Blog

As a graduate student at Harvard in the mid-1990s, I participated in research studies carried out by the psychology department that began in October 1996 and continued until August 2005 to interview adults who had experience sexual abuse as children and learn what effects the abuse had had on their lives. Although I was sure I knew what I would discover—that the abuse would be remembered as a horrible experience that overwhelmed the people I interviewed with fear when it happened and...

John Ioannidis, the “ scourge of sloppy science”   has documented again and again that the safeguards being introduced into the biomedical literature against untrustworthy findings are usually inconsistent and ineffective. In Ioannidis’ most recent report , his group: …Assessed the current status of reproducibility and transparency addressing these indicators in a random sample of 441 biomedical journal articles published in 2000–2014. Only one study...

Early MTV had a major problem: It was almost exclusively white. As it set out to revolutionize the music industry, MTV hit a few major bumps in the road, which included accusations of racism for the lack of diverse artists on the network in its early years. "There was a shortage of Black videos by urban artists," MTV co-founder Les Garland told Jet Magazine in 2006 . "The success of this AOR (album-oriented rock) format in radio certainly had its influence on MTV. But, there were no music...

As an ACE activist, I talk to a lot of people about the impact of ACE’s in society. For many conversations, the results are predictable. When I talk or write about the negative impact of aggressive spanking, I am told “I was spanked and I turned out OK.” I am also reminded of the old Testament passage of “spare the rod, spoil the child.” I have abandoned both excuses a long time ago. But I get this as a common defense to spanking. I also hear an admonition...

Not many people ever make it out of the ADX. Officially called the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence — and colloquially known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies” — the ADX is the highest-security federal prison in the country, located in the Colorado mountains. It houses some of the more notorious inmates in recent American history, from Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to...

Could roof-straddling “sky walks” soon be coming to Stockholm? A new plan proposed for the Swedish capital would see a large slice of its city center built over with densely packed towers, joined at their peaks by a dramatic zigzag of tree-lined, open air gangways. Commissioned by Sweden’s opposition Center Party, the plan might seem a little fanciful. But it nonetheless answers some key questions that Stockholm is currently being forced to ask itself. Sweden’s...

Last year, Trae Vassallo took the stand during Ellen Pao’s discrimination case against Kleiner Perkins, testifying vividly about her experience being sexually harassed by a former partner at the VC firm. Afterwards, she says an “overwhelming number” of women approached her to share their own stories of harassment. Despite having been on the receiving end of unwanted sexual advances, Vassallo was surprised at how prevalent the issue seemed to be—and says that most men...

It was the fake $100 bill that finally landed Corey Roberts in prison. He’d already had one close call, getting picked up for marijuana possession at the end of his freshman year in college. By the middle of his sophomore year, he and some friends were selling pot too. Then one of their buddies passed a rival dealer the bogus Benjamin. That led to a beatdown that drew the attention of campus police and an 18-month stretch behind bars, including nine months in a prison drug treatment...

More than 15 million American adults seek treatment for depression each year. However, a first-of-its-kind study by researchers at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice reveals an eye-opening disconnect between the priorities of patients and clinicians when it comes to the information needed to make decisions about treatment options. The good news is that both patients and clinicians who treat depression consider whether a treatment will work to be the most...

Discrimination has been linked with negative health outcomes among racial minorities, including increased rates of mental health problems such as panic attacks 1 , generalized anxiety disorder 2 , depression 3 and suicidal ideation 4 . “Racial discrimination is a type of chronic stress that leads to both psychological and physiological stress responses and, as such, contributes to the disease process that results in negative physical and mental health outcomes for those who experience...

One Sunday night in March, 1985, Michele Murray, a sophomore at Texas Tech University, tried to find a parking space near her dorm. In the preceding months, four women had been raped on or near the Texas Tech campus, in the small plains city of Lubbock; local newspapers speculated about a “Tech rapist,” but the police had no solid leads. As Murray parked in a church lot, a man wearing a yellow terry-cloth shirt and bluejeans approached the car. She felt a pang of fear, but at...

The first time I heard a preschooler explaining a classmate’s disruptive behavior, I was surprised at how adult her four-year-old voice sounded. Her classmate “doesn’t know how to sit still and listen,” she said to me, while I sat at the snack table with them. He couldn’t learn because he couldn’t follow directions, she explained, as if she had recently completed a behavioral assessment on him. Months before either of these children would start...