Joyful news today on the BBC about a successful campaign for the charity Sense About Science. They asked the World Health Organisation to comment on the use of homeopathic treatment for diseases like HIV, malaria, TB and infant diarrhoea, and various WHO authorities have responded, stating in very clear terms that these conditions need to [...]
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Last week I gave a talk about happiness research. Here are some notes for posterity. I haven’t deliberately sought out happiness research, but bias research (my area of interest) overlaps with it a great deal.
First, a disclaimer. When we talk about one group being happier than another, we’re talking about the average of a large [...]
Filed under: Bias, Economics, Health, Psychology | 4 Comments »
Review of Peter A. Ubel (2009) Free Market Madness: Why human nature is at odds with economics – and why it matters. Harvard Business Press, ISBN:9781422126097
Despite the title, this book sings the praises of the free market. However, it soundly debunks a libertarian free-market fundamentalism that draws its legitimacy from the rational-choice assumptions of economics.
The [...]
Filed under: Economics, Health, Psychology | Tagged: behavioral economics, behaviorism, behaviourism, book review, cognitive bias, Daniel Kahneman, decision making, politics, public policy | Leave a Comment »
I wasn’t at the London meeting last night, but here is the New Scientist write-up about Simon Singh’s libel case with the British Chiropractic Association (previously featured). It seems that this case is capturing the mood of the nation’s skeptics to an unexpected extent, just as the Atheist Bus campaign and Godless People events succeeded [...]
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