Papi: Self-bias and psychology research

I've read this really interesting article about psychologists who like to cite themselves. Is this happening in other areas of science or just psychology? What do you think?

Angel: Less focused and less productive

(Fourth in a series of blog posts written in response to this New Yorker article In Praise of Distraction)

Break times are okay and I agree with the idea to have a couple during the day, but you should to be careful if you spend all your day watching videos on YouTube, checking new fancy offers, status updating on Facebook or clicking follow icons on Twitter. The thing is not really rather you do this or do not, the issue is more related on which kind of distractions increase or decrease your performance. An article published by the New Yorker reports that free on-line access to viral social networks or e-websites is helpful to enhance concentration and productivity inside companies.

"..if we spend lots of energy controlling our impulses in one area, it becomes harder to control our impulses in others.."

I feel that extrapolate the concept of coffee break to Internet break sounds really awesome, but in the 1920s, time of the quantum and atomic physics' effervescent, there weren't any superfast broadband  or fancy smartphones, distractions were so far different. For example,  physicists lodged in the Bohr's Institute, three-story stucco residence with a roof of red tile, used to work hard and discuss new experiments or mathematical topics until late. Nevertheless, pin-pong or discussions over the charm of Danish girls during the meal or reviews on the latest film of Billy the Kid, were breaks of relax and talk about non-scientific matters. Even although, some of these topics weren't excluded to be analyzed using the scientific method,  for example the experimental testing, with toy pistols in hand, on the explanation of why the villain draw his gun after the hero does.

"Poor Casimir," said Rosenfeld. "He had to wait until the lovers had safely got over their troubles and married and all, before he could resume his calculations. He did not lose a second either: every time the lamps lit up, they invariably disclosed our friend bent over odd bits of paper and feverishly filling them with intricate formulae. The way he made the best of a desperate situation was truly admirable."

Excerpt from the novel: Men Who Made a New Physics: Physicists and the Quantum Theory.

Making reference about science, scientist performance is related with the creativity in creation and resolution of questions, so the necessity of non-scientific activities or distractions is something important. For example, taking time to read something not totally related with our own work or taking time to have a short walk can help to clarify, organize and bring about  ideas to tackle a problem. Perhaps, this is the main reason why Albert Einstein loved to have long outdoors walks. In my case, reading about fiction and poetry or watch some pictures are helpful activities to encourage my creativity and make me feel enthusiastic about the things that human being can achieve.

Niels Bohr Institute in 2005 (wapedia.mobi)

Niels Borh Institute in1920 (Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)

At the end, I think it's important to have some breaks but the way manage time plays an important role in what can be a waste of time or something that can increase your performance during your day. Finally, If you're interested in know more about human aspects of the scientist involved in the develop of the quantum theory take a look on the book by Barbara Lovett Cline: Men Who Made a New Physics: Physicists and the Quantum Theory.

Papi: What do you believe in?

I first met professor Bruce Hood as my second year lecturer on developmental psychology. I was nice to see him again as the host of the Manipulating Biologies talk, at the Grant Bradley Gallery. I was glad when he said that he’d be happy to give me a short interview.

YC: You recently wrote a book about the supernatural and how that affects people; the book’s conclusion was that believing in supernatural is good for us.

BH: Yeah, it’s a book about where these beliefs come from. We often assume that our beliefs come from our parents or culture, so we indoctrinate people to believe things. That’s true to a certain extent, but there is a whole host of beliefs that seem to emerge spontaneously in all of us. And of course, we also have to ask why do many cultures share the same sorts of beliefs, which suggest that they are universals.

So, I am interested in the origin of these universal beliefs and I happen to think that they may be spontaneous and natural occurring, if you like byproducts of the way our brains are designed to infer meaning in the world. So, I work on origins of supernatural beliefs. I study children’s assumptions; and what we find is that they reason about all manner of things, and often assume the presence of invisible forces or energies or patterns, which don’t exist. And when you look at them more clearly you can see really the rudiments of what become later adult supernatural beliefs. So, to give you an example children look at the natural world and they see it seems to be order and structure, so naturally infer that there must be someone who designed it, which could obviously be the case of a god or a creator. They also think that the mind is separate to the body, so again that could also be the basis for manner beliefs you know for telepathy and the ability of the mind. So, I am interested in the science of belief and where it comes from.

YC: So why is it good for us to actually have supernatural beliefs?

BH: It’s both good and inevitable. The good side of it I’ll say and not everything is good, because some beliefs obviously are used and abused. Some people will claim that’s the case of religion. But I tend not to talk about religion because I think those are political issues. But you know for example, some people will engage in remedies that they think will help them when in fact they’re either non-effectual or they’re actually dangerous. So, homeopathy is something, which has no active ingredient but it works because of the power of placebo, which is the belief that if you do something you’ll get better. Likewise, superstitions also work because if you think you can do something about your environment or control an outcome then you generally do better. And that’s why you find superstitions amongst those people who are faced with potential threat in their job and/or in situations where they don’t have much control. If they engage in a ritual or some superstitious behaviour they generally perform better. If you stop them or thwart them doing their ritual then they feel the loss of control and therefore feel stress. So, those are the sorts of good aspects of it, but I also think they are inevitable because as I said a bit earlier the natural byproduct of trying to understand your world is to assume there are all these things operating. The obvious experiment that we can’t do is to raise children in isolation on an island; my prediction would be that given enough time they too create all the gods, all the rituals and all the superstitions, which currently exist in our society today.

If you want to know more about professor Hood, then you should check his blog.

James: Physicists and Sport

Physicists and sport, not normally two things you would put together. However, Bristol has the precedent of an annual 5 a side football tournament for Physicists. Idea being it is a friendly competition between all the research groups within the school of physics. This year saw nine teams enter; Correlated Electron Systems, Quantum Photonics, Particle Physics, Astrophysics, three teams from the nanophysics and soft matter group, plus an all girls team and the reigning champions Interface Analysis Centre.

I was attending this year as the only new player in the IAC team. I must admit that I was expecting it to just be a bit of a laugh and no one to take it too seriously. However I was wrong, all laughs and smiles in the galleries but the moment of kick off and the competitive nature kicked in. It was also interesting to see that everyone was against the IAC, one of those things if we don’t win, we certainly don’t want them to win. In stark contrast the girls team ‘Girls Allowed’ where supported very vocally, especially when they scored two goals against Quantum Photonics.

Despite who the crowd wanted to win at the semi-final stage only the IAC, Particle {Physics}, Astroturf {Astrophys} and the Nano veterans where left. With IAC finish top of their group by winning every game went into the game against Astroturf with some confidence, which showed as they won a comfortable 6-0. In the other semi things where far more even with the Nano veterans just edging it to set up a repeat of last year’s final.

The final was very tense and was decided by a single strike on the 5th minute for the IAC, the rest of the game was tense with the Nano vets forcing a handful of great saves and even hitting the bar on one occasion. Yet when the final whistle blew the IAC, undefeated, had yet again retained the trophy which will I’m sure stoke the fire for next year’s competition.

From a personal point of view, I thought it was a great day (apart from badly twisting my ankle in the first game) as it brought all the groups of physics together with a common interest and a reason to go out for a drink afterwards. Normally there isn’t a great deal of cohesion between the groups as there is no academic cross over, from an internal point Quantum Photonics and Particle physics are as different as Biology and English, don’t get me started on Astrophysics that is like a different world.

So if you take nothing else away from this article I hope you see that however strange and odd physicists seem they are real people who play sport and socialise just like you.

Julio: Distraction and Research

(Third in a series of blog posts written in response to this New Yorker article In Praise of Distraction)

Watching YouTube videos or use Facebook, Twitter or visit shopping sites is definitely a good way to relax and spend some time without thinking about mathematics. But to solve difficult math problems and learn difficult math while watching a funny video on YouTube can be a difficult challenge and I do not think is the proper way to do research, at least not for me.

The best thing that works for me is that when I try to learn math or to solve a problem I try to stay totally focused on this task. And when I'm not thinking in mathematics (which is hard to do) I try to use the time to just relax and leisure and this of course can include visiting the internet. So I try to follow the following rule: when I'm working and researching I just try to do this and keep me focused and when I´m not doing research I use my time to relax and fun and I just try to do this and not think about work. This way I think is the best way to take my time, at least works for me like that!

Posted by Julio

Papi: If you don’t have time, turn off the Internet.

(Second in a series of blog posts written in response to this New Yorker article In Praise of Distraction)

I used to spend lots of time on line. It started when I first moved here; being away from home, it was the only way to communicate with family and friends, either through Facebook or Skype. Then I used my FB contacts as participants for my psychology experiments. And then I had to return the favour to those who participated in my experiments; mainly through gifting in FB online games. After that I was all day long online.

When I realized how much time I was spending on FB talking about life and not actually living it I was shocked. Currently I play only one game online and only when I can’t sleep at night (not very often). I prefer spending time with real people outside my little student room. Reading this out loud, sounds like an addict’s speech. Oh, well I am Papi and I am an Internet addict…


Posted by Papi.

Milly: PhD PhindingDistraction (worst title so far)

(First in a series of blog posts written in response to this New Yorker article In Praise of Distraction)

I spend most of my time at work in the biology department running experiments, writing or just thinking. Due to the never ending list of things I have to do, but would rather not, I’m easily distracted. The internet is probably my worst enemy.

Today I found myself and a friend searching for socks in various different animal shapes. Our favourite were a pair of shark socks that look like they’re eating your legs...once again I am distracted.

Since the development of the internet, a PhD student like me no longer needs to spend hours in the library searching through books of abstracts and reading whole journals to get to the necessary information. With one click of a button I can search the entire web and I am rewarded within 0.7 seconds (so I’m told by Google).

But does this make us more efficient? Do I miss interesting journals and relevant papers because I’m not spending these hours in the library? The lure of the internet is often too much and I find myself bombarded with useless information.

I don’t think I could go back now I’ve used things like Web of Knowledge, Google Scholar and Mendeley (a bit like facebook for scientists) for so long. It seems we have entered a new era of researching….

Posted by Milly.