Hans Eysenck: Consensus And Controversy


Book Description

During the last forty years, Hans Eysenck's brilliant contribution to knowledge has beenwell-known world-wide. From its early transmission, his work has not been without itscritics. Naturally, criticisms persist, although his work continues to be frequentlyacknowledged with great admiration in the channels of psychology. With such prolificwork, it would seem justified to consider the discrepancies, the omissions, together withthe various interpretations which have been and are currently being highlighted.




Psychological Science in the Courtroom


Book Description

This rigorous yet reader-friendly book reviews the state of the science on a broad range of psychological issues commonly encountered in the forensic context. The goal is to help professionals and students differentiate between supported and unsupported psychological techniques--and steer clear of those that may be misleading or legally inadmissible. Leading contributors focus on controversial issues surrounding recovered memories, projective techniques, lie detection, child witnesses, offender rehabilitation, psychopathy, violence risk assessment, and more. With a focus on real-world legal situations, the book offers guidelines for presenting scientific evidence accurately and effectively in courtroom testimony and written reports.




Society's Choices


Book Description

Breakthroughs in biomedicine often lead to new life-giving treatments but may also raise troubling, even life-and-death, quandaries. Society's Choices discusses ways for people to handle today's bioethics issues in the context of America's unique history and cultureâ€"and from the perspectives of various interest groups. The book explores how Americans have grappled with specific aspects of bioethics through commission deliberations, programs by organizations, and other mechanisms and identifies criteria for evaluating the outcomes of these efforts. The committee offers recommendations on the role of government and professional societies, the function of commissions and institutional review boards, and bioethics in health professional education and research. The volume includes a series of 12 superb background papers on public moral discourse, mechanisms for handling social and ethical dilemmas, and other specific areas of controversy by well-known experts Ronald Bayer, Martin Benjamin, Dan W. Brock, Baruch A. Brody, H. Alta Charo, Lawrence Gostin, Bradford H. Gray, Kathi E. Hanna, Elizabeth Heitman, Thomas Nagel, Steven Shapin, and Charles M. Swezey.




Communicating Science Effectively


Book Description

Science and technology are embedded in virtually every aspect of modern life. As a result, people face an increasing need to integrate information from science with their personal values and other considerations as they make important life decisions about medical care, the safety of foods, what to do about climate change, and many other issues. Communicating science effectively, however, is a complex task and an acquired skill. Moreover, the approaches to communicating science that will be most effective for specific audiences and circumstances are not obvious. Fortunately, there is an expanding science base from diverse disciplines that can support science communicators in making these determinations. Communicating Science Effectively offers a research agenda for science communicators and researchers seeking to apply this research and fill gaps in knowledge about how to communicate effectively about science, focusing in particular on issues that are contentious in the public sphere. To inform this research agenda, this publication identifies important influences â€" psychological, economic, political, social, cultural, and media-related â€" on how science related to such issues is understood, perceived, and used.




Debate Dynamics: How Controversy Improves Our Beliefs


Book Description

Is critical argumentation an effective way to overcome disagreement? And does the exchange of arguments bring opponents in a controversy closer to the truth? This study provides a new perspective on these pivotal questions. By means of multi-agent simulations, it investigates the truth and consensus-conduciveness of controversial debates. The book brings together research in formal epistemology and argumentation theory. Aside from its consequences for discursive practice, the work may have important implications for philosophy of science and the way we construe scientific rationality as well.




Anthony Giddens


Book Description

This volume forms part of a series of publications on contemporary sociologists. The work of each scholar chosen, in this case Anthony Giddens, is internationally recognised and is relevant to the core of the discipline in the 1990s, is thematic in coverage and is, at one and the same time, consensus-generating.




Creating Scientific Controversies


Book Description

This is the first book-length introductory study of the concept of a created scientific controversy, providing a comprehensive and wide-ranging analysis for students of philosophy of science, environmental and health sciences, and social and natural sciences.




Misbehaving Science


Book Description

Behavior genetics has always been a breeding ground for controversies. From the “criminal chromosome” to the “gay gene,” claims about the influence of genes like these have led to often vitriolic national debates about race, class, and inequality. Many behavior geneticists have encountered accusations of racism and have had their scientific authority and credibility questioned, ruining reputations, and threatening their access to coveted resources. In Misbehaving Science, Aaron Panofsky traces the field of behavior genetics back to its origins in the 1950s, telling the story through close looks at five major controversies. In the process, Panofsky argues that persistent, ungovernable controversy in behavior genetics is due to the broken hierarchies within the field. All authority and scientific norms are questioned, while the absence of unanimously accepted methods and theories leaves a foundationless field, where disorder is ongoing. Critics charge behavior geneticists with political motivations; champions say they merely follow the data where they lead. But Panofsky shows how pragmatic coping with repeated controversies drives their scientific actions. Ironically, behavior geneticists’ struggles for scientific authority and efforts to deal with the threats to their legitimacy and autonomy have made controversy inevitable—and in some ways essential—to the study of behavior genetics.




Constructive Controversy


Book Description

Using the social psychological theory of 'constructive controversy', this book analyses the nature of disagreement among members of decision-making groups. It addresses questions such as: do differences of opinion enhance or obstruct creative thinking? And why do people make decisions based only on their own perspective without considering alternative viewpoints?




Neuroeconomics


Book Description

In the years since it first published, Neuroeconomics: Decision Making and the Brain has become the standard reference and textbook in the burgeoning field of neuroeconomics. The second edition, a nearly complete revision of this landmark book, will set a new standard. This new edition features five sections designed to serve as both classroom-friendly introductions to each of the major subareas in neuroeconomics, and as advanced synopses of all that has been accomplished in the last two decades in this rapidly expanding academic discipline. The first of these sections provides useful introductions to the disciplines of microeconomics, the psychology of judgment and decision, computational neuroscience, and anthropology for scholars and students seeking interdisciplinary breadth. The second section provides an overview of how human and animal preferences are represented in the mammalian nervous systems. Chapters on risk, time preferences, social preferences, emotion, pharmacology, and common neural currencies—each written by leading experts—lay out the foundations of neuroeconomic thought. The third section contains both overview and in-depth chapters on the fundamentals of reinforcement learning, value learning, and value representation. The fourth section, "The Neural Mechanisms for Choice, integrates what is known about the decision-making architecture into state-of-the-art models of how we make choices. The final section embeds these mechanisms in a larger social context, showing how these mechanisms function during social decision-making in both humans and animals. The book provides a historically rich exposition in each of its chapters and emphasizes both the accomplishments and the controversies in the field. A clear explanatory style and a single expository voice characterize all chapters, making core issues in economics, psychology, and neuroscience accessible to scholars from all disciplines. The volume is essential reading for anyone interested in neuroeconomics in particular or decision making in general. - Editors and contributing authors are among the acknowledged experts and founders in the field, making this the authoritative reference for neuroeconomics - Suitable as an advanced undergraduate or graduate textbook as well as a thorough reference for active researchers - Introductory chapters on economics, psychology, neuroscience, and anthropology provide students and scholars from any discipline with the keys to understanding this interdisciplinary field - Detailed chapters on subjects that include reinforcement learning, risk, inter-temporal choice, drift-diffusion models, game theory, and prospect theory make this an invaluable reference - Published in association with the Society for Neuroeconomics—www.neuroeconomics.org - Full-color presentation throughout with numerous carefully selected illustrations to highlight key concepts