Science News for Writers

How many times have you watched a Superman film or TV show and found yourself almost screaming, "Clark Kent is Superman you dolt!"  Or have you actually screamed this, shocking everyone around you in the theater? I guess it's because we're in on the joke, whereas, at least according to this research, donning a pair of glasses can be an effective disguise.  Add a hat and a dorky expression, and Superman becomes Clark Kent and no body is the wiser. Here's the report. Now go try it.  Put a costume of some sort on over your Superman duds and see for yourself. *  *  *  *  * Scientists show that 'Superman' disguise could actually work Researchers at the University of York have shown that small alterations to a person's appearance, such as wearing glasses, can significantly hinder positive facial identification.  The research has the potential to contribute to future policies concerning photo identification, such as drivers' licences ...

Credit: Images: mirellawalker.com   People who look cold and incompetent receive less support in situations of social exclusion than those who look warm and incompetent. Fair or unfair? Facial cues influence how social exclusion is judged People are often excluded from social groups. As researchers from the University of Basel report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, whether un-involved observers find this acceptable or not may depend on the facial appearances of those excluded. The exclusion of cold and incompetent looking people is more likely to be accepted. Social exclusion -- be it at school, work or among friends -- is usually a painful experience for those affected. This behavior also often has a considerable effect on third-party observers: Bullying and ostracism with the aim to hurt the victims are seen as particularly unfair and morally unacceptable. However, in some cases, social exclusion is also perceived as justified. Groups are, f...

As a writer, I've often wondered what would happen if a conspiracy theorist who sees manipulations and deceit everywhere actually came across a real conspiracy? Would it be like the boy who cried wolf?  Would anyone believe it if he or she was to tell them, "this is real!  I'm telling you the truth this time."  (Not that they would necessarily say that.) And suppose the real conspiracy was truly dangerous - and no one believed them.  What would they do?  How would they act?  Could they convince anyone else of the reality of the conspiracy after ranting about the 9-11 conspiracy, the Kennedy Assassination conspiracy, the Moon Landing conspiracy and on and on?  Would he or she even realize that the other conspiracies they ranted about were in essence delusions? As the old joke goes, "even paranoids have enemies. Just some random thoughts about this report on conspiracy versus coincidence.  There is a link to the full study in the attribution...

www.cnn.com The question is, if Caitlyn Jenner can choose her sex, can Rachel Dolezal choose her race? In cases like Jenner or Dolezal, does it come down to the freedom change what is genetically imbued to meet personal choice, personal preference, of self-identification?   How much can each of us change ourselves by psychotherapy or plastic surgery or exercise or diet?   Is there a limit to what we can change about ourselves?  And how?  . . .before it becomes an issue to those around us or to or society as a whole. If we believe in absolute personal freedom - as long as we don't yell fire in a movie theater - are there or should there be other limits?  Who gets to set the limits?  Is it a politically controlled, majority rules decision?  Or does it fall within the choice of the individual? Getting back to the cases in point, if one can choose her sex, can the other choose her race? Sounds like a topic a writer should explore. *  ...

cw33.com This election year has produced 17 Republican presidential candidates, which on its surface  may appear to give the party a competitive advantage. Evolution, however, disagrees. The 2016 Presidential race is in full swing, with the news cycle currently dominated by a slate of seventeen seemingly qualified candidates for the Republican nomination.  The assumed wisdom is that competition is good, leading to the eventual emergence of the best candidate. But is it?  This study out of Michigan State University suggests otherwise, that too many candidates is as bad as too few - according to their application of the theories of evolution of decision-making strategies. As many have noted, it's very hard for an individual candidate in this pack to make himself or herself heard over the din of attack and counter-attack between the current leader and the pack. As yesterday's post pointed out, it appears that when faced with a multitude of options, the human bra...

wegotthiscovered.com Tony Shalhoub as Adrian Monk, a San Francisco detective who suffers obsessive compulsive disorder, created by writer and producer Andy Breckman. The television detective Monk was an enjoyable character, solving crime despite being portrayed as being nearly crippled by his obsessive compulsive disorder.  What attribute of the Monk character made him effective at solving crime?  Or rather, what attribute might the writers have picked up on that made him able to solve crimes that baffled others? As this research points out it was his imagination.  He was obsessive because he could imagine the germs on every door knob and so on, so he had a well developed ability to picture "what-ifs." This in turn gave him the ability to imagine all sorts of possible solutions that those of us lacking a hyper-imagination would miss. I don't know that this was the writer's thought process, but it came through in Monk's thought processes. Here's...

Credit: UZH Preference-based decisions were less stable if the information flow between the two brain regions was disrupted. Don't know about you, but I find all of the current research on how our brains function fascinating. From a layman's point of view (mine), our brains are a highly complex organ consisting of 8 billion neurons organized into twenty modes, or functional regions.  Most of what constitutes our thoughts are generated almost randomly by the various modes and transmitted to our conscious minds which acts like traffic control at O'Hare Airport during a snow storm over the holidays. Each mode is calling for attention of the conscious mind.  You know how random thoughts go flittering through your mind while you're trying to sleep?  That's the result of various modes getting the attention of traffic control, if only for a moment.  One thing that research shows is that a person can only think about one thing at a time, the reason ...

www.prohamm.de There is a saying, "the more things change, the more they remain the same."   While our society has made tremendous strides since the civil rights movement of the sixties, it's been a bit like squeezing a balloon.  Squeeze here, bulge there.  For those of us alive in the sixties, we've watched as redlining and other blatant discriminations have faded while other racially based practices to control minorities have flourished.  I'm thinking of Nixon's War on Drugs that imprisons primarily black men for essentially petty crimes of simple possession. So have things changed?  Yes and no. This research points out that the balloon has simply bulged in another direction. *  *  *  *  * With racial segregation declining between neighborhoods, segregation now taking new form " Neighborhood segregation still remains high in America ." Recent research has shown that racial segregation in the U.S. is declining between...

Majority rule: Why conformity  can actually be a good thing " Our whole world is made up of things that we  do that are good for us, but we don't know why ."  Like to go your own way? Most of us actually prefer to follow the pack, according to UBC research. That's one of the outcomes from a study published in Evolution and Human Behavior that examines how mathematical models predict human behavior. The research tested theories about when people should rely on "social information" -- information that we learn vicariously from others -- and when we should choose to go it alone. Nurturing Independent Thinkers  by Michael Bosher Order new or used from Powell's Books "People are conformist -- and that's a good thing for cultural evolution," said Michael Muthukrishna, a Vanier and Liu Scholar and recent PhD recipient from UBC's department of psychology. "By being conformist, we copy the things that are popular in ...