Posts by Tom Bartlett
May 17, 2012, 04:00 PM ET
Stolen Ideas? Or Great Minds Thinking Alike?
Figuring out whether someone
committed plagiarism is usually straightforward. You compare the
two texts to see how much of one appears verbatim in the other.
Even if some words have been changed, there is often a pattern of
similarities that can't be coincidental. It's not that hard.
Determining whether someone swiped an idea, or a set of ideas, is
another beast entirely. In a review in the June 7 issue of The
New York Review of Books, the possibility is raised that
Terence W. Deacon, chairman of the anthropology department at the
University of California at Berkeley, borrowed heavily and failed
to credit core ideas in his book,
Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter, from at
least two scholars. Here's what the NYRB reviewer, Colin
McGinn, a professor of philosophy at the University of Miami,
writes:
One would never think from reading Incomplete Nature that the author's main ...Read More
February 24, 2012, 02:24 PM ET
Yo-Yo Ma and the Value of Anger
Trying to be happy all the time
can make you unhappy. You should make room for less smiley
emotions—like, say, anger. Or so say the authors of a new paper.
Researchers had subjects role-play scenarios like a police officer
questioning a subject or a politician lobbying for the passage of a
bill. Beforehand, they allowed them to choose clips of music deemed
in previous trials to provoke anger (the Sepultura song
"Refuse/Resist," performed by thrash cellists Apocalyptica),
happiness ("Estudiante," by Waldteufel), or something in-between
("Indecision," by Yo-Yo Ma). They were then asked whether they
wanted to listen to the entire song before completing the role-play
scenario. Some subjects were more interested in listening to
"Refuse/Resist" when they were going to act out a confrontational
scenario. Those same people also scored higher on well-being
indicators, while those who chose...
Read More
January 30, 2012, 05:16 PM ET
The Profound Importance of Familiar Cookies
We are easily fooled, more
biased than we believe, less rational than we think, unable to
accurately recall the past, unrealistically positive about the
future, spoiled by money, controlled by hormones, hamstrung by
prejudices, overwhelmed by choice. We can't stop eating. We pay for
free stuff. Our minds go blank. There is something—actually, lots
of things—wrong with us. Or so it feels after attending two days of
talks at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social
Psychology, in which researcher after researcher explained how
they had exposed humanity's multitudinous foibles. What, how, and
how much we eat was a much-discussed topic. Brian Wansink, director
of the Cornell Food
and Brand Lab, rehearsed his finding that the size of our
plates (or bowls or glasses) affects how much we consume, though
with his national TV appearances and
best-selling book, this was ...
Read More
November 11, 2011, 03:12 PM ET
Penn State, Motivated Blindness, and the Dark Side of Loyalty
Why didn't somebody do
something? That's the maddening question you ask yourself when you
read the grand jury report that details the horrible crimes
witnessed by Penn State employees and reported to superiors. No one
intervened. No one held the perpetrator accountable. No one stopped
the abuse, which then allegedly continued for years. Presumably,
the employees and their superiors all consider themselves ethical
people. In many other situations, no doubt, they've conducted
themselves honorably. And yet, judging by the evidence that's been
made public so far, they didn't do the right thing when it counted
most. Why not? A new book titled Blind Spots: Why We Fail To Do
What's Right and What to Do About It (Princeton University
Press) offers some clues. In that book, the two authors, Max E.
Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel, write about the child-abuse
scandals of the Catholic Church,...
Read More
August 16, 2011, 04:30 PM ET
Oh the Horror of the Post-Idea World
Neal Gabler
wrote in The New York Times this Sunday that people
don't have big ideas anymore because of the Internet or something.
He believes we are in real trouble, ideas-wise, and that we should
be afraid. Here are some of the more frightening passages:
A big idea could capture the cover of Time — “Is God Dead?” — and intellectuals like Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal would even occasionally be invited to the couches of late-night talk shows. How long ago that was.First, I'm not sure Norman Mailer making small talk on late-night TV was a cultural moment worth mourning. And Time -- if that's your barometer, I don't know why it would be -- still has big ideas on the cover sometimes (it has celebrities and other nonsense, too, but that's always been the case). In February, which I just found doing a quick Google Image search, Time's cover line was "2045: The... Read More
August 2, 2011, 02:45 PM ET
Malcolm Gladwell and President Obama Are Wrong
In an interview last year,
President Obama argued that kids in the United States are "losing a
lot of what they learn during the school year during the summer."
In his best-seller, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell praises a
charter school with an extended schedule, writing that the "only
problem with school, for kids who aren't achieving, is that there
isn't enough of it." Those are two pretty big-name advocates for a
longer school year. Also, this past weekend, a Times
op-ed,
with the exciting headline "This Is Your Brain on Summer," informs
us that "decades of research confirm that summer learning loss is
real." Usually when people argue for a longer school year, they
mention how other countries are outpacing us because their children
spend more time in the classroom. Obama refers to the longer school
years of "most other advanced countries." In Outliers,
Gladwell is more specific: "The...
Read More
June 28, 2011, 02:25 PM ET
Do Fetuses Feel Pain?
The Alabama state legislature recently passed a ban on abortions
after 20 weeks, except when the mother's health is in danger. Why
20 weeks? A Republican state senator explains: "It's clear that a
baby at 20 weeks experiences pain. There's no doubt about that." In
reporting on the recent ban, which follows similar bans in several
other states, an article
in The New York Times contends that the argument that
fetuses can feel pain at 20 weeks is "disputed by mainstream
medical organizations in the United States and Britain." It goes on
to assert that supporters of these bans make such claims "in the
face of scientific criticism." So on one side we have politicians,
while on the other we have Science. I'm guessing a lot of New
York Times readers sadly shook their heads at the triumph of
blatant propaganda over peer-reviewed evidence. Which would be an
understandable reaction -- but only ...
Read More
May 24, 2011, 11:10 AM ET
Wait—Maybe Having Kids Doesn't Bum You Out
Last summer New York magazine published a cover story explaining
why having a kid more or less ruins your life. It featured
beautifully forlorn photographs of a couple with twins and mostly
dismal conclusions from psychologists and sociologists about the
effect of offspring on parental happiness. The headline: "All Joy
and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting." But before you abandon
junior at the mall, consider a new study that argues that
reproducing probably won't make you any less happy in the long run.
There's a chance it might. But there's also a chance children might
add significantly to your bliss. It's not a straightforward
conclusion, which is exactly the point. The authors argue that
previous researchers may have erred in thinking of parenthood as a
"unified phenomenon," lumping parents together and then reporting,
on average, whether they were happier as a group. But what...
Read More
April 7, 2011, 12:17 PM ET
How to Win the Templeton Prize
Before explaining how to win the Templeton Prize,
here's why it's a nice thing to win: money. A whole lot of money.
This year's winner, Martin Rees, a British astrophysicist, will
receive $1.61-million, an amount intentionally set to top what
winners of the Nobel rake in. So while the Nobel has more cachet,
the Templeton has more cash. With that out of the way, here's how
to win it: 1) Put together a really impressive scientific career,
complete with hundreds of publications, numerous honors, and a few
path-breaking discoveries. 2) Be ever-so-slightly religious or
spiritual or at least be willing to pay lip service to the idea
that being religious or spiritual might possibly be worthwhile in
some way (maybe). Number one is pretty straightforward. Just work
hard and be a genius. Number two is where it gets tricky. Exactly
how religious or spiritual must one be to meet the requirement...
Read More
March 30, 2011, 12:44 PM ET
Filthy Liberals and the Politics of Purell
We already know that literally having clean hands
affects your moral judgment. But can it also influence your
politics? Apparently. Researchers asked 52 college students to
complete a questionnaire about their political attitudes. Some were
asked to "step over to the wall" to answer the questions while
others were told to "step over to the hand-sanitizer dispenser."
Those who simply stood in the vicinity of the hand-sanitizer rated
themselves as more conservative. What's extra weird is that they
were more conservative even on fiscal issues when they were near
the hand-sanitizer. What germ-killing gel has to do with tax policy
I do not know. In a
previous study, researchers found a connection between disgust
and conservatism. For instance, conservatives were more likely to
strongly agree with statements like "I try to avoid letting any
part of my body touch the toilet seat in a public...
Read More
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