are we remnants of something ancient?

[Soup]

@ WYV: well said! We really do need to ensure a better educated society.

"And EVERYBODY needs to be willing to point out when someone in any camp is chock full o' shiitake." -WYV.

You & Dizzy & I need to start a BULL$#!TOMETER manufacturing firm! Can you imagine the readings during political campaign season?!?

 

[Dragon's Tooth]

In some instances (but certainly not all) I think it's less what the academics are saying and more how the public interpret them. Either there is heated debate among the scientists concerning the legitimacy of such-and-such study but the media feeds it to the public as "the gospel truth;" or the opposite happens, and places where the scientists are in strong accord but powers outside the scientific community are doing their best to muddy the waters. The latter seems to happen on hot-button issues like global warming, and it seems the former applies to everything having to do with "social sciences," "mental illness," what have you. Though there are most definitely bone-headed academics in the psych world - I've encountered them myself. There is a strong disconnect between academia and "the real world." The public need to be better educated, yes; but academics need to do a much better job of conveying their material honestly and transparently. And EVERYBODY needs to be willing to point out when someone in any camp is chock full o' shiitake.

having spent most of my adult life in some form of study I can say that the way that academia tries to convey ideas is largely limited to trying to pass them off to other academics ... not to the general public. That makes it easy for media or politicians to pick and choose what they want to feed to the masses. they can pick out a couple sentences and run with that.

Also I've produced data for studies in the work place (I did some projects for the mining company I used to work for) and you only need to get an R value over 20% (if I'm remember correctly) which is just about piss all. Its virtually nothing. Then you toss out certain data values and stuff to make your work look better blah blah blah ... there is a bit of data manipulation that can make your work actually mean something when it doesn't. I always have a giggle when I see data on TV and its like 10 points randomly all over the place and they managed to get a rough line through it which APPARENTLY shows a relationship. I personally would do a hell of a lot more research if that was the best I got.

You can basically make any data fit what you want it to fit. Which is sad because you can then take a bunch of kids ... look at the fidgety ones and design an experiment to prove ADHD or something. Studies have shown that environmental factors have a big impact on ADHD kids like what food they eat and attention from mum and dad. A number of food colours have been shown to have advert reactions in some kids with ADHD for instance. And who knows what the additives in McDonalds does. A lot of parents now days buy the instant food which is usually low on nutrients and high on additives. A lot of food additives are not tested for reactions in combination with each other, they are usually only tested to show if that additive has a reaction with humans. So who knows what this cocktail of chemicals is doing in kids. I think you would probably find that the incidence of actual ADHD is far lower if all kids were put on a natural healthy diet not fish crackers and chicken nuggets and mcdonalds (or what ever else you can grab out the cupboard and say "get out from under my feet"). Kids could probably also benefit from getting outside and burning off some excess energy which is something that is almost a part of the past when we have ipads and PS3s and Xboxes to baby sit them now.