Scientific American’s Getting Duped: How the Media Messes With Your Mind educates us on two important fallacies used to undermine arguments.
Statements made in the media can surreptitiously plant distortions in the minds of millions. Learning to recognize two commonly used fallacies can help you separate fact from fiction.
[…]
One common method of spinning information is the so-called straw man argument. In this tactic, a person summarizes the opposition’s position inaccurately so as to weaken it and then refutes that inaccurate rendition.
via Mind Hacks
This news report comes as no surprise.
While in the past, adults would have helped children in distress or rebuked those misbehaving, there was now “a feeling that it is best not to become involved”, it said.
Report author Prof Frank Furedi, of Kent University, said: “From Girl Guiders to football coaches, from Christmas-time Santas to parents helping out in schools, volunteers - once regarded as pillars of the community - have been transformed in the regulatory and public imagination into potential child abusers, barred from any contact with children until the database gives them the green light.”
This is the consequence of fear-mongering at its finest colliding with years of poor news reporting. Give the public something to worry about, and they will - taking it out of all proportions in the process.
Instead of relying on Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks, adults should be allowed to use their “discretion and professional judgment” to decide who should work with children.
Bravo.
FT Predict is more than just a game. Predictive markets collect the wisdom of the crowd in a single dynamic price unit that can be far more sensitive to changes in the market than standard survey-based research. And a growing number of today’s leading companies embrace predictive market models in order to harness the wisdom of their own crowds to improve decision-making.
In The Wisdom of Crowds, prediction markets are praised for being a useful application of crowd intelligence. They sounded interesting when I read about them, now I’m going to be part of one.
(Side note: the book has an excellent Wikipedia entry.)
Homosexuality is a mental illness, according to the head of Northern Ireland’s health committee, Iris Robinson MP. Can we say ‘forced resignation’?
After apparently branding homosexuality as “disgusting, loathsome, nauseating, wicked and vile” she went on to recommend [...] “a very lovely psychiatrist who works with me in my offices and his Christian background is that he tries to help homosexuals”.
So what is this research Miller [the 'lovely psychiatrist'] talks about? A randomised controlled trial from the peer-review medical literature? A meta-analysis of past treatment programmes? Perhaps just an exploratory outcome study?
No, it’s a book released by a Christian publisher and written by a psychologist and psychiatrist employed by a private evangelical college in the States.
An extremely depressing read, worth your time to find how much deeper Mrs. Robinson digs her hole. Especially when she likens homosexuals to murderers. You’ll be pleased to know she’s now being investigated for hate crimes.
Boston.com’s The Big Picture (”News Stories in Photographs”) must be the most linked-to current affairs/photography ‘blog’ in the past week.
There’s a reason for this - it’s amazing.