By happy, horrified tradition, theater folk hesitate to name a certain Shakespeare play, for fear bad things will then happen. A noted psychology study that (albeit not being a theatrical endeavor) did explicitly name that play now seems to have had something bad happen. A new study brings (and is!) the bad news: “Out, Damned […]
April Fools: Justified or Not Justified?
Should well-respected journalistic outlets publish ‘April Fools’ items? For Dr. Moira Smith, writing in the scholarly journal Folklore, Volume 120, Issue 3, 2009, such media hoaxes flout journalistic ethics. “On April Fools’ Day, journalists from every media take advantage of the occasion to pass off fabricated stories as news. While entertaining, these media hoaxes flout […]
Homeopathic medicine possibly contaminated with actual drugs
Some homeopathic remedies might be contaminated by actual remedies — might contain actual drugs — warns The US Food and Drug Administration in March 20, 2014 alert headlined “Pleo Homeopathic Drug Products by Terra-Medica: Recall – Potential for Undeclared Penicillin“. (Arielle Duhaime-Ross supplies commentary about this, in The Verge). BONUS: All wet: Benveniste explains it to […]
Generating predictions while watching the movie Moonraker
Two decades ago, Rolf Zwaan — who likely at the time did not predict that he would one day be awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for an experiment involving the Eiffel Tower — published a study, with colleagues, about people generating predictions while watching the James Bond movie Moonraker. The study was and is: “Generating predictive […]