Of 100 studies published in top-ranking journals in 2008, 75% of social psychology experiments and half of cognitive studies failed the replication test
Psychology experiments are failing the replication test – for good reason
Ian Sample Science editor
Thursday 27 August 2015 14.00 EDT
A major investigation into scores of claims made in psychology research journals has delivered a bleak verdict on the state of the science.
An international team of experts repeated 100 experiments published in top psychology journals and found that they could reproduce only 36% of original findings.
The study, which saw 270 scientists repeat experiments on five continents, was launched by psychologists in the US in response to rising concerns over the reliability of psychology research.
What is the origin of the false belief—constantly repeated—that almost all scientists agree about global warming?
By JOSEPH BAST And ROY SPENCER
May 26, 2014 7:13 p.m. ET
Last week Secretary of State John Kerry warned graduating students at Boston College of the “crippling consequences” of climate change. “Ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists,” he added, “tell us this is urgent.”
Where did Mr. Kerry get the 97% figure? Perhaps from his boss, President Obama, who tweeted on May 16 that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” Or maybe from NASA, which posted (in more measured language) on its website, “Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities.”
Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.
One frequently cited source for the consensus is a 2004 opinionessay published in Science magazine by Naomi Oreskes, a science historian now at Harvard. She claimed to have examined abstracts of 928 articles published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and found that 75% supported the view that human activities are responsible for most of the observed warming over the previous 50 years while none directly dissented.
Ms. Oreskes’s definition of consensus covered “man-made” but left out “dangerous”—and scores of articles by prominent scientists such as Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Sherwood Idso and Patrick Michaels, who question the consensus, were excluded. The methodology is also flawed. A study published earlier this year inNature noted that abstracts of academic papers often contain claims that aren’t substantiated in the papers.
Record numbers of Americans are unplugging their subscriptions
When 24m US viewers tuned in to watch Donald Trump slug it out with his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, Fox News made television history, recording record ratings for a non-sports cable broadcast.
However, those who followed the political jousting on social networks had a common complaint: despite partnering with Facebook to host the debate, Fox News had made it virtually impossible to watch the event online.
Twitter users traded links with illicit livestreams and lambasted the network’s failure to cater for “cord-cutters” or “cord-nevers” — people who have either ditched their pay-TV subscription or have never signed up for one.
The disconnect between the knockout ratings and the incredulity of young, media-savvy viewers appeared to support the central thesis of broadcasters and pay-TV providers: cord-cutting might be fashionable for trendy elites, but it has yet to make a dent in “real” America’s love affair with television.
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 12–The second episode in a new documentary web series highlights a young woman’s eyewitness narrative of the daily practice of fetal body parts harvesting in Planned Parenthood abortion clinics, describing tissue procurement workers’ coordination with abortion providers, the pressure placed on patients, and disregard for patient consent.
The “Human Capital” documentary web series, produced by The Center for Medical Progress, integrates expert interviews, eyewitness accounts, and real-life undercover interactions to explore various themes connected to Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted fetal tissue. Episode 1, “Planned Parenthood’s Black Market in Baby Parts,” premiered last month. Episode 2, “Inside the Planned Parenthood Supply Site,” launches today at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABzFZM73o8M
The series follows the personal narrative of Holly O’Donnell, a former Blood and TIssue Procurement Technician for StemExpress, a start-up biotech company from northern California that partners with Planned Parenthood clinics to purchase their aborted fetus parts and resell them for scientific experimentation. As a procurement tech, O’Donnell’s job was to identify pregnant patients matching the specifications of StemExpress customers and to harvest the fetal body parts from their abortions.
“It’s not an option, it’s a demand,” StemExpress supervisors instructed O’Donnell about approaching pregnant women at Planned Parenthood for fetal tissue “donations.” O’Donnell says the StemExpress techs working in Planned Parenthood clinics sometimes harvested fetal parts without obtaining consent from the patients: “If there was a higher gestation, and the technicians needed it, there were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don’t know. And there’s no way they would know.”
Online websites have now cemented their position as the nation’s No. 1 source of news, overtaking television and practically burying print publications six feet under as younger Americans embrace digital platforms.
The latest evidence comes from the circulation report on the nation’s top 125 magazines that found a six-month drop of 11.4 percent this year following a 14.2 percent drop in the last six months of 2014.
The biannual Alliance for Audited Media found that “total paid circulation” for 86 of 125 top magazines, or 71 percent, saw circulation drop, according to a new report in Media Life Magazine.
NEWARK, N.J. (CBSNewYork) — Another drone was reported Sunday in the path of several flights at a Tri-State Area airport.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said a drone was found on the final approach path to Runway 4 Right at Newark Liberty International Airport between noon and 12:30 p.m. Sunday.
As CBS2’s Hazel Sanchez reported, air traffic control tower audio captured the disturbing incident.
“Attention all aircraft use caution,” an air traffic controller warns. “Drone activity reported left side.”
The drone was spotted by the pilots of four commercial flights, which were between 2,000 and 3,000 feet in the air and between eight and 13 miles from the airport at the time, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The flights were ExpressJet 3267, an Embraer E145; Northwest Airlink 5837, an Embraer E170; United Airlines 107, a Boeing 767; and United Airlines 1210, a Boeing 737, the FAA said.
Google’s Search Algorithm Could Steal the Presidency
DAM ROGERS SCIENCE
DATE OF PUBLICATION: 08.06.15.08.06.15
TIME OF PUBLICATION: 1:24 PM.1:24 PM
IMAGINE AN ELECTION—A close one. You’re undecided. So you type the name of one of the candidates into your search engine of choice. (Actually, let’s not be coy here. In most of the world, one search engine dominates; in Europe and North America, it’s Google.) And Google coughs up, in fractions of a second, articles and facts about that candidate. Great! Now you are an informed voter, right? But a study published this week says that the order of those results, the ranking of positive or negative stories on the screen, can have an enormous influence on the way you vote. And if the election is close enough, the effect could be profound enough to change the outcome.
In other words: Google’s ranking algorithm for search results could accidentally steal the presidency. “We estimate, based on win margins in national elections around the world,” says Robert Epstein, a psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and one of the study’s authors, “that Google could determine the outcome of upwards of 25 percent of all national elections.”
Epstein’s paper combines a few years’ worth of experiments in which Epstein and his colleague Ronald Robertson gave people access to information about the race for prime minister in Australia in 2010, two years prior, and then let the mock-voters learn about the candidates via a simulated search engine that displayed real articles.
With the country focused on this week’s high drama at the Supreme Court, President Obama’s EPA quietly released long-delayed regulations to apply global warming rules never authorized by Congress to new coal-fired power plants.
That Obama’s EPA would release a rule to destroy coal-fired electricity while the president gives stump speeches about an “all of the above” energy policy is an insult to the American people.
This rule will effectively block any new coal-fired power plants from being built in America, and a second round of related rules – expected after the election, of course – will shut down existing coal-fired power plants.
The result will be steeply higher electricity prices, lost jobs, and lower standards of living. Remarkably, this is all done in the name of global warming, but even EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson admits it will have no discernible impact on global temperatures. Obama’s EPA is crippling the U.S. economy not to accomplish anything, but just to enjoy a nice, warm, green feeling of self-satisfaction.
Four years ago, then-candidate Barack Obama explained his anti-coal energy policy in an editorial board meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle. Obama said: “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad.” He went on to explain: “So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them.”
Indeed Obama attempted to make good on his campaign promise to bankrupt the coal industry and make electricity prices skyrocket the legitimate way – by proposing cap-and-trade legislation in Congress. It was jammed through the House but crashed and burned in the Senate, where many Democrats understood such an energy rationing plan to be political suicide.
The overseers of the Internet on Monday published a keenly anticipated proposal to step out from under US oversight.
Under the plan, nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) would create a separate legal entity that would be contracted to handle key technical functions of the online address system.
A “Customer Standing Committee” would monitor performance of what would essentially be an ICANN subsidiary, and a review process involving stake-holders would be put in place.
ICANN would remain based in Southern California, and any major structural or operational changes to the foundation of the Internet’s addressing system would require approval of the nonprofit organization’s board of directors.
The 199 page proposal was posted online at icann.org, where a note said that a public comment period would end on September 8.
ICANN president Fadi Chehade said last month that the end of the US role is now set for mid-2016, with the transition pushed back by a year to allow time for input from the Internet community and review by the US government and Congress.
ICANN will become an independent entity without US government oversight for the Internet’s domain and address system, Chehade said, noting that the transition is likely to take place between July and September 2016.
“People may also begin to fall in love with their virtual reality partners”
11:59, 4 AUGUST 2015
BY DAVID WATKINSON
Humans could soon be having sexual relationships with robots, a top academic has claimed.
Dr Helen Driscoll said advances in technology mean the way in which humans interact with robots is set to change drastically in the coming years.
Dr Driscoll, a leading authority on the psychology of sex and relationships, said ‘sex tech’ was already advancing at a fast pace and by 2070, physical relationships will seem primitive.
Already you can order a mannequin partner online. And robotic, interactive, motion-sensing technology is likely to become more and more central to the sex industry in the next few years.
“It could really start to enable mannequin partners to ‘come to life'”, according to Dr Driscoll, from the University of Sunderland.
Scientist warns the world to ‘think twice before replying to alien signals from outer space’
VICTORIA RICHARDS
Thursday 23 July 2015
A scientist responsible for finding signs of life on other planets has warned that human beings should probably think twice before making contact with aliens.
Professor Matthew Bailes is based at Swinburne University in Melbourne – and is leading Australia’s efforts to find signs of extra-terrestrial life.
But he warned that making contact with aliens capable of transmitting powerful signals to Earth over tens of thousands of light years could lead humanity into disaster, because they’re likely to be so much more advanced.
“The history of weak civilisations contacting more advanced civilisations is not a happy one,” he said.
Artificial minds will not be confined to the planet on which we have evolved, writes Martin Rees
So vast are the expanses of space and time that fall within an astronomer’s gaze that people in my profession are mindful not only of our moment in history, but also of our place in the wider cosmos. We wonder whether there is intelligent life elsewhere; some of us even search for it. People will not be the culmination of evolution. We are near the dawn of a post-human future that could be just as prolonged as the billions of years of Darwinian selection that preceded humanity’s emergence.
The far future will bear traces of humanity, just as our own age retains influences of ancient civilisations. Humans and all they have thought might be a transient precursor to the deeper cogitations of another culture — one dominated by machines, extending deep into the future and spreading far beyond earth.
Not everyone considers this an uplifting scenario. There are those who fear that artificial intelligence will supplant us, taking our jobs and living beyond the writ of human laws. Others regard such scenarios as too futuristic to be worth fretting over. But the disagreements are about the rate of travel, not the direction. Few doubt that machines will one day surpass more of our distinctively human capabilities. It may take centuries but, compared to the aeons of evolution that led to humanity’s emergence, even that is a mere bat of the eye. This is not a fatalistic projection. It is cause for optimism. The civilisation that supplants us could accomplish unimaginable advances — feats, perhaps, that we cannot even understand.
By JANE E. BRODY JULY 6, 2015 6:00 AM July 6, 2015 6:00 am
Excessive use of computer games among young people in China appears to be taking an alarming turn and may have particular relevance for American parents whose children spend many hours a day focused on electronic screens. The documentary “Web Junkie,” to be shown next Monday on PBS, highlights the tragic effects on teenagers who become hooked on video games, playing for dozens of hours at a time often without breaks to eat, sleep or even use the bathroom. Many come to view the real world as fake.
Chinese doctors consider this phenomenon a clinical disorder and have established rehabilitation centers where afflicted youngsters are confined for months of sometimes draconian therapy, completely isolated from all media, the effectiveness of which remains to be demonstrated.
While Internet addiction is not yet considered a clinical diagnosis here, there’s no question that American youths are plugged in and tuned out of “live” action for many more hours of the day than experts consider healthy for normal development. And it starts early, often with preverbal toddlers handed their parents’ cellphones and tablets to entertain themselves when they should be observing the world around them and interacting with their caregivers.
Published: 11:43AM Saturday July 04, 2015 Source: Sunday
A visiting American research scientist says he is close to discovering a ‘cure’ for ageing, that he could have a drug ready for testing by the end of next year.
Molecular Biologist Dr Bill Andrews told TV ONE’s SUNDAY programme that humans shouldn’t have to suffer from the ravages of ageing. He says that ageing is a disease that should, and could be cured.
His research centres around Telomeres – small caps at the end of our chromosomes that become shorter every time our cells divide.
When they become critically short, we age and eventually die.
Over the past week, you may have noticed what appear to be two superbright stars near the horizon. Those aren’t stars; they’re planets in a celestial race around the sun. On Tuesday, Venus will come neck-and-neck with Jupiter.
That day, at 2:17 pm Universal Time or 10:17 am E.T., the two planets will be at their closest. You can see this unusual sight, known as a conjunction, from just about anywhere in the world.
The optimal viewing location, according to Jackie Faherty, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, is one where where the sun sets just as the planets approach one another. Complete darkness is not necessary to see these bright objects, but it helps.
Regardless of where you are, your viewing instructions are simple: At sunset, get away from buildings or trees that might block your view of the western sky. Stick an arm out, give a thumbs up, and squint your eyes. Venus and Jupiter should be about one third of a degree, or about a thumb’s width, apart.
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