Why is misinformation so sticky?
When my mother was warning me against talking to strangers in the street, she might have had not only security concerns, but also epistemological ones. Misinformation, whichis so widespread in contemporary societies, is sticky! According to Stephan Lewandowsky, Ullrich K. H. Ecker, Colleen Seifert, ...
Meat-eating in the eyes of young vegetarians
Not all transgressions are equal in the eyes of a child. Asked to evaluate the permissibility of certain actions (hitting another child, or stealing a toy from her) young children are quick to judge these actions wrong. Their judgment does not change when it is made explicit that in these hypothe...
Religious beliefs: Matter of fact or of preference?
In the public sphere, religious beliefs are often considered to be a matter of private sentiment or preference, not as matters of fact. While this may be helpful for the maintenance of a pluralistic society, religious individuals often regard their beliefs as true in an objective sense. Attempts to ...
The spread of “Correlation does not imply causation”
Daniel Engber's short article at Slate on the success of the misleading formula "correlation does not imply causation" is doubly relevant here: as an example of the epidemiology of a scientific idea, and as a corrective to a cliché all too common in the social sciences:
"So how did a stats-class ...