Progress-focused

Just over 10 years ago, there was a scandal about the psychologist Diederik Stapel, who had committed fraud on a large scale in his investigations. Recently, there have been some reports about scientists who probably did not act ethically. 

A growth mindset intervention can increase interest in math and science. A new study by O'Keefe et al. (2023) examines how students' perceptions of their interests can influence how they perform in certain subjects. The research is specifically about exact subjects and mathematics. It's common for students to label themselves as "not a math or science person." This can limit their academic performance and development. But what if we can change this mindset?

Nobel prize winner economist Joseph Stiglitz has written a new book called People, Power and Profits . In this book he describes how, since the mid-1970s has been dominated by a conservative ideology which, step-by-step has brought every increasing inequality and the undermining of democracy. In the book, Stiglitz explains what's wrong and what's needed and how to move forward.

Growth mindset is on a firm foundation, but we’re still building the house ~ Carol Dweck, January 18, 2017 In science, we build a firm foundation and then we keep renovating the house. We find interesting results, we are fascinated by them, we don’t always trust them, so we go back and replicate them. We also challenge them by asking, where will this not work? When does the effect go away? How can we use better methods to test our theories? As part of this process, scientists ask each other questions. Recently, other scientists asked us some questions about three of our papers. We took this very seriously, carefully considered each inquiry, delved into the studies again (in some cases reanalyzing the data), and prepared three documents, each detailing our process and our findings (here, here, and here). In each case, we showed that the conclusions reached in the paper were sound. But, as with anything that helps make science better, we were grateful for the questions because the...

All of us experience reality in a distorted way and we are mostly unaware of that this happens and how this happens. Here is a list of well-known human biases. On this list is a bias called naive realism. This bias plays a special role. It can be seen as the mother of all biases. Naive realism, a term coined by Lee Ross, is the wrong belief that reality is just like we experience it. In other words, it is the cognitive mechanism which blinds us to the many biases we fall prey to.

Science, democracy, and capitalism, some treasured institutions of the world's most advanced societies, in terms of health, wealth, freedom, and equality, are being criticized more and more. I acknowledge that there are some severe problems surrounding these institutions but I think we should not see these institutions as the problem.

You would think that people only hold beliefs based on their veracity but that is not the case. Of course, people do have beliefs because they think they are true but there are also other reasons for holding beliefs. Those reasons have to do with various psychological and social goals we have. Some examples of this are: wanting to see the world as orderly, meaningful and secure, viewing one's own group as morally good, feeling that you belong to a group, and having influence or power over other people.

Writing down the title of this post feels awkward and even a bit scary. Who am I to disagree with Steven Weinberg ? He is a paragon of rationality and intellectual accomplishment. He's won a Nobel prize in physics, he coined the phrase 'standard model' and he recently wrote a wonderful book on the history of science ( read more ). So he has lots of authority on matters of science whereas I have little if any. Yet, in determining truth, authority alone is not a valid argument. So I will point out where I think he is wrong.

Today, a team of researchers has made a good contribution to solving the replication problem in social science.  Previously, I wrote about what science is and why it is important (see Improving science ). In that piece I used the picture below to describe some essential parts of the scientific process. Each of these parts are links in the chain of the scientific process and play an essential role in making science function well. In several of these links there are some serious weaknesses which threaten the quality of science.

It is understandable that exact sciences are generally viewed as the most difficult. But psychology may be harder in some ways.  One of my favorite science writers is Sean Carroll. He is a theoretical physicist at Caltech and author of the awarded book T he Particle at the End of the Universe which is about the discovery of the Higgs particle. Recently he surprisingly said: “Physics is by far the easiest science.” False modesty? Or it there some truth in it?

Nowadays we hear a lot about racism and how bad it is. Famous football players, in a UEFA campaign, are sending the message to say 'no' to racism. By using the word racism we refer to the underlying concept of race. Races, subspecies, exist throughout biology. We all understand, perhaps not precisely, but roughly what is meant when we talk about human races and racism. I say that we understand roughly what is meant, because we all associate the term race with concepts like the with race, the black race, the Jewish race, and the Asian race. I say that we do not know precisely what is meant, because we do not know exactly, for example, what makes someone a Jew, and whether Chinese people and Indian people belong to the same race. It also gets confusing when we think about the race of president Obama. Does he belong to the 'black' race? That is what is often said ("the first black president' of the United States) but what about the fact that his mother was '...

I came across a Huffington post article from some time ago written by Scott Barry Kaufman in which he teamed up with David S. Moore to list  8 Surprising Facts About Parenting, Genes and What Really Makes Us Who We Are . Do the statements below indeed surprise you? Which surprised you most? How convincing do you find Kaufman's explanations?