While I put the finishing touches on my book review of Bad Science (enter your comment to win my copy here), I’ll point you to some interesting articles I’ve found over the past couple of weeks.
In a piece on MSNBC, “Some doctors may stop vaccines because of cost” we can see a great example of a scary headline followed by a whole lot of speculation and questionable survey results. Though the headline is a little shocking, it is not until the 6th paragraph we are told,
Experts say there’s no evidence that significant numbers of doctors are quitting the vaccination business yet because of financial concerns.
Can you find the other problems with the article, and why it might not be something we should worry about?
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In an article from the New York Times, UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner comes out in Defense of Teasing. In an era when schools are banishing teasing from classrooms and playgrounds, Keltner argues
The language of teasing is intimately linked to the language of social behavior. Because teasing allows us to send messages in indirect, masked ways, it is an essential means of navigating our often-fraught social environments.
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In another article from MSNBC, a piece about the necessity of free-play in children’s lives, an unnamed writer from the Associated Press reports from the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. Apparently, there are classes adults can take that teach them how to help children play without structure. While I generally agree with the importance of free-play (I learned far more exploring the woods next to the field after soccer practice than I did at soccer practice itself), the notion that adults need to have conferences on how to encourage children to engage in unstructured playtime was an irony I could not ignore.
In the same article is my nominee for the most egregious analogy of 2008.
Among the speakers at last week’s Wonderplay conference was Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a Temple University psychologist who contends that lack of play in early childhood education “could be the next global warming.”
This is the best example I could ever hope to find of why analogies rarely make good arguments.
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Arguing by analogy is like putting the Hindenburg on the Titanic!!!
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