I want to believe: Prior beliefs influence judgments about the effectiveness of both alternative and scientific medicine

Previous research suggests that people may develop stronger causal illusions when the existence of a causal relationship is consistent with their prior beliefs. In the present study, we hypothesized that prior pseudoscientific beliefs will influence judgments about the effectiveness of both alternative medicine and scientific medicine. Participants (N = 98) were exposed to an adaptation of the standard causal illusion task in which they had to judge whether two fictitious treatments, one described as conventional medicine and the other as alternative medicine, could heal the crises caused by two different syndromes. Since both treatments were completely ineffective, those believing that any of the two medicines worked were exhibiting a causal illusion. Participants also responded to the Pseudoscience Endorsement Scale (PES) and some questions about trust in alternative therapies that were taken from the Survey on the Social Perception of Science and Technology conducted by FECYT. The results replicated the causal illusion effect and extended them by revealing an interaction between the prior pseudoscientific beliefs and the scientific/pseudoscientific status of the fictitious treatment. Individuals reporting stronger pseudoscientific beliefs were more vulnerable to the illusion in both scenarios, whereas participants with low adherence to pseudoscientific beliefs seemed to be more resistant to the illusion in the alternative medicine scenario. Alternative medicine refers to a wide range of health practices not included in the healthcare system and not considered conventional or scientific medicine (World Health Organization, 2022). A common feature of alternative therapies is the lack of scientific evidence on their effectiveness, with some popular examples being homeopathy (Hawke et al., 2018; Peckham et al., 2019) and reiki (Zimpel et al., 2020). Therefore, they often can be considered pseudoscientific (i.e., practices or beliefs that are presented as scientific but are unsupported by scientific evidence; Fasce and Picó, 2019). Understanding why some people rely on alternative medicine despite this lack of evidence is relevant, since its usage can pose a threat to a person’s health (Freckelton, 2012; Hellmuth et al., 2019; Lilienfeld, 2007), either by replacing evidence-based treatments (Chang et al., 2006; Johnson et al., 2018a, 2018b; Mujar et al., 2017) or by reducing their effectiveness (Awortwe et al., 2018). In this research, we will assume that people assess the effectiveness of a given treatment (whether scientific or alternative) by estimating the causal link between the treatment (potential cause) and symptom relief (outcome). To achieve this, people can resort to various information sources, but they could certainly use their own experience of covariation between the treatment and the symptoms. However, biases can occur in this process. In particular, the causal illusion is the systematic error of perceiving a causal link between unrelated events that happen to occur in time proximity (Matute et al., 2015). This cognitive bias could explain why people sometimes judge that completely ineffective treatments cause health benefits (Matute et al., 2011), particularly when both the administration of the treatment (i.e., the cause) and the relief of the symptoms (i.e., the outcome) occur with high frequency (Allan et al., 2005; Hannah and Beneteau, 2009; Musca et al., 2010; Perales et al., 2005; Vadillo et al., 2010). Although the causal illusion is subject to variations in the probability with which the potential cause and the outcome occur, and hence most theoretical analyses of the phenomenon have focused on how people acquire contingency information (e.g., Matute et al., 2019), the participant’s prior beliefs could also play a role, and this will be the focus of the current paper. In fact, influence of prior beliefs seems common in other cognitive biases that enable humans to protect their worldviews. A good example is the classical phenomenon of belief bias (Evans et al., 1983; Klauer et al., 2000; Markovits and Nantel, 1989). This consists of people’s tendency to accept the conclusion of a deductive inference based on their prior knowledge and beliefs rather than on the logical validity of the arguments. For example, the syllogism ‘All birds can fly. Eagles can fly. Therefore, eagles are birds’ is invalid because the conclusion does not follow from the premises, but people would often judge it as valid just because the conclusion seems in line with their previous knowledge. There is a specific form of belief bias known as ‘motivated reasoning’ (Trippas et al., 2015), in which people exhibit a strong preference or motivation to arrive at a particular conclusion when they are making an inference (Kunda, 1990). Thus, individuals draw the conclusion they want to believe from the available evidence. To do this, people tend to dismiss information that is incongruent with prior beliefs and focus excessively on evidence that supports prior conceptions, which resembles the popular confirmation bias (Oswald and Grosjean, 2004). Additionally, some evidence points out that motivated reasoning can specifically affect causal inferences (Kahan et al., 2017), particularly when people learn about cause–effect relationships from their own experience (Caddick and Rottman, 2021). Thus, if these cognitive biases show the effect of prior beliefs, it should not be surprising that causal illusions operate in a similar way. In fact, some experimental evidence suggests that this is the case. For example, Blanco et al. (2018) found that political ideology could modulate causal illusion so that the resulting inference fits previous beliefs. In particular, the results from their experiments suggest that participants developed a causal illusion selectively to favor the conclusions that they were more inclined to believe from the beginning. Thus, we predict that prior beliefs about science and pseudoscience could also bias causal inferences about treatments and their health outcomes. More specifically, we suggest that, when people attempt to assess the effectiveness of a pseudoscientific or scientific medical treatment, their causal inferences may be biased to suit their prior beliefs and attitudes about both types of treatments. In line with this idea, a recent study by Torres et al. (2020) explicitly examined the relationship between causal illusion in the laboratory and belief in pseudoscience. These authors designed a causal illusion task with a pseudoscience-framed scenario: participants had to decide whether an infusion made up of an Amazonian plant (i.e., a fictitious natural remedy that mimicked the characteristics of alternative medicine) was effective at alleviating headache. They found that participants who held stronger pseudoscientific beliefs (assessed by means of a questionnaire) showed a greater degree of causal illusion in their experiment, overestimating the ability of the herbal tea to alleviate the headache. Importantly, note that this experiment only contained one cover story, framed in a pseudoscientific scenario. We argue that the results observed by Torres et al. (2020) have two possible interpretations: the first is that people who believed in pseudoscience were more prone to causal illusion in general, regardless of the cover story of the task; the second, based on the effect observed by Blanco et al. (2018) in the context of political ideology, is that the illusion is produced to confirm previous beliefs, that is, those participants who had a positive attitude toward alternative medicine were more inclined to believe that the infusion was working to heal the headache, and causal illusion developed to favor this conclusion. Given that only one pseudoscientific scenario was used in Torres et al.’s experiment, it is impossible to distinguish between the two interpretations. Thus, further research is necessary to analyze how individual differences in pseudoscientific beliefs modulate the intensity of causal illusion, and whether this modulation interacts with the scenario so that prior beliefs are reinforced. To sum up, the present research aims to fill this gap by assessing the participants’ attitude toward pseudoscience, and then presenting an experimental task in which participants are asked to judge the effectiveness of two fictitious medical treatments: one presented as conventional/scientific, and the other one as alternative/pseudoscientific. None of these treatments were causally related to recovery. Our main hypothesis is that the intensity of the observed causal illusion will depend on the interaction between previous beliefs about pseudoscience and the current type of medicine presented. Specifically, we expect that: • Participants with less positive previous beliefs about pseudoscience will develop weaker illusions in the pseudoscientific scenario than in the scientific scenario. For those participants, the conclusion that an alternative medicine is working is not very credible according to their prior beliefs. • Participants with more positive beliefs about pseudoscience could either show the opposite pattern (so that they find more believable the conclusion that the pseudoscientific medicine works than the conclusion that the scientific medicine works), which would be consistent with the studies by Blanco et al. (2018) on political ideology, or, alternatively, they could show similar levels of (strong) causal illusion for both treatments, which would suggest that pseudoscientific beliefs are associated with stronger causal illusions in general, as has been previously suggested (Torres et al., 2020)Grant PID2021-126320NB-I00 from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Spanish GovernmentGrant IT1696-22 from the Basque Governmen

Competencias docentes en secundaria. Análisis de perfiles de profesorado

En el presente trabajo se muestran los resultados de una investigación cuyo objetivo ha sido analizar la importancia que el profesorado de secundaria de la provincia de Castellón otorga a las competencias docentes y determinar los perfiles profesionales en función de las respuestas dadas. La investigación llevada a cabo se ha basado en un estudio de encuesta, cuyo  cuestionario ha sido aplicado a una muestra representativa de 136 profesores de secundaria de Castellón, integrado por 23 departamentos didácticos. Los resultados  obtenidos han permitido caracterizar tres perfiles profesionales en función de la importancia otorgada a las competencias y, si bien todas ellas han sido valoradas de manera elevada, se aprecia que se sigue confiriendo mayor relevancia a la transmisión tradicional de conocimiento

Handbook on Industrial Applications of Nanofluids in Energy Sector

The idea of this handbook was to open a call for possible contributions in the field of nanofluids industrial applications in the energy sector among the Nanouptake networ

Diversidad cultural y eficacia de la escuela

Belén Ballesteros Velázquez e Inés Gil Jaurena, (coords.). Diversidad cultural y eficacia de la escuela. Un repertorio de buenas prácticas en centros de educación obligatoria. Madrid: Instituto de Formación del Profesorado, Investigación e Innovación Educativa. 2011. 356 págs. isbn: 978-84-369-5116-5 (cd), 978-84-369-5149-5 (libro electrónico). El actual sistema educativo se caracteriza por una diversidad cultural que hace necesaria una respuesta educativa por parte de los y las docentes y de los centros educativos, adaptada a las características del contexto en el que se encuentran. Esta respuesta puede ser muy variada en función de la forma de entender y reconocer la diversidad cultural por parte de los principales implicados. Así, este proyecto de investigación presenta prácticas educativas que mejoran la eficacia de la escuela a la hora de responder a esa diversidad cultural..

La atención a la diversidad, la igualdad de género y la inclusión en los planes de estudio del Grado en Información y Documentación en España

Trabajo de Fin de Máster en Sistemas de Información Digital, curso 2018-2019[ES] La adaptación al Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior conllevó laadopción de una programación curricular basada en la adquisición de competencias por parte de los estudiantes. La Ley de Igualdad y otras normativas posteriores han hecho hincapié en la necesidad de que la universidad forme a sus estudiantes en competencias de respeto a la diversidad, igualdad de género y no discriminación. Los contenidos que se imparten en el Grado en Información y Documentación, así como el perfil profesional de las personas egresadas, hacen especialmente necesario el fomento de la sensibilidad respecto a las desigualdades de género ya que van a realizar tareas de procesamiento y representación de los contenidos de la información y de intermediación en los procesos informacionales de quienes buscan y utilizan la información. De ahí la justificación y el interés de la realización de esta investigación. Se han analizado las menciones a la atención a la diversidad (funcional, étnico-racial, sexual, etc.), la igualdad de género y la inclusión en los programas docentes de las asignaturas impartidas en las titulaciones del Grado en Información y Documentación en las universidades españolas. La muestra estudiada está compuesta por 471 guías docentes, que se han descargado en formato pdf de los sitios web de las 11 universidades públicas que imparten la titulación y corresponden al curso 2018-2019. Para el análisis de los documentos se ha empleado el programa de análisis cualitativo Atlas.ti. Los 471 programas se han introducido en ambos programas como documentos primarios, agrupados en familias según curso, grado y universidad. Se ha determinado el porcentaje de asignaturas en las que se hace mención a estos contenidos o competencias a adquirir por los estudiantes, el tipo de asignaturas, el curso en el que se encuentran y la materia de que se trata. Igualmente hemos podido determinar si la mención se realiza al relacionar las competencias a adquirir por los estudiantes, en los contenidos de la asignatura o en la bibliografía. También se han agrupado los resultados en función de las materias y del tipo de asignatura. Para ello se ha establecido un conjunto de categorías (asignaturas de inercia, de inercia legal, de colonización, evolutivas naturales y evolutivas por compromiso) en función de la atención a la diversidad y la integración de la perspectiva de género. Se concluye que la mayor parte de los programas docentes ignoran la formación en competencias de género e inclusión a los futuros profesionales de la información.[EN] The adaptation to the European Higher Education Area led to the adoption of a curricular program based on the acquisition of competences by students. The Equality Act and other subsequent regulations have emphasized the need for the university to train its students in competencies that respect diversity, gender equality and non-discrimination. The contents taught in the Degree in Information and Documentation, as well as the professional profile of graduates, make especially necessary to promote sensitivity to gender inequalities as they will perform tasks of processing and representing the contents of information and intermediation in the informational processes of those who seek and use information. For that reason is the justification and interest in conducting this research. We have analyzed mentions of diversity attention (functional, ethnic-racial, sexual, etc.), gender equality and the inclusion in teaching programs of the subjects taught in the Degree in Information and Documentation in the Spanish universities. The sample studied consists of 471 teaching guides which have been downloaded in pdf from the websites of the 11 public universities that teach the degree and they correspond to the 2018-2019 academic year. For the analysis of the documents, the qualitative analysis program Atlas.ti has been used. The 471 programs have been introduced in both programs as primary documents, grouped into families according to course, grade and university. It has been determined the percentage of subjects in which mention is made of these contents or competences to be acquired by the students, the type of subjects, the course in which they are and the subject in question. We have also been able to determine if the mention is made by relating the competences to be acquired by the students, in the contents of the subject or in the bibliography. The results have also been grouped according to the subjects and the type of subject. To that end, a set of categories has been established (inertia subjects, legal inertia, colonization, natural evolutionary and evolutionary by commitment) in terms of attention to diversity and the integration of the gender perspective. To conclude, the most of the teaching programs ignore training in gender competencies and inclusion to future information professionals. In general, the little presence of the gender perspective in the teaching projects of the Spanish universities is observed after carrying out the analysis of all the teaching guides of each university

Creación de un Sistema Alternataivo y Aumentativo de la Comunicación (SAAC) basado en la música

Trabajo de fin de Grado. Grado en Maestro de Educación Primaria. Curso Académico 2022[ES] A lo largo del trabajo se comprobará que existen diferentes trastornos que llevan implícitos dificultades en la comunicación y en el lenguaje. Para hacer frente a esta problemática se presenta una herramienta frecuentemente utilizada, los Sistemas Aumentativos y Alternativos de la comunicación (SAAC). La incorporación de SAAC en la vida cotidiana de las personas con problemas en la comunicación y el lenguaje es un tema que está a la orden del día. Por ello, se propone un nuevo SAAC basado en la música y pensado para que pueda ser utilizado por todos aquellos usuarios que lo deseen y cumplan los requisitos necesarios. Este nuevo sistema se centra en el aula de Educación Primaria y está compuesto de una serie de motivos que ayudan al usuario a transmitir aquella información que desea. Además de realizar una descripción del nuevo sistema, se plantean los requisitos necesarios para poder hacer un uso adecuado de él. Los motivos que lo componen son de elaboración propia y están divididos en cuatro categorías fácilmente combinables e identificables tanto para el usuario como para el receptor. El desarrollo del sistema termina realizando una explicación de cuál es el funcionamiento del tablero de comunicación o App que se plantea para utilizar este nuevo SAAC. Finalmente se extraen una serie de conclusiones que permiten considerar si los objetivos planteados inicialmente han sido conseguidos o no.[EN] In this work we review different disorders that involve difficulties in communication and language. To address this problem, a frequently used tool, the Augmentative and Alternative Communication System (SAAC), is presented. The inclusion of SAAC in the daily lives of people with communication and language problems is a common issue. We propose a new SAAC, based on music, and designed in such a way that can be used by the target users meeting the necessary requirements. This new system focuses on the primary education classroom and is composed by a series of items (motifs, music patterns) that help the user to transmit the information he wants. In addition to the new system, we also describe the requirements for its proper use. The musical motifs we have designed are divided into four categories, easily combinable and identifiable for both the user and the receiver. The development of the system ends with an explanation about the operation of the communication board or the way this new SAAC should be applied. Finally, a series of conclusions are drawn that allow us to check whether the objectives initially set, have been achieved or not

APORTES DE LA POLISEMIA PARA LA DESCRIPCIÓN Y LA ENSEÑANZA DE LOS VERBOS DE CAMBIO. ANÁLISIS DEL USO DE PONER Y VOLVER EN L1 Y L2

En este trabajo se ha analizado el uso de los verbos poner y volver como verbos de cambio en español L1 y L2. El objetivo principal ha sido comprobar si los aprendientes de español L2 han utilizado estos verbos de la misma manera (frecuencia, productividad, combinatoria, distribución) que los hablantes nativos. Con este fin se ha analizado un corpus basado en relatos narrativos de temática emocional, redactados por dos grupos de 18 participantes (hablantes nativos / aprendientes francófonos de español de nivel B1). Los resultados han mostrado un uso anómalo de estos verbos en L2, que podría responder en gran medida al tratamiento didáctico recibido. Estos resultados han llevado a proponer un conjunto de sugestiones didácticas que pretenden adaptar la enseñanza de estos verbos al uso que los hablantes nativos hacen de ellos. Las propuestas didácticas de este trabajo se basan esencialmente en el aprendizaje del léxico verbal a través de la polisemia. Este enfoque parece particularmente pertinente si se tiene en cuenta la persistencia léxica que existe entre el uso de poner y volver como verbos de cambio y el resto de sus acepciones. Se fundamenta igualmente en el interés de proponer a los aprendientes de una L2 un acceso al significado basado en la motivación semántica y en la noción de metáfora. La descripción sintética de la red polisémica de poner y volver que se propone en este estudio ha sido esencial para este propósito

Event safety: Medusa Sunbeach Festival 2022 Accident analysis

Treball Final de Grau en Publicitat i Relacions Públiques. Codi: PU0932. Curs acadèmic: 2022/2023En el presente trabajo abordaremos el tema de la importancia de la seguridad en los eventos, especialmente en los festivales de música. Cabe destacar que aunque el Covid-19 supuso una parada total para este sector, como para la sociedad en general, pasada la crisis sanitaria, se han ido retomando todas las actividades sociales, incluso los festivales de música. Pero ese tiempo transcurrido ha dejado una impronta incuestionable: la pandemia ha provocado una falta de profesionales y personal especializado, puesto que muchos de ellos decidieron cambiar de profesión, lo que ha desencadenado en una falta de seguridad importante, tanto como para provocar accidentes graves. A todo ello también hay que sumar la falta de legislación de seguridad, sobre todo para el montaje y desmontaje de los diferentes festivales. Tampoco podemos dejar de considerar los efectos del cambio climático, puesto que las condiciones meteorológicas tan impredecibles como desfavorables llevan consigo un mayor riesgo para la seguridad de estos actos. Para ahondar en todo ello, analizaremos el terrible accidente que ocurrió el pasado verano en Cullera (Valencia) en el festival de música Medusa Sunbeach Festival 2022. Una tragedia que dejó cuarenta heridos y un fallecido. Un análisis reivindicativo de la acuciante falta de una mayor seguridad, además de rendir en cierta manera, homenaje a la víctima y afectados.In this paper we will address the importance of safety at events, especially at music festivals. It is worth noting that although Covid-19 meant a total halt for this sector, as for society in general, after the health crisis, all social activities have been resumed, including music festivals. But the time that has passed has left an unquestionable mark: the pandemic has resulted in to a lack of professionals and specialised personnel, as many of them decided to change professions, which has led to a significant lack of safety, so much so that serious accidents have occurred. To all this we must also add the absence of certain safety legislations, especially for the assemble and dismantle of different festivals. Nor can we fail to consider the effects of climate change, as unpredictable and unfavourable weather conditions could lead to an increased risk to the safety of these events. To delve into all this, we will analyse the terrible accident that occurred last summer in Cullera (Valencia) at the Medusa Sunbeach Festival 2022 music festival. A tragedy that left forty people injured and one dead. A vindictive analysis of the pressing lack of greater safety, as well as paying tribute, in a certain way, to the victim and those affected

Improving the performance of a stability monitoring system by adding wave encounter frequency estimation

[Abstract]: Onboard guidance systems have emerged to improve the safety of fishing vessels providing the skipper with simplified stability information. In the last years, the authors have developed a stability monitoring system that automatically estimates the natural roll frequency of the vessel. Although the performance was acceptable, there were some specific situations where the influence of external excitations reduced the accuracy of the stability estimations. In this work, a methodology to automatically estimate the wave encounter frequency from ship motions is proposed. Then, this methodology is included in the stability monitoring system. Towing tank tests of a mid-sized stern trawler in different conditions have been used to analyse the improvements obtained with this approach.Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2021/3

On the feasibility of a real time stability assessment for fishing vessels

Manuscrito aceptado[Abstract]: Fishing is one of the sectors with the highest number of accidents worldwide. Many of them are related to stability failures and affect mostly small and medium sized fishing vessels. One of the main reasons is the crew lack of training in stability matters. Due to this, guidance systems have emerged in the last years as a solution to this problem, complying with three main requirements: being simple, being easy to use and being inexpensive to install and maintain. The authors have proposed their own alternative consisting on an onboard stability guidance system. However, it has some weak points. The aim of this paper is to propose a solution to overcome one of them, the need for crew interaction. In order to do this, and to try to set up a fully automated system, a methodology to estimate the stability of the ship in an automatic and unattended way, based on a frequency analysis of roll motion and on the estimation of the mass moment of inertia of the vessel, is presented. The methodology has been applied to the roll motion time series obtained from a towing tank test campaign of a mid-sized stern trawler, showing good performance