Review August 2009: Top Five PsyCentral Posts

Here’s a list of the top five PsyCentral posts for August 2009:

1. Who Says So? Gender and the Social Construction of the Sewing Machine (and Other Power Tools)
2. Myth Busting Sexual Anatomy Quiz
3. The Dangers of Social Networking: Are We Frying Our Brains?
4. The Clitoris, the Penis, Political Correctness and Biological ‘Factness’
5. Body Language Myth: The 7% 38% 55% Rule

Links:

Don’t Wait For Your Ship To Come In. . . Swim Out To Meet It

Review July 2009: Top Five PsyCentral Posts

Here’s a list of the top five PsyCentral posts for July 2009:

1. Myth Busting Sexual Anatomy Quiz
2. Who Says So? Gender and the Social Construction of the Sewing Machine (and Other Power Tools)
3. The Dangers of Social Networking: Are We Frying Our Brains?
4. Celebrity Body Language: Fact or Flim Flam?
5. Body Language Myth: The 7% 38% 55% Rule

Links:

Don’t Wait For Your Ship To Come In. . . Swim Out To Meet It

Gender Differences & The Seven Deadly Sins

I was invited to offer my thoughts on the recent news story regarding gender differences and the seven deadly sins for a short piece on  BBC Radio Leicester’s morning show.

I hadn’t heard about the story and was surprised to learn that the ‘research’ came from The Vatican. Apparently the ‘researchers’ had collected statistics from the confessional booth.

Now I don’t know much about the ‘ins and outs’ of the confessional booth but a key principle of research is informed consent. I wonder if the people entering the booth were told that their confessions would form part of a headline grabbing bit of research. I assume not.

Aside from this ‘cardinal research sin’, there’s a big question over how the sins were defined. Was ‘pride’ for women comparable to that of men? Who decided which confession should be lumped into which ‘deadly sin’. All in all it’s not really research at all but sadly it’s more likely to get into the newspapers than the real stuff.

Welcome to PsyCentral with Gary Wood

Hello and welcome to my blog. As you may have gathered, the key theme running through it will be psychology. I’ve recently become a ‘tweeter’ on Twitter.com and to be honest I’m still a bit bemused by it all. However, I noticed that a friend had integrated his blog and his ‘tweets’ and was inspired to do the same. So I’ve set up the blog in the hope it will inspire my tweets. Hey, it’s not the greatest of motivations but it’s got me started.

The goal for the blog is to discuss news stories that have a psychological angle and ‘critique’ a few of the nonsense bits of research that do psychology a great disservice. Performance artist Laurie Anderson has derided blogging as ‘Me-search’ (as opposed to ‘research’), so I will be bearing this in mind and keep the emphasis on evidence-based research. Although, I’m not ruling out the odd rant or a bit of ‘thinking out loud’.

Bright Moments

Gary Wood