Category Archives: Science

IT’S HARD TO TOLERATE BEING LOVED. One of the men in the Harvard study became a doctor. When he retired at age 70, his wife prepared for him a book of letters from over 100 grateful patients who loved him. … Continue reading →

WHY DO PEOPLE FEAR COMPLIMENTS? George Vaillant, the head of the Harvard study, says that “people tell psychologists they’d cross the street to avoid someone who had given them a compliment the previous day” Vaillant thinks that the reason is … Continue reading →

DEFENSES–GROWING STRONGER WITH AGE. Back in the sixties, I had heard about the long-term study of mentally healthy students from my friend Bob Clipner. Bob said that one of the findings at that point was that, on the whole, the … Continue reading →

THE DIFFICULT LIVES OF WELL-ADJUSTED YOUNG MEN. By age 50, almost one third of the group in the Harvard study had met the lead psychologist”s criteria for mental illness at one time or another. The psychologist who started the study … Continue reading →

FOLLOWING THE LIVES OF “WELL-ADJUSTED” YOUNG MEN. I posted several times, including here about the UP SERIES, which has filmed fourteen English children every seven years from when they were seven in 1964. This article by Joshua Wolf Shenk describes … Continue reading →

REQUIRED SHARING OF NEGATIVE RESULTS. I posted here about how my brother has been saying for thirty years that there should be a journal for negative results and that now there are in fact several in different fields. This article … Continue reading →

DOES THE CENTER OF THE GALAXY TASTE LIKE RASPBERRIES? I began this blog two and a half years ago today with a post about how the remnants of the Big Bang affect our daily lives. Annalisa sent me this article … Continue reading →

PUTTING CLINICAL TRIALS AHEAD OF HUMAN LIVES (AGAIN). I have posted on this subject a number of times, for example here. This story from the weekend New York Times describes the efforts of the family of a young man with … Continue reading →

SEEING PATTERNS THAT AREN’T THERE. In the interview, Philip Tetlock tells about an experiment which matched up Yale undergraduates against a Norwegian rat in a “T maze.” There was a reward available randomly 60% of the time if you turned … Continue reading →