Posted on by Amy Rogers - 5 Comments on Assorted Links

Assorted Links

Thanks to Casey Manion and Anne Weiss

5 Replies to “Assorted Links”

  1. The study used _margarine_ with a little added omega-3. Considering how unhealthy and full of omega-6 most margarines are, this sounds like trying to put out a fire by dumping oil with a little added water on it.

  2. Yes this seems like a poorly designed study. Only 4 teaspoons a day of omega-3? If there were no other dietary changes, that little O-3 would seem to have little effect on the patients overall O-3/O-6 ratios. It doesn’t even seem that this ratio was measured in this study.

  3. Here’s another interesting article, from today’s New York Times:

    “Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits”

    Here’s a sample:

    Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.

    Ditto for teaching styles, researchers say. Some excellent instructors caper in front of the blackboard like summer-theater Falstaffs; others are reserved to the point of shyness. “We have yet to identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere,” said Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Why Don’t Students Like School?”

  4. The L-world paper reminded me of a paper that came out this year in JPSP: The desire to expel unselfish members from the group, by Cragi Parks and Asako Stone. They set out to study how one tolerates freeriders, and discovered to their surprise that group members were also willing to punish someone that gave more and took less. from what they can see people either thought that the unselfish people set too high standards, or, alternatively that they broke the rules.

    Also reminds me of the discussions I have with my 7 year old son, when he wants to give his friends the really big and wonderful lego boxes as a birthday present, and I say no. The consideration that it costs too much is fairly easy to explain, but the half implicit, not quite pronounced idea that it would be wrong to come with a very expensive birthday gift (especially in the eyes of parents that may feel a pressure to reciprocate) is just not that easy to convey.

  5. That LL-world paper by Gambetta and Origgi is outstanding. It explains so much, including just about the whole blogging world.

    The omega3-in-the-margarine study is an excellent example of how to cook a trial.

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