interest groups deliberately misrepresent the facts?"

It's a good question with a number of facets. Three issues come to mind immediately: framing, media priming, and the many ways in which people either ignore or fail to use new information that could correct false beliefs.

Here's a quick overview, with some examples. Well, we'll see about quick, but there will be examples.

Why People Know What They Know About Politics

In my two previous posts, I looked at what people know about politics, and I looked a bit at who knows what about politics. The general theme is that people don't know very much overall, but there's variation—people know more about some things than others, and some people know more than others.

Today, I want to look at why people know what they know, and fortunately we've already seen some hints at the explanation. For example, we've seen that more people know about high-profile issues than about others. Putting that together with everything else we've seen so far suggests a fairly simple explanation for why people don't know that much about politics: it's actually kind of hard to follow, and most people have better things—or at least more pleasant things—to do than think about the awful state of the economy or whether gay people should be allowed to marry each other.

Metaphors and Crime at ScienceNOW

I have a brief story up at ScienceNOW on how the metaphors others use to describe crime affects how we think about dealing with crime. This is part of a broader research program — both on the authors' part and on the part of the political science, communications, and psychology fields — focusing on how subtle changes in language affect how we think about all manner of things.

In fact, I've written on this before, when I wrote about Teenie Matlock and Caitlin Fausey's research on the effects of grammar on electability. Caitlin, who I knew when we were grad students at Stanford, was a student of Lera Boroditsky, one of the authors of the crime and metaphors paper — but, like I said, lots of people are interested in this stuff.

Grammar in the Real/Political World

My friend, the illustrious John Bullock of the Yale University Political Science Department, points this observation out. I can't vouch for the blog or its content, but it is intriguing.

Readers may, with bemused curiosity, recall that one of my first stories was on grammar and perceptions of political figures. The story is here.

Stay tuned for a post on physics: how gravity really works!


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Feeling Blue? Try a Dose of Blue Light at New Scientist

After a bit of a lull, it's been a busy week (and day) at Nathan Explains Science. This afternoon I have a new story over at New Scientist (link below) on using a blue-light activated, algae-derived protein called Channel Rhodopsin 2 (ChR2) to cure depression in mice.

In the meantime...Daryl Bem

I'm working on a number of things at the moment, but in the meantime I want to draw your attention to Jon Wilkins's post on the incredibly weird things Daryl Bem has been up to. Jon understates a little how famous Bem is in social psychology circles—he is absolutely huge. He is first-year social psychology material, literally.