Are they suffering from potential availability heuristic (cognitive bias) here? Are they encouraging it in us? Just because we see violence on the news every day doesn't mean it's ubiquitous.

Apparently we'll need real evidence here to provide actual indications.

Does Steven Pinker provide archaeological evidence in his book? What are the per capita rates of violence and/or death over time?

Is there a reason or cognitive bias we've got that would tend to make us think that there's a teleological outcome in these cases?

Why should it seem like there would be a foregone conclusion to all of human life or history? Why couldn't/shouldn't it just keep evolving from its current context to the next

Replicating scientific results is tough—But essential. (2021). Nature, 600(7889), 359–360. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03736-4

Tentori, K., Pighin, S., Giovanazzi, G., Grignolio, A., Timberlake, B., & Ferro, A. (2021). Default change nudges Covid-19 vaccine uptake: A randomized controlled trial. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/9bsjg

'No obvious relationship to historic events' is blatantly inaccurate here. The US military was active in the Pacific for the entirety of this time frame reestablishing the power in the Pacific US colonies. It naturally would follow that volcanic activity would be reported at higher rates as military vessels were combing the area.

Sean Phelan. (2021, November 26). Striking how some media coverage is assuming (without caveats) that the Belgian case brought the new variant “from” Egypt or Turkey.There’s no chance they picked it up after returning to Belgium of course. How could that happen..we only have a 7-day average of 17,000 cases a day [Tweet]. @seanphelan8. https://twitter.com/seanphelan8/status/1464252432033136659

Johnston, M. (2021). What Lies Beneath: Tackling Vaccine Hesitancy. Emergency Medicine News, 43(10), 7. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.EEM.0000795760.41732.33

I've seen/heard several articles about Narendra Modi and the BJP rewriting history in India over the past several years.

Examples include:

• https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/india-modi-culture/ 2018-03-06
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/06/01/indias-new-textbooks-are-promoting-the-prime-ministers-favorite-policies-critics-allege/ 2018-06-01
• https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/11/16/bjp-has-been-effective-in-transmitting-its-version-of-indian-history-to-next-generation-of-learners-pub-80373 2019-11-16

Caulfield, T. (2021, October 18). The Golden Age of Junk Science Is Killing Us. Men’s Health. https://www.menshealth.com/health/a37910261/how-junk-science-and-misinformation-hurt-us/

The Metascience Movement Needs to be More Self-Critical. (2021, October 31). Absolutely Maybe. https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2021/10/31/the-metascience-movement-needs-to-be-more-self-critical/

One of the flaws of Mark Zuckerberg's spectrum disorder is that he either has no sense of shame or his confirmation bias and loss aversion biases are incredibly large.

Pagel, C., & Yates, C. A. (2021). Tackling the pandemic with (biased) data. Science, 374(6566), 403–404. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abi6602

Is there a name for this bias?

At the beginning of this episode, Sandy Hudson tells Nora Loreto about a podcast on NPR, Invisibilia.

The episodes that I listened to were about an anti-news news website in Stockton, California. How news has shifted and changed.

The Invisibilia episode is entitled, The Chaos Machine: An Endless Hole.

I ended up following this rabbit hole all the way to The View from Somewhere podcast episode featuring a discussion of Hallin’s spheres. Truly fascinating!

Sutton, J. (2018). Health Communication Trolls and Bots Versus Public Health Agencies’ Trusted Voices. American Journal of Public Health, 108(10), 1281–1282. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304661

Yee, A. (n.d.). COVID’s Outsize Impact on Asian Americans Is Being Ignored. Scientific American. Retrieved May 14, 2021, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covids-outsize-impact-on-asian-americans-is-being-ignored/

Ciccione, L., Sablé-Meyer, M., & Dehaene, S. (2021). Analyzing the misperception of exponential growth in graphs. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dah3x

Mixing science and art to make the truth more interesting than lies. (n.d.). Retrieved September 28, 2021, from https://theconversation.com/mixing-science-and-art-to-make-the-truth-more-interesting-than-lies-100221?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bylinetwitterbutton

Thinking in solitary can increase one's susceptibility to confirmation bias. Thinking in groups can mitigate this.

How might keeping one's notes in public potentially help fight against these cognitive biases?

Is having a "conversation in the margins" with an author using annotation tools like Hypothes.is a way to help mitigate this sort of cognitive bias?

At the far end of the spectrum how do we prevent this social thinking from becoming groupthink, or the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nyIy_TX4wk

An excellent video. Going to have to watch it a few more times to absorb more.

Rutjens, B. T., van der Linden, S., van der Lee, R., & Zarzeczna, N. (2021). A group processes approach to antiscience beliefs and endorsement of “alternative facts.” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 24(4), 513–517. https://doi.org/10.1177/13684302211009708

The Attack on "Critical Race Theory": What's Going on?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P35YrabkpGk

Lately, a lot of people have been very upset about “critical race theory.” Back in September 2020, the former president directed federal agencies to cut funding for training programs that refer to “white privilege” or “critical race theory, declaring such programs “un-American propaganda” and “a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue.” In the last few months, at least eight states have passed legislation banning the teaching of CRT in schools and some 20 more have similar bills in the pipeline or plans to introduce them. What’s going on?

Join us for a conversation that situates the current battle about “critical race theory” in the context of a much longer war over the relationship between our racial present and racial past, and the role of culture, institutions, laws, policies and “systems” in shaping both. As members of families and communities, as adults in the lives of the children who will have to live with the consequences of these struggles, how do we understand what's at stake and how we can usefully weigh in?

Hosts: Melissa Giraud & Andrew Grant-Thomas

Guests: Shee Covarrubias, Kerry-Ann Escayg,

Some core ideas of critical race theory:

• racial realism
  • racism is normal
• interest convergence
  • racial equity only occurs when white self interest is being considered (Brown v. Board of Education as an example to portray US in a better light with respect to the Cold War)
• Whiteness as property
  • Cheryl Harris' work
  • White people have privilege in the law
  • myth of meritocracy
• Intersectionality

People would rather be spoon fed rather than do the work themselves. Sadly this is being encouraged in the media.

Short summary of CRT: How laws have been written to institutionalize racism.

Culturally Responsive Teaching (also has the initials CRT).

KAE tries to use an anti-racist critical pedagogy in her teaching.

SC: Story about a book Something Happened in Our Town (book).

• Law enforcement got upset and the school district
• Response video of threat, intimidation, emotional blackmail by local sheriff's department.
• Intent versus impact - the superintendent may not have had a bad intent when providing an apology, but the impact was painful

It's not really a battle about or against CRT, it's an attempt to further whitewash American history. (synopsis of SC)

What are you afraid of?

Pilditch, T. (2021). Why scientific evidence is no longer enough in public debate [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/98v2n

People remember interrupted or unfinished tasks better than completed tasks.

Examples: I've had friends remember where we left off on conversations months/years later and we picked right back up.

I wonder what things effect these memories/abilities? Context? Importance? Other?

How to trash confidence in a COVID-19 vaccine: Brexit edition—Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. (n.d.). Retrieved August 10, 2021, from https://thebulletin.org/2021/08/how-to-trash-confidence-in-a-covid-19-vaccine-brexit-edition/#.YQwD9u6LazM.twitter

Marc Lipsitch. (2021, August 5). @nataliexdean @CT_Bergstrom N serology at end of follow up could solve problem of bias from unobserved infections https://t.co/Dwwxh77zP2 [Tweet]. @mlipsitch. https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1423107107558084608

Sun, Q., Lu, J., Zhang, H., & Liu, Y. (2021). Social Distance Reduces the Biases of Overweighting Small Probabilities and Underweighting Large Probabilities. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 47(8), 1309–1324. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220969051

Hosseinmardi, H., Ghasemian, A., Clauset, A., Mobius, M., Rothschild, D. M., & Watts, D. J. (2021). Examining the consumption of radical content on YouTube. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(32), e2101967118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101967118

Sulik, J., & McKay, R. (2021). Studying science denial with a complex problem-solving task [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/huxm7

Aizpurua, A., Migueles, M., & Aranberri, A. (2021). Prospective Memory and Positivity Bias in the COVID-19 Health Crisis: The Effects of Aging. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 666977. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.666977

Bressan, P. (2021). Strangers look sicker (with implications in times of COVID-19). PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/x4unv

Taber, J. M., Thompson, C. A., Sidney, P. G., O’Brien, A., & Updegraff, J. (2021). Experimental Tests of How Hypothetical Monetary Lottery Incentives Influence Vaccine-Hesitant U.S. Adults’ Intentions to Vaccinate. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ux73h

Dr. Felix Schönbrodt on Twitter. (2020). Twitter. Retrieved 4 March 2021, from https://twitter.com/nicebread303/status/1325829196883636231

u/dawnlxh. (2021). Reviewing peer review: does the process need to change, and how?. r/BehSciAsk. Reddit

ReconfigBehSci on Twitter. (2020). Twitter. Retrieved 27 February 2021, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1339855911796543488

Holmes, N. P. (2021). I critiqued my past papers on social media—Here’s what I learnt. Nature, 595(7867), 333–333. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01879-y

Prof Nichola Raihani on Twitter: “Submitted a paper reporting null results to a mid tier journal. Guess how it went. I literally don’t care at this point but I do feel bad for the first author (who I won’t name here). Https://t.co/sX5lTcEl29” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved July 16, 2021, from https://twitter.com/nicholaraihani/status/1415308025179656194

Palminteri, S. (2021). Choice-confirmation bias and gradual perseveration in human reinforcement learning [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dpqj6

Moore, D. A., Backus, M., & Little, A. T. (2021). Constraints on Thinking Cause Overprecision [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/evcx2

The time and effort required to put together this dataset is significant in itself. So much of the data we need to train algorithms simply doesn't exist in a useful format. However, the more we need to manipulate the raw information, the more likely we are to insert our own biases.

This means that by design the trial would MISS asymptomatic COVID19 cases that nevertheless make up a substantial proportion (about 60% of covid cases). But this was mitigated by taking monthly swabs for Category 2 participants.

Why was the decision of per-protocol taken if the study was blinded to the participants and the study personnel BUT unblinded to the analysts?

That still leaves open the role of unblinded data analysts. Why were they not blinded as well or at least made agnostic as to the status of the allocation. How was allocation concealment achieved and why was this not described here?

How did they mitigate self-report bias?

Richard McElreath 🍜 on Twitter: “Everything is selection effects, always has been. From page 162 of my book: Https://t.co/tQaeF2LXkW” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2021, from https://twitter.com/rlmcelreath/status/1396040993175126018

Laukkonen, R., Kaveladze, B., Protzko, J., Tangen, J. M., von Hippel, B., & Schooler, J. (2021). The ring of truth: Irrelevant insights make worldviews seem true [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/zq3vd

Baghal, T. A., Wenz, A., Sloan, L., & Jessop, C. (2021). Linking Twitter and survey data: Asymmetry in quantity and its impact. EPJ Data Science, 10(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-021-00286-7

Crocker-Buque, T., & Mounier-Jack, S. (2018). Vaccination in England: A review of why business as usual is not enough to maintain coverage. BMC Public Health, 18(1), 1351. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-6228-5

Betsch, C., & Sachse, K. (2013). Debunking vaccination myths: Strong risk negations can increase perceived vaccination risks. Health Psychology: Official Journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association, 32(2), 146–155. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027387

strand bias example

Gugerty, L., Shreeves, M., & Dumessa, N. (2021). Biased belief updating in causal reasoning about COVID-19. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/bfw76

Agarwal, A. (2021). The Accidental Checkmate: Understanding the Intent behind sharing Misinformation on Social Media. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/kwu58

Salvador, C. E., Berg, M. K., Yu, Q., San Martin, A., & Kitayama, S. (2020). Relational Mobility Predicts Faster Spread of COVID-19: A 39-Country Study. Psychological Science, 31(10), 1236–1244. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620958118

Dunn, E. W., Chen, L., Proulx, J. D. E., Ehrlinger, J., & Savalei, V. (2021). Can Researchers’ Personal Characteristics Shape Their Statistical Inferences? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 47(6), 969–984. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220950522

Examples of this sort of non-logical behaviour used to represent identity can be found in fiction in:

• Dr. Seuss' The Butter Battle Book (Random House,1984) which is based on
• the war between Lilliput and Blefuscu in Jonathan Swift's 1726 satire Gulliver's Travels, which was based on an argument over the correct end to crack an egg once soft-boiled.

It almost seems related to creating identity politics as bike-shedding because the real issues are so complex that most people can't grasp all the nuances, so it's easier to choose sides based on some completely other heuristic. Changing sides later on causes too much cognitive dissonance, so once on a path, one must stick to it.

Young, K. S., Purves, K. L., Huebel, C., Davies, M., Thompson, K. N., Bristow, S., Krebs, G., Danese, A., Hirsch, C., Parsons, C. E., Vassos, E., Adey, B., Bright, S., Hegemann, L., Lee, Y. T., Kalsi, G., Monssen, D., Mundy, J., Peel, A., … Breen, G. (2021). Depression, anxiety and PTSD symptoms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/sf7b6

Niemeyer, H., Aert, R. C. M. van, Schmid, S., Uelsmann, D., Knaevelsrud, C., & Schulte-Herbrueggen, O. (2020). Publication Bias in Meta-Analyses of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Interventions. Meta-Psychology, 4. https://doi.org/10.15626/MP.2018.884

Maarten van Smeden on Twitter. (n.d.). Twitter. Retrieved 4 March 2021, from https://twitter.com/MaartenvSmeden/status/1328093246829064192

Rohrer, J. M., Schmukle, S., & McElreath, R. (2021). The Only Thing That Can Stop Bad Causal Inference Is Good Causal Inference. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/mz5jx

COVID, One Year Ago on Twitter. (n.d.). Twitter. Retrieved 1 May 2021, from https://twitter.com/covidoneyearago/status/1383888066671046657

Pleskac, T. J., Kyung, E., Chapman, G. B., & Urminsky, O. (2021, April 23). Single- or double-blind review? A field study of system preference, reliability, bias, and validity. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/q2tkw

Yang, K.-C., Pierri, F., Hui, P.-M., Axelrod, D., Torres-Lugo, C., Bryden, J., & Menczer, F. (2020). The COVID-19 Infodemic: Twitter versus Facebook. ArXiv:2012.09353 [Cs]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2012.09353

Scheel, Anne M., Mitchell R. M. J. Schijen, and Daniël Lakens. ‘An Excess of Positive Results: Comparing the Standard Psychology Literature With Registered Reports’. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science 4, no. 2 (1 April 2021): 25152459211007468. https://doi.org/10.1177/25152459211007467.

Nabavi, N., & Dobson, J. (2021, April 21). Covid-19 new variants—known unknowns. The BMJ Opinion. https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/04/21/covid-19-new-variants-known-unknowns/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=socialnetwork

Białek, M., & Grossmann, I. (2021). Social bias insights concern judgments rather than real-world decisions. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/y3h7n

Interesting. This acts as evidence for the hypothesis that environments/conditions are powerful forcing functions.

It also acts as evidence against the argument of the "lone genius".

Qian, M., Chou, S.-Y., & Lai, E. K. (2020). Confirmatory bias in health decisions: Evidence from the MMR-autism controversy. Journal of Health Economics, 70, 102284. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.102284

Giubilini, A., Caviola, L., Maslen, H., Douglas, T., Nussberger, A.-M., Faber, N., Vanderslott, S., Loving, S., Harrison, M., & Savulescu, J. (2019). Nudging Immunity: The Case for Vaccinating Children in School and Day Care by Default. HEC Forum, 31(4), 325–344. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10730-019-09383-7

Bish, A., Yardley, L., Nicoll, A., & Michie, S. (2011). Factors associated with uptake of vaccination against pandemic influenza: A systematic review. Vaccine, 29(38), 6472–6484. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2011.06.107

Bonder, Taly, Ido Erev, and Elliot Ludvig. ‘On the Impact of Germs and Demons’. PsyArXiv, 10 March 2021. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/vscz4.

Coenen, A., & Gureckis, T. (2021). The distorting effects of deciding to stop sampling information. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tbrea

Griffith, G. J., Morris, T. T., Tudball, M. J., Herbert, A., Mancano, G., Pike, L., Sharp, G. C., Sterne, J., Palmer, T. M., Davey Smith, G., Tilling, K., Zuccolo, L., Davies, N. M., & Hemani, G. (2020). Collider bias undermines our understanding of COVID-19 disease risk and severity. Nature Communications, 11(1), 5749. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19478-2