#specifically re: koch and york

[polyboros]

tyvi + koch?

“so you’re super roamin’ now, huh?”

jesús shrugs. their hand is fixed at their neck, rubbing idle circles into the spot just below their hairline, head aching. the item they got—the legendary super roamin’ fifth base—sits at the foot of their bed, dormant.

“guess so,” they reply, a long moment passing. “there’s not much for me here anymore, anyway?”

tyvi’s eyes narrow, and she makes a moment of eye contact with scorpler, trying to communicate are you seeing this shit without saying anything. “what do you mean there’s not much for you here, jesús, there’s cv—”

“tyvi, i just.” they rub at their eyes, and she swears, for a moment, there— “i’m just a little tired of this town, okay? i’m. just a little- a little tired, of all this.”

“you didn’t say anything.”

“c’mon, jesús,” scorpler adds, but there’s a note of resignation in his voice, like he knows the cause is—already lost, or something. “least shit you could do is tell her why.”

tyvi feels like she’s four steps out of her own body, like this, too separated from jesús to know what they’re really thinking, too melded with her own body to change. “tell me what?”

“i’m just a little tired of all this.” jesús’ hands move, then, from their neck to their lap, motioning like they’re supposed to be clutching onto a bat, again. their eyes go unfocused, again. and again, she swears they’re just—too golden-brown, in this light. “i’m okay, tyvi, i- promise. just tired.”

“we’re all tired,” she says, dry, and jesús laughs, scorpler grins, and the conversation moves on. it feels like she’s given something up that she shouldn’t have let go.

it feels like she’s going to lose them. more than thirty fucking years, and being alive’s finally what’ll do them in, huh.

you better not fuck this up, she says to scorpler, all eye contact.

hundreds of scorpions stare back. we’re trying our fucking best here, they say, tell you later.

fine. later has to be good enough.

#rai ramble comp #blaseball #prompt reward #aha. uh oh! #uh oh whoops! #i've been percolating on some legendary items thoughts #specifically re: koch and york

[alexsmitposts]

Democrats Hate Russia, Republicans Hate China – the New Divide in America’s Ruling Class Since the 2016 elections, the Democratic Party has been calling out President Trump for his alleged ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Even after the investigation of Trump for “collusion” has been concluded, new hearings regarding Trump’s dealing with Ukraine have been turned into a festival of anti-Russian phrase mongering. Meanwhile, Trump is waging a trade war with China. The White House Trade Council includes Peter Navarro, an economic flimflam man whose entire career has consisted of blaming China for all of America’s woes. While Republicans love “law and order” at home, they seem to line up behind the Hong Kong protesters without question as they light people on fire and attack police officers. Meanwhile, Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire and former New York City Mayor who recently announced a Presidential run as a centrist Democrat, speaks positively of Xi Jinping. Furthermore, despite it not showing up in his policies, Trump has made positive statements about the Russian President and expressed a desire to improve US-Russia relations. So, what is going on here? It’s actually quite easy to understand. All it takes is an understanding of the Russian and Chinese economies, the US Deep State apparatus, and the different interests among the circles of American power. The Eurasian Alternative – Two Economic Giants, Different Markets At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia and China were both deeply poor countries. Their economies were largely agrarian. The people were mostly illiterate and routinely died of starvation. Russia and China were both more or less dominated by western capitalist nations. This changed due to one thing: socialism. Following the 1917 revolution, and most specifically following the 1928 implementation of “Socialism in One Country” and 5-year economic plans, Russia became an industrial superpower. By the mid-1930s, Russia had huge state run industries, the country had been electrified, and the world was marveling at what was being accomplished while the west experienced the “great depression.” In the 1990s, after the defeat of the Soviet Union, Russia experienced huge economic catastrophe. Mass unemployment, drug addiction, suicide, human trafficking, what US economist Andre Gunder Frank called “economic genocide.” Free market policies implemented under the advice of Jeffrey Sachs led to the country being looted by figures like Bill Browder, BP, Hermitage Capital Management, and British Petroleum. However, at the dawn of the 21st Century, Russia restructured itself with Putin’s economic re-orientation. As President, Putin put his academic thesis into practice and made Gazprom and Rosneft into gigantic state controlled mega corporations. The result was an economic reboot that raised wages, reduced poverty, and restored the industrial output to pre-1991 levels. Russia’s economy is now centered around state control of oil and gas. Russia exports huge amounts of energy, and the proceeds are utilized in order to keep the economy churning along. China’s 1949 revolution also resulted in the building up of state-run industries. With 5 year economic plans, Mao Zedong led China to build its first steel mills, new power plants, and basic industrialization. The 1961 Sino-Soviet split was a significant setback, and after a more than a decade of attempting to build an ultra-egalitarian and “pure” version of socialism with the Cultural Revolution, China began reorienting toward “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” and a large market sector. Like Russia, China has an economy centered around huge, state controlled mega corporations. However, unlike Russia, these are not energy exporting companies, but manufacturers. No telecommunications manufacturer on earth is larger that Huawei technologies. The Chinese State Controlled steel industry produces over 50% of the steel on earth. China leads the world in the production of electric cars, smart phones, and computers. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Russia and China were captive markets, dependent on the western countries and dominated by Wall Street and London’s corporate monopolies. Today, Russia and China are competitors with the western capitalists. Across the world, as the Eurasian Economic Union and the Asian Investment Infrastructure Bank expand, many developing countries are choosing to sign on with Russia and China. Russia and China are cutting into the economic hegemony of western corporations. This is the basis of the hostility to them from both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats – Big Oil & Intel Agencies The Rockefeller oil dynasty were known as Republicans during the early Cold War, but the far-right of the GOP always held them with suspicion. It was the Rockefeller Family, owners of Exxon-Mobile, the modern day incarnation of John D. Rockfeller’s Standard Oil, that created the sexual revolution. The Rockefellers funded the sex research of Alfred Kinsey, arguing that homosexuality and promiscuity was more prevalent and normal, and urging the lifting of traditional constraints on behavior. Prior to that the Rockefeller family had bankrolled Margaret Sanger creation of the “Birth Control League,” today known as Planned Parenthood. The Rockefeller family has long been obsessed with sexual libertarianism. Their position in the Republican Party was based on a love affair with free markets and a hostility to labor unions. However, as the Democratic Party moved in a free market direction during the late 1980s, with Bill Clinton’s Democratic Leadership Council, the Rockefeller increasingly found the USA oldest major party to be less odious. During the Obama years, the big four super majors, Exxon-Mobile, BP, Shell, and Chevron pretty clearly lined up behind Obama, while their primary opponent, the fracking corporations, lined up behind the Republicans. The “Fracking Cowboys” and the Koch Brothers continue to throw their money into Republican causes like PragerU, Turning Points USA, etc. Meanwhile, Rockefeller linked foundations and institutions such as the Ford Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Open Society Institute, tend to put out a socially liberal message critical of Trump. This divide with big oil (the 4 super majors) behind the democrats and little oil (frackers and drillers) behind Republicans, lines up pretty well in recent years. However, it also points to factions within the US state apparatus. Not only do Rockefeller linked think-tanks and institutions push a liberal message, but they are also heavily involved in the covert efforts of US intelligence agencies. George Soros efforts to topple socialist governments, the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and the soft-power apparatus through which the US government peddles influence and destabilizes anti-imperialist countries, has money from big oil all over it. The Democratic Party as it exists in 2019, as the party of sexual liberation, environmental regulations to restrict the activities of frackers and maintain big oil’s monopoly, is very much an expression of big oil. Big oil sees Russia, a major oil and gas exporter, as a competitor. They aim to push Russia off the market, along with the fracking cowboys, in order to maintain “energy dominance” for the big 4 supermajors. The Democratic Party is also the party of the intelligence agencies, setting up NGOs, promoting destabilization in the name of “human rights,” and hoping to “win without war.” The intel agencies have long pushed a strategy of utilizing proxy forces and avoiding full on invasions and bombings in order to preserve the image of the United States. The Democratic Party seems to favor maintaining a covert US alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al-Jazeera, the voice of the Qatar monarchy, seems to push a pro-democratic party message. The Obama Presidency, in which an African-American man with a Muslim name “reset” relations with the Middle East, and played the role of “good cop” attempting to heal the discord of the Bush years, fit the CIA playbook completely. The Intel Agencies favor a Mr. Nice Guy, racially inclusive, apologetic, and friendly face for US foreign policy. Republicans – Manufacturers & the Military Industrial Complex The Pentagon’s approach toward foreign policy is the exact opposite of the intel agencies. The Pentagon contractors push “peace through strength.” Their bread is buttered with big bombs and cruise missiles, huge research budgets to develop new weapons systems, and most especially through the sale of military hardware to US-aligned countries. This of course, leads to an alliance between the US military and American manufacturers. The term “military industrial complex” was made famous by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In the post-World War 2 years, it seemed the USA was adopting the economic theories not just of John Maynard Keynes but also of Nazi economist Hjalamar Schatch. Huge amounts of military spending stimulate the US economy and keep dollars flowing to Wall Street as the US public gets poorer. One of the primary founders of Republican Party activism in the United States is Bernie Marcus. Marcus is the owner of Home Depot, an American hardware store chain that has replaced the small local businesses across the United States. Go into the shelves of Bernie Marcus’s big box tool sheds and it is hard to find a single product that isn’t manufactured by a Pentagon contractor such as Caterpillar or General Electric. The DeVos Foundation, another founder of Republican Party linked voices, is owned by the family of US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who herself is heavily tied in with military contractors. Her brother is none other than Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater (Academi). American manufacturers are closely tied in with the military industrial complex and the Republican party, and their focus is not on the energy markets. The fact that China operates as a huge state controlled booming center of production makes it the primary threat to the American manufacturers. The military industrial complex also sees lot of money to be made in selling weapons all over Asia in a “build-up” against China. In the tech world, many have been surprised to see that Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has sparked up an unlikely friendship with Donald Trump. Facebook, Twitter, and other tech companies seem very hostile to Republicans, and Apple seems to present itself as a liberal corporation. So, what has sparked this new friendship? The answer is simple. Trump is waging an all-out war on Apple’s primary competitor, Huawei. As Trump works to crush Huawei technologies, Apple is benefiting. Google, Twitter, and Facebook see China has a vast untapped market. They seek to improve US-China relations, in the hopes that the 1 billion people living in China can go online and start making revenue for the tech giants. Apple, on the other hand, sees China a market rival, manufacturing higher quality phones and threatening their monopoly. Globalist Imperialism vs. The Eurasian Alternative While Republicans emphasize opposition to China, and Democrats emphasize opposition to Russia, both parties oppose both countries, and echo the same opposition to multipolarity. The US economy functions as part of an economic order described in Lenin’s book “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.” It is an economic order in which major banks and monopolies in western countries reap “super profits” by “super exploiting” the rest of the world. Countries are kept poor, so these huge multinational corporations can stay rich. The world is carved up by different corporations into “spheres of influence” and captive markets. Impoverished countries are prevented from developing their own manufacturing, energy production, and independent economies. Impoverished countries remain as “client states” purchasing from western countries, and doing business from a place of weakness and dependency. Russia and China have broken out of this economic prison. By seizing control of their industries and natural resources, and utilizing the government to plan production, they have been able to experience un-precedented economic growth and poverty alleviation. An economic miracle is currently happening across the Eurasian subcontinent. Places like Central Asia, the Russian Far East, Tibet and Xinjiang are being lit up with electricity. Modern housing, manufacturing jobs, railway, and other modernizations are being brought to millions of people. The economic relationship that Russia and China have with developing countries in places like Africa and South America is quite different than the relationships of western countries. “Win-Win cooperation” seems to define the activities of the One Belt, One Road initiate of China and the Eurasian Economic Union led by Russia. Russia and China become wealthier at the same time that the countries they trade with become wealthier. Instead of reducing countries to weak captive markets, Russia and China build infrastructure in order to stimulate the domestic economies. Bolivia, through doing business with Russia and China, had the highest rate of GDP growth of any country in South America in 2018. While Honduras and Guatemala flounder as US client states, socialist Nicaragua, trading with Russia and China, has had huge achievements in reducing poverty and building up the domestic economy. Russia and China are a threat to the entire system of western capitalism. They discredit mythology of western economists like Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan by proving that state-planned, growth based economies are preferable to “greed is good” “laissez-faire” free trade. Despite the fact that Democrats and Republicans have a different target in the short term, in the long term, they oppose both Russia and China, as well as any other country that dares pose a challenge to Wall Street and London monopolists.

[jeremystrele]

Meet 14 of Australia’s Most Exciting Textile Designers

Meet 14 of Australia’s Most Exciting Textile Designers

TDF Design Awards

by Lucy Feagins, Editor

Photos – Zoe Helene Spaleta

Photo – Molly Heath

Badaam, The Meeting Place

The Meeting Place collection by Badaam encourages cultural exchanges by experimenting with drape, silhouette and patterns found in the Asia-Pacific region. The symbol and line prints represent ancient knowledge systems passed down through carvings on rock or ground, while the rawness and colour of handwoven silk reflect the earth these symbols were first drawn. 

The collection hopes to remind people of the sacred role of creation, and that each shared story contributes to the diversity and cultural understanding of the environment they inhabit.

Amber Days, Wanala Collection 

Founded by Yorta Yorta and Boonwurrung woman Corina Muir, Amber Days is an apparel label inspired by the Australia bush, desert and sea. In Wanala, the Aboriginal-owned, female-led label collaborated with Aboriginal artist Arkie Beaton on a playful print depicting floral energy in bright bursts of colour.

Since launching in October 2018, Amber Days has released five collaborations with female First Nations artists. With each new collection comes a new opportunity to strengthen awareness of Aboriginal culture, stories, and the importance of caring for the country.

Left photo – Victoria Barnes. Right photo – Timothy Robertson

Photos – Jesse O’Brien

Instyle Interior Finishes, Native

Native is a beautiful commercial upholstery fabric designed by Carol Debono from Instyle’s in-house textile design studio.

The inspiration for Native was driven by colour and a desire to create a pared-back textile with a

timeless and versatile appearance at an accessible price point. Working closely with Instyle’s longstanding Australian manufacturing partner, Carol utilised existing yarn qualities made from high-quality Australian wool to translate these into a new fabric design. By using quality raw materials and the simplest of constructions (a plain weave) the resultant Native textile is understated, price-competitive, heavy duty and highly versatile, complementing a vast range of furniture types and shapes.

Nobody Denim and GEORGE, Woven Bag

The objective of this textile project was to reduce Nobody Denim’s footprint and reimagine commercial textile waste. Cut offs otherwise destined for landfill were gathered from the denim label’s cutting room floor, and rerouted into the hands of weaver and designer, Georgina Whigham for her label, GEORGE.

Prioritising a slow approach to manufacture, each bag is meticulously handmade by Georgina using her traditional four shaft floor loom. Completely left to chance, the colour palette of each piece is determined by what denim fabrication has recently been cut at Nobody’s factory. The process takes several hours to complete via the laborious process of cutting, weaving and sewing. 

Left photo – Georgie Brunmayr. Right photo – Hattie Molloy x Annika Kafcaloudis

Photos – Still Smiths

Curio Practice, Australian Woollen Blankets

Curio is a practice in slow craftsmanship and responsible knitting, partnering with ethical local factories and using consciously selected Australian merino wool yarns to create heirloom-quality blankets for the everyday. 

The label’s blankets are made using around 1.9kg of high-grade Australian merino wool sourced from farms across Victoria, New South Wales, and Western Australia. On average, each blanket takes two hours to knit in ethical Melbourne knitting factories, and are then linked, washed and pressed. 

Takeawei, Glaze Test Woollen Blanket

Ceramicist Chela Edmunds of Takeawei collaborated with Geelong Textiles Australia to create a colourful blanket that simulates the process of glazing of clay bodies in the weft of the weave. Unlike symmetrical checks that rely on mirrored elements, the check design is irregular and features large sections of block colour, tonal stripes and small pixelated colour transitions to show the breadth of variation that can be achieved. Edges are naturally frayed from the weaving and milling process. 

The woollen blankets are made from 90% Australian wool and 10% nylon for durability, wash and wear.

Photos – Victoria Aguirre

Photos – Getty Images

Pampa, Eclipse

Working with their partner weavers in Argentina’s Andean mountains, Pampa produced a collection of rug designs inspired by the moon and sun. These celestial bodies are re-cast as universal symbols of warmth, vitality and comfort during a year of instability and uncertainty.

Taking its cues from Bauhaus, Eclipse is an exercise in colour play and architectural form. The result is a series of textiles that are bold, bright and expressive. Handwoven in luxuriously soft sheep’s wool, each piece takes many hours to weave and is entirely unique in its craftsmanship.

Tara Whalley, New York Fashion Week Collection

Created specifically to show at New York Fashion Week in 2020, Tara Whalley’s uplifting fashion collection was inspired by bright and joyful flowers, from those spotted on strolls through her Melbourne neighbourhood to the striking blooms Tara admired in Japanese markets on her honeymoon. These references were channelled that into a bold collection that includes apron dresses, boiler suits, kimonos, loose-fit pants, silk scarves and eye-catching ball gowns. 

The 28-piece collection as always features Tara’s whimsical, hand-painted artwork – a mix of pencil and gouache, translated into digital prints. Each piece is designed to be trans seasonal and inclusive.

Photos – Caro Pattle

Photos – Jenny Wu

Caro Pattle, Woven Vase & Cup

Using machine-made textile remnants sourced from a neighbouring dead stock merchant and her own wardrobe, Caro Pattle reproduced contemporary domestic objects including a vase and cup in handwoven form.

Woven Vase & Cup are the result of an iterative research and development phase that focused on creating the perfect balance between process and material. The vessels are a collaboration between industrial and hand-crafted techniques, combining industrially produced fabric with the ancient technology of coil basketry. Woven from a single cotton/elastane textile remnant, the objects pay homage to the unique properties of the gauzy fabric. In restricting the material palette, Woven Vase & Cup offers a moment of aesthetic appreciation for an undervalued resource.

Oat Studio, Capital Collection

Textile label Oat Studio’s Capital Collection integrates iconic architectural shapes and lines into a printed fabric design. Inspired by Australian modernism, the collection expresses a love for these bold architectural forms, and expresses them through the contrasting soft tones and textures of natural fabrics. 

All Oat Studio fabrics are printed-to-order to eliminate waste. The studio uses water based inks and recycled paper by-products, and works with printers who have achieved a Sustainable Green Print Accreditation.

Photo – Stephanie Cammarano

Photo – Mike Baker

Kuwaii, ‘Chronicle’ For Spring/Summer ’20

Melbourne fashion label Kuwaii reimagined the colourful painted pieces of local painter Charlotte Alldis onto silhouettes in their summer 2020 clothing and footwear collection, Chronicle. 

The range was inspired by story telling, and fully made up of archival Kuwaii styles spanning our 10 years of business. Designed to be worn over and over, Kuwaii imagined pieces to be like ‘walking artworks’ – pieces customers would keep and would remember forever. Pieces were constructed in Melbourne on a selection of natural fibre based cloths (linen and cotton).

GH Commercial, Oceanic Commercial Carpet Collection

Combining non-traditional graphic elements with functional comfort, the designs for the Oceanic carpet collection by GH Commercial are inspired by ocean ecosystems in the Great Barrier Reef and the Tasman and Coral seas.

The objective of the carpet collection was to enhance user experience through striking patterns and biophilic design elements, but also providing exceptional comfort underfoot and reduced noise reduction in busy commercial spaces, providing a more pleasant indoor environment. The cohesive collection features three different carpet mediums to provide an extensive array of patterns that work as standalone solutions or grouped together. 

Photo – Christian Koch

Photo – Sam Wong. Set design – Nat Turnbull

Ikuntji Artists + Publisher Textiles, Clothing Collection

Aboriginal art centre Ikuntji Artists partnered with Publisher Textiles to release a collaborative collection of 100% Australian designed and made clothing. Prints were created by both established and emerging artists in order to show the breadth of Ikuntji designs, provide a diversity of prints for different markets, and provide income to artists. Each piece was crafted by Publisher and the fabric screen printed by hand.

Artists drew their inspiration from their personal Ngurra (country) and Tjukurrpa (Dreaming). The designs are unique to Central Australia, particularly the sand hills, waterholes, jagged mountains and sandy plains of the West MacDonnell Ranges.

Paire, The World’s Comfiest Socks

Paire socks are made from a hybrid wool-cotton fabric that combines the comfort of the former with the durability of the latter.

The Melbourne label developed their unique yarn-blend from scratch, made up of 50% Australian merino wool and 50% organic cotton. The smoother, softer, moisture-wicking and odour absorbing fabric is a true chameleon that’s warm in the cold and cool in the heat. The socks are cut at 90 degrees, hand sewn shut so there’s no irritating seam, and contain cloud cushioning for added support.

[krafaparin1981]

nulty insurance kalamazoo

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare quotes from different companies :quotesdeal.net

nulty insurance kalamazoo

nulty insurance kalamazooaaaaaa nt-t-t!m.l. The policy is the only value that can provide a value at the price you are willing to pay. I only need 1.5 years, my wife in a term insurance. The insurance is cheap and the people is nice so I buy my insurance to help her pay for the years of service. And I had a very few quotes in this year. I should buy term insurance as it offers lower monthly premiums when you are older. and I am a former insurance agent and banker turned consumer advocate. My priority is to help educate individuals and families about the different types of insurance they need, and assist them in finding the best place to get it. I bought a 3yr, and I would like to know the prices and policy limits I have been looking for with no problem for the next 3yrs. The insurance was good but i really wanted the money to not be negative for all the months to go by. I am only 55. nulty insurance kalamazoo? No, because you should be paying more because you pay less. Bond (5-20%) and liability (30-60%) covers your vehicle You may be insured for 100k per year, but with bond you’ll pay only the “permanent” money. We recommend having higher limits of liability insurance when a policy is more expensive. You can get cheap through It’s very helpful. Get your in This page is currently not up to date. You are allowed for two types of :  (1) Non-owner insurance If you want to register your car, you will need  (2) Standard, or “owners” insurance. What types of insurance do I need? Non-owner insurance is designed to cover vehicles registered. For instance, You need to be able to give documents to your  registered. nulty insurance kalamazoo!!! Do I really need it? I am a young driver with no car…and I am a low mileage driver and I have been getting out of the vehicle in recent years in the last few months to pay for my car. I drive in different conditions than my old buddy. I’m not sure why your name is that same as my old one. Thank you!! Hi Mark, My daughter with no insurance is trying to get this on her in Mexico a week ago..she was told that if the car wasn’t used in the States, the insurance was going into overdrive. she wants us to get it confirmed where is her insurer. I’m just like that she’s really bad and I want to make sure no one is holding her name and driving a car in my name. Do I need insurance now ? ? can any companies find this out for me, how come? and also I don’t know.

5. Insurance Network

5. Insurance Network Services is the official Internet-based insurance agency, offering products for insurance and related services for individuals and businesses across the nation. You pay the same premiums for same-year drivers. But, as you can see in the chart, premiums change year after year, up to 11.8 percent. And, it’s more expensive. We’ll get to that with our experts. And, more insurance companies don’t always just rate the same person for the same job. As we mentioned, the top three companies will increase rates for those three years: The top three companies are now, on average, 2.4 percent above the state average rate of $1.56 million. And, though the numbers may be much higher because of increases, insurance companies now consider these four companies the most competitive markets for insurance and other products. This is why companies like Farm Bureau (NY, F-150) and Aon (OR,.

20. Ryan Smeader - State Farm Insurance Agent

20. Ryan Smeader - State Farm Insurance Agent - Certified Insurance Counselor Ryan Smeader has thousands of dollars of experience helping people with insurance related questions and challenges. She is extremely helpful in her free time and her voice is not overwhelming. You are just getting one small piece of advice. To learn more about Ryan Smeader s experience you can read our  page. Ryan is fully licensed and on the phone with you. You just need to call Ryan on her Phone to have details: Phone number 1-800-252-3834 to talk directly with her supervisor, Brian Smeader. When we did our study, I found Ryan Smeader as my go-to agent. To be honest I only had it for one specific product. We used the quote to get quotes for different insurance plans and have had no problems. Ryan has been great for the quote. She was very patient and listened to me and helped to put together our insurance plan. I am a business owner and I love to serve in the insurance.

26. Tom Breitenbach - State Farm Insurance Agent

26. Tom Breitenbach - State Farm Insurance Agent, 918-686-8277, www.sabotenbachinsuranceinfo.com or 719-685-7282 A family has multiple children to care for. That’s why your families will need to help you when you are gone. Call us to find out what all of the family can do if you were to need assistance with your family. Call the 918-686-8277, www.sabotenbachinsuranceinfo.com or 719-685-7282 The state of Michigan doesn’t permit insurance companies to conduct business in Michigan that will accept personal insurance. The only exemption from the insurance law is liability coverage under your policy. There is no exemption for damage caused to someone else’s vehicle. This coverage is sold by the insurance carrier, and usually it is in a small amount. The maximum coverage is $1 million per accident. However, it is common for insurance carriers to list the maximum amount of.

28. Bob Hayes - State Farm Insurance Agent

28. Bob Hayes - State Farm Insurance Agent 1826. Joe Hensley - Farm Owners 1828. Tom D Alio-Folks Insurance Agent 1831. Peter D Alio - Farm Owners 1831. Jim Gillett - Farm Owners 1832. Bob Meekins - Farm Owners 1836. Steve St. George - Farm Owners 1837. Mike Kline Insurance Agent - Farm 1837. Terry Tompkins - Farm Owners 1842. Jeff Fitch - Farm Owners 1845. Terry Pugh Insurance Agent - Farm Owners 1846. Bob Hayes - Farm Owners 1846. Joe Hensley - Farm Owners 1901. Mike Kline Insurance Agent - Farm Owners 1902. Bill McDonough - Farm Owners 1904. Steve St. George - Farm Owners 1911. Bob Hayes at State Farm Insurance Agent: State Farm has .

AdLance Greer - State Farm Insurance Agent

AdLance Greer - State Farm Insurance Agent. It’s one of the best auto insurance attorneys all in one office. With offices that are locally operated, with thousands of independent agents and resources to educate you, our offices represent a complete sourcebook of all your choices. Give us a call today. For you to get started on this free insurance law website, follow the simple steps below: Once you are enrolled in an Independent Agent program, you’ll be eligible for the state-required minimum rates from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Your Premium Pricing will vary depending on your insurance provider. Please refer to your Federal Emergency Management Agency for details about your provider’s coverage, limitations, or exclusions. For a list of carriers who may be eligible see .  For a list of all the companies see list below: If you have a  and have received a Certificate of Insurance (COI) on your insurance policy in the last 30 days, this certificate will give to you an insurance code which.

15. Rich DuBois - State Farm Insurance Agent

15. Rich DuBois - State Farm Insurance Agent - Auto Club Insurance Agent - Allstate Insurance Agent - Auto Club Insurance Agent - Blue Cross and Blue Shield Agent - Farmers Insurance Agent- Farmers Insurance Agent - Farmers Insurance Agent - Mid-Century Insurance Agent- Mid-Century Insurance Agent- Mid-Century Insurance AgentThe  company has the same name as the Company. A local Farmers Insurance agent or agent can help you to understand your insurance options to find the right coverage plan for your car. Auto Club Insurance Agency is a local Farmers Insurance agent/agent for all of California.   Contact us today at Farmers Insurance Agent, We re ready to provide you with a more secure and cost-effective insurance plan.   Farmers Insurance Agency  is committed to working with you to maximize your savings and ensure you are able to enjoy your new and used car.  Advertisement produced on behalf of the following specific insurers and seeking to obtain business for.

19. Kory Wagonmaker - State Farm Insurance Agent

19. Kory Wagonmaker - State Farm Insurance Agent. AAAR Ins 4   .

AdJohn Koch - State Farm Insurance Agent

AdJohn Koch - State Farm Insurance Agent (United States) American Family - AARP Insurance Agent American Family Mortgage & Auto Austin, TX Austin, TX Avoca, CA Baldwin, CA Calvert, CA Colorado Springs, CO Dallas, TX El Paso, TX Houston, TX Humboldt TX Irregulant TX Idaho  Illinois  Indiana  Indiana  Iowa  Kansas  Kentucky  LSK  Louisiana  Maine  Maryland  Massachusetts  Michigan  Minnesota  Mississippi  Missouri  Montana  Nebraska  Nevada  New Hampshire  New Jersey  New Mexico  New York  North Carolina  North Dakota  Ohio  Oklahoma  Oklahoma  Oregon  Pennsylvania  Pine Falls, NJ Princeton, NJ .

Nulty Insurance s Technology Stack

Nulty Insurance s Technology Stack: We are able to help many drivers with the benefits you will have the right insurance you need. We have been in business for more than 100 years and have been successful at helping people with all types of problems. There are a handful of us still working to support those who do find some comfort in the time lost from your insurance. While you may have a car but they are still insured at an alarming level, there may be other issues out there that help you make a little more sense about it. If your car is the perfect car or is a great asset, you should shop for the insurance. While the cost of doing that, you might notice some of the rates you get that are much more expensive than what you are paying now. Some vehicles usually cost significantly more to repair after their age. While this is not a big deal, we still take these situations seriously. Some parts may not be as well covered as they would be in a.

22. Andy Poulsen - State Farm Insurance Agent

22. Andy Poulsen - State Farm Insurance Agent - Allstate s insurance agent. Thanks for your help, Brad. I’m in California working for State Farm, and I have heard that if I am to be on my insurance policy, my California insurance will be higher. I have tried to contact State Farm, but haven’t heard anything back. I would want to know, can I get a call back as a courtesy? Thanks, I’ll be glad I had the coverage! I had my accident on one of my vehicles; it occurred so that I would not be driving! My husband got into an accident. I then hit him three days later, on the same day he went to a medical company. He was treated to what hospital, at which time his insurance company paid him immediately, and they even gave him temporary hospital treatment because of that. So not only had he waited a very long time, but I did not get a call back. It took over two weeks for another claim to.

[herwitchinesss]

annual list of books i have read this year

(i’m already doing my favorite reads of the year in instagram posts, so look out for those instead of my usual bold = favorite that i do; if you want to know about a specific book or if i have it available to lend out on eBook or give to you via Audible, send me a message! xo)

1) Mrs. Zant and the Ghost by Wilkie Collins 2) Dreamer’s Pool by Juliet Marillier 3) DC Bombshells Vol 3 by Marguerite Bennett 4) The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir by Josh Kilmer-Purcell 5) The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena 6) Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi 7) The Devourers by Indra Das 8) A Good Idea by Cristina Moracho 9) The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski 10) The Baker’s Secret by Stephen P. Kiernan 11) Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson 12) A Word For Love by Emily Robbins  13) The Strange Case of the Alchemists Daughter by Theodora Gross 14) Ahsoka by EK Johnston 15) Gwenpool Vol 2 by Christopher Hastings 16) Spell On Wheels by Kate Leth 17) Hi-Fi Fight Club by Carly Usdin 18) Beauty Vol 1 by Jeremy Haun 19) American Housewife, stories by Helen Ellis 20) 10 Things I Can See From Here by Carrie Mac 21) Imprudence by Gail Carriger 22) The Authentics by Abdi Nazemian 23) Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman 24) Delicate Monsters by Stephanie Kuehn 25) The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney 26) Miles Morales: Spider-Man by Jason Reynolds 27) The Virgin Cure by Ami McKay 28) My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix 29) Crash Override by Zoe Quinn 30) Forest of Memory by Mary Robinette Kowal 31) Belle: The Slave Daughter & the Lord Chief Justice by Paula Byrne 32) Invincible Summer by Alice Adams 33) Leia, Princess of Alderaan by Claudia Gray 34) The Trap by Melanie Raabe 35) The End of Everything by Megan Abbott 36) A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas 37) Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling (re-read) 38) The Girls by Emma Cline 39) I Am Princess X by Cherie Priest 40) The Likeness by Tana French 41) Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch 42) A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler 43) The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck 44) Whispers Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch 45) Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong---- and the New Research that’s Rewriting the Story by Angela Saini 46) In the Woods by Tana French 47) The Mothers by Brit Bennett 48) Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch 49) Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal 50) The World Is Bigger Now by Euna Lee 51) Hope In the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit 52) Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch 53) The Psychopath Inside by James Fallon 54) Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney 55) iZombie vol 1 by Chris Roberson 56) The End of the Affair by Graham Greene 57) The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch 58) Mercury by Margot Livesey 59) The Witches of New York by Ami McKay 60) The Girl At Midnight by Melissa Grey 61) Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller 62) Caraval by Stephanie Garber 63) Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace 64) Night of Cake & Puppets by Laini Taylor 65) The World According to Star Wars by Cass R Sunstein 66) Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero 67) The Sleeper & the Spindle by Neil Gaiman 68) Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley 69) The Runaways by Brian K Vaughan 70) Monstress Vol 1 by Marjorie M Liu 71) Beautiful Broken Girls by Kim Savage 72) November 9 by Colleen Hoover 73) The People We Hate At the Wedding by Grant Ginder 74) How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett 75) Mosquitoland by David Arnold 76) Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll 77) The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice & Virtue by Mackenzi Lee 78) Ashes to Ashes by Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian 79) Fire with Fire by Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian 80) Burn for Burn by Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian 81) Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell 82) Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood 83) The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee Johnson 84) How To Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather 85) The Lovely Reckless by Kami Garcia 86) You’re Never Weird On the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day 87) One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus 88) Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery (re-read) 89) Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris 90) Lost Stars by Claudia Gray 91) The Mistletoe Murder & Other Stories by PD James 92) Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams 93) I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman by Nora Ephron 94) Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo & the Battle That Defined a Generation by Blake J Harris 95) We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson 96) Dear Mr You by Mary-Louise Parker 97) Carry On by Rainbow Rowell 98) The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant 99) Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt 100) Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth by Warsan Shire 101) Nelson Mandela’s Favorite African Folktales by Nelson Mandela 102) We Could Be Beautiful by Swan Huntley 103) Girl Walks Into a Bar... by Rachel Dratch 104) Bloodline by Claudia Gray 105) Romeo & Juliet by David Hewson 106) Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng 107) You Don’t Look Your age... And Other Fairy Tales by Sheila Nevins 108) The Regional Office Is Under Attack! by Manuel Gonzales 109) Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce 110) The Color Master: Stories by Aimee Bender 111) The Inseperables by Stuart Nadler 112) Rani Patel in Full Effect by Sonia Patel 113) Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple 114) Moshi Moshi by Banana Yoshimoto 115) We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to Covergirl, the Buying & Selling of a Political Movement by Andi Zeisler 116) Beast by Brie Spangler 117) Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham 118) Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey 119) The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald 120) Dare Me by Megan Abbott 121) Eleven Hours by Pamela Erens 122) Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett 123) Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor 124) Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde 125) The Briefcase by Hiromi Kawakami 126) The Fever by Megan Abbott 127) Illusionarium by Heather Dixon 128) Life After Life by Kate Atkinson 129) Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson 130) The Dinner by Herman Koch 131) The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters 132) In the Country by Mia Alvar 133) Putin’s Russia by Anna Politkovskaya 134) You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott 135) The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura 136) Jackaby by William Ritter 137) Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson 138) Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia 139) Rain by Amanda Sun 140) Norwegian by Night by Derek B Miller 141) The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco 142) Iron Cast by Destiny Soria 143) Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty 144) Naomi & Ely’s No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn & David Leviathan 145) The Long Way To a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers 146) What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami 147) People of the Book, Jewish Sci-Fi/Fantasy anthology by various authors 148) Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, re-read 149) Exit, Pursued by a Bear by EK Johnston 150) The Bear & the Nightingale by Katherine Arden  151) The Nature of a Pirate by AM Dellamonica 152) Ink by Amanda Sun 153) More Than This by Patrick Ness 154) The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson 155) A Daughter of No Nation by AM Dellamonica 156) Lucky Us by Amy Bloom 157) This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper 158) Child of a Hidden Sea by AM Dellamonica 159) Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín 160) Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick 161) The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy 162) Beautiful Chaos by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl 163) Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly 164) Candide by Voltaire 165) After You by JoJo Moyes 166) Pocket Full of Posies by Angela Roquet 167) Snow Flower & the Secret Fan by Lisa See 168) English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs 169) The Hopefuls by Jennifer Close 170) DC Bombshells vol 4 by Marguerite Bennett 171) DC Bomsbells Vol 5 by  Marguerite Bennett 172) DC Bombshells Vol 6 by  Marguerite Bennett 173) The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe by CS Lewis re-read 174) Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, re-read 175) The Love Artist by Jane Alison 176) Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling, re-read

#booklr #books #reading #2017 reads #reading challenge

[adambstingus]

What is grey culture, precisely? Here’s what the stats say

Whiteness is hard to define, but apparently it involves lots of veggies, alcohol and the arts and reputations like Yoder

A few months after I moved to New York, a magical communication happened that would radically shift my psyche forever. I was telling my friend that I had gone to his favorite shop and he expected:” Who sufficed you? Was it the tall lily-white guy ?”

I frowned and replied,” Are the rest of the staff not grey ?” to which my friend responded” Huh? What do you necessitate? No. I was just describing him .”

While he strayed off to get a beer, I stood dumbfounded. This was the first time I had discovered a white person’s hasten used as a casual descriptor, a simple phase of differentiation in what I perceive to be a grey nature.

As a Brit, I grew up in a country that was 86% white-hot, so “white” was the norm. That kid you were seeing in volumes like Roald Dahl’s was lily-white, unless you were told otherwise( which you never were ). The males paraded on the TV appearance Crimewatch were described as black when they were black, and short or towering or thin or fat once they are white.

Now I live in the United States, countries around the world that is 61% grey. Non-whiteness is much more visible here, and abruptly the distinguish of whiteness is very. But I’m still struggling to constitute the shift from my previous mindset, where grey is the default, the presume, the baseline. You don’t notice normalcy; you consider the divergences from it. So the word “white” could ever be hop-skip over as an adjective.

Now, “white” still feels like an absence: an absence of colour, an is a lack of food that is “different” and an is a lack of a mum who enunciates your mention differently from the room your friends do. But if my friend can use “white” as an adjective, then what exactly are they describing? What is grey culture, exactly?

I decided to find out by expecting the questions that I and many other non-white people have been asked over and over again. I looked for answers in data.

Q: What do white people dine? A: Vegetables.

The US Department of Agriculture’s latest data been demonstrated that the average lily-white American eats 16 lb more vegetables at home each year than do non-white Americans( that could add up to 112 medium-sized carrots, 432 cherry-red tomatoes, or God knows how much kale ).

The only thing that white people are likely to adore more than vegetables is dairy. White Americans chew 185 lb of dairy produces at home each year, are comparable to exactly 106 lb for pitch-black Americans.

But this isn’t just the result of our desires: all of these numbers are influenced by structural parts. For instance, fruit and vegetable uptake increases each time that a new supermarket is lent near to someone’s home, according to a 2002 study . That same study too found that grey Americans are four times more likely than pitch-black Americans to live in a census tract that has a supermarket.

Q: What do white people drink? A: Alcohol.

Almost a third of non-Hispanic greys had at least one heavy drinking day in the past year, according to the CDC. Only 16% of black Americans and 24% of Hispanic Americans said the same.

If you’re wondering which drinks white people are boozing, then you have the same question as a unit of researchers who followed 2,171 girls from the time they were 11 years old to the time the issue is 18. As per year extended, the researchers “ve noticed that” compared to the black girls, white-hot girlfriends imbibe a lot more wine-coloured( and beer, actually, and, er, hearts, more ).

Q: What’s a typical white-hot name? A: Joseph Yoder.

The Census Bureau did an analysis of 270 million people‘s last names to find those that are most likely to be held by particular hastens or ethnicities. Yoder had not been able to the more common family name in the US- only about 45,000 parties have it- but, since 98.1% of those people are white-hot, it’s just ahead of Krueger and Mueller and Koch as the whitest last name in their respective countries. Which means that statistically speaking, the Yoders of America are maybe the least likely white people to marry someone of a different hasten to themselves.

The most common grey last names. Sketch: Mona Chalabi

The most common Hispanic last names. Instance: Mona Chalabi

The most common pitch-black last names. Illustration: Mona Chalabi

The most common Asian last names. Illustration: Mona Chalabi

Many of these last names have German and Jewish descents. Which seems to run counter to my ideology of lily-white culture being intangible- Jewish culture “re a long way from” it. Having experienced discrimination, and having a distinct, tangible culture is sufficient to potentially disqualify you as white, as some American Jewish beings themselves ask the question: ” Are Jews White ?”.

As for Joseph, well, the best data I could find was the most popular child refers rolled by the hasten or the ethnicity of the mother( no mention of the father so some of these Josephs are possibly mixed hasten ). Even then, the numbers are exclusively from New York and were collected from 2011 to 2014. Still, I found that the most common white appoints are Joseph, David, Michael, Jacob and Moshe( seven of the most common refers were male because people tend to be more creative when they’ve delivery a girl ).

Q: What do white people do for merriment? A: Enjoy the arts.

I turned to my esteemed colleague and friend Amanda and asked what she would like to know about white people. Amanda, herself a white person, replied:” Why do they affection guitars so much better ?” Alas, despite two hours of online research, I couldn’t experiment her speculation about musical instruments and hasten.( Although I did find out that bassoons are more popular with women than servicemen, which led me to a YouTube clip of the status of women playing the bassoon with specific comments that spoke” THIS is how you bassoon “. It built me laugh so difficult I had to take a break from preparing the present .)

Instead, I looked at the latest American Time Use Survey. It was published after the Bureau of Labor Statistics expected 10,500 beings in the US how they expend their experience. White beings are the only ethnic or ethnic group in the dataset to have a number higher than zero for time spent attending museums or the performing arts. It’s only 36 seconds, but recollect, this is a daily median, so that adds up to 219 times each year.

I double checked my findings against a 2015 report from the National Endowment for the Arts, which found that white-hot Americans were almost twice as likely as pitch-black or Hispanic Americans to have done at least one arts activity in the past year. Their definition of an artworks task was pretty broad- it included” jazz, classical music, opu, musical and non-musical plays, ballet, and visits to an art museum or gallery “.

Pondering leisure activities. Instance: Mona Chalabi

These counts feel closely connected to home. When I was growing up, my family never set foot inside a museum, gallery or theatre. Not once. I didn’t think it was strange, I exactly thought it was like tripping in duos or taking coaches- specific activities reserved only for school trips.

And yet, despite having better access to these institutions, it seems like it’s some white people who seem to feel culturally deprived.

Remember Amanda? I mentioned her earlier- she’s my colleague with the disdain for guitars. In 2015, she interviewed black psychologists to ask their mind about Rachel Dolezal, a white-hot professor who intentionally misrepresented herself as an African American.

Anita Thomas, an assistant professor of counseling psychology at Loyola University, said:” In some paths it’s normal, but not at her age .” Thomas explained that numerous lily-white teens reacted similarly to Dolezal, attempting to take on what the fuck is perceived to be the types of another race while exploring their identities. Being “the other” sure as hell has its downsides, but it is about to change that not being “the other” does too- especially if you’re a teen.

” For white[ American] youth, “whos” disconnected from European patrimony or gift, it often feels like whiteness as a idea is empty ,” Thomas added in a quotation that has really protruded with me. It seems to tie together some disparate conceptions I have had on “white” as an adjective.

Dolezal was treated as if she were a “bizarre” outlier, but she’s part of a much bigger structure of white action. It includes Mezz Mezzrow, the 1930 s jazz musician who affirmed himself a” voluntary Negro” after marrying a black both women and selling marijuana. It includes the millions of white-hot Americans who take DNA tests and proudly reveal that they are in fact x percentage non -white. And it’s a structure that includes the grey Americans who listen to a” rights for whites” album that includes sungs designation Sons of Israel and Fetch the Noose. One reaction might seem ludicrous, the other frightening, but they are all eventually about meeting a concept of whiteness that isn’t empty.

But what does all that searching yield? I’m not sure I can answer the issues to” what is white culture ?” but I’m certain we should try. If whiteness takes no chassis, then the concrete organizations that shaped it( and often benefit from it) remain invisible very- the supermarkets, the unions, and the museums that stir these numbers what they are. If the “somethingness” of grey culture is never quite pinned down, it remains both” good-for-nothing, certainly” and” well, everything “.

If white culture remains vague, then it can lay claim to every recipe, every garment, every suggestion “thats really not” explicitly “non-white”. That would mean that my identity is just a summing-up, that my “non-whiteness” can only be understood as a subtraction from the totality of “whiteness”. I refuse to be a remainder.

This article will be published in the March edition of The Smudge .

Do you have conceives on white-hot culture? We want to hear them! Please leave a comment below or email me at mona.chalabi @theguardian. com .

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/what-is-white-culture-exactly-heres-what-the-stats-say/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/182730797017

[thisdaynews]

‘If He’s Not in a Fight, He Looks for One.’

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/if-hes-not-in-a-fight-he-looks-for-one/

‘If He’s Not in a Fight, He Looks for One.’

On July 24, as special counsel Robert Mueller’s uneven testimony came to a close, Donald Trump clearly was feeling triumphant. He gloated and goaded on Twitter. He stood outside the White House and crowed. Mueller had done “horrible” and “very poorly,” the president said on the South Lawn. He called it “a great day for me.” He was, after all, rid, it seemed, of perhaps his first term’s preeminent enemy.

It took him less than 24 hours to flip to the next big fight.

Story Continued Below

Because on July 25, according to reports, Trump pressured repeatedly the leader of Ukraine to help rustle up potential political ammunition on Joe Biden, the man polls at this point suggest is his most likely opponent in next year’s election.

That Trump would so quickly in the wake of the Mueller investigation commit a brazen act some critics say representsan egregious and impeachable abuse of power has mystified many observers. How could he have so blithely ignored the lessons of the nearly three-year investigation? But those who know him best say this is merely the latest episode in a lifelong pattern of behavior for the congenitally combative Trump. He’s always been this way. He doesn’t stop to reflect. If he wins, he barely basks. If he loses, he doesn’t take the time to lie low or lick wounds; he invariably refuses to even admit that he lost. Regardless of the outcome—up, down or somewhere in between—when one tussle is done, Trump reflexively starts to scan the horizon in search of a new skirmish.

“If he’s not in a fight, he looks for one,” former Trump publicist Alan Marcus told me this weekend. “He can’t stop.”

“He’s always in an attack mode,” former Trump casino executive Jack O’Donnell said. “He’s always got adversaries.”

“He does love a confrontation—there’s no question about it,” added Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization executive. “Trump thinks he’s always going to win—he really does believe that—and he fights very, very, very dirty.”

“A street fighter,” Louise Sunshine, another former Trump Organization executive, once told me.

Trump, of course, has said all of this himself, and for as long as people have been paying him any attention. For decades, he has been redundantly clear. “I go after people,” he has said. “… as viciously and as violently as you can,” he has said. “It makes me feel so good,” he has said.

As president, he’s changed … not at all.

“I like conflict,” he confirmed last year.

***

“Donald,” wrote Jerome Tuccille,in the first biography ever written of Trump, in 1985, “was a round, fleshy baby who howled up a storm from the day he was born.” He was “a brat” from the start, according to his oldest sister. In elementary school in Queens, he was a desk-crashing, spitball-spewing, pigtail-pulling playground boor. “Surly,” said one of his teachers. “A little shit,” said another. He was sent at 13 years old some 60 miles up the Hudson River to New York Military Academy, where he was cocksure and hypercompetitive—“so competitive,” his roommate recalled, “that everybody who could come close to him he had to destroy.” His favorite instructor at NYMA called him “a real pain in the ass.” But it was what Trump’s father had taught him to be. “Life’s a competition,” Fred Trump told his second son and chosen heir. Be a “killer.”

In the 1970s, when Trump was a young adult, Roy Cohn continued the tutorial. “What makes Roy Cohn tick?” journalist Ken Auletta once asked Cohn in an interview, the audio recording of which acts as a kind of spine to Matt Tyrnauer’s new documentary. “A love of a good fight,” Cohn answered.

“Roy,” Roger Stone tells Tyrnauer, “would always be for an offensive strategy. Those are the rules of war. You don’t fight on the other guy’s ground. You define what the debate is going to be about. I think Donald learned that from Roy.”

“I bring out the worst in my enemies, and that’s how I get them to defeat themselves,” Cohn once said. Trump was taking notes. “A sponge,” Cohn cousin David Lloyd Marcus told me.

“He made Donald,” added socialite and celebrity interviewer Nikki Haskell, “very confrontational.”

Trump spent the 1980s constructing what’s proven to be an ineradicable foundation, opening the refurbished Grand Hyatt, building Trump Tower and buying Mar-a-Lago, the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League and a vast stretch of land on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that he would try to turn into “Trump City,” pile-driving into the cultural bedrock the places and props that would underpin his persona.

The consistency of his bellicosity, too, became impossible to ignore. He fought, and he fought, and he fought. Even after fighting the city for lavish tax breaks for his first two projects—and winning—he quickly picked new fights and new foes. He fought preservationists after jackhammering pieces of art on the building he had to tear down to put up the building branded with his name. He fought aghast residents of the neighborhood in which he wanted to plop his most gargantuan project yet.

And as the owner of the USFL’s Generals, he fought … everybody. Arrogant, impulsive and ill-informed, Trump wasted no time starting to fight with his fellow team owners in the second-tier outfit. He then set his sights on the larger, richer, much more powerful National Football League. He wanted to go head-to-head by playing games in the fall instead of the spring. He wanted to fight for players, for television time, for attention. “We’re definitely at war with the National Football League,” he said just six weeks after he acquired the Generals. He wanted the NFL in the end to take in him and his team, and he didn’t want to wait. And enough of his fellow owners finally capitulated. He sued the NFL—and he lost. “Everyone let Donald Trump take over,” one of the owners said. “It was our death.”

Trump, though, hadn’t even waited for the verdict to shift his focus. Two monthsbeforethe upshot in court, he kickstarted his next fight. It started with two words.

“Dear Ed …”

Mayor Ed Koch. His No. 1 antagonist all decade long.

For several years, Trump had been looking down from his Trump Tower perches, from his office on the 26th floor and from his triplex at the top, sometimes with a telescope, watching broken Wollman Rink sitting dormant in Central Park. The city had been fumbling in its efforts to fix it, a stupor of faulty Freon, damaged coils and construction delays. And it still was nowhere close to being done. Trump sniffed the possibility of a fight that could make him look good.

“I have watched with amazement,” he wrote in a provocation of a letter to Koch, “as New York City repeatedly failed on its promises to complete and open the Wollman Skating Rink. Building the rink, which essentially involves the pouring of a concrete slab over coolant piping, should take no more than four months’ time. To hear that, after six years, itwill now take another two years, is unacceptable to all the thousands of people who are waiting to skate once again at the Wollman Rink. I and all other New Yorkers are tired of watching the catastrophe of Wollman Rink. The incompetence displayed on this simple construction project must be considered one of the great embarrassments of your administration. I fear that in two years there will be no skating at the Wollman Rink, with the general public being the losers.”

He made his pitch. He wanted to take over the rink and make it work. “I don’t want my name attached to losers,” Trump said. “So far the Wollman Rink has been one of the great losers. I’ll make it a winner.”

And he did. The rink opened later in the year to great fanfare in the city and around the country. Beyond the specific accomplishment, though, the entire endeavor let Trump fan his feud with Koch. It was a milepost in their sour, never-ending back-and-forth, Trump calling Koch a “moron” and a “disaster,” Koch calling Trump a greedy bully, all of which only intensified later in the decade when Koch spurned Trump’s demands for more tax breaks for his plot on the Upper West Side.

Trump didn’t get the money from the city that he wanted, but the war alone was a sort of a win—a key slice of the Cohn syllabus, passed down. Reporters, as Trump put it, “love stories about extremes, whether they’re great successes or terrible failures.” All publicity was good publicity, he believed, and more than anything else, as he (with Tony Schwartz) would write inThe Art of the Deal, “the press thrives on confrontation.”

The ‘90s were no different. He fought his first wife through their high-profile split and acrimonious aftermath. He fought his lenders and creditors in a desperate attempt to stay solvent. Most people, perhaps all other people, would have concluded that this was more than enough strife. Not Trump. He picked a fight with casino analyst Marvin Roffman (and lost). He picked a fight with Atlantic City resident Vera Coking (and lost). He engaged in headline-generating legal tit-for-tat with Harry and Leona Helmsley. In 1995, still owing his lenders $115 million of debt he had guaranteed during his late ‘80s shopping spree, Trump teetered on the precipice of personal bankruptcy. Restless and unchastened, he spent the rest of the decade tangling with casino tycoon Steve Wynn in Atlantic City, filing lawsuits, calling him names (“an incompetent”) and attempting (and ultimately succeeding) to prevent him from expanding from Las Vegas into what Trump considered his territory.

“He is a man who will say anything,” Richard D. “Skip” Bronson, Wynn’s righthand man at the time, wrote of Trump in a book about this fight,War at the Shore. “It didn’t matter how baseless or how ridiculous the comments, Trump didn’t need to be proven right in order to win. All he had to do was be a nuisance and stall long enough so that the project would no longer be attractive.” Bronson added: “The whole feud had been a game to him and now that it was over, he was ready to move on.”

***

Over the last two decades, as his officious schtick on “The Apprentice” somehow forged a path into politics, he sniped with celebrities before he did the same with Republicans and Democrats alike.

“Trump is a predator,” Republican strategist Alex Castellanos asserted last spring. “When something enters his world, he either eats it, kills it or mates with it.”

“He is not interested in pleasures such as art and food and friendship, and he doesn’t seem to be motivated by love or creative impulses. The one exception is his drive to create conflict, which brings him the attention of others. When he says he likes to fight—all kinds of fights—he is telling the truth,” Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio told me earlier this year, pointing to a “discomfort” Trump seems to feel in “the moment of peace that follows a victory.”

“Yes,” D’Antonio texted this weekend as the Ukraine news was breaking. “It’s always a matter of a new extreme.”

“He’s more comfortable in an adversarial relationship,” O’Donnell, the former Trump casino exec, said when we talked on Sunday. “So he’s thinking about Mueller one moment, and he’s thinking about Biden the next.”

I asked O’Donnell why he thinks Trump is this way.

He told me to call a psychiatrist.

Read More

#fight #Foreign #looks #Politics

[bluewatsons]

Scott Lillenfeld, Public skepticism of psychology: why many people perceive the study of human behavior as unscientific, 67 Am Psychol 111 (2012)

Abstract

Data indicate that large percentages of the general public regard psychology’s scientific status with considerable skepticism. I examine 6 criticisms commonly directed at the scientific basis of psychology (e.g., psychology is merely common sense, psychology does not use scientific methods, psychology is not useful to society) and offer 6 rebuttals. I then address 8 potential sources of public skepticism toward psychology and argue that although some of these sources reflect cognitive errors (e.g., hindsight bias) or misunderstandings of psychological science (e.g., failure to distinguish basic from applied research), others (e.g., psychology’s failure to police itself, psychology’s problematic public face) reflect the failure of professional psychology to get its own house in order. I offer several individual and institutional recommendations for enhancing psychology’s image and contend that public skepticism toward psychology may, paradoxically, be one of our field’s strongest allies.

Whenever we psychologists dare to venture out- side of the hallowed halls of academia or our therapy offices to that foreign land called the “real world,” we are likely at some point to encounter a puzzling and, for us, troubling phenomenon. Specifically, most of us will inevitably hear the assertion from laypersons that psychology—which those of us within the profession generally regard as the scientific study of behavior, broadly construed—is in actuality not a science. Some outsiders go further, insinuating or insisting that much of modern psychology is pseudoscientific. Keith Stanovich (2009) dubbed psychology the “Rodney Dangerfield of the sciences” (p. 175) in reference to the late comedian famous for joking that “I don’t get no respect.” As Stanovich observed, “Most judgments about the field and its accomplishments are resoundingly negative” (p. 175).

Ironically, some of the harshest criticisms of contemporary psychology’s scientific status have come from within the ranks of psychology itself (see Gergen, 1973; S. C. Hayes, 2004; Lilienfeld, 2010; Lykken, 1968, 1991; G. A. Miller, 2004; Skinner, 1987). Specifically, many scholars within psychology have rued the extent to which (a) excessive reliance on statistical significance testing, (b) the propensity of psychologists to posit vague theoretical entities that are difficult to test, and (c) political correctness and allied trends (see Redding & O’Donohue, 2009, and Tierney, 2011, for recent discussions) have retarded the growth of scientific psychology. Others (e.g., Dawes, 1994; Lilienfeld, Lynn, & Lohr, 2003; Thyer & Pignotti, in press) have assailed the scientific status of large swaths of clinical psychology, counseling psychology, and allied mental health disciplines, contending that these fields have been overly permissive of poorly supported practices. Still others (e.g., S. Koch, 1969; Meehl, 1978) have bemoaned the at times painfully slow pace of progress of psychology, especially in the “softer” domains of social, personality, clinical, and counseling psychology.

Such criticisms have been ego bruising to many of us in psychology. At the same time, they have been valuable and have spurred the field toward much needed reforms, such as greater emphasis on effect sizes and confidence intervals in addition to (or in lieu of) tests of statistical significance (Cohen, 1994; Meehl, 1978) and the development of criteria for, and lists of, evidence-based psycho- logical interventions (Chambless & Hollon, 1998). Yet with the exception of criticisms of mental health practice, most of the concerns voiced by insiders probably overlap only minimally with those of outsiders.

Whatever the sources of the public’s skepticism of psychology’s scientific status, it is clear that such doubts are not new (Benjamin, 2006)—nor is our field’s deep- seated insecurity about how outsiders view it. As Coon (1992) remarked when explaining psychology’s conspicuous omission from Auguste Comte’s mid-19th-century hierarchy of the sciences,

It is well-known that whereas sociology sat at the peak of the Comtian hierarchy, psychology was not even on the pyramid, having been deemed incapable of becoming a science because its subject matter was unquantifiable and its methods mired in a metaphysical morass. Psychology has never quite lived this down and, as psychologists themselves like to say, has never recovered from its adolescent physics envy. (p. 143)

Nevertheless, as a field, we have been reluctant to examine the reasons for the widespread and longstanding public skepticism of psychology (but see Benjamin, 1986, for a useful historical analysis), perhaps because we see little merit in these reasons. Nor have we invested much effort in generating potential solutions for enhancing our field’s public image.

Yet we ignore negative lay perceptions of psychology at our peril. Public skepticism of psychology may render would-be mental health consumers reluctant to seek out our potentially valuable clinical services. Public skepticism may have also contributed indirectly to psychology’s noticeable absence from some funding agencies’ lists of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines (Price, 2011). As a consequence of this lack of recognition, “Psychologists are often not eligible for targeted funding for education, professional training, and re- search that could contribute substantially to achieving STEM goals” (American Psychological Association [APA] 2009 Presidential Task Force Report on the Future of Psychology as a STEM Discipline, 2010, p. 6), such as programs for boosting psychology students’ science and mathematics literacy. In addition, public skepticism of our field may foster the seemingly perpetual misunderstanding of psychological research by politicians, some of whom control the purse strings for federal funding of our research. Prompted in part by attacks from members of Congress against several federally funded studies on psychological topics (e.g., primate responses to inequity, the effects of retirement on marital quality), the APA Science Directorate (2006) prepared a “Self-Defense for the Psychological Scientist” pamphlet that provided researchers with advice for countering misperceptions of their studies by politicians. Certainly, the APA, the Association for Psychological Science (APS), and other professional organizations are right to rebut such misunderstandings when they arise. Yet, with the exception of the APA Science Directorate pamphlet, such efforts are usually reactive rather than proactive. Moreover, these efforts may meet with mixed and at best short-term success, because they largely neglect to appreciate the underlying reasons for policymakers’ skepticism.

Understanding why many nonpsychologists are skeptical of psychology is important for four reasons. First, such knowledge can forearm psychologists not only when field- ing questions from skeptical relatives at holiday dinners (“But isn’t what you’re studying pretty obvious?”) but, more crucially, when encountering resistance about psychological findings from students, therapy clients, and lay- persons. In this way, such knowledge can equip psychologists with intellectual ammunition against misguided criticisms of their field. Second, such knowledge may allow psychologists to anticipate commonplace objections to psychological research from policymakers and help psychologists explain the pragmatic and theoretical significance of their research to outsiders. Third, such knowledge is valuable in its own right, because it sheds light on the psycho- logical sources of resistance to the scientific study of human nature (see also Bloom & Weisberg, 2007, for a discussion of developmental precursors of resistance to science). In this respect, it may help us to grasp why so many educated individuals find psychology to be unscientific. Fourth, such knowledge may aid psychologists in crafting recommendations for counteracting public and policymakers’ misunderstandings of psychology.

In this article, I pose two overarching questions: (a) Are the negative views of psychology’s scientific status held by many outsiders warranted? (b) What are the principal sources of these views? I place primary emphasis on the psychological and sociological reasons for the public’s skepticism of psychology’s scientific status. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that these negative attitudes have deep historical roots, including early 20th-century psychologists’ entanglements with the paranormal and spiritualism, which probably contributed to psychology’s less than lowing public image (Benjamin, 2006; Coon, 1992). I conclude by proposing several individual and institutional recommendations for diminishing the widespread public skepticism of psychology as a scientific discipline. Before doing so, I canvass data on the prevalence of the public’s skeptical attitudes toward psychology’s scientific status, as such data offer us a glimpse of the magnitude of the problem we confront. As we will see, the data also provide us with tantalizing clues to the reasons for many laypersons’ negative attitudes toward our field.

The Prevalence of Public Skepticism of Psychology

One need not look far and wide in the media to find examples of skepticism toward psychology. In 1982, a New York Times editorial subtitled “If This Is Consensus, Psychology Can’t Be Much of a Science” (Wade, 1982, p. A28) reported on a Psychology Today survey that asked 11 psychologists to name the most significant psychological finding of the previous 15 years. The writer concluded wryly, “The results are astonishing: it would seem that there has been none” (Wade, 1982, p. A28). Observing that minimal consensus emerged among the psychologists who were queried, he further contended that this lack of agreement “evinces a serious problem in their [psychologists’] academic discipline” (Wade, 1982, p. A28). Some readers may also recall the time that David Stockman, President Reagan’s Director of the Office of Management and Bud- get, derided psychology as a pseudoscience when justifying his administration’s intention to slash behavioral science funding (Benjamin, 2003). More recently, other readers may remember when Dr. Laura Schlessinger (2000), better known as “Dr. Laura,” proclaimed on her radio show, “Psychology has become a God to the general public. It is not science.” Yet just how representative are these scat- tered assertions? The answer is sobering, at least to those of us in the field: Evidence suggests that serious doubts regarding psychology’s scientific status are relatively wide-spread among the general public.

As Wood, Jones, and Benjamin (1986; see also Benjamin, 1986) noted, several early studies (e.g., Guest, 1948; Withey, 1959) suggested that many laypersons hold negative views of psychology. In contrast, some recent surveys have yielded more encouraging results. Kabatznick (1984) found that only about 25% of individuals, including business people, mall shoppers, and physical and biological scientists, hold mostly negative views of psychologists. Wood et al. surveyed 201 members of the community from four major metropolitan areas (Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Houston, and Washington, DC). They found that 8.5% of participants had neither “favorable” nor “somewhat favor- able” views of psychology; 15.5% disagreed that psychology is a science. Eighty-three percent of respondents, how- ever, believed that daily life experiences afford them adequate training in psychology, suggesting that many lay- persons do not appreciate the crucial role of formal scientific training in understanding human behavior.

Other data suggest more troubling trends. Janda, England, Lovejoy, and Drury (1998) contacted a randomly selected community sample of 141 adults in Virginia, 100 of whom agreed to participate. Participants rated psychology and sociology significantly lower than the five other disciplines examined (biology, chemistry, economics, medicine, and physics) in their “contribution of the discipline to society” (p. 141); the mean score for psychology was 4.94 (SD   1.46) on a 7-point scale. They also rated psychology (M   5.08, SD   1.45), sociology, and economics lower than the other professions in terms of expertise—namely, the difference between what an ostensible expert in the field as opposed to the average person knows about the subject matter. Of 27 spontaneous comments by participants, 25 pertained to psychology, 24 of which were deemed “clearly negative” (p. 141). The authors noted,

Many of the negative comments had as their theme that at least some of what psychologists have to say cannot be believed and that people should rely instead on their common sense. A few respondents had much stronger views, suggesting that psychology was responsible for creating problems for our society. (Janda et al., 1998, p. 141)

In a second study, Janda et al. (1998) surveyed 72 participants who were faculty members at a university in Virginia and asked them to rate the same variables as in the previous study. For the variables of contribution to the discipline (M   5.06, SD   0.96) and expertise (M   4.72, SD   1.24), psychology ranked lower than the other five disciplines (only sociology did not differ significantly from psychology); the authors did not separate out these ratings by area of faculty expertise.

The most recent large-scale survey, the APA Bench- mark Study (Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, 2008), sampled 1,000 adults across the United States. The findings of this important study are multifaceted and give psychologists ample reasons to both cheer and moan. On the relatively positive side, the researchers found that 82% agreed that psychological research helps to improve people’s lives either “somewhat or a lot,” with 16% disagree- ing (see also Mills, 2009).

On the mostly negative side, only a minority of participants appeared to view psychology as scientific. On a forced-choice question, only 30% agreed that “psychology attempts to understand the way people behave through scientific research,” whereas 52% agreed that “psychology attempts to understand the way people behave by talking to them and asking them why they do what they do” (Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, 2008, p. 29). Others voiced doubts about psychology’s scientific standards: 41% believed that psychology is less rigorous than medical research and 31% that it is less rigorous than economic research, with 11% in both cases stating that it is “a lot less rigorous.” Even more striking was the finding that few participants seemed aware of psychology’s impact on myriad applied domains. When offered a choice among multiple professions (e.g., psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers, businesspersons, priests and other religious figures), only 22% selected psychologists when asked which profession is best suited to reducing divorce rates, with 37% selecting religious figures. Only 12% selected psychologists when asked which profession is best suited to addressing physical health problems, such as obesity and smoking (60% selected physicians); 11% selected psychologists when asked which profession is best suited to improving organizational productivity and morale (37% selected businesspersons); and 2% selected psychologists when asked which profession is best suited to understanding economic problems (57% selected economists and 15% selected businesspersons). Most disconcerting of all, 1% (!) selected psychologists when asked which profession is best suited to con- fronting the problems posed by climate change, with 44% selecting engineers and 16% economists. Finally, although 62% agreed that the federal government should spend more money on psychological research, 29% disagreed, with 13% opining that the government should spend “a lot” less money on such research.

Few studies have examined the attitudes of students from nonpsychological disciplines toward psychology. Martin, Sadler, and Baluch (1997) administered attitudinal questions to 193 students drawn from various majors at a British university. They found that engineering students were significantly less likely than students in other fields (e.g., sociology, business, English) to regard psychology as either a science or a social science. On average, students across disciplines tended to view psychology as a social science but not as a genuine science, although the authors did not report means for these comparisons (but see Bartels, Hinds, Glass, and Ryan, 2009, who found no significant differences among students from different majors in the view that psychology is a science).

In sum, survey data indicate that although most members of the public hold generally positive views of psychology’s scientific status, nontrivial minorities do not hold such views. Hefty percentages view psychology as less valuable to society than a number of other disciplines, including physics, business, medicine, and engineering (Janda et al., 1998). Moreover, many laypersons view psychology as largely nonscientific and as lacking in scientific rigor. Consistent with the results of earlier surveys (Wood et al., 1986), the data from the APA Benchmark Study (Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, 2008) suggest that many members of the public appear unaware of the breadth of psychology’s current and potential contributions to society (e.g., Zimbardo, 2004), including its applications to physical health, worker productivity, economic problems, and the environment.

Six Common Criticisms of the Scientific Basis of Psychology and Six Rebuttals

To what extent is the public’s skepticism of our field merited? Perhaps the best means of addressing this question is to examine the most prevalent criticisms of psychology’s scientific basis and to evaluate how well they with- stand careful scrutiny. Here I evaluate the merits of six widely voiced criticisms.

“Psychology Is Merely Common Sense”

As Stanovich (2009) observed, the claim that psychology is scant more than common sense is among the most ubiqui- tous criticisms of our field (see also Chabris & Simons, 2010; Furnham, 1988; Kelley, 1992). Some popular web- sites and newspapers have recently introduced regular col- umns titled “The Duh Files,” consisting of ostensibly ob- vious findings (e.g., that television shows featuring sex are viewed more often than other television shows, that women can tolerate pain better than men can), many of which derive from psychological research (e.g., see http://thebadmomsclub. com/2010/04/from-the-duh-files-women-can-tolerate-pain- more.html; http://haigmedia.blogspot.com/2008/04/more- from-duh-files.html). Moreover, so-called “folk knowl- edge” or “fireside inductions” (Meehl, 1971), such as “opposites attract,” “familiarity breeds contempt,” or “we use only 10% of our brain power,” are omnipresent in popular culture, even though all are contradicted by con- trolled research (Lilienfeld, Lynn, Ruscio, & Beyerstein, 2010).

In recent years, several high-profile radio hosts (e.g., Prager, 2002; Schlessinger, 2000) and writers have sug- gested that common sense should almost always trump scientific findings in psychology and allied fields. In a widely discussed New York Times editorial, influential sci- ence journalist John Horgan (2005) argued that common sense should be an arbiter of the value of scientific theories in numerous disciplines, including psychology and neuro- science. Horgan wrote, “I have also found common sense— ordinary, nonspecialized knowledge and judg- ment—to be indispensable for judging scientists’ pro- nouncements” (p. A34). For Horgan, it is “only sensible to doubt” (p. A34) findings that clash with our intuitions. Even some psychology scholars (e.g., Kluger & Tikochin- sky, 2001; Redding, 1998) have suggested that psycholog- ical findings that contravene popular wisdom should be treated with considerable skepticism.

The view that accurate psychological knowledge is merely common sense is also pervasive in the legal arena. In one striking example, in the 2007 trial of former White House aide I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Judge Reginald Wal- ton disallowed expert testimony on the malleability of human memory (from psychologist Robert Bjork of the University of California at Los Angeles) on the grounds that the fallibility of memory is a “commonplace matter of course” for jurors and that jurors can safely rely on their “common sense” to ascertain how memory works (see Kassam, Gilbert, Swencionis, & Wilson, 2009, p. 552).

Contradicting this position, scores of psychology find- ings violate popular wisdom; in a recent book, my col- leagues and I (Lilienfeld et al., 2010) collected over 300 examples. Here, for example, is a sampling of the preva- lence of psychological misconceptions derived from sur- veys of undergraduates in North American psychology classes, followed in parentheses by the percentage of par- ticipants who endorsed each misconception:

Expressing pent-up anger reduces anger (66%; Brown, 1983).

Strange behaviors are especially likely during full moons (65%; G. W. Russell & Dua, 1983).

People with schizophrenia have multiple personali- ties (77%; Vaughan, 1977).

Human memory operates like a tape recorder (27%; Lenz, Ek, & Mills, 2009).

The polygraph test is a highly accurate detector of lies (45%; Taylor & Kowalski, 2004).

Hypnotized people act like robots and blindly fol- low the suggestions of hypnotists (44%; Green, Page, Rasekhy, Johnson, & Bernhardt, 2006).

On a multiple-choice test, one should stick with one’s original answer, even if a different answer seems correct (75%; Kruger, Wirtz, & Miller, 2005).

Erroneous beliefs about psychology are widespread in the general population too. Surveys of laypersons reveal that (a) about 50% believe that schizophrenia is synonymous with a split personality (H. Stuart & Arboleda-Florez, 2001; Wahl, 1987); (b) 72% believe that subliminal advertising is effective in persuading people to purchase products (Rogers & Smith, 1993); and (c) 40% believe that listening to Mozart’s music enhances intelligence (Chabris & Simons, 2010). These and a host of other data on the prevalence of psychological misconceptions (e.g., Furnham, 2002) call into question the recommendation (e.g., Kluger & Tikochinsky, 2001) to privilege common sense over scientific findings when distinguishing facts from fictions concerning human nature (Lilienfeld, 2010).

“Psychology Does Not Use Scientific Methods”

As many philosophers of science have noted, the belief that there is a monolithic scientific method is almost surely a myth (Bauer, 1992). Still, many philosophers of science concur that a higher order commonality in epistemic approach cuts across most or all scientific disciplines. Specifically, different sciences, despite their surface diversity, are marked by (a) a willingness to root out error in one’s web of beliefs and (b) the implementation of procedural safeguards against confirmation bias—the deeply ingrained tendency to seek out evidence consistent with one’s hypotheses and to deny, dismiss, or distort evidence that is not (Gilovich, 1991; Lilienfeld, 2010; Tavris & Aronson, 2007).

From this perspective, many areas of psychology are every bit as scientific as traditional “hard” sciences, including physics and chemistry. In such domains as social and cognitive psychology, for example, the use of randomized control groups and blinded observations are de rigueur; the same holds for the use of randomized controlled trials, placebo control groups, and blinded designs in clinical psychology, counseling psychology, and allied fields (Kazdin, 2003). Moreover, subdisciplines of psychology that investigate individual differences, such as the study of intellectual aptitudes, vocational interests, personality, and psychopathology, rely on sophisticated statistical methods, including correlational, multiple regression, and structural equation modeling techniques, to distinguish genuine co- variation in nature from “illusory correlation” (Chapman & Chapman, 1967, p. 194)—namely, the perception of statistical associations in their absence. And longitudinal designs are partial controls against retrospective memory bias and hindsight bias, both of which can distort the recollection of previously collected information (Ruspini, 2002).

These and other methodological and statistical procedures are sophisticated, albeit fallible, safeguards against manifold sources of human error, especially confirmation bias (O’Donohue, Lilienfeld, & Fowler, 2007). Blinded observations, for example, prevent investigators’ preconceptions from inadvertently influencing their ratings; and meta-analytic procedures decrease (although by no means eliminate; see Ghaemi, 2009) the chances that investigators’ biases will influence their integration and interpretation of ambiguous bodies of literature.

“Psychology Cannot Yield Meaningful Generalizations Because Everyone Is Unique”

Each of us, even those of us who are monozygotic (identical) twins, is unquestionably unique. Some critics have invoked this uniqueness to argue that psychology cannot yield meaningful generalizations across individuals. For example, in an effort to explain why the self-help program Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) does not help all problem drinkers, New York Times columnist David Brooks (2010) wrote,

Each member of an A.A. group is distinct. Each group is distinct. Each moment is distinct. There is simply no way for social scientists to reduce this kind of complexity into equations and formula [sic] that can be replicated one place after another. (para. 8)

Brooks’s (2010) argument reflects a pervasive misunderstanding. Each person’s uniqueness does not necessarily undermine the efficacy of psychological interventions across most or even virtually all individuals, because unique variables may be largely or entirely irrelevant to the underlying mechanisms of the treatment in question (Hill, 1962). Put in statistical terms, the unique attributes of each individual may not interact statistically with the intervention but may be swamped out by its main effects. This state of affairs holds in medicine: To take merely one example, although all individuals with melanoma are surely unique, 90% or more of cases of this form of skin cancer are largely curable with early surgery (Berwick, 2010).

A similar misconception arises frequently in the con- text of criticisms of psychiatric classification. Many have attacked the use of psychiatric diagnoses, such as schizophrenia, major depression, and obsessive–compulsive disorder, as pigeonholing, because such diagnoses ostensibly disregard crucial differences among individuals within each category (e.g., B. Miller, 2007). But psychiatric diagnoses, like medical diagnoses, do not imply that all indi- viduals within a category are alike in all ways. They imply only that they are alike in one crucial way— namely the core signs and symptoms that constitute the category (Lilienfeld & Landfield, 2008).

“Psychology Does Not Yield Repeatable Results”

How replicable (repeatable) are the results of psychology compared with those of the hard sciences? Larry Hedges (1987) decided to find out. He compared the replicability of findings in particle physics, ostensibly one of the most rigorous domains of physics, with those of several areas in psychology, including the effect of teacher expectations on students’ IQ scores, gender differences in verbal and spatial ability, the effects of desegregation on educational achievement, and the validity of student course evaluations. Using various statistical metrics of consistency, Hedges found that the results of particle physics studies aimed at estimating the mass or lifetime of stable subatomic particles (e.g., the muon) were in general no more consistent that those of psychology. Hedges’s findings suggest that the claim that psychology’s results are far less dependable than those of physics are not supported by data.

Still, we should not overstate the implications of Hedges’s (1987) findings. As Hedges acknowledged, he did not sample randomly within either physics or psychol- ogy, so his results may be unrepresentative of the domains within these broad fields. Nevertheless, Hedges observed that the results of studies in several other domains of physics, including the estimation of chemical and thermo- dynamic constants, appear to be about equally consistent (or inconsistent, depending on whether one chooses to view the glass as half full or half empty) as those within many domains of psychology.

That said, George Howard (1993) pointed out that there is one respect in which psychology is undeniably softer than physics: the ability to generate successful pre- dictions (see also Pigliucci, 2010). Because psychology’s “causal density” (Manzi, 2010, para. 10)—the sheer num- ber of causal variables—tends to be much higher than that of physics, its capacity to produce successful predictions about human actions, such as voting behavior, the recidivism of released prison inmates, or the outcome of psycho- therapy, is usually modest (see Cohen, 1990; Meehl, 1978). Still, even in these and numerous other domains, psychology’s ability to generate successful predictions far exceeds chance (Meyer et al., 2001).

“Psychology Cannot Make Precise Predictions”

Extending Howard’s (1993) argument, some critics have decried the fact that psychology’s predictions are highly probabilistic. Such probabilistic predictions, the argument continues, render psychology unscientific. To take merely one example, an Amazon.com reviewer of a book on psy- chological misconceptions that I coauthored (Lilienfeld et al., 2010) ridiculed the notion that “sociologists, pyscholo- gists [sic], anthropologists, etc [sic] actually are engaged in scientific pursuits because they can hook numbers up to their assertions, even though the conclusions are spurious at best” (Leach, 2010). He seized on the fact that across studies, estimates of the percentage of children who suffer negative psychological aftereffects following divorce range from 15% to 25%. The reviewer continued,

They [the authors] expose the “myth” that divorce has a dileteri- ous [sic] effect on the children of divorced parents. They cite two “well designed” experiments, in fact surveys of such children, one that shows 15% of such children suffer ill effects and another that shows 25% suffer. GOOD GRIEF!! How could such “experi- ments” produce such widely variable results?? If Gallileo [sic] had such results when he rolled his round balls down his inclined planes he certainly would have concluded that his notions of the constancy of gravity were all wet. (Leach, 2010)

The reviewer’s comments imply that any discipline that yields a fairly wide range of results in its predictions is of negligible scientific value. Yet as Paul Meehl (1978) reminded us, statistical associations in psychology, in con- trast to those in physics, tend to be highly stochastological (probabilistic), in part because these associations are often context dependent (see also Cronbach, 1975). For example, the relation between divorce and negative outcomes in children is almost certainly conditional on such variables as the severity of conflict between parents, the degree of psychopathology in one or both parents, the emotional resilience of the children, the race and culture of the family, and so on. Even such figures as the heritability of measured intelligence can vary markedly across samples and popu- lations; for example, intelligence appears to be substan- tially less heritable in poor than in rich samples (Turkheimer, Haley, Waldron, D’Onofrio, & Gottesman, 2003). As a consequence, it is probably impossible to assign firm numerical values to such statistics as the per- centage of children who suffer ill effects following divorce, heritability of IQ, or correlation between impulsivity and physical aggression.

Hempel’s (1942, p. 42; see also Hempel & Oppenheim, 1948) concept of the “explanation sketch” and von Bertalanffy’s (1972) concept of the “explanation in princi- ple” are relevant in this regard. Many psychological theo- ries are useful, albeit incomplete, explanations of natural phenomena. This incompleteness stems in part from the enormous number of moderating variables in any given case, as well as from a lack of knowledge of the values of these variables. As Hempel (1942) observed, the “fill- ing-out [of the explanation sketch] requires further em- pirical research, for which the sketch suggests the direc- tion” (p. 42).

Psychology is far from the only scientific discipline that trades in highly probabilistic predictions. Many sophis- ticated natural sciences, like meteorology and seismology, yield highly probabilistic predictions with wide confidence intervals (Sherden, 1998). This fact does not obviate these disciplines’ scientific status, because some of the operative causal variables are unknown, and the precise levels of many of the operative causal variables that are known are unknown at any given moment. One might reasonably contend that the same principle holds even in more tradi- tionally “deterministic” sciences (see Nisbett, Fong, Leh- man, & Cheng, 1987, p. 630), such as physics and chem- istry. Even Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1995) acknowledged this point:

Physics has given up. We do not know how to predict what would happen in a given circumstance, and we believe now that it is impossible—that the only thing that can be predicted is the probability of different events. (p. 135)

Berscheid (1986) quoted Gombrich (1979) in advanc- ing similar arguments with respect to natural scientists’ ability to generate precise predictions regarding individual events:

I ask you to imagine the response of an expert in thermodynamics if I were to ask him or her when the pot of stew sitting on my stove is going to boil, or the response of a classical physicist if we were to ask him or her to plot the fall of a single snowflake. (p. 284)

The results of the APA Benchmark Study (Penn, Schoen and Berland, Associates, 2008) reviewed earlier suggest that many laypersons do not recognize psychology’s appli- cability to many traditionally nonpsychological domains, such as physical disease and crime prevention. As I also noted earlier, other survey data (e.g., Janda et al., 1998) show that many laypersons and academicians doubt the contribution of psychology to society; most find psychol- ogy considerably less valuable than other disciplines, in- cluding biology, chemistry, physics, and economics.

In all fairness, one could make a reasonable argument that these fields have made more significant and enduring contributions to society than has psychology. Nevertheless, claims that psychology has proven largely useless to soci- ety are clearly unwarranted. The contributions of psycho- logical science to contemporary society are far too myriad to enumerate and could easily occupy an entire issue of American Psychologist, but a handful are worth listing here (also see http://www.decadeofbehavior.org/specialpublications .cfm and Lilienfeld, Lynn, Namy, & Woolf, 2011, and Zimbardo, 2004, for selective summaries):

Operant conditioning techniques derived from the laboratory have proven useful across a variety of domains, including teaching autistic individuals lan- guage, managing the behavior of children with con- duct disorders, and training animals (Grasha, 1997).

Psychology has been at the forefront of the con- struction and validation of aptitude tests used to measure intelligence and other abilities, standard- ized tests for college and graduate admission, and personnel selection tests for employees (Zimbardo, 2004).

Research from applied social psychology has helped to reform eyewitness lineups to minimize error. As a consequence of this research, police departments in the United States are increasingly turning to sequential lineups (in which eyewitnesses are shown one suspect at a time) in lieu of more tradi- tional simultaneous lineups (in which eyewitnesses are shown all suspects at the same time; Wells, Memon, & Penrod, 2006).

Work on the psychology of human memory has helped triers of fact to appreciate that memory is much more malleable than previously assumed and has exerted a substantial impact on legal decisions (Loftus, 1997).

Research by psychologists in social cognition has revolutionized economic models and moved eco- nomics away from standard rational choice models (which assume that people rationally weigh the costs and benefits of financial decisions) to better supported models that acknowledge that financial decision making is influenced by a plethora of bi- ases (such as overweighting losses under certain conditions of risk and underweighting losses under other conditions; Ariely, 2008; Tversky & Kahne- man, 1992).

Perception researchers have helped to improve the safety of vehicles and apparatuses; for example, research showing that lime-yellow objects are easier than red objects to detect in the dark has led to a gradual change in the color of fire engines (Solomon & King, 1995).

Public Skepticism Toward Psychology: Eight Sources

In all likelihood, the sources of public skepticism toward psychology are multifarious. In this section, I offer my candidates for eight prime culprits, although this list is surely not exhaustive. As we will discover, some of these sources reflect cognitive errors or public misunderstandings of science, psychological science in particular. Yet several other sources, especially the first two, point to systemic difficulties within professional psychology itself and un- derscore the need to get our own house in order.

Psychology’s Failure to Police Itself

Like many unjustified beliefs (Lilienfeld et al., 2010), the belief that psychology is nonscientific probably contains a kernel of truth. The general public can hardly be blamed for holding a negative view of certain domains of psychology because our field has been slow to police its own question- able practices (Baker, McFall, & Shoham, 2009; Benjamin, 2003; Tavris, 2003). Indeed, survey data from both psy- chotherapy clients and practitioners suggest that question- able science is thriving in some sectors of psychology, especially clinical and educational practice (Gambrill, 2005; Lilienfeld et al., 2003; see also Lilienfeld, Wood, & Garb, 2006, for survey data on the prevalence of question- able assessment practices).

Studies show that approximately one third of children with autistic disorder receive scientifically unsupported interventions, such as sensory-motor integration therapy and facilitated communication (Levy & Hyman, 2003); most people with clinical depression or panic attacks are receiving scientifically unsupported interventions for these conditions, such as acupuncture, herbal remedies, and yoga (Kessler et al., 2001); about a fourth of licensed clinical psychologists use suggestive techniques, such as repeated prompting and cueing, hypnosis, and guided imagery, to “recover” purported memories of past abuse, even though these techniques are associated with a heightened risk of false memories (Polusny & Follette, 1996; Poole, Lindsay, Memon, & Bull, 1995); and half or more of clinicians who treat patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder or post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) do not use exposure- based therapies, the clear scientific interventions of choice for these conditions (Becker, Zayfert, & Anderson, 2004; Freiheit, Vye, Swan, & Cady, 2004). A recent survey revealed that approximately 90% of psychologists treating PTSD in the Veterans Administration system do not use any of the evidence-based treatments recommended by the U.S. government (M. Russell & Silver, 2007).

Although approximately 3,500 self-help books are published each year, only about 5% of them are subjected to scientific testing (Arkowitz & Lilienfeld, 2006b). Some of these books dispense scientifically grounded advice and have been shown in meta-analyses to be efficacious for anxiety, depression, and other problems (Gould & Clum, 1993; Hirai & Clum, 2006). In contrast, many best-selling self-help books rest on feeble scientific foundations (Rosen, Glasgow, & Moore, 2003). For example, a number of popular self-help books provide readers with checklists that purport to contain specific signatures of symptoms (e.g., giving too much to others in relationships, concerns about body image, frequent daydreaming) for ascertaining whether they were sexually abused in childhood (Woodi- wiss, 2009). Nevertheless, these checklists barely distin- guish sexually abused from nonabused women at better than chance levels (Emery & Lilienfeld, 2004). Other self- help books advance claims that go well beyond available data. Psychologist John Gray’s enormously popular Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus book series (e.g., Gray, 1992), which in aggregate has sold over 40 million copies and was second only to the Bible in book sales during the 1990s, implies that men and women differ so vastly in their communication styles that we can regard them metaphorically as inhabiting different planets (Lilien- feld et al., 2010). Yet meta-analyses show that gender differences in most communicative variables, such as frequency of interruptions, amount of self-disclosure, and sheer verbal productivity, are at best small in mag- nitude (Hyde, 2005; see also Zimmerman, Haddock, & McGeorge, 2001).

Despite the insinuation of dubious science into much of mental health practice, some psychologists, including a number of the field’s chief spokespersons, have resisted the movement to establish criteria and lists for empirically supported therapies (ESTs), treatments that have been dem- onstrated to work in replicated controlled trials (Chambless & Ollendick, 2001). In all fairness, some criticisms of the EST movement may well have merit, such as the assertions that current EST lists (a) probably include some interven- tions that have not been tested against rigorous control conditions (Westen, Novotny, & Thompson-Brenner, 2004; but see Weisz, Weersing, & Henggeler, 2005), (b) rest on an overly simple dichotomization of treatments as either empirically supported or not (Arkowitz & Lilienfeld, 2006a), (c) overemphasize the potency of specific relative to nonspecific effects in psychotherapy (Wampold, 2001), (d) do not identify which features of treatments exert spe- cific therapeutic effects (J. D. Herbert, 2003), (e) empha- size psychological techniques at the expense of underlying principles of therapeutic efficacy (Rosen & Davison, 2003), and (f) neglect to consider the theoretical plausibility of treatments (David & Montgomery, in press). Such criti- cisms do not reflect a rejection of scientific evidence per se or imply that alternative approaches to knowledge (e.g., clinical intuition) are as valuable as science in ascertaining treatment efficacy (see O’Donohue et al., 2007). To the contrary, they are signs of healthy debate in the field regarding the best means of operationalizing evidence- based practice (Westen, Novotny, & Thompson-Brenner, 2005).

Nevertheless, several other criticisms of the EST cri- teria and lists appear to reflect a partial or wholesale rejec- tion of the primacy of scientific evidence in ascertaining therapeutic efficacy. A former president of APA, Ronald Fox (2000), wrote, “Psychologists do not have to apologize for their treatments. Nor is there any actual need to prove their effectiveness” (p. 5). Another ex-APA President, Ronald Levant (2004), argued against ESTs on the grounds that clinical experience and intuition should be accorded equal status with the best available scientific evidence when deciding which psychological treatments to admin- ister: His preferred operationalization of evidence-based practice “does not imply that one component is privileged over another” (p. 223; but see the APA Presidential Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice, 2006). In another cri- tique of ESTs, Bohart (2005) argued that clinical psychol- ogy should make room for “alternative forms” of knowl- edge, including “practical wisdom” (p. 48).

From the perspective of Fox, Levant, Bohart, and others (see also Hunsberger, 2007, and Hoshmand & Pol- kinghorne, 1992), the EST movement is misguided because it places undue constraints on subjective clinical judgment. Moreover, these critics contend, the EST movement im- plies erroneously that scientific evidence should be weighted more heavily than clinical intuition when making treatment decisions. Yet decades of research show that error rates typically increase when practitioners routinely override well-established data with their informal impres- sions (Dawes, Faust, & Meehl, 1989). The critics’ argu- ments overlook the crucial point that science, although imperfect, is our best set of safeguards against manifold sources of human error, including confirmation bias, hind- sight bias, and illusory correlation (O’Donohue et al., 2007). They also neglect the history of medicine, which shows that exclusive reliance on clinical experience has often resulted in suboptimal and at times disastrous prac- tices (Grove & Meehl, 1996).

Still other critics contend that ESTs are inherently limited because all clients are different and therefore can- not be expected to respond equally well to the same treat- ment (e.g., Nordal, 2009). Yet this argument disregards the point that, just as in medicine, some evidentiary basis for generalization to the individual clinical case is surely better than none (Dawes et al., 1989). Science is by no means infallible, but it is our best means of reducing uncertainty in our clinical inferences (McFall, 2000). Moreover, meta- analyses designed to detect moderators of treatment re- sponse are more likely than informal clinical impressions to yield accurate information about who is most likely to benefit from a given intervention.

The Problematic Public Face of Psychology

To most Americans, the public face of psychology is not represented by psychological researchers or scientifically minded psychotherapists (Stanovich, 2009). Instead, to most Americans, psychology’s public face is represented largely by such media personalities as Dr. Phillip McGraw (“Dr. Phil”) and Dr. Laura Schlessinger (who is not even a psychologist; her PhD is in physiology, although she holds a certificate degree in marriage, family, and child counsel- ing), both of whom routinely dispense confident and un- qualified psychological advice on the basis of minimal clinical information (Arkowitz & Lilienfeld, 2009). Dr. Phil has also advanced a number of claims that run counter to scientific evidence (see also Lilienfeld, 2002, for a discussion of Dr. Laura’s questionable views of psycho- logical research and meta-analysis). Among other things, on his television show Dr. Phil has endorsed the polygraph test as a “foolproof” technique for ascertaining whether an individual is a sexual predator (Furedy, 2005) and claimed that electroencephalograph biofeedback is a recommended treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder de- spite a striking paucity of evidence that this treatment is more efficacious than placebo (Barkley, 2006). Yet despite Dr. Phil’s endorsement of several nonscientific claims, in 2006, the APA selected Dr. Phil as its invited speaker to highlight the effective communication of psychology to the public (Meyers, 2006). The APA presented Dr. Phil with a Presidential citation that read, “Your work has touched more Americans than any other living psychol- ogist” (Meyers, 2006, para. 9).

Furthermore, in sharp contrast to the late decades of the 19th and early decades of the 20th centuries, when many prominent psychologists (e.g., John B. Watson, William James, E. L. Thorndike, Mary Whiton Calkins, and Hugo Munsterberg; see Benjamin, 2006) wrote for popular magazines, including Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, and Popular Science Monthly, few scientific psychologists today write for the general public. The number of psychol- ogists authoring articles for popular magazines plummeted by 300% between the 1870s and 1930s and has not re- bounded since (Benjamin, 2006). The primary popular magazine whose title contains the word psychology, Psy- chology Today, has a readership of more than 3 million people. Initiated in 1967, its early issues featured scientif- ically grounded and entertaining articles by eminent re- search psychologists, including Stanley Milgram, Philip Zimbardo, Nathan Azrin, Hans Eysenck, and David Lyk- ken. Yet beginning in the 1970s and extending into the 1980s, Psychology Today shifted in content and style to appeal to a more general audience, featuring articles on such pop psychology topics as love, relationships, work, and happiness, most of them written by nonexperts from a largely nonscientific perspective (Benjamin & Bryant, 1997). Despite a brief and ill-fated attempt by the APA to rehabilitate the magazine in 1983 (Pallak & Kilburg, 1986), Psychology Today’s lack of scientific rigor persists today. Moreover, arguably the lone high-quality psychology mag- azine geared to the general public, Scientific American Mind, which launched in 2004, does not even contain the word psychology in its title or its subtitle (Behavior, Brain Science, Insights), perhaps reflecting a desire to appeal to more scientifically inclined readers.

Confusion Between Psychologists and Psychotherapists

There is reason to believe that many laypersons regard psychology largely as a helping profession, not as a scientific discipline (Hartwig & Delin, 2003). The findings here are more fragmentary, dated, and mixed than we might like, but those that are available support this concern. Using content analyses of essays describing various professions, Webb and Speer (1986) reported that although undergrad- uate students and their parents hold a generally positive view of psychology, they perceive psychologists as ex- tremely similar to psychiatrists (r   .98) and as extremely dissimilar (r   .11) to scientists. In addition, they found that whereas scientists were seen as tough minded and as focused on normality, psychologists were seen as tender minded and as focused on abnormality. In their discussion, Webb and Speer commented on the high prevalence of what Korn and Lewandowski (1981, p. 149) called “the clinical bias”—the erroneous assumption that most psy- chologists are therapists—among members of the general public. Findings by Rosenthal, McKnight, and Price (2001) bear out the existence of this bias, at least among college students. They found that undergraduates estimated that 67% of psychologists are clinical, counseling, or school psychologists when the actual figure was 50%, and that undergraduates estimated that 56% of psychologists are in private practice when the actual figure was 39% (but see Rosenthal, Soper, Rachal, McKnight, & Price, 2004, who did not find evidence for such overestimation).

Potentially contributing to the confusion of psychol- ogy with psychotherapy are findings pointing to “role dif- fusion” (Schindler, Berren, Hannah, Beigel, & Santiago, 1987, p. 372) in the public perception of different thera- peutic professionals. Data show that many, although by no means all (see Wood et al., 1986), laypersons confuse psychologists with psychiatrists, social workers, counsel- ors, and other psychotherapists. In a survey of over 1,000 Americans, Farberman (1997) found that large percentages “cannot tell one mental health professional from another” (p. 128); J. L. Wong (1994) similarly reported that only half of a sample of 286 college students and staff felt that they could distinguish among psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts. Such confusion may stem in part from misleading coverage by the entertainment media. For ex- ample, many films refer to psychologists and psychiatrists interchangeably or blur the boundaries between psycholo- gists and psychiatrists by depicting the former as prescrib- ing medication (Schneider, 1987; von Sydow & Reimer, 1998).

On the one hand, the overestimation of the proportion of psychologists who are psychotherapists, as well as the confusion between psychologists and other mental health professionals, may not necessarily be problematic given survey data that most laypersons perceive psychotherapy as helpful (Hartwig & Delin, 2003; J. L. Wong, 1994). On the other hand, to the extent that laypersons overestimate the proportion of psychologists who are professional helpers, they almost certainly underestimate the proportion of psy- chologists engaged in other pursuits, including basic and applied scientific research.

Since 1996, the APA has embarked on a large-scale public education campaign to destigmatize mental illness, enhance the reputation of psychotherapy in the eyes of the general public, and offer laypersons information about how and where to obtain help for psychological problems (http:// www.apa.org/practice/programs/campaign/background.aspx). There is much to commend in this effort. It is not clear, however, whether this campaign will enhance public un- derstanding of the differences between practicing and re- search psychologists or heighten the public’s appreciation of the value of psychological science. To accomplish these goals, APA may need to prescribe alternative remedies, which I address later (see the Concluding Thoughts and Recommendations section).

Hindsight Bias

As I noted earlier, many laypersons appear to view most psychological knowledge as obvious. Although there are probably several reasons for this belief (Stanovich, 2009), a crucial one on which I focus here is hindsight bias (the “I knew it all along” effect), the tendency to perceive out- comes as foreseeable once we know them. In the case of psychological knowledge, hindsight bias often takes the form of the “feeling of obviousness” (L. Y. Wong, 1995, p. 504). Once we learn of a psychological finding, it fre- quently appears self-evident (Gage, 1991; Kelley, 1992; Myers, 1994). Because we humans are meaning-seeking organisms (Shermer, 2002), we almost always manage to concoct a plausible explanation of a psychological finding after the fact.

In a clever study, Baratz (1983) asked undergraduates to read 16 pairs of statements describing psychological findings and asked them to evaluate how likely they would have been to predict each finding; each pair consisted of a finding and its opposite. For example, participants read, “People who go to church regularly tend to have more children than people who go to church infrequently,” but they also read, “People who go to church infrequently tend to have more children than people who go to church reg- ularly”; they read, “Single women express more distress over their unmarried status than single men do,” but they also read, “Single men express more distress over their unmarried status than single women do” (see Gage, 1991, p. 14). Across the board, most participants rated each statement as what “I would have predicted.” Baratz’s find- ings suggest that many people find psychological findings commonsensical only because they judge them retrospec- tively as obvious once they learn about them (see L. Y. Wong, 1995, for comparable findings in the domain of educational psychology research).

The Illusion of Understanding

To many people, psychology seems “easier” than physics, chemistry, and other hard sciences. Why? Frank Keil and his colleagues (Keil, Lockhart, & Schlegel, 2010, p. 4) asked children to rate the difficulty of several questions from five disciplines—physics, chemistry, biology, eco- nomics, and psychology—that a sample of adults had ranked previously as equally difficult to answer. Questions from physics included “How does a top stay spinning upright?” and “Why does light travel faster than sound?” whereas those from psychology included “Why is it hard to

understand two people talking at once?” and “Why can children learn new languages more easily than adults?” Despite these questions’ being matched for difficulty by adults, children in the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth grades (but not kindergarteners) rated psychological phe- nomena easier to explain than those in the natural sciences and, in many cases, economics. It is interesting that, in a second study, children from kindergarten to the eighth grade, but not adults, found questions within psychology that deal with neuroscience (e.g., “How does your brain know when to have you wake up?”) more difficult than those in other psychological domains, such as personality (e.g., “Why do some people sometimes lie about something bad they did?”) and cognitive psychology (e.g., “How do you recognize yourself in the mirror?”; p. 6). So even within psychology, children perceive domains closer to hard sciences (namely, neuroscience) as more difficult than those closer to soft sciences.

As Keil and his colleagues (2010) observed, there is probably no objective benchmark for ascertaining which scientific disciplines are more inherently difficult than oth- ers. Yet it is intriguing that even preschool children display a pronounced bias toward perceiving psychological phe- nomena as easier to explain than other sciences. The rea- sons for this proclivity are unclear, although Keil and collaborators conjectured that psychological phenomena may seem easier because they are (a) more subjectively immediate and (b) easier to control. With respect to imme- diacy, we have direct contact with our behaviors, thoughts, memories, and emotions, whereas we do not have such contact with our genes, let alone our subatomic particles. We also have a great deal of experience interacting with others and with anticipating and interpreting their behav- iors. As a consequence, by drawing on the familiarity heuristic (W. Herbert, 2010), we may come to confuse familiarity with comprehensibility. With respect to control- lability, we can exert direct influence over our actions and often over our thoughts and feelings. In turn, we may confuse the ability to control a phenomenon with the ability to understand it (Keil et al., 2010).

Greedy Reductionism

We humans are “cognitive misers” (Fiske & Taylor, 1984, p. 12; see also Ruscher, Fiske, & Schnake, 2000, p. 241, for a discussion of humans as “motivated tacticians”), meaning that we tend to seek explanatory simplicity. This propensity is by and large adaptive, as it helps us to make sense of our often confusing everyday worlds. But it can lead us astray when it causes us to oversimplify reality. One likely man- ifestation of cognitive miserliness is a preference for par- simonious explanations. But as the scientific guideline of Occam’s razor reminds us, we should generally select the simplest explanation only when it accounts for the evidence as well as alternative explanations (Uttal, 2003).

In this regard, the past several decades have witnessed a pronounced increase in the popularity of reductionist explanations of human behavior, especially those striving to reduce all psychological phenomena to neuroscience (Lilienfeld, 2007). The seductive appeal of reductionist explanations probably stems in part from their seeming simplicity (Jacquette, 1994). In turn, such explanations have probably fostered the impression in the eyes of edu- cated laypersons that neuroscience is more “scientific” than psychology. Weisberg, Keil, Goodstein, Rawson, and Gray (2008, p. 471) showed that merely inserting the words “brain scans indicate” (along with a few phrases of accom- panying neuroscientific explanation) into logically flawed interpretations of psychological findings can render under- graduates— but not neuroscience experts—significantly more likely to find these interpretations persuasive (see also McCabe & Castel, 2008). If such findings prove general- izable to the general public, they suggest that brain imaging findings may often be held with a certain reverence in the minds of laypersons.

Critical to understanding the perils of a neurocentric view of psychology—one that regards neuroscience as inherently the most important level of explanation for un- derstanding behavior—is the distinction between constitu- tive and eliminative reductionism, the latter termed greedy reductionism by Daniel Dennett (1995, p. 82). Constitutive reductionism, a relatively noncontroversial credo sub- scribed to by virtually all scientific psychologists, posits only that all “mind stuff” is ultimately “brain stuff” (or at least central nervous system stuff) at some level and that everything mental is ultimately material. In contrast, the far more radical program of eliminative reductionism proposes that the neural level of explanation will eventually gobble up all higher levels of explanation, including the psycho- logical, much like a greedy computerized Pac-Man canni- balizing everything in its path. From the standpoint of the eliminative reductionist, psychology will eventually be ren- dered superfluous as a subject matter, because advances in neuroscience will one day allow scientists to translate all thoughts, emotions, and behaviors into strictly neural lan- guage.

In accord with the tenets of eliminative reductionism, some skeptics of psychology’s scientific status have gone further, arguing that this field affords few insights that cannot be reduced to more fundamental levels of analysis. As G. A. Miller (2010) observed in a provocative analysis brimming with dozens of vivid examples, such pronounce- ments have become customary in the popular press. As one illustration, Miller cited a New York Times op-ed piece on Abraham Lincoln’s depression: “Lincoln suffered from recurring episodes of what would now be called depression from early childhood onward. In light of what we know today, an effort to link them to emotional disappointments rather than to a chemical imbalance seems quaint rather than scientific” (Schreiner, 2006, p. A19). The reasoning here implies that depression is necessarily better viewed at the level of a chemical imbalance than at the level of a psychological dysfunction. Even setting aside nagging sci- entific questions concerning the chemical imbalance model of depression (see Kirsch, 2010; Lacasse & Leo, 2005), the notion that depression is a chemical imbalance at one level of analysis in no way precludes the possibility that it is a psychological disorder at a different level (Lilienfeld, 2007).

Endorsements of eliminative reductionism (see also Guze, 1989) also neglect the possibility of emergent prop- erties, higher level capacities that result from interactions among lower order elements (Chalmers, 2006; Meehl & Sellars, 1956). Traffic jams and crystals, for example, are emergent phenomena that cannot be reduced entirely to their lower order constituents: The whole differs from the sum of its parts (Calvin, 1996). Even if emergent properties do not exist in psychology—and some scholars doubt they do (Churchland, 1984)—we are still a long way away from a full explanatory reduction of human psychological capac- ities to the neural level of analysis. For the foreseeable future, the psychological level of explanation will offer indispensable contributions to the scientific understanding of thinking, feeling, and acting (Lilienfeld, 2007).

As Kendler (2005) observed, this level is also likely to be the most fruitful for the lion’s share of psychological interventions. He noted that brain scans are of scant help when counseling a client who is struggling with a potential career change from scientific research to the priesthood. Instead, constructs at the psychological level of explana- tion, such as vocational interests, personality traits, per- ceived social pressures, and emotional conflicts, are far more germane to treatment planning in such a case.

The Scientific Impotence Excuse

As we have seen, some psychological findings conflict sharply with our commonsense intuitions: Similars, not opposites, tend to attract; when it comes to bystander intervention in emergencies, there is typically danger rather than safety in numbers; and expressing pent-up anger typ- ically increases, not decreases, hostility (Lilienfeld et al., 2010). When people are confronted with findings that chal- lenge their preconceptions, they occasionally are willing to forsake their beliefs. But more often than not, they respond by dismissing a scientific approach to the questions at hand, a reaction that Munro (2010) called the scientific impotence excuse.

In two investigations, Munro (2010) presented un- dergraduates with brief descriptions of studies that either confirmed or disconfirmed their stereotypes about homo- sexuality—specifically, their beliefs about whether ho- mosexuality is a mental illness. When participants read information that contradicted their preexisting beliefs, they became more likely to conclude that scientific methods are inadequate for addressing questions concerning homosex- uality. Moreover, this belief in scientific impotence gener- alized to an unrelated topic, namely, whether science can inform the question of whether the death penalty should be retained. So, participants whose beliefs were disconfirmed appeared to become more skeptical of scientific methods in general. If these results extend to other psychological do- mains, they raise the possibility that when scientific find- ings run counter to folk psychological beliefs, many people may conclude that scientific approaches are simply not up to the task of shedding light on human nature.

Failure to Distinguish Basic From Applied Research

Between 1975 and 1989, Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire became famous—or infamous—for his Golden Fleece Awards, satirical “honors” bestowed on researchers who he felt had flagrantly wasted taxpayers’ money (Ben- son, 2006; Shaffer, 1977). A number of Golden Fleece recipients were psychologists who had obtained federal funding for research that Proxmire deemed risible. Some might reasonably contend that a few of Proxmire’s awards were well deserved, such as a study of how long male drivers honked their horns at women wearing miniskirts of differing lengths as a function of drivers’ stress levels (see Atkinson, 1984, for a discussion).

Yet several other Golden Fleece Awards (see Hunt, 1999, for other Congressional misunderstandings of psy- chological research) reflected a widespread logical error: a failure to distinguish basic research—research designed to uncover fundamental scientific principles—from applied research—research designed to solve practical, real-world problems (Hoffman & Deffenbacher, 1993). Basic research frequently entails the use of scientific models, which ex- amine phenomena that are not the focus of interest per se but that allow investigators to isolate potential causal vari- ables of interest.

When laypersons or politicians neglect to appreciate the distinction between basic and applied research, they may conclude erroneously that researchers are interested in the topic of study per se rather than using this topic as a model system for investigating deeper psychological prin- ciples. This error, in turn, can mislead them into concluding that potentially important psychological research is frivo- lous. In 1980, Proxmire bestowed the Golden Fleece on psychologist Robert Kraut for his work on “why bowlers smile” (Kraut, 2006, para. 1; Kraut & Johnston, 1979). In fact, Kraut was not interested in the smiling behavior of bowlers (or hockey fans and pedestrians, whom he also studied) themselves. Instead, he used bowlers, among other groups, as real-world models for understanding the effects of social stimuli on emotional expressions. Ironically, Kraut and Johnston’s (1979) study, which demonstrated that smiling often serves more of a communicative than an emotional function, is a citation classic (an article cited more than 100 times in the literature) that helped to give birth to the now burgeoning field of evolutionary psychol- ogy (Diener, 2006). As another example, in 1988, Proxmire awarded the Golden Fleece to psychologist Michael Dom- jan for his now classic work on the mating habits of Japanese quail (Domjan & Hall, 1986). But Domjan was not interested in the reproductive habits of Japanese quail per se; he instead used quail as a model species to better understand the mechanisms of classical (Pavlovian) condi- tioning of sexual behavior in general, a topic of consider- able theoretical and practical interest.

More recently, in 2003, the research of psychologist J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University drew the ire of 20 Republican members of Congress. Bailey’s $147,000 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant study, which had

already been approved following peer review, asked par- ticipants to observe sexually arousing film stimuli and was intended to investigate the hypothesis that females’ sexual arousal is less tied to their sexual orientation than males’. Congressman Dave Weldon (R, Florida) complained that NIH was using its “money to pay women to watch pornog- raphy” (“Lawmakers Assail NIH Funding for Sexual- Arousal Conference,” 2003, para. 10), and the other 19 representatives similarly demanded an explanation for why NIH was funding studies involving salacious films (“Uni- versity Investigates Ethics of Sex Researcher,” 2003). Put- ting aside questions concerning the scientific merits of Bailey’s research, such criticisms miss the point: that Bai- ley was using sexually arousing stimuli as a means of testing basic questions regarding sex differences in sexual arousal— differences that may hold significant implications for high-risk behaviors and their prevention. In July of 2003, a bill to strip funding for Bailey’s study and three others was defeated in Congress by the razor-thin margin of 212 to 210.

Concluding Thoughts and Recommendations

Although most laypersons view psychology at least some- what positively, sizeable minorities do not (Benjamin, 1986), and many doubt its scientific status. Survey data suggesting improvement in the public opinion of psychol- ogy over the past few decades are encouraging, although such data indicate that our field still faces an uphill battle in the effort to assuage widespread doubts among laypersons. Many people continue to have a poor understanding of psychology’s scientific worth, especially its contributions to society and applicability to a broad array of everyday problems (Janda et al., 1998; Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, 2008). Regrettably, Wood et al.’s (1986) 25- year-old conclusion that most laypersons have “virtually no understanding of the impact of psychology on their lives” (p. 949) seems to hold today.

Some of the public skepticism toward psychology’s scientific status is unwarranted and is rooted in misunder- standings of both scientific epistemology and psychologi- cal knowledge. In particular, such skepticism largely ne- glects the fact that psychology relies on scientific methods—systematic tools designed to compensate for confirmation bias—and has generated a host of replicable findings in sensation and perception, learning theory, mem- ory, emotion, social psychology, and clinical psychology, among other domains. In these subdisciplines, psychology has yielded helpful applications that many of us take for granted, such as the safety of appliances and vehicles, aptitude testing, political polling, eyewitness identification, financial decision making, and effective psychotherapy (Zimbardo, 2004).

What Are We Doing Wrong?

Still, psychologists should curb the facile temptation to place all of the blame for their field’s tarnished image on widespread public misunderstanding. At least some of psychology’s negative reputation appears to be deserved, as large pockets of the field, especially those pertaining to psychotherapy, remain mired in unscientific practices (Dawes, 1994; Lilienfeld et al., 2003). As Meehl (1993) noted, professional psychology has failed to “clean up [its] clinical act and provide . . . students with role models of scientific thinking” (p. 729). Moreover, the continued re- sistance on the part of some of our field’s leaders to adopting evidence-based practices may hamper efforts to enhance psychology’s blemished public image. Perhaps understandably, many laypersons are less familiar with psychology’s scientific accomplishments (Zimbardo, 2004) than with its highly visible public embarrassments, such as the recovered memory debacle of the 1990s, which spot- lighted many psychologists’ use of suggestive and poten- tially harmful therapeutic techniques (Garry & Hayne, 2006). Moreover, the public face of psychology is often represented not by psychological scientists but by flashy media personalities who have routinely put forth psycho- logical claims that have minimal scientific grounding (Stanovich, 2009).

Exacerbating the problem, many psychological re- searchers, practitioners, and teachers have been reluctant to devote any of their time to disseminating good science to the public, combating bad science, and correcting miscon- ceptions of their field (Benjamin, 2003). When it comes to confronting the threats posed by questionable science or pseudoscience, academicians have typically stayed out of the fray, preferring to concentrate on their research, grant seeking, and teaching (Lilienfeld, 1998). This reluctance to confront pseudoscience in the public arena is understand- able given the mounting pressures on university and col- lege psychologists to publish peer-reviewed articles and obtain federal funding, but it has come at a dear cost: their field’s poor public image.

All of this leads to several concluding recommenda- tions, some individual, others institutional. The two sets of recommendations are by no means mutually exclusive, but because they differ in emphasis and strategy, I separate them here.

Individual-Level Recommendations

First, psychologists must play a more active role in edu- cating laypersons about their discipline’s scientific side and in confronting their discipline’s smaller but more publicly conspicuous nonscientific side (see Olson, 2009, for rec- ommendations for communicating science to laypersons). To do so, they must be willing to venture out occasionally of their laboratories, therapy rooms, and classrooms to communicate scientific psychology to the public. For ex- ample, perhaps because pharmacological companies are blessed with much larger advertising budgets than psychol- ogists, the public probably underestimates the efficacy of evidence-based psychotherapies relative to medications for depression and several other conditions (Nordal, 2010). Clinical psychologists therefore have a valuable role to play in educating mental health consumers about the sub- stantial research base for psychotherapy.

Just as important, within academia, administrators and department chairs must be willing to reward, not punish, faculty who take the time and effort to disseminate psy- chological science to the public. Although there are few formal data in this regard, most suggest that a negative attitude toward popularization is prevalent in academia. In a national survey of 287 social and physical scientists (percentages for these two groups were not separated in the analyses), Dunwoody and Ryan (1985) found that 67% agreed that “scientists are not rewarded within the scientific community for having their work reported in the popular media” (p. 32), and 47% agreed that “scientists who allow their work to be publicized in the popular media are more likely to be criticized than praised by their peers” (p. 32). More recently, in their critique of the “anti-popularization sentiment” (p. 77) common in the science world, Mooney and Kirshenbaum (2009) offered a number of examples of the “Carl Sagan phenomenon,” in reference to the eminent Cornell University astrophysicist, science writer, and me- dia personality who was “persecuted during his lifetime by much of the scientific establishment for being too much of a ‘popularizer’” (p. 77).

Still, there are encouraging signs that the trend away from the popularization of psychology by psychological scientists may gradually be reversing. In recent years, a number of prominent academic psychologists, such as Ste- ven Pinker (2002), Daniel Gilbert (2006), Daniel Ariely (2008), and Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons (Chabris & Simons, 2010), have written successful trade books for the general public that portray psychological findings in an accurate and engaging fashion. Perhaps the tide is turning, but it is too early to tell.

Second, when explaining psychological findings to the general public, psychologists must remain cognizant of the fact that many misconstruals of the subject matter stem from what we might term understandable misunderstand- ings. Because psychology is part and parcel of our every- day lives and is subjectively immediate (Keil et al., 2010), many laypersons assume it to be intuitively obvious. Yet such intuitiveness is frequently deceptive, because it may be associated with various illusions of understanding marked by the sense that we comprehend things better than we do (Chabris & Simons, 2010). For example, Rozenblit and Keil (2002; see also Lawson, 2006) found that many people believe they understand the workings of everyday appliances, such as toilets, zippers, and sewing machines, far better than they actually do. If such findings generalize to the human mind, they may suggest a similar tendency on the part of many laypersons to be much more confident in their understanding of basic psychological principles than is warranted.

In any case, when attempting to rebut criticisms of our work in the public square, we must recognize that merely pointing out the merits of our research projects will often be insufficient. We must also be prepared to acknowledge the understandable bases for skepticism of our investiga- tions, such as the views that psychology is mostly com- monsense knowledge or usually trivial in real-world im- portance. For example, when confronting policymakers’ claims that “this is all obvious,” we may need to explain that many psychological findings seem self-evident but only in retrospect, and remind them of the scores of coun- terintuitive results yielded by psychological research. When addressing concerns that our findings are exceed- ingly unlikely to be pragmatically useful, we may need to remind policymakers that basic psychological research on learning, memory, sensation, perception, and the like has led to unanticipated benefits across a host of applied do- mains, and we should be prepared to illustrate this point with easily grasped examples. Or when responding to com- plaints that our research is frivolous, we must be prepared to explain the distinction between basic and applied re- search and to note that psychological scientists frequently use model systems as vehicles for understanding much broader psychological phenomena. More generally, rather than reflexively viewing policymakers’ mistrust of psycho- logical research as stemming from “anti-intellectualism” (e.g., Shaffer, 1977, p. 814), it may be more profitable to conceive of it as a gap in understanding regarding how psychological scientists approach, obtain, and apply knowledge. This gap, it is worth noting, is attributable in part to our field’s collective failure to effectively articulate the methods and fruits of psychological science to the public.

Third, although thoughtful debates concerning the best means of operationalizing evidence-based practice (J. D. Herbert, 2003; Westen et al., 2005) should continue, practitioners within the applied fields of psychology (e.g., clinical, counseling, school) would be well advised to be- come less tolerant of pseudoscience and more willing to ground their practices in replicated research evidence. Per- haps running counter to the stereotypes of some academi- cians, surveys of practicing clinicians offer reason for cautious optimism in this regard. Such surveys reveal that large pluralities or even majorities are favorable to the concept of evidence-based treatments, including manual- ized therapies, and to incorporating at least some of them in their practices (e.g., Addis & Krasnow, 2000; McGovern, Fox, Xie, & Drake, 2004), although many are not per- suaded that they can readily apply these interventions to their everyday clinical work. Therefore, clinical researchers must be willing to spend more of their time communicating their findings regarding therapeutic efficacy to practitioners and to addressing practitioners’ concerns regarding the transportability of psychotherapies to real-world practice settings. If they were to do so, they might often find a more receptive audience than they anticipated.

Institutional-Level Recommendations

These individual-level recommendations, although impor- tant, are probably not sufficient to address the problem of public skepticism toward psychology’s scientific basis. An APA Presidential Task Force recently outlined several rec- ommendations for enhancing the “recognition of psychol- ogy as a science and as a STEM discipline” (APA 2009 Presidential Task Force on the Future of Psychology as a STEM Discipline, 2010, p. 15), including public education campaigns to better inform laypersons regarding the ap-

plied value of psychological science, capitalizing on news events that highlight psychology’s contributions to society, increasing collegial interchanges between psychologists and scientists in traditional STEM disciplines, and expand- ing advocacy efforts to include psychology in STEM train- ing programs. I echo all of these recommendations but wish to go further in proposing that our professional organiza- tions take the lead in bringing about three more fundamen- tal changes in the profession.

First, APA, APS, and other major professional orga- nizations must step up their efforts to include psychological scientists—including researchers, scientifically rigorous practitioners, and teachers—in regular media coverage. As it now stands, television stations typically turn not to re- search psychologists or scientifically minded psychothera- pists but to physicians (e.g., Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Dr. Drew Pinsky) or pop psychologists to comment on psychological news stories. To the extent that we can encourage scientif- ically informed psychologists to serve as media point per- sons for psychology news stories, the public perception of our discipline as a science may be markedly enhanced.

Second, professional organizations must help the gen- eral public to better grasp the distinctions between psychol- ogy and allied professions. As noted earlier, data on role diffusion (Schindler et al., 1987) suggest that the public often perceives psychology as similar to psychiatry and related practice fields and does not appreciate psychologi- cal science’s unique contribution to alleviating mental health ailments or broader societal problems. In response to these misperceptions, professional organizations must con- tinually underscore the point that trained psychologists are virtually unparalleled among rival professions in one cru- cial respect: our ability to apply scientific reasoning and rigorous methodology to assessing, evaluating, and allevi- ating human problems, whether they be mental health difficulties, such as depression or anxiety disorders, or broader societal difficulties, such as prejudice or blind obedience (see also N. Hayes, 1996; McFall, 1991). To do so, professional organizations must focus squarely on mak- ing clearer distinctions among helping professions and whenever possible avoid blurring them. For the past 15 years or so, APA has made achieving prescriptive authority a major goal for practicing psychologists. The merits or demerits of this proposal aside (see McGrath, 2010, and R. B. Stuart & Heiby, 2007, for arguments, both pro and con), APA must ensure that in pursuing prescription priv- ileges and other practice rights, it does not inadvertently cloud the already murky distinctions among mental health professions, especially psychology and psychiatry, in the public eye.

Third, professional psychological organizations need to be much clearer about not only what they are for, but also what they are against. By doing so, they can help to forge a more cohesive scientific identity in the public eye (see also Dawes, 1995, on the distinction between horta- tory and minatory standards of psychological practice). Specifically, APA, APS, and other organizations need to play a more active public role in distancing themselves from the plethora of therapeutic and assessment fads that are either poorly supported by scientific evidence or that blatantly contradict such evidence (Dawes, 1994; Lilien- feld et al., 2003). The social psychological literature on persuasion reminds us that by establishing unambiguous comparisons to alternatives (“We support X, but we oppose Y”; see Pratkanis, 2007), organizations can sharpen their message. In the case of psychology, professional organiza- tions would enhance their scientific credibility—and more important, ultimately enhance the perceived legitimacy of psychology at large—by adopting not only visible public stances for science but also visible public stances against questionable science and blatant nonscience.

Final Thoughts: Viewing Public Skepticism as Our Ally

Rather than viewing public skepticism of psychology as our enemy, we might instead best regard it as our stalwart ally. Such skepticism may allow us to anticipate potential objections to our research by laypersons and policymakers and to make a more compelling case for our field’s long- term social import. In this way, we can harness public skepticism as an opportunity to help us become more effective communicators of psychological science. A better understanding of the reasons for the public skepticism of psychology may also afford us a valuable window into the sources of deep-seated misconceptions regarding human nature and point us toward educational interventions to alleviate them.

Finally, public skepticism of psychology may provide us with a much needed impetus toward getting our clinical house in order and winnowing out the elements of our profession that are scientifically dubious, some of which have tarnished our hard-fought credibility. In this respect, public skepticism may be an imperfect but nonetheless informative barometer of our field’s scientific status. Just as former New York City Mayor Ed Koch (1981) became famous for asking his constituents “How’m I doing?” as a means of gauging his performance, we as a field should continually be asking the general public “How are we doing?” and be prepared to take their critical feedback to heart if their answers are not to our liking.

References

Addis, M. E., & Krasnow, A. D. (2000). A national survey of practicing psychologists’ attitudes toward psychotherapy treatment manuals. Jour- nal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 68, 331–339. doi:10.1037/ 0022-006X.68.2.331

American Psychological Association, Presidential Task Force on Evi- dence-Based Practice. (2006). Evidence-based practice in psychology. American Psychologist, 61, 271–285. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.61.4.271

American Psychological Association, 2009 Presidential Task Force on the Future of Psychology as a STEM Discipline. (2010). Psychology as a core science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disci- pline. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Re- trieved from http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2010/08/stem-report .pdf

American Psychological Association, Science Directorate. (2006). Pre- pare now to prevail if your research is attacked: Self-defense for the psychological scientist. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/about/gr/science/advocacy/2006/self-defense.aspx

Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions. New York, NY: Harper-Collins.

Arkowitz, H., & Lilienfeld, S. O. (2006a, April/May). Psycho- therapy on trial. Scientific American Mind, 17, 42–49. doi:10.1038/ scientificamericanmind0406-42

Arkowitz, H., & Lilienfeld, S. O. (2006b, October/November). Do self- help books help? Scientific American Mind, 17, 90–91. doi:10.1038/ scientificamericanmind1006-78

Arkowitz, H., & Lilienfeld, S. O. (2009, October/November). The “Just do it” trap: Why Dr. Phil and Dr. Laura won’t solve your problems. Scientific American Mind, 20, 64–65. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican mind0409-64

Atkinson, R. C. (1984, January 7). Psychology and the Golden Fleece. Address presented at the annual conference of the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, Clearwater Beach, FL.

Baker, T. B., McFall, R. M., & Shoham, V. (2009). Current status and future prospects of clinical psychology: Toward a scientifically princi- pled approach to mental and behavioral health care. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9, 67–103.

Baratz, D. (1983). How justified is the “obvious” reaction? Dissertation Abstracts International, 44/02B, 6448. (UMI No. DA 8314435)

Barkley, R. (2006, December). Dr. Phil and accuracy. Monitor on Psy- chology, 37(11), 4.

Bartels, J. M., Hinds, R. M., Glass, L. A., & Ryan, J. J. (2009). Percep- tions of psychology as a science among university students: The influ- ence of psychology courses and major of study. Psychological Reports, 105, 383–388.

Bauer, H. H. (1992). Scientific literacy and the myth of the scientific method. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Becker, C. B., Zayfert, C., & Anderson, E. (2004). A survey of psychol- ogists’ attitudes towards and utilization of exposure therapy for PTSD. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 42, 277–292. doi:10.1016/S0005- 7967(03)00138-4

Benjamin, L. T. (1986). Why don’t they understand us? A history of psychology’s public image. American Psychologist, 41, 941–946. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.41.9.941

Benjamin, L. T. (2003). Why can’t psychology get a stamp? Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 5, 443– 454. doi:10.1023/A: 1026071631669

Benjamin, L. T. (2006, May). Why are we keeping psychological science a secret? Invited address at the annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science, New York, NY.

Benjamin, L. T., Jr., & Bryant, W. H. M. (1997). A history of popular psychology magazines in America. In W. G. Bringmann, H. E. Lu ̈ck, R. Miller, & C. E. Early (Eds.), A pictorial history of psychology (pp. 585–593). Carol Stream, IL: Quintessence.

Benson, E. S. (2006). All that’s gold does not glitter. APS Observer, 19(6), 12–14.

Berscheid, E. (1986). Mea culpas and lamentation: Sir Francis, Sir Isaac, and “The Slow Progress of Soft Psychology.” In R. Gilmour & S. Duck (Eds.), The emerging field of personal relationships (pp. 267–287). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Berwick, D. (2010). Nature or nurture—which is responsible for mela- noma? Skin Cancer Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.skincancer .org/nature-or-nurture-which-is-responsible-for-melanoma.html

Bloom, P., & Weisberg, D. S. (2007). Childhood origins of adult resis- tance to science. Science, 316, 996–997. doi:10.1126/science.1133398 Bohart, A. C. (2005). Evidence-based psychotherapy means evidence- informed, not evidence-driven. Journal of Contemporary Psychother-

apy, 35, 39–53. doi:10.1007/s10879-005-0802-8 Brooks, D. (2010, June 28). Bill Wilson’s gospel. The New York Times.

Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/opinion/29brooks

.html Brown, L. T. (1983). Some more misconceptions about psychology

among introductory psychology students. Teaching of Psychology, 10,

207–210. doi:10.1207/s15328023top1004_4 Calvin, W. H. (1996). The cerebral code: Thinking a thought in the

mosaics of the mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chabris, C., & Simons, D. (2010). The invisible gorilla: And other ways

our intuitions deceive us. New York, NY: Crown. Chalmers, D. (2006). Strong and weak emergence. In P. Clayton & P.

Davies (Eds.), The re-emergence of emergence: The emergentist hy-

Month 2011 ● American Psychologist

15

pothesis from science to religion (pp. 244–254). Oxford, England:

Oxford University Press. Chambless, D. L., & Hollon, S. (1998). Defining empirically supported

therapies. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 66, 7–18.

doi:10.1037/0022-006X.66.1.7 Chambless, D. L., & Ollendick, T. H. (2001). Empirically supported

psychological interventions: Controversies and evidence. Annual Re-

view of Psychology, 52, 685–716. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.685 Chapman, L. J., & Chapman, J. P. (1967). Genesis of popular but erro- neous diagnostic observations. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 72,

193–204. doi:10.1037/h0024670 Churchland, P. M. (1984). Matter and consciousness. Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press. Cohen, J. (1990). Things I have learned (so far). American Psychologist,

45, 1304–1312. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.45.12.1304 Cohen, J. (1994). The earth is round (p   .05). American Psychologist, 49,

997–1003. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.49.12.997 Coon, D. J. (1992). Testing the limits of sense and science: American

experimental psychologists combat spiritualism, 1880 –1920. American

Psychologist, 47, 143–151. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.47.2.143 Cronbach, L. J. (1975). Beyond the two disciplines of scientific psychol-

ogy. American Psychologist, 30, 116–127. doi:10.1037/h0076829 David, D., & Montgomery, G. (in press). The scientific status of psycho- therapies: A new evaluative framework for evidence-based psychoso-

cial interventions. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice. Dawes, R. M. (1994). House of cards: Psychology and psychotherapy

built on myth. New York, NY: Free Press. Dawes, R. M. (1995). Standards of practice. In S. C. Hayes, V. M.

Follette, R. M. Dawes, & K. E. Grady (Eds.), Scientific standards of

psychological practice (pp. 31–43). Reno, NV: Context Press. Dawes, R. M., Faust, D., & Meehl, P. E. (1989, March 31). Clinical versus actuarial judgment. Science, 243, 1668 –1674. doi:10.1126/science

.2648573 Dennett, D. C. (1995). Darwin’s dangerous idea. New York, NY: Simon

& Schuster. Diener, E. (2006). Why Robert Kraut smiles. APS Observer, 19(6), 15, 32. Domjan, M., & Hall, S. (1986). Sexual dimorphism in the social proximity

behavior of Japanese quail. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 100,

68–71. doi:10.1037/0735-7036.100.1.68 Dunwoody, S., & Ryan, M. (1985). Scientific barriers to the populariza-

tion of science in the mass media. Journal of Communication, 35,

26–42. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1985.tb01882.x Emery, C., & Lilienfeld, S. O. (2004). The validity of child sexual abuse

survivor checklists in the popular psychology literature: A Barnum effect? Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 35, 268–274. doi:10.1037/0735-7028.35.3.268

Farberman, R. K. (1997). Public attitudes about psychologists and mental health care: Research to guide the American Psychological Association public education campaign. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 28, 128–136. doi:10.1037/0735-7028.28.2.128

Feynman, R. P. (1995). Six easy pieces: Essentials of physics explained by its most brilliant teacher. Pasadena, CA: California Institute of Tech- nology.

Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1984). Social cognition. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Fox, R. E. (2000). The dark side of evidence-based treatment. Practitioner Focus, 12(2), 5.

Freiheit, S. R., Vye, D., Swan, R., & Cady, M. (2004). Cognitive- behavioral therapy for anxiety: Is dissemination working? The Behavior Therapist, 27, 25–32.

Furedy, J. J. (2005). The polygraph is merely a psychological rubber hose, not a way of detecting deception [Online forum letter]. Retrieved from https://antipolygraph.org/articles/article-045.shtml

Furnham, A. (1988). Lay theories: Everyday understanding of problems in the social sciences. Oxford, England: Pergamon Press.

Furnham, A. (2002). All in the mind: The essence of psychology. Chich- ester, England: Wiley.

Gage, N. L. (1991). The obviousness of social and educational research results. Educational Researcher, 20, 10–16.

Gambrill, E. (2005). Critical thinking in clinical practice: Improving the quality of judgments and decisions (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Wiley. Garry, M., & Hayne, H. (2006). Do justice and let the sky fall: Elizabeth

Loftus and her contributions to science, law, and academic freedom.

Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Gergen, K. J. (1973). Social psychology as history. Journal of Personality

and Social Psychology, 26, 309–320. doi:10.1037/h0034436 Ghaemi, S. N. (2009). A clinician’s guide to statistics and epidemiology in mental health: Measuring truth and uncertainty. New York, NY:

Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511581250 Gilbert, D. (2006). Stumbling on happiness. New York, NY: Alfred J.

Knopf. Gilovich, T. (1991). How we know what isn’t so: The fallibility of human

reason in everyday life. New York, NY: Free Press. Gombrich, E. H. (1979). The sense of order: A study in the psychology of

decorative art. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Gould, R. A., & Clum, G. A. (1993). A meta-analysis of self-help treatment approaches. Clinical Psychology Review, 13, 169–186. doi:

10.1016/0272-7358(93)90039-O Grasha, A. F. (1997). Practical applications of psychology (4th ed.).

Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gray, J. (1992). Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. New York,

NY: HarperCollins. Green, J. P., Page, R. A., Rasekhy, R., Johnson, I. K., & Bernhardt,

S. E. (2006). Cultural views and attitudes about hypnosis: A survey of college students across four countries. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 54, 263–280. doi:10.1080/ 00207140600689439

Grove, W. M., & Meehl, P. E. (1996). Comparative efficiency of informal (subjective, impressionistic) and formal (mechanical, algorithmic) pre- diction procedures: The clinical–statistical controversy. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2, 293–323. doi:10.1037/1076-8971.2.2.293

Guest, L. (1948). The public’s attitudes toward psychologists. American Psychologist, 3, 135–139. doi:10.1037/h0057512

Guze, S. B. (1989). Biological psychiatry: Is there any other kind? Psychological Medicine, 19, 315–323. doi:10.1017/S0033291700012356

Hartwig, S. G., & Delin, C. (2003). How unpopular we are? Reassess- ing psychologists’ public image with different measures of favourability. Australian Psychologist, 38, 68 –72. doi:10.1080/ 00050060310001707047

Hayes, N. (1996). What makes a psychology graduate distinctive? Euro- pean Psychologist, 1, 130–134. doi:10.1027/1016-9040.1.2.130

Hayes, S. C. (2004). Falsification and the protective belt surrounding entity-postulating theories. Applied and Preventive Psychology, 11, 35–37. doi:10.1016/j.appsy.2004.02.004

Hedges, L. V. (1987). How hard is hard science, how soft is soft science? The empirical cumulativeness of research. American Psychologist, 42, 443–455. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.42.5.443

Hempel, C. G. (1942). The function of general laws in history. Journal of Philosophy, 39, 35–48. doi:10.2307/2017635

Hempel, C. G., & Oppenheim, P. (1948). Studies in the logic of expla- nation. Philosophy of Science, 15(2), 135–175.

Herbert, J. D. (2003). The science and practice of empirically supported therapies. Behavior Modification, 27, 412–430. doi:10.1177/0145445503027003008 Herbert, W. (2010). On second thought: Outsmarting your brain’s hard-

wired habits. New York, NY: Crown. Hill, A. B. (1962). Statistical methods in clinical and preventive medicine.

New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Hirai, M., & Clum, G. A. (2006). A meta-analytic study of self-help

interventions for anxiety disorders. Behavior Therapy, 37, 99–111.

doi:10.1016/j.beth.2005.05.002 Hoffman, R. R., & Deffenbacher, K. A. (1993). An ecological analysis of

the relations of basic and applied science. Ecological Psychology, 5,

315–352. doi:10.1207/s15326969eco0504_3 Horgan, J. (2005, August 12). In defense of common sense. The New York

Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/opinion/

12horgan.html?_r 1 Hoshmand, L. T., & Polkinghorne, D. (1992). Redefining the science–

practice relationship and professional training. American Psychologist,

47, 55–66. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.47.1.55 Howard, G. (1993). When psychology looks like a “soft” science, it’s for

good reason! Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 13,

42–47. doi:10.1037/h0091107 Hunsberger, P. H. (2007). Reestablishing clinical psychology’s subjective

16

Month 2011 ● American Psychologist

core. American Psychologist, 62, 614 – 615. doi:10.1037/0003-

066X62.6.614 Hunt, M. (1999). The new know-nothings: The political foes of the

scientific study of human nature. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Hyde, J. S. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychol-

ogist, 60, 581–592. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.60.6.581 Jacquette, D. (1994). Philosophy of mind. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-

Hall. Janda, L. H., England, K., Lovejoy, D., & Drury, K. (1998). Attitudes

toward psychology relative to other disciplines. Professional Psychol- ogy: Research and Practice, 29, 140–143. doi:10.1037/0735- 7028.29.2.140

Kabatznick,R.(1984).Thepublic’sperceptionofpsychology:Attitudesof four selected groups (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). City Univer- sity of New York, New York, NY.

Kassam, K. S., Gilbert, D. T., Swencionis, J. K., & Wilson, T. D. (2009). Misconceptions of memory: The Scooter Libby effect. Psychological Science, 20, 551–552. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02334.x

Kazdin, A. E. (2003). Research design in clinical psychology (4th ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Keil, F. C., Lockhart, K. L., & Schlegel, E. (2010). A bump on a bump? Emerging intuitions concerning the relative difficulty of the sciences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139, 1–15. doi:10.1037/ a0018319

Kelley, H. H. (1992). Common-sense psychology and scientific psychol- ogy. Annual Review of Psychology, 43, 1–24. doi:10.1146/annurev .ps.43.020192.000245

Kendler, K. S. (2005). Toward a philosophical structure for psychiatry. American Journal of Psychiatry, 162, 433– 440. doi:10.1176/appi .ajp.162.3.433

Kessler, R. C., Soukup, J., Davis, R., Foster, D., Wilkey, S., Van Rompay, M., & Eisenberg, D. (2001). The use of complementary and alternative therapies to treat anxiety and depression in the United States. American Journal of Psychiatry, 158, 289–294. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.158.2.289

Kirsch,I.(2010).Theemperor’snewdrugs:Explodingtheantidepressant myth. London, England: The Bodley Head.

Kluger, A. N., & Tikochinsky, J. (2001). The error of accepting the theoretical null hypothesis: The rise, fall, and resurrection of common sense hypotheses in psychology. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 408 – 423. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.127.3.408

Koch, E. (1981). How’m I doing? The wit and wisdom of Ed Koch. New York, NY: Lion Books.

Koch, S. (1969, March). Psychology cannot be a coherent science. Psy- chology Today, 3(4), 14, 64–68.

Korn, J. H., & Lewandowski, M. E. (1981). The clinical bias in the career plans of undergraduates and its impact on students and the profession. Teaching of Psychology, 8, 149–152. doi:10.1207/ s15328023top0803_5

Kraut, R. E. (2006, June). Why bowlers smile. APS Observer. Retrieved from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id 1999 Kraut, R. E., & Johnston, R. E. (1979). Social and emotional messages of

smiling: An ethological approach. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 37, 1539–1553. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.37.9.1539 Kruger, J., Wirtz, D., & Miller, D. (2005). Counterfactual thinking and the first instinct fallacy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88,

725–735. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.88.5.725 Lacasse, J. R., & Leo, J. (2005). Serotonin and depression: A disconnect

between the advertisements and the scientific literature. PLoS Medicine,

2(12), e392. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020392 Lawmakers assail NIH funding for sexual-arousal conference. (2003, June

23). The Washington Times. Retrieved from http://www.washingtontimes

.com/news/2003/jun/23/20030623-102147-8935r/print/ Lawson, R. (2006). The science of cycology: Failures to understand how

everyday objects work. Memory & Cognition, 34, 1667–1675. doi:

10.3758/BF03195929 Leach, C. (2010, March 7). Myths indeed [Review of the book 50 great

myths of popular psychology: Shattering widespread misconceptions about human behavior, by S. O. Lilienfeld, S J. Lynn, J. Ruscio, & B. L. Beyerstein]. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/ Great-Myths-Popular-Psychology-Misconceptions/product-reviews/ 1405131128?pageNumber 4

Lenz, M. A., Ek, K., & Mills, C. A. (2009, March 26). Misconceptions in

psychology. Presentation at the 4th Midwest Conference on Profes-

sional Psychology, Owatanna, Minnesota. Levant, R. F. (2004). The empirically validated treatments movement: A

practitioner/educator perspective. Clinical Psychology: Science and

Practice, 11, 219–224. doi:10.1093/clipsy/bph075 Levy, S. E., & Hyman, S. L. (2003). Use of complementary and alterna-

tive treatments for children with autism spectrum disorders is increas-

ing. Pediatric Annals, 32, 685–691. Lilienfeld, S. O. (1998). Pseudoscience in contemporary clinical psychol-

ogy: What it is and what we can do about it. The Clinical Psychologist,

51, 3–9. Lilienfeld, S. O. (2002). When worlds collide: Social science, politics, and

the Rind et al. (1998) child sexual abuse meta-analysis. American

Psychologist, 57, 176–188. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.57.3.176 Lilienfeld, S. O. (2007). Cognitive neuroscience and reductionism: Legit- imate versus illegitimate reductionism and five challenges. Cognitive

Therapy and Research, 31, 263–272. doi:10.1007/s10608-007-9127-0 Lilienfeld, S. O. (2010). Can psychology become a science? Personality and Individual Differences, 49, 281–288. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.01

.024 Lilienfeld, S. O., & Landfield, K. (2008). Issues in diagnosis: Categorical

versus dimensional. In W. E. Craighead, L. Craighead, & D. Miklowitz (Eds.), Psychopathology: Theory and research (pp. 1–33). New York, NY: Wiley.

Lilienfeld, S. O., Lynn, S. J., & Lohr, J. M. (Eds.). (2003). Science and pseudoscience in clinical psychology. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Lilienfeld, S. O., Lynn, S. J., Namy, L., & Woolf, N. (2011). Psychology:

From inquiry to understanding. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Lilienfeld, S. O., Lynn, S. J., Ruscio, J., & Beyerstein, B. L. (2010). 50 great myths of popular psychology: Shattering widespread misconcep-

tions about human behavior. Chichester, England: Wiley-Blackwell. Lilienfeld, S. O., Wood, J. M., & Garb, H. N. (2006). Why questionable psychological tests remain popular. Scientific Review of Alternative

Medicine, 10, 6–15. Loftus, E. F. (1997, September). Creating false memories. Scientific

American, 277(3), 70–75. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0997-70 Lykken, D. T. (1968). Statistical significance in psychological research.

Psychological Bulletin, 70, 151–159. doi:10.1037/h0026141 Lykken, D. T. (1991). What’s wrong with psychology anyway? In D. Cicchetti & W. M. Grove (Eds.), Thinking clearly about psychology: Vol. 1. Matters of public interest (pp. 2–39). Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press. Manzi, J. (2010, Summer). What social science does—and does not—

know. City Journal, 20(3). Retrieved from http://www.city-journal.org/

2010/20_3_social-science.html Martin, G. N., Sadler, S. J., & Baluch, B. (1997). Individual group

differences in the perception and knowledge of psychological research. Personality and Individual Differences, 22, 771–774. doi:10.1016/ S0191-8869(96)00256-5

McCabe, D. P., & Castel, A. D. (2008). Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Cognition, 107, 343–352. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2007.07.017

McFall, R. M. (1991). Manifesto for a science of clinical psychology. The Clinical Psychologist, 44(6), 75–88.

McFall, R. M. (2000). Elaborate reflections on a simple manifesto. Ap- plied and Preventive Psychology, 9, 5–21. doi:10.1016/S0962- 1849(05)80035-6

McGovern, M. P., Fox, T. S., Xie, H., & Drake, R. E. (2004). A survey of clinical practices and readiness to adopt evidence-based practices: Dis- semination research in an addiction treatment system. Journal of Sub- stance Abuse Treatment, 26, 305–312. doi:10.1016/j.jsat.2004.03.003

McGrath, R. E. (2010). Prescriptive authority for psychologists. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 6, 21– 47. doi:10.1146/annurev-clinpsy- 090209-151448

Meehl, P. E. (1971). Law and the fireside inductions: Some reflections of a clinical psychologist. Journal of Social Issues, 27, 65–100. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1971.tb00679.x

Meehl, P. E. (1978). Theoretical risks and tabular asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the slow progress of soft psychology. Journal of Consult-

ing and Clinical Psychology, 46,

006X.46.4.806

806 – 834. doi:10.1037/0022-

Month 2011 ● American Psychologist

17

Meehl, P. E. (1993). Philosophy of science: Help or hindrance? Psycho- logical Reports, 72, 707–733.

Meehl, P. E., & Sellars, W. (1956). The concept of emergence. In H. Feigl & M. Scriven (Eds.), Minnesota studies in the philosophy of science: Vol. 1. The foundations of science and the concepts of psychology and psychoanalysis (pp. 239–252). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Meyer, G. J., Finn, S. E., Eyde, L. D., Kay, G. G., Moreland, K. L., Dies, R. R., . . . Read, G. M. (2001). Psychological testing and psychological assessment: A review of evidence and issues. American Psychologist, 56, 128–165. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.56.2.128

Meyers, L. (2006, October). Behind the scenes of the “Dr. Phil” show. Monitor on Psychology, 37(9), 63. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/ monitor/oct06/drphil.aspx

Miller, B. (2007). Perspectives on psychiatric diagnosis. Current Opinion in Pediatrics, 19, 546–547. doi:10.1097/MOP.0b013e3282efa054

Miller, G. A. (2004). Another quasi-30 years of slow progress. Applied and Preventive Psychology, 11, 61– 64. doi:10.1016/j.appsy.2004 .02.010

Miller, G. A. (2010). Mistreating psychology in the decades of the brain. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 716–743. doi:10.1177/ 1745691610388774

Mills, K. I. (2009, March). Getting beyond the couch: How does the general public view the science of psychology? Monitor on Psychology, 40(3), 28.

Mooney, C., & Kirshenbaum, S. (2009). Unscientific America: How scientific illiteracy threatens our future. New York, NY: Basic Books. Munro, G. D. (2010). The scientific impotence excuse: Discounting be- lief-threatening scientific abstracts. Journal of Applied Social Psychol-

ogy, 40, 579–600. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.2010.00588.x Myers, D. (1994). Exploring social psychology. New York, NY: McGraw-

Hill. Nisbett, R. E., Fong, G. T., Lehman, D. R., & Cheng, P. W. (1987).

Teaching reasoning. Science, 238, 625– 631. doi:10.1126/science

.3672116 Nordal, K. (2009, October 8). Taking issue with Newsweek [Web log

post]. Retrieved from http://www.yourmindyourbody.org/taking-issue-

with-newsweek/ Nordal, K. C. (2010). Where has all the psychotherapy gone? Monitor on

Psychology, 41(10), 17. O’Donohue, W. T., Lilienfeld, S. O., & Fowler, K. A. (2007). Science is

an essential safeguard against human error. In W. T. O’Donohue & S. O. Lilienfeld (Eds.), The great ideas of clinical science: 17 principles that every mental health professional should understand (pp. 3–27). New York, NY: Routledge.

Olson, R. (2009). Don’t be such a scientist: Talking substance in an age of style. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Pallak, M. S., & Kilburg, R. R. (1986). Psychology, public affairs, and public policy: A strategy and review. American Psychologist, 41, 933– 940. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.41.9.933

Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates. (2008). American Psychological Association benchmark study. New York, NY: Author.

Pigliucci, M. (2010). Nonsense on stilts: How to tell science from junk. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York, NY: Viking.

Polusny, M. A., & Follette, V. M. (1996). Remembering childhood sexual abuse: A national survey of psychologists’ clinical practices, beliefs, and personal experiences. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 27, 41–52. doi:10.1037/0735-7028.27.1.41

Poole, D. A., Lindsay, D. S., Memon, A., & Bull, R. (1995). Psychother- apy and the recovery of memories of childhood sexual abuse: U.S. and British practitioners’ opinions, practices, and experiences. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 63, 426–437. doi:10.1037/0022- 006X.63.3.426

Prager, D. (2002, June 19). The commencement address I would give. The Dennis Prager Show. Retrieved from http://www.dennisprager .com/columns.aspx?g 7bbeb237-47bb-4caf-aa46-5bc6cfcf8e22&url the_commencement_address_i_would_give

Pratkanis, A. R. (2007). Social influence analysis: An index of tactics. In A. R. Pratkanis (Ed.), The science of social influence: Advances and future progress (pp. 17–82). Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.

Price, M. P. (2011). Promoting psychology as a STEM discipline. Monitor on Psychology, 42(2), 32–36.

Redding, R. E. (1998). How common-sense psychology can inform law and psycholegal research. The University of Chicago Law School Roundtable, 5, 107–142.

Redding, R. E., & O’Donohue, W. T. (2009). The psychology of political correctness in higher education. In F. M. Hess, R. Maranto, & R. E. Redding (Eds.), The politically correct university: Problems, scope, and reforms (pp. 99–120). Washington, DC: AEI Press.

Rogers, M., & Smith, K. H. (1993). Public perceptions of subliminal advertising: Why practitioners shouldn’t ignore this issue. Journal of Advertising Research, 33, 10–18.

Rosen, G. M., & Davison, G. C. (2003). Psychology should identify empirically supported principles of change (ESPs) and not trademarked therapies or other treatment packages. Behavior Modification, 27, 300 – 312. doi:10.1177/0145445503027003003

Rosen, G. M., Glasgow, R. E., & Moore, T. E. (2003). Self-help therapy: The science and business of giving psychology away. In S. O. Lilien- feld, S. J. Lynn, & J. M. Lohr (Eds.), Science and pseudoscience in clinical psychology (pp. 399–424). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Rosenthal, G. T., McKnight, R. R., & Price, A. W. (2001). Who, what, how, and where the typical psychologist is ... the Profession of Psychology Scale. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 28, 220–224.

Rosenthal, G. T., Soper, B., Rachal, C., McKnight, R. R., & Price, A. W. (2004). The Profession of Psychology Scale: Sophisticated and naive students’ responses. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 31, 202–205.

Rozenblit, L., & Keil, F. C. (2002). The misunderstood limits of folk science: An illusion of explanatory depth. Cognitive Science, 26, 521– 562. doi:10.1207/s15516709cog2605_1

Ruscher, J. B., Fiske, S. T., & Schnake, S. B. (2000). The motivated tactician’s juggling act: Compatible versus incompatible impression goals. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 241–256. doi:10.1348/ 014466600164453

Ruspini, E. (2002). Introduction to longitudinal research. New York, NY: Routledge.

Russell, G. W., & Dua, M. (1983). Lunar influences on human aggression. Social Behavior and Personality, 11, 41–46. doi:10.2224/sbp.1983 .11.2.41

Russell, M., & Silver, S. M. (2007). Training needs for the treatment of combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder: A survey of Depart- ment of Defense clinicians. Traumatology, 13, 4–10. doi:10.1177/ 1534765607305440

Schindler, F., Berren, M. R., Hannah, M. T., Beigel, A., & Santiago, J. M. (1987). How the public perceives psychiatrists, psychologists, nonpsy- chiatric physicians, and members of the clergy. Professional Psychol- ogy: Research and Practice, 18, 371–376. doi:10.1037/0735- 7028.18.4.371

Schlessinger, L. (2000, March 15). Analysis of pedophilia junk science at its worst [Radio series broadcast]. Sherman Oaks, CA: Premiere Radio Networks.

Schneider, I. (1987). The theory and practice of movie psychiatry. Amer- ican Journal of Psychiatry, 144, 996–1002.

Schreiner, S. A. (2006, February 20). Truly, madly, deeply. The New York Times, A19.

Shaffer, L. S. (1977). The Golden Fleece: Anti-intellectualism and social science. American Psychologist, 32, 814 – 823. doi:10.1037/0003- 066X.32.10.814

Sherden, W. A. (1998). The fortune sellers: The big business of buying and selling predictions. New York, NY: Wiley.

Shermer, M. (2002). Why people believe weird things: Pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our time. New York, NY: Owl Books.

Skinner, B. F. (1987). Whatever happened to psychology as the science of behavior? American Psychologist, 42, 780–786. doi:10.1037/0003- 066X.42.8.780

Solomon, S. S., & King, J. G. (1995). Influence of color on fire vehicle accidents. Journal of Safety Research, 26, 41–48. doi:10.1016/0022- 4375(95)00001-1

Stanovich, K. (2009). How to think straight about psychology (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Stuart, H., & Arboleda-Florez, J. (2001). Community attitudes toward

18

Month 2011 ● American Psychologist

people with schizophrenia. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry/La revue

canadienne de psychiatrie, 46, 245–252. Stuart, R. B., & Heiby, E. M. (2007). To prescribe or not to prescribe:

Eleven exploratory questions. Scientific Review of Mental Health Prac-

tice, 5, 4–32. Tavris, C. (2003, February 28). Mind games: Psychological warfare

between therapists and scientists. The Chronicle Review, B7–B9. Tavris, C., & Aronson, E. (2007). Mistakes were made (but not by me): Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful actions.

Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Taylor, A. K., & Kowalski, P. (2004). Na ̈ıve psychological science: The

prevalence, strength, and sources of misconceptions. The Psychological

Record, 54, 15–25. Thyer, B. A., & Pignotti, M. (in press). Science and pseudoscience in

social work. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Tierney, J. (2011, February 7). Social scientist sees bias within. The New

York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html Turkheimer, E., Haley, A., Waldron, M., D’Onofrio, B., & Gottesman, I. I. (2003). Socioeconomic status modifies heritability of IQ in young children. Psychological Science, 14, 623–628. doi:10.1046/j.0956-

7976.2003.psci_1475.x Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1992). Advances in prospect theory:

Cumulative representation of uncertainty. Journal of Risk and Uncer-

tainty, 5, 297–323. doi:10.1007/BF00122574 University investigates ethics of sex researcher. (2003, November 24).

The Washington Times. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonti-

mes.com/news/2003/nov/24/20031124-103155-8053r/?page all Uttal, W. R. (2003). Psychomythics: Sources of artifacts and misconcep-

tions in scientific psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Vaughan, E. D. (1977). Misconceptions about psychology among intro- ductory psychology students. Teaching of Psychology, 4, 138–141.

doi:10.1207/s15328023top0403_9 von Bertalanffy, L. (1972). The history and status of general systems

theory. In G. K. Klir (Ed.), Trends in general systems theory (pp.

407–426). New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience. von Sydow, K., & Reimer, C. (1998). Attitudes toward psychotherapists,

psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts. American Journal of

Psychotherapy, 52, 463–488. Wade, N. (1982, April 30). Smart apes or dumb? The New York Times,

A28. Wahl, O. (1987). Public vs. professional conceptions of schizophrenia.

Journal of Community Psychology, 15, 285–291. doi:10.1002/1520- 6629(198704)15:2 285::AID-JCOP2290150217 3.0.CO;2-F

Wampold, B. E. (2001). The great psychotherapy debate: Models, meth- ods, and findings. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Webb, A. R., & Speer, J. R. (1986). Prototype of a profession: Psychol- ogy’s public image. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 17, 5–9. doi:10.1037/0735-7028.17.1.5

Weisberg, D. S., Keil, F. C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., & Gray, J. (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 470–477. doi:10.1162/jocn.2008.20040

Weisz, J. R., Weersing, V. R., & Henggeler, S. W. (2005). Jousting with straw men: Comment on the Westen, Novotny, and Thompson-Brenner (2004) critique of empirically supported treatments. Psychological Bul- letin, 131, 418–426. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.131.3.418

Wells, G. L., Memon, A., & Penrod, S. D. (2006). Eyewitness evidence: Improving its probative value. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 7, 45–75.

Westen, D., Novotny, C. M., & Thompson-Brenner, H. (2004). The empirical status of empirically supported psychotherapies: Assump- tions, findings, and reporting in controlled clinical trials. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 631–663. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.130.4.631

Westen, D., Novotny, C. M., & Thompson-Brenner, H. (2005). EBP   EST: Reply to Crits-Christoph et al. (2005) and Weisz et al. (2005). Psychological Bulletin, 131, 427–433.

Withey, S. B. (1959). Public opinion about science and scientists. Public Opinion Quarterly, 23, 382–388. doi:10.1086/266890

Wong, J. L. (1994). Lay theories of psychotherapy and perceptions of therapists: A replication and extension of Furnham and Wardley. Jour- nal of Clinical Psychology, 50, 624 – 632. doi:10.1002/1097- 4679(199407)50:4 624::AID-JCLP2270500420 3.0.CO;2-I

Wong, L. Y. (1995). Research on teaching: Process-product research findings and the feeling of obviousness. Journal of Educational Psy- chology, 87, 504–511. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.87.3.504

Wood, W., Jones, M., & Benjamin, L. T., Jr. (1986). Surveying psychol- ogy’s public image. American Psychologist, 41, 947–953. oi:10.1037/ 0003-066X.41.9.947

Woodiwiss, J. (2009). Contesting stories of child sexual abuse. London, England: Palgrave. doi:10.1057/9780230245150

Zimbardo, P. G. (2004). Does psychology make a significant difference in our lives? American Psychologist, 59, 339–351. doi:10.1037/0003- 066X.59.5.339

Zimmerman, T. S., Haddock, S. A., & McGeorge, C. R. (2001). Mars and Venus: Unequal planets. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 27, 55–68. doi:10.1111/j.1752-0606.2001.tb01139.x

#psychology #skepticism #bias #legitimacy #psychotherapy #misconceptions #self-help #popular psychology

[rabbiandrewrosenblatt]

Us-and-Them

Tragedy such as what happened last Shabbat in Pittsburgh is unfortunately not new to the Jewish people. In 2014 four Jews were murdered at prayer in Har Nof, Israel. In 2015 the heavily secured synagogue in Copenhagen was attacked at prayer by a gunman who killed two and wounded five police officers. In 1986 an Abu Nidal terrorist opened fire on Jews praying in a synagogue on Shabbat in Istanbul.  

Killing people at prayer is nothing new to the United States. In 2012, a white supremacist killed six and wounded four in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. In 2015 another killed nine people, including the church’s pastor, at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC. In 1963, white supremacists killed four African American girls in the infamous 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham.

If misery loves company, we should find solace in confronting again such a tragedy, especially in this era when victimhood is a badge of honour. Yet we find only unspeakable pain. Maybe this tragedy was different from all those listed above. In fact, some communities recited Kinot, the prayers read on the 9th of Av, reserved for profound destruction. Perhaps that was because this tragedy was the bellwether signaling the end of American exceptionalism.

Based on what has been happening in Europe, the events in Pittsburgh might be an early sign of things to come here. The daughter of a famed Holocaust denier nearly won the majority of French votes. The Polish government has passed a law designed to whitewash their involvement in the Holocaust. Here is what the Hungarian prime minister recently said about the Jews:

We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world” a thinly veiled reference to the Jew as enemy.

I think we need to be concerned about how anti-Semitism has played into the historical framework of partisan political conflict. I believe that we have entered a new phase defined by a societal, racialized, and binary struggle to the death of an us-versus-them. It is even a war to claim the privilege of who gets to define the terms of the us and the them. I don’t know exactly how we got to that state of affairs, but I think it is glaringly obvious that politics is no longer about policy and government. It is about culture and opposing teams. When that happens, politics feeds on conflict, rather than working to resolve conflict. Each side’s party profits from the vilification of some enemy.  

It used to be that political news was about policy, decisions, markets, entitlements and programs. I can remember when conservatives talked mostly about free markets and fiscal responsibility. Consider what dominated the news cycle at the end of September. It was one story: Brett Kavanaugh. That American story even played out here in Vancouver. Young women from a Vancouver private school told me the Kavanaugh story dominated their classroom discussions.

Consider what else was going on in the news then. On the same day that everyone was watching the Kavanaugh hearing, the New York Times reported that the U.S. Government will soon spend more on interest payments than on the military. The US might may spend 13% of its budget on interest payments alone by 2028.  

Which of those stories is more important? I would argue both are important. However, spending 13% on interest payments will have a huge effect on the economy. The impact to entitlement programs and government deliverables will affect most people much more than the times – if any - that Brett Kavanaugh’s vote will determine an American Supreme Court case.

Political discourse is now about name calling. It is about making people afraid of caravans by hinting about security threats. It is about calling the supporters of this candidate or that bigots, deplorables and the like. It is about making nefarious enemies out of philanthropists who advocate for political solutions that one’s party disagrees with. The Koch brothers and George Soros serve as evil puppet masters in the eyes of their political opponents.

In The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Revolution Reshaping America, Salina Zito studied people who had voted twice for Barack Obama and then voted for Donald Trump, specifically in states that had a long history of electing Democrats. She wanted to know why. She found that Trump made them feel that he was looking out for them. There is nothing wrong with political leaders letting constituents know they will be supported. The question is how do politicians get voters to believe that they will be supported?  

Look around the world. Listen to the language of Hungarian nationalists, Brazilian militarists, Brexit, the ascendency of Marine Le Pen, and the gains of German neo-Nazi parties. They all speak to this. You will hear it in the tone of cable news, which seems designed to foment anger against the political opponents of their regular audience. When government employees are evicted from restaurants because they work for certain politicians, they are being treated as an enemy in partisan politics. When we accuse the other side of inviting terrorists and violent actors to cross the border, we are treating the other side like enemies.

Political gains are now made by vilification, by painting the other side as a threat. It is us-versus-them.

We Jews generally do not fare well in an us-versus-them environment. We often look like an us, but others might be inclined to believe that we are secretly one of them. Alfred Dreyfus is a perfect example. He was convicted as a fifth columnist – in league with enemies of the people. He looked like a French officer in high command. He was suspected of really being a traitor and outsider. The fact that he looked like an ordinary French officer in high command was used as evidence that he was nefarious, and truly a traitor. When one is presumed to be guilty, any sign of innocence can be re-interpreted to accentuate their aura of guilt.

Look on Twitter and consider why there are three sets of parentheses around certain names. It is code to indicate the accounts that belong to Jews. Why? Because we Jews look like the host culture. Since we are assumed to be the eternal, international fifth column, we need to be outed, brought out from behind our camouflage. The Pittsburgh attacker’s postings on Gab were meant to serve this purpose.

HIAS [Hebrew Immigrant AID Society] likes to bring invaders in that kill our people, I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.  

This is the distillation of us-versus-them, mixed with the Jew-as-clandestine-enemy fifth-columnist trope. That part of the killer’s motivation is less a psychotic break, and more a slice of what lurks on the edge of the cultural bell curve in the us-versus-them world of modern politics. In the culture of vilification, there is room for all supporters and allies. There, even white supremacy finds a comfortable home. And there, even  some who claim to be progressive will  defend to the death, under various names, your right to hate Jews.

I am loath to suggest that we Jews will be able to reverse the tide of populism, nationalism, and the us versus them that has smitten the world. Our job, as a nation, is to be a “light unto the nations.” For that to happen, the rest of the world has to be willing to give us more of a chance than the current climate affords. However, I think the Torah still offers us an essential lesson in how to shine that light.

We are told 36 times in the Torah to not oppress the stranger, because we were strangers in Egypt. Consider the character of Pharaoh in the narrative about the origin of oppression in Egypt. He makes the Jews out to be an enemy, a nation within his nation, that could rise up as a fifth column. Contrast that with Abraham, who travels to a strange land, calls himself גר ותושב אנכי אמכם a stranger and resident among you, and literally loves welcoming other strangers into his tent. Rav Moshe Lichtenstein noted that Avraham, like the modern Jew, is both citizen and stranger. Many Jewish communities of old straddled the fence – e.g., Shushan under Mordechai, Spain from Maimonides to Abravanel, Frankfurt under Samson Raphael Hirsch, to name a few.

There is a strong universalist thread in the Torah. Read Maimonides on the burial of deceased non-Jews, or on feeding the poor among non-Jews. He says that we do so because Gd is good and merciful to all - as articulated in the Ashrei prayer. Maimonides exhorts us to care for all Gd’s children. The great Zionist Rav Kook wrote a responsa that says that Gd never intended for Israel to be exclusive to Jews, if, for no less a reason, the milking of cows on Shabbat.

Judaism is the only Abrahamic religion that believes people from other religions have a place in heaven. Judaism does not proselytize, nor does it force those who dwell among its people to convert. We have no need to make enemies of other peoples, nor to alienate anyone from their own people. In the last 1,400 years, it is only under Jewish administration of Jerusalem that all three Abrahamic religions have been able to freely and openly worship at their holy sites there.

None of this is to say that Judaism does not have its protectionism. We are very afraid of the forces of assimilation. We have dietary rules that compel us to prefer eating with other Jews. We prioritize the charity toward the Jewish poor. We even have special dispensations on Shabbat for the purpose of acquiring land in Israel. In that sense, Torah has a formula of us-with-them, even us-within-them. We can even say, us-recognizing-the-value-of-them. It is a formula of coexistence with a 3,000-year history.

The American and European formula of democracy has but a 250-year history. So far, we have learned to transfer political power without killing our opponents or making them into enemies.

Unfortunately, that seems to be changing. The current wave of anti-Semitism may just be the beginning of another cycle of baseless hatred against us. If history teaches us anything, it is that our hope for the future lies in our commitment to the Torah’s timeless formula for coexistence. When we say “may the memory of the martyrs be for a blessing,” perhaps peace, or civility could be such a blessing. Perhaps, we can all take note of how tone, and hyperbole lead to vilification and how vilification leads some to violence.

May the memory of those murdered while praying at the Tree of Life synagogue bring us to the greatest of blessings: Peace.

---

An Open Letter to the President of MIT from Terry S. Neiman

To: L. Rafael Reif, President

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

(c/o [email protected])

1 November 2018

Dear Mr. Reif,

Two days ago, I received your email, “Consoling each other and helping to heal the world.” While its message was in many ways laudable, I was troubled by its tone. As you say, “official statements matter.” In response, and after much reflection, I have decided to suspend my service as an MIT Educational Counselor.

You note that the nation has “once again confronted heartbreaking mass violence.” I think that the once you refer to is the Tree of Life synagogue shootings. You use that moment as a platform to criticize a US Presidential policy, promote awareness of MIT harassment policies, and specify the persecution of transgender people as the case in point. You announce an event “to honor those killed or injured.” Here, I believe that you might seek to do a service to the Tree of Life victims, by associating their persecution with the more general case of baseless hatred. I support those goals. It does not even trouble me that you, in effect, exploit the victims to further a good cause. As we say in Judaism, “may their memories be a blessing.”

However, for all of your discourse on “violence, racism, harassment and bullying,” on the dignity of “a million transgender Americans,” and the various cities where other forms of violence have taken place, you never once acknowledge that the cause célèbre - the congregants of Tree of Life - were targeted because they were Jews.

The erasure of anti-Semitism is itself a form of anti-Semitism. You have left us in the dark…

Like you, I believe that “the light” here is, “respect, sympathy, decency, humility and kindness; the responsibility each of us has to make sure that everyone at MIT can truly feel at home...”

In this context, omitting acknowledgement of the anti-Semitic nature of what happened at the Tree of Life synagogue, and its corrosive ripple effect on others – Jews and Gentiles – leaves me not “truly feel[ing] at home” at MIT just now. I do not feel comfortable promoting MIT admissions.

I take my leave with a heavy heart, having been an MIT Educational Counselor since 1982. However, I have been, and will always be Jewish.

Sincerely,

Terry S. Neiman, [MIT] Class of 1980

[mariowil]

"Well, there is a difference between finding a correlate and finding an explanation," . TWENTY years ago this week, two young men sat in a smoky bar in Bremen, northern Germany. Neuroscientist Christof Koch and philosopher David Chalmers had spent the day lecturing at a conference about consciousness, and they still had more to say. After a few drinks, Koch suggested a wager. He bet a case of fine wine that within the next 25 years someone would discover a specific signature of consciousness in the brain. Chalmers said it wouldn't happen, and bet against.

It was a bit of fun, but also an audacious gamble. Consciousness is truly mysterious. It is the essence of you - the redness of red, the feeling of being in love, the sensation of pain and all the rest of your subjective experiences, conjured up somehow by your brain. Back then, its elusive nature meant that many believed it wasn't even a valid subject for scientific investigation.

Today, consciousness is a hot research area, and Koch and Chalmers are two of its most influential figures. Koch is head of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. Chalmers is a professor at New York University and famous for coining the phrase the "hard problem" to distinguish the difficulty of understanding consciousness from that of grasping other mental phenomena. Much progress has been made, but how close are we to solving the mystery? To find out, I decided to ask Chalmers and Koch how their bet was going. But there was a problem - they had mislaid the terms of the wager. Luckily, I too was in Bremen as a journalist 20 years ago and was able to come to their rescue. . Comment: Perhaps the problem is that "consciousness researchers" are thinking about consciousness in the wrong way. Whitehead arguably solved the consciousness problem philosophically a century ago, and David Ray Griffin laid out the argument in Unsnarling the World-Knot. While Antonio Damasio doesn't go there philosophically, his explanation of consciousness being rooted in feelings is compatible: The Strange Order of Things.