Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us - Sara E Gorman, Jack M Gorman (2016)
Notes
Introduction
1.A. Mamiit, “Relatives of Thomas Eric Duncan blame Ebola victim’s death on hospital’s lack of proper care,” Tech Times, October 12, 2014, http://www.techtimes.com/articles/17683/2141012; Manny Fernandez & Dave Philips, “Death of Thomas Eric Duncan in Dallas fuels alarm over Ebola,” The New York Times, October 8, 2014; Alexandra Sifferlin, “Here’s who’s blaming who for Ebola,” TIME, October 16, 2014, http://time.com/3513274/ebola-cdc-obama-blame/
2.D. Baker, “Ebola hysteria fever: A real epidemic,” Huffington Post, October 21, 2014.
3.A. Yuhas, “Panic: The dangerous epidemic sweeping an Ebola-fearing US,” The Guardian, October 20, 2014.
4.C. M. Blow, “The Ebola hysteria,” The New York Times, October 29, 2014.
5.S. L. Murphy, J. Xu, K. D. Kochanek, United States Department of Health and Human Services, & Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National vital statistics reports, Deaths: Final data for 2010, May 2013, 61. We have simply divided the total numbers of deaths for 2010, the most recent complete report available, by 365. Of course, these numbers fluctuate for causes of death that are seasonal, such as influenza, but give a fairly good idea of the magnitude on a daily basis in the United States.
6.http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/23/358349882/an-answer-for-americans-who-ask-whats-my-risk-of-catching-ebola, October 23, 2014.
7.B. Hallowell, “Pastor solves mystery surrounding why one-fourth of his congregation abruptly disappeared,” The Blaze, June 6, 2015.
8.E. Ritz, “Nurse diagnosed with Ebola makes a request of Ohio bridal shop that the owner is calling a ‘slap in the face,’” The Blaze, November 26, 2014.
9.“Report slams U.S. Ebola response and readiness,” NBCNews, February 26, 2015.
10.http://blogs.plos.org/speakingofmedicine/2014/10/22/ebola-taught-us-crucial-lesson-views-irrational-health-behaviors/
11.C. Spencer, “Having and fighting Ebola—public health lessons from a clinician turned patient,” New England Journal of Medicine, 2015, 372, 1089–1091.
12.S. B. Omer, D. A. Salmon, W. A. Orenstein, P. deHart, & N. Halsey, “Vaccine refusal, mandatory immunization, and the risks of vaccine-preventable diseases,” New England Journal of Medicine, 2009, 360, 1981–1988.
13.A. Anglemyer, T. Horvath, & G. Rutherford, “The accessibility of firearms and risk for suicide and homicide victimization among household members: A systematic review and meta-analysis,” Annals of Internal Medicine, 2014, 160, 101–110.
14.N. Golgowski, “Woman kills self with gun bought for Ferguson unrest: Report,” New York Daily News, November 24, 2014, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/woman-kills-gun-bought-ferguson-unrest-report-article-1.2022352
15.O. Khazan, “Wealthy LA schools vaccination rates are as low as South Sudan’s,” The Atlantic, September 16, 1951, http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/wealthy-la-schools-vaccination-rates-are-as-low-as-south-sudans/380252/
16.C. Pouliot & J. Godbout, “Thinking outside the ‘knowledge deficit’ box,” EMBO Reports, 2014, 15, 833–835.
17.L. Xin, “Got charisma? Depends on your voice,” http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/10/got-charisma-depends-your-voice, October 29, 2014.
18.P. Slovic, “Beyond numbers: A broader perspective on risk perception and risk communication,” in Deborah G. Mayo & Rachelle D. Hollander, eds., Acceptable evidence: Science and values in risk management, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, 48–65.
19.D. H. Barlow, J. M. Gorman, M. K. Shear, & S. W. Woods, “Cognitive-behavioral therapy, imipramine, or their combination for panic disorder: A randomized controlled trial,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 2000, 283, 2529–2536.
20.By body fluids we mean saliva, mucus, vomit, feces, tears, breast milk, urine, and semen. One has to come into contact with one of these from an infected person or the corpse of someone who died from Ebola in order to get sick. Simply sitting next to someone with Ebola virus infection on a plane or bus is insufficient to catch it.
21.National Safety Council, Injury facts, 2014 Edition, Itasca, IL: Author, 2014.
22.D. Kahneman, personal communication.
23.N. N. Taleb, Fooled by randomness: The hidden role of chance in life and in the markets, New York: Random House, 2004.
24.http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2014/10/06/widow-of-1st- american-ebola-victim-strives-to-end-ignorance/
25.http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/24/health/ebola-travel-policy/; Marc Santora, “Doctor in New York City is sick with Ebola,” The New York Times, October 23, 2014; and finally, Anemona Hartocollis, “Craig Spencer, New York doctor with Ebola, will leave Bellevue Hospital,” The New York Times, November 10, 2014.
26.C. Spencer, “Having and fighting Ebola—public health lessons from a clinician turned patient,” New England Journal of Medicine, 2015, 372, 1089–1091.
27.C. Spencer, “Having and fighting Ebola—public health lessons from a clinician turned patient,” New England Journal of Medicine, 2015, 372, 1090.
28.F. DeStefano, T. Karapurkar, W. W. Thompson, M. Yeargin-Allsopp, & C. Boyle, “Age at first measles-mumps-rubella vaccination in children with autism and school-matched control subjects: A population-based study in metropolitan Atlanta,” Pediatrics, 2004, 113, 259–266.
29.http://www.translationalneurodegeneration.com/content/3/1/22
30.B. Kantrowitz, “The science of learning,” Scientific American, August 2014, 69–73; S. Freeman, S. L. Eddy, M. McDonough, M. K. Smith, N. Okoroafor, H. Jordt, & M. P. Wenderoth, “Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), 2014, 111, 8410–8415.
31.A. Meisel, “Keeping science fun,” September 2014, http://www.sas.upenn.edu/series/frontiers/keeping-science-fun
32.P. G. Alaimo, J. M. Langenhan, & I. T. Suydam, “Aligning the undergraduate organic laboratory experience with professional work: The centrality of reliable and meaningful data,” Journal of Chemic Education, Epub October 10, 2014, doi:10.1021/ed400510b
33.R. Pérez-Peňa, “Colleges reinvent classes to keep more students in science,” The New York Times, December 26, 2014.
34.http://jeromiewilliams.com/2013/04/12/holy-fukushima-radiation-from-japan-is-already-killing-north-americans/
35.D. Kahan, D. Braman, & H. Jenkins-Smith, “Cultural cognition of scientific consensus,” Journal of Risk Research, 2011, 14, 147–174.
36.B. Nyhan, J. Reifler, S. Richey, & G. L. Freed, “Effective messages in vaccine promotion: A randomized trial,” Pediatrics, 2014, 133, e835–842.
37.J. K. Koh, “Graphic warnings for cigarette labels,” New England Journal of Medicine, August 4, 2011, 365, e10.
38.S. A. Schroeder, “Tobacco control in the wake of the 1998 master settlement agreement,” New England Journal of Medicine, 2004, 350, 293–301.
39.T. Nordhaus & M. Shellenberger, “Global warming scare tactics,” The New York Times, April 8, 2014.
40.D. Shiffman, “ ‘I’m not a scientist’ is a dangerous cop-out,” http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/10/i_m_not_a_scientist_excuse_politicians_don_t_need_to_be_experts_to_make.html
41.A. Cockcroft, M. Masisi, L. Thabane, & N. Andersson, “Legislators learning to interpret evidence for policy,” Science, 2014, 354, 1244–1245.
42.C. Korownyk, M. R. Kolber, J. McCormack, et al., “Televised medical talk shows—what they recommend and the evidence to support their recommendations: A prospective observational study,” British Medical Journal, 2014, 349, g7346, doi:10.1136/bmj.g7346
43.G. A. Poland &R. M. Jacobson, “Understanding those who do not understand: A brief review of the anti-vaccine movement,” Vaccine, 2001, 19, 2440–2445.
44.G. K. Spurling, P. R. Mansfield, B. D. Montgomery, J. Lexchin, J. Doust, N. Othman, et al., “Information from pharmaceutical companies and the quality, quantity, and cost of physicians’ prescribing: A systematic review,” PLoS Medicine, 2010, 7(10), e1000352, doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000352; B. T. Montague, A. H. Fortin 6th, & J. Rosenbaum, “A systematic review of curricula on relationships between residents and the pharmaceutical industry,” Medical Education, March 2008, 42(3), 301–308.
45.For a fuller discussion of these issues, see J. M. Gorman & P. E. Nathan, “Challenges to implementing evidence-based treatments,” in Peter E. Nathan and Jack M. Gorman, eds., A Guide to Treatments that Work, 4th ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 2015, 1–21.
46.“Economists aren’t free of biases, even though economists say otherwise,” The Daily Idea: Harvard Business Review, September 16, 2014.
47.D. Martin, “Elizabeth Whelan, who challenged food laws, dies at 70,” The New York Times, September 17, 2014.
48.To be fair, Whelan was almost certainly correct in challenging the notion that artificial sweeteners are human carcinogens. However, it is now clear that use of artificial sweeteners has the paradoxical effect of increasing the risk for type 2 diabetes.
Chapter 1
1.http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2015/03/03/nras-lapierreif-you-care-about-your-freedoms-you-belong-in-the-national-rifle-association-n1965197; https://www.nranews.com/series/wayne-lapierre/video/wayne-lapierre-how-to-stop-violent-crime/episode/wayne-lapierre-season-1-episode-1-how-to-stop-violent-crime; http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/12/21/1368881/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-nras-wayne-lapierre/; W. LaPierre, address at NRA-ILA Leadership Forum, April 25, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3XJKAq8NjQ; W. LaPierre address to the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference, February 6, 2014, http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/06/cpac-wayne-lapierres-speech/
2.C. Hodapp & A. Von Kannon, Conspiracy theories and secret societies for dummies, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, 2008, 21. This volume was cited in another book by an author we consider both erudite and discriminating and were surprised to find that despite its title it has some useful information. We stress, however, that it is imperative never to use the word “dummy” or anything like it when referring to the victims of conspiracy theories. Such people are not at all unintelligent as a class and calling them so feeds right into the hands of the leaders of such groups.
3.U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, The health consequences of smoking—50 years of progress: A report of the Surgeon General, Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health, 2014.
4.N. Oreskes & E. M. Conway, Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming, New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010, 6.
5.C. Mooney & S. Kirshenbaum, Unscientific America: How scientific illiteracy threatens our future, New York: Basic Books, 2009, 29.
6.It isn’t, of course. The overwhelming scientific consensus based on extensive data is that climate change and global warming are real and alarming phenomena.
7.S. C. Kalichman, Denying AIDS: Conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and human tragedy, New York: Copernicus/Springer, 2009, 9.
8.K. M. Douglas & R. M. Sutton, “Does it take one to know one? Endorsement of conspiracy theories is influenced by personal willingness to conspire,” British Journal of Social Psychology, 2011, 50, 544–552, quotes on pp. 545 and 550.
9.J. A. Whitson & A. D. Galinsky, “Lacking control increases illusory pattern perception,” Science, 2008, 322, 115–117.
10.D. Jolley & K. M. Douglas, “The social consequences of conspiracism: Exposure to conspiracy theories decreases intentions to engage in politics and to reduce one’s carbon footprint,” British Journal of Psychology, 2014, 105, 35–56.
11.V. Swamin, R. Coles, S. Stieger, J. Pietschnig, A. Furnham, S. Rehim, & M. Voracek, “Conspiracist ideation in Britain and Austria: Evidence of a monological belief system and associations between individual psychological differences and real-world and fictitious conspiracy theories,” British Journal of Psychology, 2011, 102, 443–463, quote on p. 452.
12.D. Jolley & K. M. Douglas, “The effects of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories on vaccination intentions,” PLoS ONE, 2014, 9, e89177.
13.S. Lewandowsky, K. Oberauer, & G. E. Gignac, “NASA fakes the moon landing—therefore, (climate) science is a hoax: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science,” Psychological Science, 2013, 24, 622–633.
14.D. Jolley & K. M. Douglas, “The effects of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories on vaccination intentions,” PLoS ONE, 2014, 9, e89177, 6.
15.Jack freely acknowledges that this was once indeed his own thinking. Until a little over a decade ago he was the recipient of money from many drugs companies. Hence, this is not a statement generated from a false sense of moral superiority but rather from personal experience.
16.L. M. Bogart, G. Wagner, F. H. Galvan, & D. Banks, “Conspiracy beliefs about HIV are related to antiretroviral treatment nonadherence among African American men with HIV,” Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, 2010, 53, 648–655.
17.M. Abalakina-Paap, W. G. Stephan, T. Craig, & W. L. Gregory, “Beliefs in conspiracies,” Political Psychology, 1999, 20, 637–647, quote on p. 637.
18.M. Bruder, P. Haffke , N. Neave, N. Nouripanah, & R. Imhoff, “Measuring individual differences in generic beliefs in conspiracy theories across cultures: Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire,” Frontiers in Psychology, 2013, 4, 225.
19.T. Goertzel, “Conspiracy theories in science,” EMBO Reports, 2010, 11, 493–499, quote on p. 494.
20.A. Makrandya & P. Wilknson, “Electricity generation and health,” Lancet, 2007, 370, 979–990.
21.M. Gannon, “Air pollution linked to 1 in 8 deaths worldwide,” http://www.livescience.com/44365-air-pollution-linked-to-1-in-8-deaths.html
22.D. Kahneman, Thinking, fast and slow, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011, 140.
23.A. Damascio, Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994.
24.J. G. Edelson, Y. Dudai, R. J. Dolan, & T. Sharot, “Brain substrates of recovery from misleading influence,” Journal of Neuroscience, 2014, 34, 7744–7753.
25.P. Slovic, M. Finucane, E. Peters, & D. G. MacGregor, “The affect heuristic,” in Thomas Gilovich, Dale W. Griffin, & Daniel Kahneman, eds., Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 401.
26.N. Schwarz, “Feelings as information: Moods influence judgments and processing strategies,” in Thomas Gilovich, Dale W. Griffin, & Daniel Kahneman, eds., Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 535.
27.T. Goertzel, “Conspiracy theories in science,” EMBO Reports, 2010, 11, 493–499.
28.C. R. Sunstein, Conspiracy theories and other dangerous ideas, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2014, 5.
29.P. R. Bost, S. G. Prunier, & A. J. Piper, “Relations of familiarity with reasoning strategies in conspiracy beliefs,” Psychological Reports, 2010, 107, 593–602, quote on p. 599.
30.P. R. Bost & S. G. Prunier, “Rationality in conspiracy beliefs: The role of perceived motive,” Psychological Reports: Sociocultural Issues in Psychology, 2013, 113, 118–128.
31.P. R. Bost & S. G. Prunier, “Rationality in conspiracy beliefs: The role of perceived motive,” Psychological Reports: Sociocultural Issues in Psychology, 2013, 113, 118–128, quote on p. 125.
32.B. G. Southwell, Social networks and popular understanding of science and health: Sharing disparities, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, 8.
33.N. Hertz, Eyes wide open: How to make smart decisions in a confusing world, New York: HarperCollins, 2013, 169.
34.B. G. Southwell, Social networks and popular understanding of science and health: Sharing disparities, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, 72.
35.C. Mooney & S. Kirshenbaum, Unscientific America: How scientific illiteracy threatens our future, New York: Basic Books, 2009, 15.
36.C. R. Sunstein, Conspiracy theories and other dangerous ideas, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014, 13.
37.V. Swami, “Social psychological origins of conspiracy theories: The case of the Jewish conspiracy theory in Malaysia,” Frontiers in Psychology, 2012, 3, 280. Published online August 6, 2012. Prepublished online July 3, 2012, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00280.
38.C. R. Sunstein, Conspiracy theories and other dangerous ideas, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014, 22.
39.C. R. Sunstein, Conspiracy theories and other dangerous ideas, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014, 29.
Chapter 2
1.S. A. Haslam, S. D. Reicher, & M. J. Platow, The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence, and power, Hove, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press, 2011, 29.
2.S. A. Haslam, S. D. Reicher, & M. J. Platow, The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence, and power, Hove, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press, 2011, 75.
3.S. A. Haslam, S. D. Reicher, & M. J. Platow, The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence, and power, Hove, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press, 2011, 75.
4.S. A. Haslam, S. D. Reicher, & M. J. Platow, The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence, and power, Hove, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press, 2011, 75.
5.J. A. Conger & R. N. Kanungo, Charismatic leadership in organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998, 23–24.
6.J. A. Conger & R. N. Kanungo, Charismatic leadership in organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998, 13–14.
7.J. A. Conger & R. N. Kanungo, Charismatic leadership in organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998, 15.
8.J. A. Conger & R. N. Kanungo, Charismatic leadership in organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998, 21.
9.R. H. Gass & J. S. Seiter, Persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining, 4th ed., Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2011, 121.
10.R. H. Gass & J. S. Seiter, Persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining, 4th ed., Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2011, 121–122.
11.http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/spycatcher/201208/dangerous-cult-leaders
12.R. H. Gass & J. S. Seiter, Persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining, 4th ed., Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2011, 54.
13.R. H. Gass & J. S. Seiter, Persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining, 4th ed., Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2011, 62.
14.R. H. Gass & J. S. Seiter, Persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining, 4th ed., Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2011, 186.
15.J. A. Conger & R. N. Kanungo, Charismatic leadership in organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998, 31.
16.J. B. Engelmann, C. M. C. Capra, C. Noussair, & G. S. Berns, “Expert financial advice neurobiologically ‘offloads’ financial decision-making under risk,” PLoS One, 4, e4957, quote on p. 10.
17.M. G. Edelson, Y. Dudai, R. J. Dolan, & T. Sharot, “Brain substrates of recovery from misleading influence,” Journal of Neuroscience, 2014, 34, 7744–7753, quote on p. 7751.
18.J. A. Conger & R. N. Kanungo, Charismatic leadership in organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998, 63.
19.N. Nattrass, Mortal combat: AIDS denialism and the struggle for antiretrovirals in South Africa, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa: University of KwaZulu Natal Press, 2007, 151.
20.N. Oreskes & E. M. Conway, Merchants of doubt, New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010, 10.
21.We do not mean to disparage any scientific journal and recognize that many useful and even important scientific publications find their homes in journals of lesser overall impact. However, it remains the case that there is a hierarchy of scientific and medical journals, with publications like Science, Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) at the top. These journals conduct the most rigorous—some would say ferocious—peer review of submitted manuscripts and have very low acceptance rates, around 10% or less. As we descend the hierarchy, it gets progressively easier to get a paper accepted for publication.
22.P. H. Duesberg, Inventing the AIDS virus, Washington, DC: Regnery, 1998, 11.
23.R. B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and practice, 5th ed., Boston: Pearson Education, 2009, 212–213.
24.P. H. Duesberg, Inventing the AIDS virus, Washington, DC: Regnery, 1998, 66–67.
25.Two of the most disturbing aspects of this affair are that Wakefield’s paper was published in the journal Lancet, which is considered a top-tier medical journal, and the prolonged time before the editors of Lancet agreed to have the paper retracted despite Wakefield’s refusal to do so himself (the original paper was published in 1998 and not retracted until 2010). One can only speculate how a paper with only 12 subjects who were not properly ascertained for the study and without any comparison group possibly got past the Lancet’s normally rigorous review. It has since been made clear that the paper is essentially a fraud.
26.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6kOxkPJfRM
27.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpvB3gt4akE
28.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpvB3gt4akE
29.A. Picard, “Medical fraud revealed in discredited vaccine-autism study,” The Globe and Mail, January 6, 2011.
30.J. A. Conger & R. N. Kanungo, Charismatic leadership in organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998, 47.
31.J. A. Conger & R. N. Kanungo, Charismatic leadership in organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998, 47.
32.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b1fycxZIwI
33.As will be discussed later in this book, oxytocin is a hormone secreted by a structure in the brain called the hypothalamus. Among other functions, oxytocin plays a major role in mammals in enhancing attachment behaviors, such as those between mothers and infants. When given to humans, it can make them feel more secure, loved, and affiliated with others.
34.Technically, the U.S. Department of Energy was not created until 1977, although its official website does acknowledge that it traces its lineage to the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb.
35.“Vermont v science,” The Economist, May 10, 2014, pp. 25–26. We believe the real problem with GMOs was aptly stated by Mark Bittman in an op-ed piece in The New York Times on May 6, 2014: “By themselves and in their current primitive form, G.M.O.s are probably harmless; the technology itself is not even a little bit nervous making. (Neither we nor plants would be possible without ‘foreign DNA’ in our cells.) But to date G.M.O.s have been used by companies like Monsanto to maximize profits and further removing the accumulated expertise of generations of farmers from agriculture; in those goals, they’ve succeeded brilliantly. They have not been successful in moving sustainable agriculture forward (which is relevant because that was their claim), nor has their deployment been harmless: It’s helped accelerate industrial agriculture and its problems and strengthened the positions of unprincipled companies. But the technology itself has not been found to be harmful.” In other words, GMOs are not harmful to human health but have not been used yet to engage the problems of starvation and disease for which they could be helpful.
36.A. Harmon, “A lonely quest for facts on genetically modified crops,” The New York Times, January 4, 2014.
37.G. E. Séralini, E. Clair, R. Mesnage, S. Gress, N. Defarge, M. Malatesta, D. Hennequin, & J. S. de Vendômois, “Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize,” Food and Chemical Toxicology, 2012, 50, 4221–4231. (Note that maize is what North Americans call corn.)
38.Retraction notice to “Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize,” Food and Chemical Toxicology, 2012, 50, 4221–4231.
39.G. E. Séralini, R. Mesnage, & N. Defarge, “Conclusiveness of toxicity data and double standards,” Food and Chemical Toxicology, 2014, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fct2012.08.005
40.http://www.sustainablepulse.com
41.http://www.digital-athanor.com/PRISM_ESCAPE/article_usb312.html?id_article=18
42.B. Alberts, R. Beachy, D. Baulcombe, G. Blobel, S. Datta, N. Fedoroff, D. Kennedy, G. S. Khush, J. Peacock, M. Rees, & P. Sharp, “Standing up for GMOs,” Science, 2013, 341, 1320.
43.W. LaPierre, address to the Conservative Political Action Conference, National Harbor, Maryland, February 6, 2014, http://www.nrablog.com/post/2014/03/06/Wayne-LaPierres-address-to-the-2014-Conservative-Political-Action-Conference.aspx#continue
44.http://motleynews.net/2013/02/06/was-nra-leader-wayne-lapierre-deferred-from-vietnam-due-to-a-nervous-disorder/; https://www.facebook.com/ThePlatznerPost/posts/415418721878388; http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022302951
45.H. Stuart, “Violence and mental illness: An overview,” World Psychiatry, 2003, 2, 121–124.
46.C. L. Barry, E. E. McGinty, J. S. Vernick, & D. W. Webster, “After Newtown—public opinion on gun policy and mental illness,” New England Journal of Medicine, 2013, 368, 1077–1081.
47.http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/nra-wayne-lapierre-tells-group-guns-protect-murderers-bloomberg-article-1.1769560
48.R. Keers, S. Ullrich, B. L. Destavola, & J. W. Coid, “Association of violence with emergence of persecutory delusions in untreated schizophrenia,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 2014, 171, 332–339.
49.J. W. Coil et al., “The relationship between delusions and violence: Findings from the East London First Episode Psychosis Study,” JAMA Psychiatry, 2013, 70, 465–471.
50.J. W. Swanson, “Explaining rare acts of violence: The limits of evidence from population research,” Psychiatry Services, 2011, 62, 1369–1371.
51.P. S. Appelbaum & J. W. Swanson, “Law and psychiatry: Gun laws and mental illness: How sensible are the current restrictions?” Psychiatry Services, 2010, 61, 652–654.
52.American Psychiatric Association, Fact sheet: Violence and mental illness, Washington, DC: Author, 1994.
53.J. T. Walkup & D. H. Rubin, “Social withdrawal and violence—Newtown, Connecticut,” New England Journal of Medicine 2013, 368, 399–401.
54.H. Stuart, “Violence and mental illness: An overview,” World Psychiatry, 2003, 2, 121–124.
55.C. Mair et al., “Varying impacts of alcohol outlet densities on violent assaults: Explaining differences across neighborhoods,” Journal of Studies on Alcohol Drugs, 2013, 74, 50.
56.G. J. Wintermute, “Association between firearm ownership, firearm-related risk and risk reduction behaviours and alcohol-related risk behaviours,” Injury Prevention, 2011, 17, 422–427.
57.D. A. Brent, J. A. Perper, & C. J. Allman, “Alcohol, firearms, and suicide among youth,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 1987, 257, 3369–3372; F. P. Rivara, B. A. Mueller, G. Somes, C. T. Mendoza, N. B. Rushforth, & A. L. Kellerman, “Alcohol and illicit drug abuse and the risk of violent death in the home,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 1997, 278, 569–575.
58.“Violent, drunk and holding a gun,” The New York Times, February 23, 2013.
59.W. LaPierre, Address to the Conservative Political Action Conference, National Harbor, Maryland, March 6, 2014, http://www.nrablog.com/post/2014/03/06/Wayne-LaPierres-address-to-the-2014-Conservative-Political-Action-Conference.aspx#continue
60.N. Oreskes & E. M. Conway, Merchants of doubt, New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010, 8.
61.N. Oreskes & E. M. Conway, Merchants of doubt, New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010, 27.
62.S. A. Haslam, S. D. Reicher, & M. J. Platow, The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence, and power, Hove, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press, 2011, 50.
63.S. A. Haslam, S. D. Reicher, & M. J. Platow, The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence, and power, Hove, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press, 2011, 52.
64.S. A. Haslam, S. D. Reicher, & M. J. Platow, The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence, and power, Hove, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press, 2011, 52.
65.S. A. Haslam, S. D. Reicher, & M. J. Platow, The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence, and power, Hove, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press, 2011, 55.
66.S. A. Haslam, S. D. Reicher, & M. J. Platow, The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence, and power, Hove, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press, 2011, 67–68.
67.R. H. Gass & J. S. Seiter, Persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining, 4th ed., Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2011, 117–118.
68.G. S. Berns, J. Chappelow, F. Zink, P. Pagnoni, M. E. Martin-Skurski, & J. Richards, “Neurobiological correlates of social conformity and independence during mental rotation,” Biological Psychiatry, 2005, 58, 245–253.
69.B. G. Southwell, Social networks and popular understanding of science and health: Sharing disparities, Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, 72.
70.S. Zeki, “The neurobiology of love,” FEBS Letters, 2007, 581, 2575–2579.
71.E. Fehr & C. F. Camerer, “Social neuroeconomics: The neural circuitry of social preferences,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2007, 11, 419–427.
72.R. H. Gass & J. S. Seiter, Persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining, 4th ed., Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2011, 120.
73.R. H. Gass & J. S. Seiter, Persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining, 4th ed., Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2011, 120.
74.Because he is a true believer that global warming is a real phenomenon that is threatening human existence, Jack affiliates with groups that share this belief and advocate for a reduction in the use of fossil fuels. However, it is often the case that such groups adopt other ideas that they think are environmentally correct, such as opposing nuclear power and GMOs. In these settings, surrounded by people he generally respects, Jack often refrains from expressing his privately held belief that neither is actually a threat. Thus, Jack in his silence and fear of being ostracized from the group, succumbs to normative influence. Fortunately, he gets to express his true feelings in this book.
75.J. A. Conger & R. N. Kanungo, Charismatic leadership in organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998, 272.
76.J. A. Conger & R. N. Kanungo, Charismatic leadership in organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998, 50.
77.D. Kelly & M. D’Aust Garcia, “Resisting persuasion: Building defences against competitors’ persuasive attacks in the context of war-gaming methodology,” Journal of Medical Marketing, 2009, 9(2), 84.
78.D. Kelly & M. D’Aust Garcia, “Resisting persuasion: Building defences against competitors’ persuasive attacks in the context of war-gaming methodology,” Journal of Medical Marketing, 2009, 9(2), 84.
79.M. Friestad & P. Wright, “The persuasion knowledge model: How people cope with persuasion attempts,” Journal of Consumer Research, 1994, 21(1), 12.
80.J. L. Lemanski & H.-S. Lee, “Attitude certainty and resistance to persuasion: investigating the impact of source trustworthiness in advertising,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, 2012, 3(1), 71.
81.E. S. Knowles & J. A. Linn (Eds.), Resistance and persuasion, Yahweh: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004, 29
82.N. Hertz, Eyes wide open, New York: HarperCollins, 2013, 70.
Chapter 3
1.For instance, the famous Yogi line “When you get to a fork in the road, take it” refers to directions he gave to get to his house, which was on a cul-de-sac. Hence, when one got to the fork in the road, going either way would serve equally well to get to his house. Yogi’s statement turns out to be perfectly logical after all.
2.R. S. Nickerson, “Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises,” Review of General Psychology, 1998, 2, 175–220.
3.D. Alighieri, canto 13 in “Paradiso,” in The divine comedy: Inferno; purgatorio; paradiso, trans. Allen Mandelbaum, New York: Alfred A Knopf (Everyman’s Library), 1995, 441.
4.D. A. Redelmeier & A. Tversky, “On the belief that arthritis pain is related to the weather,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Medicine, 1996, 93, 2895–2896.
5.Actually, Jack did make that mistake twice. The second umbrella was just as bad as the first. He would have been better off succumbing to confirmation bias in the first instance.
6.We often use the term “prestigious” journal. There are basically two ways that this is determined. The first is historical. Certain journals have gained reputations for being more authoritative than others over the years, and these are generally the most selective when it comes to accepting submissions. The American journal Science and the British journal Nature are generally held as the two most prestigious scientific journals in the world. In medicine, this would be the New England Journal of Medicine. The second way to determine whether a journal is “prestigious” is by impact factor, which is a calculation based on the number of times each article in a journal is referred to, or “cited,” in other scientific articles. Getting an article published in prestigious, high-impact journals is the coin of the realm for scientists, necessary for them to get tenure at their institutions, funding from granting agencies, and invitations to speak at important scientific conferences. Journalists also troll the more prestigious articles, looking for new things about which to write articles.
7.R. S. Nickerson, “Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises,” Review of General Psychology, 1998, 2, 175–220.
8.Strep throat is of course the popular phrase for infection of the mucous membrane of the throat—technically called pharyngitis—by a bacteria called streptococcus. Although most people with streptococcal pharyngitis recover uneventfully, a subgroup develop serious complications later on, including a type of kidney disease called glomerulonephritis, heart disease called rheumatic heart disease, and neurological disease called Syndenham’s chorea. The first two of these can cause premature death.
9.This is the name doctors give the rash associated with scarlet fever, part of the complex of symptoms and signs caused by Streptococcus, or group A strep, infection that includes strep throat.
10.Depending on the study, only about 10% of cases of sore throat are caused by strep. The most common virus to cause pharyngitis is adenovirus, but many other viruses can do it as well.
11.This is in itself an irrational choice, since plain old penicillin is probably better than azithromycin or the Z-Pak for treating strep throat. But that is another story.
12.M. L. Barnett & J. A. Linder, “Antibiotic prescribing to adults with sore throat in the United States, 1997–2010,” JAMA Internal Medicine, 2014, 174, 138–140. We should also note that despite the fact that we used a pediatric example, pediatricians seem to be coming around to prescribing antibiotics for sore throats in children only when the tests are positive for strep. But changing this prescribing behavior was not easy.
13.R. M. Poses, R. D. Cebul, M. Collins, & S. S. Fager, “The accuracy of experienced physicians’ probability estimates for patients with sore throats: Implications for decision making,” JAMA, 1985, 254, 925–929; M. R. Wessels, “Streptococcal pharyngitis,” New England Journal of Medicine, 2011, 364, 648–655.
14.M. L. Barnett & J. A. Linder, “Antibiotic prescribing for adults with acute bronchitis in the United States, 1996–2010,” JAMA, 2014, 311, 2020–2022.
15.It is important to note here that physicians overprescribing antibiotics contributes to the problem of creating bacterial resistance but overuse in agriculture is an even more significant factor. Antibiotics should be given only to sick livestock but are commonly given promiscuously to all farm animals. Nearly 80% of the antibiotics sold in the United States are fed to animals to promote growth, not to treat bacterial infections. The FDA has only recently started to address this serious problem, and unfortunately what they have asked for from pharmaceutical companies so far is only voluntary. The FDA does not have regulatory authority over farmers. So although we are often skeptical of claims that the food we eat is dangerous, there is no question that meat from animals treated with antibiotics is a substantial threat to our health.
16.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Antibiotic/antimicrobial resistance: Threat report 2013,” http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/threat-report-2013/index.html; “Antibiotic resistance: The spread of superbugs,” The Economist, March 31, 2011, http://www.economist.com/node/18483671.
17.Physicians Briefing, “CDC addresses burden, threat of antibiotic resistance,” www.physiciansbriefing.com/Article/asp?AID=683568, January 6, 2014.
18.“The antibiotic crisis,” The New York Times, September 17, 2013.
19.J. P. Donnelly, J. W. Baddley, & H. E. Wang, “Antibiotic utilization for acute respiratory tract infections in U.S. emergency departments,” Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, 2014, 58, 1451–1457.
20.It is worth commenting here on the use of the term cold. The common cold is an illness caused by a group of organisms called rhinoviruses that infect that upper airways of the respiratory tract (nasal passages and throat), causing cough, sneeze, headache, fever, and general malaise. When people get sick with a cold they seem to think the word cold is inadequate to describe their misery. The cold is then described as a head cold or a chest cold, to distinguish what they have from an ordinary cold. These modifiers, however, have no medical significance. Colds are unpleasant and debilitating, especially in the very young, very old, or otherwise medically ill, but for most people they go away when the body’s immune system is able to kill off the rhinovirus. That takes about 10 days. Antibiotics have absolutely no influence on the course of the common cold.
21.C. Llor, A. Moragas, C. Bayona, R. Morros, H. Pera, O. Plana-Ripoll, J. M. Cots, & M. Miravitlles, “Efficacy of an anti-inflammatory or antibiotic treatment in patients with non–complicated acute bronchitis and discoloured sputum: Randomised placebo controlled trial,” British Medical Journal, 2013, 347, f5762.
22.S. Fridkin, J. Baggs, R. Fagan, et al., “Vital signs: Improving antibiotic use among hospitalized patients,” http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm63e0304al.htm, March 4, 2014.
23.A. Phlipson, “Britain is reaching ‘a tipping point in its use of antibiotics,’ says Wellcome Trust director,” www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10557959, January 8, 2014.
24.N. Teicholz, “Fat (reconsidered),” The Wall Street Journal, May 3–4, 2014.
25.A. Keys & F. Grande, “Role of dietary fat in human nutrition. III. Diet and the epidemiology of coronary heart disease,” American Journal of Public Health and the Nation’s Health, 1957, 47, 1520–1530. Note that Keys and Grande refer only to men when they worry about heart attacks. Back in the 1950s another mistake commonly made by physicians and the public was to believe that women don’t get heart attacks. In fact, heart disease is by far the leading cause of death of women in the United States, exceeding breast cancer. Yet efforts to identify breast cancer are far more vigorous than those to prevent unnecessary myocardial infarctions in women.
26.R. Chowdhury, S. Warnakula, S. Kunutsor, F. Crowe, H. A. Ward, L. Johnson, O. H. Franco, A. S. Butterworth, N. G. Forouhi, S. G. Thompson, K. T. Khaw, D. Mozaffarian, J. Danesh, & D. Di Angelantonio, “Association of dietary, circulating, and supplement fatty acids with coronary risk: A systematic review and meta-analysis,” Annals of Internal Medicine, 2014, 160, 398–406.
27.A note on meta-analysis. In this procedure, a scientist or group of scientists locates all the papers in the literature that can be found in which there are data relevant to a certain question. Then a statistical procedure is used to put all of the data together and reach a conclusion. This is especially useful in situations in which a series of studies with relatively small numbers of participants have yielded contradictory findings. By combining all the studies, a larger sample is accumulated that sometimes permits a more statistically convincing finding. There are many technical hurdles and some shortcomings to meta-analysis, but it is often useful when a subject that has been studied is still unclear.
28.Note that high cholesterol level is indeed a valid risk marker for heart attacks and this deserves intervention, with diet, exercise and/or medications called statins. It is just that how much fat you eat does not seem to be related to this process.
29.As we do note elsewhere, while the scientists who conducted these studies were generally acting in good faith even though their conclusions turn out to be incorrect, there is an element of conspiracy in the dietary fat recommendations. A conglomerate of food companies and medical associations worked together to make sure that the advice served their financial goals.
30.L. A. Bazzano, T. Hu, K. Reynolds, L. Yao, C. Bunol, Y. Liu, C.-S. Chen, M. J. Klag, P. K. Whelton, & J. He, “Effects of low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets,” Annals of Internal Medicine, 2014, 161, 309–318.
31.F. A. Goodyear-Smith, M. L. van Driel, B. Arroll, & C. H. Del Mar, “Analysis of decisions made in meta-analyses of depression screening and the risk of confirmation bias: A case study,” BMC Medical Research Methods, 2012, 12, 76.
32.C. A. Anderson, M. R. Lepper, & L. Ross, “Perseverance of social theories: The role of explanation in the persistence of discredited information,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1980, 39, 1037–1049, quote on p. 1042.
33.S. Schulz-Hardt, D. Frey, C. Lüthgens, & S. Moscovici, “Biased information search in group decision making,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000, 78, 655–659.
34.It has been pointed out that the original source for this information comes from a U.K. newspaper, the Daily Mail, that is not necessarily reliable. However, whether or not Angelina Jolie actually said what she is quoted as saying, we are interested here in the reaction it got from gun proponents and their reaction, in turn, to Jack’s challenging them with data.
35.G. Kleck & M. Gertz, “Armed resistance to crime: The prevalence and nature of self-defense with a gun,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 1995, 86, 150–187.
36.D. Hemenway, Private guns, public health, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.
37.M. Shermer, “When science doesn’t support our beliefs,” Scientific American, October 2013, 95.
38.B. G. Southwell, Social networks and popular understanding of science and health: Sharing disparities, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 2013, 73.
39.J. M. Boden, L. Fergusson, & J. Horwood, “Cigarette smoking and depression: Tests of causal linkages using a longitudinal birth cohort,” British Journal of Psychiatry, 2010, 196, 440–446.
40.In his excellent book The Panic Virus, Seth Mnookin discusses the isolation children of parents with autism feel and how that drives them toward participating in group causes, such as the anti-vaccine movement.
41.P. Slovic, “The affect heuristic,” in T. Bilovich, D. Griffin, & D. Kahneman, eds., Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 401.
42.P. Slovic, “The affect heuristic,” in T. Bilovich, D. Griffin, & D. Kahneman, eds., Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 410.
43.N. Schwarz, “Feelings as information: Moods influence judgments and processing strategies,” in T. Bilovich, D. Griffin, & D.Kahneman, eds., Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
44.B. G. Southwell, Social networks and popular understanding of science and health: Sharing disparities, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 2013, 97.
45.G. S. Berns, J. Chappelow, C. F. Zink, G. Pagnoni, M. E. Martin-Skurski, & J. Richards, “Neurobiological correlates of social conformity and independence during mental rotation,” Biological Psychiatry, 2005, 58, 245–253.
46.E. G. Falk & M. D. Lieberman, “The neural bases of attitudes, evaluation, and behavior change,” in F. Krueger & J. Grafman, eds., The neural basis of human belief systems, Hove, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press, 2013.
47.S. A. Sloman, “Two systems of reasoning,” in T. Bilovich, D. Griffin, & D. Kahneman, eds., Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
48.This statement will not go unchallenged, and indeed research is increasingly suggesting that other species demonstrate altruism. Suffice it to say here, however, that if chimpanzees and other great apes are really capable of charitable behavior for its own sake it is much harder to recognize than such behavior in humans.
49.K. E. Stanovich & R. F. West, “On the failure of cognitive ability to predict myside and one-sided thinking biases,” Thinking and Reasoning, 2008, 14, 129–167; K. E. Stanovich, R. F. West, & M. E. Toplak, “Myside bias, rationale thinking, and intelligence,” Current Direction in Psychological Science, 2013, 22, 259–264.
50.C. M. Kuhnen & B. Knutson, “The neural basis of financial risk,” Neuron, 2005, 47, 763–770.
51.N. Hertz, Eyes wide open, New York: HarperCollins, 2013, 38.
52.C. M. Kuhnen & J. Y. Chiao, “Genetic determinants of financial risk taking,” PLoS One, 2009, 4, e4362.
53.C. M. Kuhnen, G. R. Samanez-Larkin, & B. Knutson, “Serotonergic genotypes, neuroticism, and financial choices,” PLoS One, 2013, 8, e54632.
54.C. G. Lord, L. Ross, & M. R. Lepper, “Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1979, 37, 2098–2109, quote on p. 2098.
55.A. T. Beck, Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders, New York: International Universities Press, 1976.
56.C. A. Anderson, M. R. Lepper, & L. Ross, “Perseverance of social theories: The role of explanation in the persistence of discredited information,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1980, 39, 1037–1049, quote on p. 1048.
57.L. Rosenbaum, “‘Misrearing’—culture, identify, and our perceptions of health risks,” New England Journal of Medicine, 2014, 37, 595–597, quote on p. 597.
Chapter 4
1.http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/
2.It is surprising to learn that only a minority of people who regularly smoke actually develop adenocarcinoma of the lung. But this should not be taken as comforting news. First, people who don’t smoke almost never get lung cancer, so the difference is staggering. Second, lung cancer is only one of a host of cancers and other devastating diseases that smoking causes. Most smokers sooner or later get a disease related to smoking, even if it isn’t lung cancer. At the present time, the Surgeon General officially lists 21 different diseases caused by cigarette smoking and there is now compelling evidence that there are even more.
3.S. A. Vyse, Believing in magic: The psychology of superstition, rev. ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 74.
4.S. A. Vyse, Believing in magic: The psychology of superstition, rev. ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 76.
5.S. A. Vyse, Believing in magic: The psychology of superstition, rev. ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 74.
6.R. Park, Voodoo science: The road from foolishness to fraud, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 35–36.
7.In fact, this is often a case of association, not causality. Many people without back pain have herniated discs, so it is not always clear that finding one on an MRI explains the cause of pain. See, for example, M. C. Jensen, M. N. Brant-Zawadzki, N. Obuchowski, M. T. Modic, D. Malkasian, & J. S. Ross, “Magnetic resonance imaging of the lumbar spine in people without back pain,” New England Journal of Medicine, 1994, 331, 69–73.
8.D. Ariely, Predictably irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions, New York: Harper Perennial, 2009.
9.T. Kida, Don’t believe everything you think: The 6 basic mistakes we make in thinking, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006, 86.
10.M. Shermer, Why people believe weird things: Pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our time, New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002, 59.
11.M. E. Talkowski, E. V. Minikel, & J. F. Gusellam, “Autism spectrum disorder genetics: Diverse genes with diverse clinical outcomes,” Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 2015, 22, 65–75; S. Sandin, D. Schendel, P. Magnusson, et al., “Autism risk associated with parental age and with increasing difference in age between the parents,” Molecular Psychiatry, 2015, doi:10.1038/mp.2015.70, Epub ahead of print.
12.K. R. Foster & H. Kokko, “The evolution of superstitious and superstition-like behavior,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Biological Sciences, 2009, 276, 31.
13.K. R. Foster & H. Kokko, “The evolution of superstitious and superstition-like behavior,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Biological Sciences, 2009, 276, 31.
14.S. A. Vyse, Believing in magic: The psychology of superstition, rev. ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 86.
15.http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/06/superstitious-ufo-alien-conspiracy-opinions-columnists-superstition.html
16.A. Bandura, D. Ross, & S. A. Ross, “Transmission of aggression through the imitation of aggressive models,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1961, 63 (3): 575–582.
17.L. Damisch, B. Stoberock, & T. Mussweiler, “Keep your fingers crossed! How superstition improves performance,” Psychological Science, 2010, 21, 1014–1020. Experts in polling may question our wisdom in citing such a Gallup poll but we will give them the benefit of the doubt this time.
18.S. A. Vyse, Believing in magic: The psychology of superstition, rev. ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 118; T. Kida, Don’t believe everything you think: The 6 basic mistakes we make in thinking, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006, 92.
19.S. A. Vyse, Believing in magic: The psychology of superstition, rev. ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 140.
20.S. A. Vyse, Believing in magic: The psychology of superstition, rev. ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 140.
Chapter 5
1.New York Daily News, Tuesday, April 22, 2014.
2.F. Bruni, “Autism and the agitator,” The New York Times, Tuesday, April 22, 2014. Also, don’t get us started on the issue of gluten-free diets, another major boondoggle of the health food industry. There is a well-characterized medical condition called celiac disease in which the patient makes antibodies to a protein in wheat called gluten that cross-react against cells of the intestinal lining or mucosa, causing horrible inflammation and damage up and down the small intestine. These individuals become malnourished and very ill unless they eliminate gluten from their diets. The disease can now be readily diagnosed by a blood test that identifies antibodies called antitissue transglutaminase antibodies (tTGA) or anti-endomysial antibodies (EMA). It turns out that the vast majority of people who think they have some kind of gluten sensitivity actually do not. It is important to remember that whereas humans have about 20,000 to 30,000 genes and two sets of chromosomes, wheat has about 90,000 genes and as many as six sets of chromosomes. So it may be the case that some people with GI problems are abnormally sensitive to wheat, but unless they have celiac disease it isn’t to gluten, and eating a gluten-free diet is useless. It could, however, be one of the other 89,999 proteins expressed by the wheat genome.
3.D. M. Kahan, “A risky science communication environment for vaccines,” Science, 2013, 342, 53–54.
4.This notion does seem a bit silly. There is no evidence that teenagers currently refrain from having sex because of fear of becoming infected with HPV or getting cervical cancer, so exactly how a vaccine against HPV would increase sexual activity in adolescents remains a mystery.
5.J. LeDoux, The emotional brain, New York: Touchstone, 1996.
6.F. Krueger & J. Grafman, The neural basis of human belief systems, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press, 2013, xii.
7.A. Shenhav & J. D. Greene, “Integrative moral judgment: Dissociating the roles of the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex,” The Journal of Neuroscience, 2014, 34, 4741–4749.
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10.D. Kahneman, Thinking, fast and slow, New York: Farrar, Straus and Geroux, 2011, 98.
11.R. H. Thaler & C. R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness, London: Penguin Books, 2008.
12.H. P. Spaans, P. Seinaert, F. Boukaert, J. F. van den Berg, E. Verwijk, K. H. Kho, M. L. Stek, & R. M. Kok, “Speed of remission in elderly patients with depression: Electroconvulsive therapy v. medication,” British Journal of Psychiatry, 2015, 206, 67–71.
13.S, Sloman, “The empirical case for two systems of reasoning,” Psychological Bulletin, 1996, 119, 3–22.
14.Pew Research Center for the People and the Press “Public’s knowledge of science and technology,” http://www.people-press.org/2013/04/22/publics-knowledge-of-science-and-technology/, accessed April 11, 2014.
15.J. D. Miller, “The public understanding of science in Europe and the United States,” paper presented at the AAAS annual meeting, San Francisco, CA, February 16, 2007, as reported in Janet Raloff, “Science literacy: U.S. college courses really count,” https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science/public/science-literacy-us-college-courses-really-count, accessed April 1, 2014.
16.J. Mervis, “Why many U.S. biology teachers are ‘wishy-washy,’” Science, 2015, 347, 1054–1053.
17.L. Rainie, “Despite esteem for science, public at odds with scientists on major issues [guest blog],” Scientific American, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/despite-esteem-for-science-public-at-odds-with-scientists-on-major-issues/, January 29, 2015.
18.J. Tanenbaum, “Creation, evolution and indisputable facts,” Scientific American, 2013, 308, 11.
19.J. Cohen, “Things I have learned (so far),” American Psychologist, 1990, 45(12), 1304–1312.
20.F. Campbell, G. Counti, J. J. Heckman, S. Y. Moon, R. Pinto, E. Pungello, & Y. Pan, “Early childhood investments substantially boost adult health,” Science, 2014, 343, 1478–1485.
21.A very interesting and potentially useful approach to educating the public about how science works and how to understand scientific claims can be found in W. J. Sutherland, D. Spiegelhalter, & M. Burgman, “Policy: Twenty tips for interpreting scientific claims,” Nature, November 20, 2013, www.nature.com/news/policy-twenty-tips-for-interpreting-scientific-claims-1.14183?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
22.S. Kirshenbaum, “No, the sun does not revolve around the Earth,” http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/18/opinion/kirshenbaum-science-literacy/index.html, accessed April 1, 2014.
23.R. J. DeRubeis, G. J. Siegle, & S. D. Hollon, “Cognitive therapy versus medication for depression: Treatment outcomes and neural mechanisms,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2008, 9, 788–796.
24.R. Yu, D. Mobbs, B. Seymour, & A. J. Calder, “Insula and striatum mediate the default bias,” Journal of Neuroscience, 2010, 30, 14702–14707.
25.K. M. Harlé, L. J. Chang, M. van ’t Wout, & A. G. Sanfey, “The neural mechanisms of affect infusion in social economic decision-making: A mediating role of the anterior insula,” Neuroimage, 2012, 61, 32–40.
26.M. Browning, T. E. Behrens, G. Jocham, J. X. O’Reilly, & S. J. Bishop, “Anxious individuals have difficulty learning the causal statistics of aversive environments,” Nature Neuroscience, 2015, 18, 590–596.
27.S. Wang, “How to think about the risk of autism,” The New York Times, March 29, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/opinion/sunday/how-to-think-about-the-risk-of-autism.html
28.E. B. Falk & M. D. Lieberman, “The neural bases of attitudes, evaluation, and behavior change,” in F. Krueger & J. Grafman, eds., The neural basis of human belief systems, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press, 2013, 76.
29.For an entertaining tour de force of similar correlations of specious meaning, see Tyler Vigen’s wonderful book Spurious Correlations, New York: Hachette Books, 2015. You will learn that there are actually statistically significant correlations between such things as consumption of fats and oils and households that still have a VCR; U.S. citizens who are able to receive a text message and the price to send a letter via the U.S. Postal Service; and physical retail sales of video games and UFO sighting in Massachusetts. These correlations are really mathematical artifacts and can best be characterized as coincidences. But, as Casey Stengel would have said, you can’t make this stuff up.
30.C. Saint Louis, “Most doctors give in to requests by parents to alter vaccine schedules,” The New York Times, March 2, 2015, http://nyti.ms/1E8yhRZ
Chapter 6
1.http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6022a1.htm. Incidentally, if you are wondering about the coin-flip rule, it is useful to point out that this is one of those “What question are you asking?” situations. The analogy to the risk of failing in the showering isn’t the question “What are your odds of tossing a head (or tail) on each toss?” but rather “What are the odds of tossing at least one head (or one tail) if we toss the coin, say, 1,000 times?” The answer is well over 99%.
2.http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103.pdf
3.http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm#risk
4.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/health/research/09child.html?_r=0
5.http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/08/widespread-vaccine-exemptions-are-messing-with-herd-immunity/
6.http://contemporarypediatrics.modernmedicine.com/contemporary-pediatrics/news/modernmedicine/modern-medicine-now/declining-vaccination-rates
7.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22277186
8.P. Narang, A. Paladugu, S. R. Manda, W. Smock, C. Gosnay, & S. Lippman, “Do guns provide safety? At what cost?” Southern Medical Journal, 2010, 103, 151–153.
9.D. J. Wiebe, “Homicide and suicide risks associated with firearms in the home: A national case-controlled study,” Annals of Emergency Medicine, 2003, 41, 771–782.
10.C. C. Branas, T. S. Richmond, D. P. Culhane, T. R. Ten Have, & D. J. Wiebe, “Investigating the link between gun possession and gun assault,” American Journal of Public Health, 2009, 99, 2034–2040.
11.D. Hemenway, Private guns, public health, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004, 111.
12.A. L. Kellermann & J. A. Mercy, “Men, women, and murder: Gender-specific differences in rates of fatal violence and victimization,” Journal of Trauma, 1992, 33, 1–5.
13.American Academy of Pediatrics, “Firearm-related injuries affecting the pediatric population,” Pediatrics, 2012, 130, e1416–e1423.
14.http://www.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx
15.http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/most-people-say-they-are-safe-drivers-want-new-auto-assist-tech-anyway/. An average is what statisticians call a mean and is calculated by dividing the total value of all observations by the total number of observations. If we had a rating scale for driving skill that ranged from 1 to 10, some drivers would score 1 (keep them off the road) and some 10 (nearly perfect). To get the mean or average, we would add up the total scores of all the drivers in a sample and then divide by the number of drivers in the sample. If the scores were “normally” distributed (i.e., forming a bell-shaped curve), then the average score would be 5 and half of the people would be “better than average” and half worse than average. If you do the arithmetic here, you will find that it is virtually impossible to imagine any sample in which 90% of the drivers are better than average.
16.D. Kahneman, Thinking, fast and slow, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011, 98.
17.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3563507
18.A. Markandya & P. Wilkinson, “Electricity generation and health,” Lancet, 2007, 370(9591), 979–990.
19.W. R. Stauffer, A. Lak, P. Bossaerts, & W. Schultz, “Economic choices reveal probability distortion in Macaque monkeys,” Journal of Neuroscience, 2015, 35, 3146–31534.
20.M. Hsu, I. Krajbich, C. Zhao, & C. F. Camerer, “Neural response to reward anticipation under risk is nonlinear in probabilities,” Journal of Neuroscience, 2009, 29, 2231–2237.
21.B. Fischhoff, S. Lichtenstein, P. Slovic, S. L. Derby, & R. L. Keeney, Acceptable risk, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, 7.
22.B. Fischhoff, S. Lichtenstein, P. Slovic, S. L. Derby, & R. L. Keeney, Acceptable risk, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, 15.
23.R. E. Kasperson, O. Renn, P. Slovic, H. S. Brown, J. Emel, et al., “The social amplification of risk: A conceptual framework,” Risk Analysis, 1988, 8(2), 184.
24.R. E. Kasperson, O. Renn, P. Slovic, H. S. Brown, J. Emel, et al., “The social amplification of risk: A conceptual framework,” Risk Analysis, 1988, 8(2), 184.
25.We acknowledge that there are of course other objections to nuclear power, most important of which is the issue of what to do with nuclear waste products. While we believe that this is a tractable problem and that nuclear power is still a preferable source of energy, we will not deal here with anything other than health issues. Of course, there are forms of energy that are probably even safer than nuclear, like solar and wind power, but it is unclear how easy it will be harness them to the scale needed in time to save Earth from its impending meltdown.
26.http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-power-and-global-warming#.VvQHqhIrJBx
27.B. J. McNeil, S. G. Pauker, H. C. SoxJr., & A. Tversky, “On the elicitation of preference for alternative therapies,” New England Journal of Medicine, 1982, 306, 1259–1262.
28.P. Slovic, H. Kunreuther, & G. White, “Decision processes, rationality and adjustment to natural hazards,” in P. Slovic, ed., The perception of risk, London: Earthscan, 2000, 1–31, 13.
29.T. Kida, Don’t believe everything you think: The 6 basic mistakes we make in thinking, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006, 174–175.
30.T. Kida, Don’t believe everything you think: The 6 basic mistakes we make in thinking, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006, 175.
31.D Kahneman, Thinking, fast and slow, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011, 249.
32.http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/01/06/in-the-wake-of-wakefield-risk-perception-and-vaccines/
33.http://www.unc.edu/~ntbrewer/pubs/2007,%20brewer,%20chpaman,%20gibbons,%20et%20al.pdf
34.M. Olpinski, “Anti-vaccination movement and parental refusals of immunization of children in USA,” Pediatria Polska, 2012, 87, 382.
35.G. A. Poland & R. M. Jacobson, “Understanding those who do not understand: A brief review of the anti-vaccine movement,” Vaccine, 2001, 19, 2442.
36.M. L. Finucane, A. Alhakami, P. Slovic, & S. M Johnson, “The affect heuristic in judgments of risks and benefits,” in P. Slovic, ed., The perception of risk, London: Earthscan, 2000, 413–429, 415–416.
37.B. Baldur-Felskov, C. Dehlendorff, J. Junge, C. Munk, & S. K. Kjaer, “Incidence of cervical lesions in Danish women before and after implementation of a national HPV vaccination program,” Cancer Causes & Control, 2014, 25, 915–922; D. M. Gertig, J. M. Brotherton, A. C. Budd, K. Drennan, G. Chappell, & A. M. Saville, “Impact of a population-based HPV vaccination program on cervical abnormalities: A data linkage study,” BMC Medicine, 2013, 11, 227.
38.M. H. Repacholi, A. Lerchl, M. Röösli, et al., “Systematic review of wireless phone use and brain cancer and other head tumors,” Bioelectromagnetics, 2012, 33, 187–206.
39.L. Hardell & M. Carlberg, “Mobile phone and cordless phone use and the risk for glioma—Analysis of pooled case-control studies in Sweden, 1997–2003 and 2007–2009,” Pathophysiology, 2015, 22, 1–13.
40.D. Kahneman, J. L. Knetsch, & R. H. Thaler, “Anomalies: The endowment effect, loss aversion, and status quo bias,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1991, 5(1), 194.
41.D. Kahneman, J. L. Knetsch, & R. H. Thaler, “Anomalies: The endowment effect, loss aversion, and status quo bias,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1991, 5(1), 195.
42.B. Knutson, G. E. Wimmer, S. Rick, N. G. Hollon, D. Prelec, & G. Loewenstein, “Neural antecedents of the endowment effect,” Neuron, 2008, 58, 814–822.
43.D. Kahneman, J. L. Knetsch, & R. H. Thaler, “Anomalies: The endowment effect, loss aversion, and status quo bias,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1991, 5(1), 205.
44.N. Schwarz, “Feelings as information: Moods influence judgments and processing strategies,” in T. Gilovich, D. W. Griffin, & D. Kahneman, eds., Heuristics and biases, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
45.N. Schwarz, “Feelings as information: Moods influence judgments and processing strategies,” in T. Gilovich, D. W. Griffin, & D. Kahneman, eds., Heuristics and biases, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 545.
46.D. A. Eckles & B. F. Schaffner, “Loss aversion and the framing of the health care reform debate,” The Forum, 2010, 8(1), 2.
47.D. A. Eckles & B. F. Schaffner, “Loss aversion and the framing of the health care reform debate,” The Forum, 2010, 8(1), 4.
48.R. D. Bartels, K. M. Kelly & A. J. Rothman, “Moving beyond the function of the health Psychology and Health, 2010, 25, 821–838. Incidentally, there is actually no such vaccine.
49.P. Slovic, “Informing and educating the public about risk,” in P. Slovic, ed., The perception of risk, London: Earthscan, 2000, 185.
50.P. Slovic, “Informing and educating the public about risk,” in P. Slovic, ed., The perception of risk, London: Earthscan, 2000, 185, 200.
51.R. H. Gass & J. S. Seiter, Persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining, 4th ed., Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2011, 135.
52.R. H. Gass & J. S. Seiter, Persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining, 4th ed., Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2011, 135.
53.C. W. Scherer and H. Cho, “A social network contagion theory of risk perception,” Risk Analysis, 2003, 23(2), 266.
54.R. E. Kasperson, O. Renn, P. Slovic, H. S. Brown, J. Emel, et al., “The social amplification of risk: A conceptual framework,” Risk Analysis, 1988, 8(2), 178–179.
55.R. E. Kasperson, O. Renn, P. Slovic, H. S. Brown, J. Emel, et al., “The social amplification of risk: A conceptual framework,” Risk Analysis, 1988, 8(2), 177–178.
56.R. E. Kasperson, O. Renn, P. Slovic, H. S. Brown, J. Emel, et al., “The social amplification of risk: A conceptual framework,” Risk Analysis, 1988, 8(2), 181.
57.http://vactruth.com/news/
58.http://www.vaccinationdebate.net/articles.html
Conclusion
1.http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertpearl/2014/03/20/a- doctors-take-on-the-anti-vaccine-movement/
2.G. A. Poland & R. M. Jacobson, “Understanding those who do not understand: a brief review of the anti-vaccine movement,” Vaccine, 2001, 19(17–19), 2440–5.
3.http://www.cdnsciencepub.com/blog/scientific-societies-in-the-internet-age.aspx
4.M. McCartney, “Making sure that inquiry is elementary,” Science, 2015, 348, 151–152.
5.D. Kahneman, personal communication by email, May 7, 2014.