Welcome to the SMN Blog
If you are a member of the SMN, you can become a contributor to the blog. To be added to the list of official blog contributors, contact Dr Olly Robinson on: olly@scimednet.org
Currently the blog contains 132 entries.
Art proves to be data for coastal erosion tracking
Art and science used to work hand-in-hand. I was reminded on this when at the Linnean Society in London I recently saw Alfred Russel Wallace's beautiful drawings of the specimens he found on his expeditions before he co-developed the theory of natural selection with Darwin. Art and science can still interact in unexpected way, as the below BBC story describes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7790416.stm
A happy new year to you. May 2009 bring you artistic inspiration and scientific progress.
Dr Olly Robinson
Chris French: being 'crazy' and belief in the paranormal
I was at the British Psychological Society Division of Clinical Psychology conference last week on Thursday, and the keynote speaker for the morning was Prof Chris French, who is a very pleasant and intelligent sceptic, and is well known for his TV appearances. His talk was entitled ‘You Don’t Have to Be Crazy to Believe in the Paranormal But it Helps’. He described a number of studies that showed a link between paranormal beliefs and the clinical construct ‘Schizotypy’. This was his evidence for a link between mental health problems and paranormal beliefs. Now, as a psychologist I am very aware what schizotypy is. It is a DSM-recognised ‘personality disorder’ in which individuals manifest ‘odd’ beliefs and ‘odd perceptual experiences’. The DSM diagnostic criteria include the following;
It pays to believe
Money talks, but apparently it can also heal. Participants in a trial who received placebo pills were more likely to feel an effect if they were told each pill cost $2.50 than if they were told each pill cost a discounted price of $0.10. The subjects in the study experienced mild electric shocks to test their perception of pain relief. Among those told the pill cost $2.50, 85% said they felt less pain after taking it, compared with 61% of the volunteers who were told they had the cheap version.
Scotland's jelly mystery
In our hyper-documented modern world, genuine mysteries in the natural world are hard to come by these days, but here's one from Scotland that was recently reported on the BBC news:
Meditation as treatment for depression - new evidence
Research shows for the first time that a group-based psychological treatment, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), could be a viable alternative to prescription drugs for people suffering from long-term depression.
Scientific progress and the Pineal gland
I grew up in a village at the foothills of Western Ghats in south India. Set in the lush greenery of pepper and coconut groves, it was a community of over one hundred families. Every morning, children of the village walked to a school nearly two miles away. Some of my fondest childhood memories are linked to these daily walks through narrow hillside paths embedded in dense monsoon vegetation. Like most other kids, I never visited a doctor except the local homeopathy practitioner during my school years.
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