However, I am prepared to go along with Ben’s argument that it was episodic in this instance!! My recall of 3rd declension nouns (specifically ‘rex’ in my case)is similarly episodic!

Sheesh.. don’t you guys know anything about textual analysis or literary criticism? Can’t you even read plain English??

Please, please do or I’ll bally-well burst into tears. I agonised for months trying to decide which A-levels to take all those years ago and I can’t bear the thought that dropping all official science studies back then means that no matter how many journals I read and how many long words I look up I’ll never be smart enough to understand that no control group = meaningless results.

One faint thought does flicker in my dull, language-graduate brain though: shouldn’t history graduates know rather a lot about the reliability of sources and statistics, and media graduates be aware of conflicts of interest, and shouldn’t an intelligent and experienced writer know that “flaky humanities graduates” implies all H.G.s are a bit flaky?

No hard feelings really, keep up the good work.

I of course agree that the so-called journalists who write this tripe are flaky, but in order to improve the problem we need to get away from looking down on those who take a nonprofessional interest in another subject (i.e. writers who dabble in science, doctors who dabble in writing, etc.). We should encourage crossover work, grab some scientists to write the science news, find out how philosophers could reform the pharmaceutical industry. We might just bring in some fresh new ideas.

Apparently, “recent functional MRI (fMRI) results suggest that the human thalamus is involved during semantic memory recall.”
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=122967

I’m off to download some PDFs now. http://www.bu.edu/hasselmo/HasselmoMcClelland.pdf

surely a Bad science first?

dissapointingly there is no photo of ben welcoming you into his camden hovel, infact he is refered to only as ‘a guardian journlaist’.

The problem is “spin” not humanities, critical thinking is a requirement of humanities and science educations equally. While we are making ad hominem attacks shouldn’t the ’scientists’ who however naively allow their authority to be used in such campaigns be held more accountable? Think, approve and clarify your expectations prior to print rather than making assertions after the fact.

Maybe we need more ethics education for the science graduates ; )

Long time fan from the US and a flaky humanities graduate who PROUDLY believes in the scientific process!

I worry about the sample group of volunteers you might get for your penis plethysmography.

I mean, c’mon.

I don’t know many people who rely on publications like the one in question for valid scientific news. It is quite sad though, because the general public is going to pick up their local publications and read what they believe to be articles actually written by scientists (or they at least got their factual information from a scientist). When in reality, most of it is crap or it’s a generalized article borrowing from many other sources & rehashed into someone’s unsupported “scientific” opinion.

That being said, I dont’ know how many people would actually be interested in the stats used to determine the sexiest wiggle, valid or falsified.