6,748 research outputs found
What's wrong with Psychology, anyway?
This chapter considers various factors that have been responsible for the comparatively slow development of psychology into a cumulative empirical science. Special attention is devoted to correctable methodological mistakes, the over-reliance upon significance testing (and the fact that, in psychology, the null hypothesis is almost always false), and an analysis of the concept of replication
Research with twins: The concept of emergenesis.
Preliminaty findings from an on-going study of monozygotic twins reared apart (MZA) and data from a larger sample of twins reared together (MZT and DZT), indicate a surprisingly strong influence of genetic variation on aptitudes, psychophysiological characteristics, personality traits and even dimensions of attitude and interest. For some of these variables, MZT and MZA twins show high intra-class correlations while DZT twins are no more similar than pairs of unrelated persons. It is suggested that such traits are Âemergenic, i.e., that they are determined by the interaction--rather than the sum--of genetic influences. Emergenic traits, although perhaps strongly genetic, will not tend to run in families and for this reason have been neglected by students of behavior genetics. For this and several other listed reasons, wider use of twins in psychological research is strongly recommended
If a Man be Mad
An evaluation of the M'Naghten Rules and other versions of the insanity defense in the criminal law
The Case for Parental Licensure
The violent crime-rate in the United States increased nearly 500% from 1960 to 1992. Subsequent small decreases can be attributed to the 500% increase since 1980 in the number of men locked up in American prisons. The most plausible explanation for this increase in crime and other social pathology is the sharp increase since the 1960s in the proportion of young men who were reared without the participation of their biological fathers. In the U.S., boys reared without fathers are approximately seven times more likely to become delinquent, then criminal. Girls reared without fathers are more likely, in consquence, to produce babies out-of-wedlock, to become teen-age runaways, and to drop out of school. Millions of American children are now being reared by (or domiciled with) parents who are incompetent, over-burdened, immature, or unsocialized themselves and many of these children will be thereby cheated of their birthright to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is argued that society has a responsibility to these children to require that persons who plan to acquire a child biologically must meet the same minimal standards expected of persons hoping to adopt a baby, namely, that they be mature, married, self-supporting, and neither criminal nor crazy
Beyond the Standard Model
Six major frameworks have emerged attempting to describe particle physics
beyond the Standard Model. Despite their different theoretical genera, these
frameworks have a number of common phenomenological features and problems.
While it will be possible (and desirable) to conduct model-independent searches
for new physics at the LHC, it is equally important to develop robust methods
to discriminate between BSM 'look-alikes'.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, Lectures given at the 2009 European School of
High-Energy Physics, Bautzen, Germany, 14-27 Jun 200
The Standard Model: Alchemy and Astrology
An brief unconventional review of Standard Model physics, containing no
plots.Comment: 12 pages, 0 figures, review talk from "Physics at LHC", Krakow, 3-8
July 200
Moriond Electroweak 2006: Theory Summary
A concise look at the big picture of particle physics, including the status
of the Standard Model, neutrinos, supersymmetry, extra dimensions and
cosmology. Based upon the theoretical summary presented at the XLIst Rencontres
de Moriond on Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories, La Thuile, 11-18
March 2006.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure
Psychology and the criminal justice system: A reply to Haney and Zimbardo
A reply to Haney & Zimbardo's recent article in the American Psychologist in which they claim that America's crime problem would be largely solved if the criminal justice system had only taken heed of the lessons learned decades ago in the Stanford Prison Project
New and Improved Superstring Phenomenology
Recent developments in string theory have important implications for
cosmology. Topics discussed here are inflation, the cosmological constant,
smoothing of cosmological singularities, and dark matter from parallel
universes. Talk presented at the International Workshop on Particle Physics and
the Early Universe (COSMO-98), 15-20 Nov, Asilomar, Monterey, CA.Comment: 9 page
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