Comments on: How Aric Sigman distorts the scientific evidence to mislead you.

By: UXKatie

UXKatie — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:46:04 +0000

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By: wayscj

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By: brandobean

brandobean — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:22:19 +0000

(sorry for the typos in there… you can’t edit after you post, whoops.)

By: brandobean

brandobean — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:21:32 +0000

I think your points are completely valid. Summed up quickly as (1) Scientists shouldn’t back up unscientific policy statements by arguing from authority as a scientist. (2) You can’t cherry pick evidence to support something that to YOU seems like common sense. OK, so all that said, I don’t think Ben did himself too many favors by: (1) Rolling his eyes every time the guy spoke. It’s condescending and it doesn’t help the case and (2) Refusing to let go of the cheery-pick evidence issue when Sigel had moved on.

I realize that technically there is no reason to be nice to accommodating to win an argument. But on a TV show, I do want to like the presenter of the ideas, and feel he’s taking the other person to task on an idea level, not a personal one.

Sigel backed down, saying “look, it just seems like staying in front of a screen all day should make people isolated maybe and in some cases it does.” But backing down and saying “I was just trying to start a dialog, it tantamount to saying “I’m probably full of sh*t”

One topic I can relate to was the valid and interesting theories around “friends” online vs. “friends” in the real world. As a designer for a social networking site, we pay attention to this stuff. It’s a tough debate. Friends used to mean people you hung out with and did things together with. Now they can mean that, or people you share ideas with, chat with, have online s*x with, or just share a common love for Radiohead. Perhaps, the term “friend” and it’s associated levels of trust are changing. No idea if it’s positive of negative (as that could mean almost anything)

By: palashdave

palashdave — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:22:46 +0000

She’s just done it again: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1172690/How-Facebook-addiction-damaging-childs-brain-A-leading-neuroscientists-chilling-warning.html

By: anonymouse

anonymouse — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 11:46:35 +0000

Maybe before Baroness Greenfield starts sounding off about social networking causing autism, she might want to have a look at the diagnostic criteria: the essential features have to be present by the age of three.
I don’t know any two-year-olds who are able to read and write well enough to set up a Facebook page, do you?

BTW, social networking has actually opened up the world of real-life friendships for my autistic son. For people who have difficulty communicating, asynchronous conversations are much easier to manage. Over time, you build skills, become more able to communicate in “real time”, and if all goes well you will meet people who share your interests in person if they live close enough. That’s how it’s worked for him.

By: Wardy the Magnificent

Wardy the Magnificent — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:26:08 +0000

Aric Sigman seems to bang on repeatedly about extreme uses of social networking rather than the message that his one sided arguments project to the aspiring, concerned parent – i.e., social networking causes cancer. Any activity done in excess (eg 6 hours a night on the internet, 6 hours a night reading books) by young and impressionable minds is not encouraged. But Sigmund repeatedly talks about these extremes of social network use. How is spending 30 minutes per day on social networking more damaging than spending 30 minutes per day in isolation, deep into a novel in some fantasy world with fictional characters?

By: Frederic

Frederic — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 21:53:07 +0000

As apgaylard said, one can quote lines from Aric Sigman’s paper that show he was dishonest. Ben could be more prepared in te future and plan for this sort of defence, which I have seen before. The guy just does not try to justify what he wrote, he just says he did not write it! Very gross, therefore very powerful. That’s why he’s a psychologist. He knows how to delude people. I know exactly how Ben felt, it is totally disarming, and almost impossible to counter without being prepared. It is very courageous from Ben to confront these guys on tele.

By: Dr Aust

Dr Aust — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:11:03 +0000

If anyone's still reading, Kev at the excellent Left Brain / Right Brain autism blog has a wry take on all this under the title "Facebook is the new vaccines". There is an amusing comment from the Holfordwatch crew that will lead you to this interesting little morsel.

By: biggerpills

biggerpills — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:00:02 +0000

Next scare: Play Games And Die!!!
http://uk.videogames.games.yahoo.com/blog/article/1970/

By: artberry

artberry — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:55:42 +0000

I actually I think one could argue the smoking ban has had a more detrimental effect on social interaction. Social Networking sites are just something people use as an alternative since they made it illegal for smokers to socialize in public places. I guess in the future there will be Social Networking related illnesses LOL

By: NelC

NelC — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:57:46 +0000

“Rewiring the brain”? Doesn’t any experience “rewire the brain”? Isn’t that how brains work?

By: biggerpills

biggerpills — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:41:58 +0000

@mikewhit- come to think of it two people in my family have had cancer and both were Daily Mail readers. Looks like there are a few case studies here, could we gather enough for a bullshit study? Using the Wakefield method we’d only need twelve.

By: mikewhit

mikewhit — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:02:06 +0000

Surely we need a study linking stress caused by reading cancer-scare stories in the Daily Mail etc., to cancer ?

By: biggerpills

biggerpills — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:57:18 +0000

Just came across the official word from the NHS Knowledge Service:

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/02February/Pages/Facebookhealthstudy.aspx

I feel sorry for the people writing these articles, those working on the “Cancer” section have got their work cut out.

By: mikewhit

mikewhit — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:55:27 +0000

My attempt:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_SearchBar.Term=loneliness%5Bti%5Dinternet

By: mikewhit

mikewhit — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:52:37 +0000

@Andy – you can usually use the hex notation for odd characters, but you should have used %5B and %5D for the square brackets, not %20 which is ’space’.

Check on the Windows Character Map for the numbers to use, at least between ‘!’ (U+0021) and ‘~’ (U+007E).

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:02:58 +0000

Hmmm the Wordpress comments system deletes the square brackets in my links.. very annoying… This problem also probbaly happened to the 1st poster too…

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:01:34 +0000

OMG I missed them out too… corrected version below..

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_SearchBar.Term=loneliness%20ti%20internet

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:00:33 +0000

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_SearchBar.Term=loneliness%20ti%20internet

I didnt see if anyone actually pasted the correct URL for PubMed search, the very 1st poster had it right, but simply omitted the [ti] brackes to indicate ’search this term in the title only’