In pursuit of ‘truth’: The question of objectivity

All very true. There are some exceptions although quite slight. I find that dissertation students and first year PhD students tend not to be invested in the outcome, and they are probably the few truly open minded investigators, although this is largely because they don’t know the background to the research, but have an inherent, what I would call cognitive or intellectual, interest in an area. They are, however, guided by a supervisor, who is likely to select the methodology.

Looked down on by a lot of scientists is exploratory research although, again, they may have a personal interest which biases them, but they could just be interested in a topic out of curiosity.

Paranormal psychology is one area that suffers from this. Experimenters who are skeptics find no effect but believers do.

I think there is a thingy in physics which says that as soon as you start observing something you change what you observe

Pray tell, what exactly is so interesting on your mobile phone?

Have you ever had the pleasure of some twat talking on their mobile phone walk into you or ‘give you the shoulder brush’? Had to listen to inane drivel on a bus….’yeah, I’m on the bus. I’m bored. I can see trees…and people talking on their mobiles. Bye. *dial* yeah, I’m on the bus….’

Have you ever seen someone nearly get mowed down by a car after walking into the road without looking as they are too busy talking on their mobile phone?

Played dodge ‘ems on the street with an endless parade of wankers all talking on their mobiles?

If you live anywhere in the western world, you will have. And you probably experienced it today, and yesterday, and the day before.

Is this what we have to look forward to? Everyone looking down at their texts while simultaneously doing something inappropriate, or yacking into thin air about complete irrelevancies?

Is there really something so important going on in your life that it couldn’t wait 15 mins until you were at home and could phone….preferably on a land line?

A lecturer wrote into THE last year and mentioned how he deals with students texting during lectures….’is your crotch really so amusing?’

As you can gather, I don’t like mobiles. I don’t understand the urgency that requires everyone to phone *right now* rather than waiting for a more appropriate time, preferably in private. I don’t want to hear about your porn addiction or dressing your cat up like Kermit the Frog. I don’t want to have to dodge you on the high street because you are reading a text.

And what is so damn interesting on a mobile that someone can stare down at it for an hour on a bus, with their head nodding up and down like a Tory politician?

I think the thing that really finished me off was last year I saw a women with a toddler and a push chair walking along the pavement of a main road, reading her texts. Her toddler ran ahead and ran into the road. If it wasn’t for the nice elderly gentleman who wasn’t reading his texts scooping her up and putting her back on the pavement the toddler would have been flatter than a pheasant on a country road.

Think how much of the world you are missing while you are reading your 100th text of the day about Made in Chelsea or reading Richard Madeley’s twitter account about wiping his arse.

And, if you don’t, then don’t complain to the nice bus driver when you miss your stop and end up in Southwark….

 

EDIT. I had the pleasure yesterday of waiting behind a woman with a pushchair getting money out of an ATM at ASDA while texting. Ten seconds texting….1 sec looking at ATM…..20 secs texting…..1 sec looking at ATM

Which one of these is the real soft science?

I continually hear about how psychology is suppose to be a ‘soft’ science. The biggest knob ends that express this view are usually physicists.

Are you kidding me?

Two words. THEORETICAL PHYSICS.

If ever there was a ‘soft’ science, this would be it.

Dark matter, dark energy, branes, bubbles, supersymmetry…..need I go on?

Have you observed these things? No. Is there any chance in the near future that you will observe these things? No. Can you actually prove with any degree of probability or falsify any of these things? No. Does that stop you appearing on every available documentary on the universe claiming that these things are fact rather than theory? ER, definitely no. Journey through the universe, Cosmos, The Planets, Evacuate Earth, I am pointing the finger at you.

And don’t get me started on Nat Geo’s Cosmos. Rogue planets? Are ye serious? Can ye see them? No. Does the sun reflect of them? No. Do they make a star wobble? No. So how do you know they exist except that they are one of Brannon Braga’s sci-fi fan wankeries?

Aaah, but we don’t have to! The wonders and magnificence of quantum theory, or its alternatives, can explain all. We just need a bigger telescope/collider/technological fanwankery and we’ll show you all that we are right.

Until you can resolve the problem of gravity, I ain’t interested.

Even the much touted Higgs Boson might not be the Higgs Boson….

Apart from the fact that physics as a science is the poorer for entertaining this bullshit, the Research Council responsible for astronomy and astrophysics has majorly slashed the funding of its grants because it used all its money to pay for that big fuck off tunnel.

I never actually met a physics student at uni who actually graduated, but I knew a few chemists and, later, a biochem PhD student. None of them actually learned about research methods or statistics at undergrad level and they ‘picked’ it up at postgraduate level informally. It was muggins here who analysed all their data for them, and I was still doing it for the biochem PhD student at the end of her second year.

Psychology is not a soft science. Yes, there are some airy fairy parts of it, but they tend to be recent additions that aren’t really psychology. Some of it is common sense, some of it is more intuitive than other sciences, and it is badly represented by twats with a psychology degree who think that it qualifies them to talk about everything and their mother’s toilet training habits in the media while acting in a professional capacity (yes, Emma Kenny, I’ma lookin at ye), but most of it has a good theoretical foundation, its applications are evidence based, and its made more impact in people’s everyday life than flippin theoretical physics. Psychology, I salute you.

EDIT. I should add that some of my memory of theoretical physics may be out of date or wrong (see, unlike theoretical physics, I can admit I might be wrong). But, like the majority of the population, I don’t have a background in physics, but this info has been gleaned from several years reading New Scientist. Badly written and incomprehensible New Scientist articles. Theoretical physics, your media profile sucks.

Wanted: Thwarted action movie director for historical documentary

As a big consumer of, what I would call History Porn, I do love history documentaries.

But as I was watching The Plantagenets last week alongside History Channel’s Crusade, I was thinking about how kinda samey the battle scenes are. Lots of raised swords and yelling ‘aaaagh’.

Who comes up with this shit?

Is there a job advert that goes out saying ‘Wanted: Failed action movie director wanted for BBC documentary’??

I assume directing a battle scene requires some kind of technical expertise. Is there a course on ‘How to film an historical battle’ in Film School? Are all those film directors who really want to film the next Bruce Willis action flick destined for Historical Battle Purgatory?

Never mind all the extras who dress up like twats and yell ‘aaagh’. Are they recruited from the local pub on a Friday night?

It all sounds, to me, like blokey twitter.

Save us all the bother and go fish out your He-Man figures from your parents’ loft….

EDIT. Apparently this is the first post on WP to have the tag ‘general twattery’….

Wanted: more funding for psychological therapies

I was reading in the BPS Clinical Psychology forum magazine how strapped NHS Trusts are diverting money earmarked for psychological therapies to prop up overstretched mainline services.

This is despite the Tory government promising more money for Clinical Psychology posts in the NHS and more money for training additional Clinical Psychology PhD places.

For service users, this means an even longer waiting list.

Apparently, if you are in crisis, you’re pretty fucked. I’m surprised the Tory’s haven’t told us all to stiffen our upper lip and pull ourselves up by our shoe laces.

There is also some kind of new ‘programme’ to increase access to psychological therapies, called something like IAPT, or some such acronym. I tend to remember it as CRAP.

No longer can you expect psychological therapies to be delivered by a qualified clinical psychologist, but nurses, social workers, teachers and your Aunt Betty can do it. You don’t even have to go to an office. They’ll deliver the ‘therapy’ over the phone, and they’ll ‘cure’ you in 6 sessions. If you actually want to see a clinical psychologist, in person, and for more sessions, tough shit.

I don’t necessarily think that psychological therapies have to be delivered by clinical psychologists. A large part of their effect is probably the therapeutic relationship. And, apparently, up to three-quarters of ‘psychotherapists’ don’t use evidence based therapies.

But, at least with a clinical psychologist, you KNOW that they’ve had at least three years of supervised training, that they are registered with the HPC, and they are bound by the BPS. Can the NHS guarantee these things about Aunt Betty?

Plus, have you ever met a psychiatric nurse? While there are some fantastic ones out there, the service users I have heard from are fairly unanimous in psychiatric nurses being extremely discriminatory against service users. Psychiatric nurses tend to have been indoctrinated into the cult of the biomedical model and ‘wouldn’t the ward run more smoothly if you were a good little girl and took your meds’. If there were any nursing group I would volunteer to deliver psychological therapies it would be ICU nurses. They are amazing and epitomise the caring compassionate profession.

The Tories are always talking about competition. Let service users vote with their feet. You pay your taxes, you are entitled to have a well qualified and regulated therapist.

And, if you have depression or anxiety and are waiting nigh on a year to see a clinical psychologist, spare a thought for those with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. They can expect to wait an AVERAGE of 8 years to see one.

The power of emotional avoidance

Yesterday, I was reading in The Psychologist Archives, about “workaholics” and whether you can be addicted to work. It suggests that if you are doing it to avoid other things in your life then it would qualify as an addiction.

Given that addiction is assumed to have a physical basis, that it is a “disease”, I am neither convinced that being a workaholic, or any other addiction, meets this criteria.

Rather than suggesting that there is some kind of unknown disease process at work, is it not more parsimonious to assume that they are all just examples of emotional avoidance?

So many “psychological disorders” are assumed to be due to a disease process, despite the scant evidence to support it and the masses of evidence showing that life circumstances, trauma and social factors are big contributors to these disorders.

Most of them have emotional avoidance at their centre.

This is important for applied reasons. If an unknown disease process is at work, we are no closer to having a remedy. If it is emotional avoidance at work, then we have numerous effective psychological therapies, such as the third wave therapies, to address this.

But not the dreadful CBT. The cognitive “restructuring” involved is, in itself, a form of emotional avoidance and, from a learning theory point of view, doesn’t make any sense. Surely, the “bad” thoughts re-emerge due to extinction?

And, CBT makes the mistake of assuming that thoughts or emotions can be “good” or “bad”. They are neither. They just are. If you want good mental and physical health, they are not to be avoided but experienced. The idea that you can live your life without “bad” thoughts or emotions is a fallacy that CBT continues to peddle.

Given the complicated nature of addiction and ALL psychological “disorders” is it likely that there will EVER be a magic bullet? Is this not in itself delusional thinking? At the very least, overly simplistic and parochial? Can human nature be reduced to this neurotransmitter, this area of the brain, this gene? Is this search not, in of itself, a form of avoidance?

The ’40 Club’

What’s your number?

Well, what is it?

No, I’m not asking you about THAT.

What I want you to ask yourself is ‘are you in the 40 club?’

Still none the wiser?

Picture this: you are driving along a nice country road. The road has a few small bends in it but is largely straight. It is a nice day, the sun is out, the road is dry, and there isn’t any mud or puddles. It is summer.
How fast are you going?

I do a lot of driving on country roads, most of them as I’ve described above. But what eternally frustrates me is the ’40 club’: those driving at 40mph. And if you have a sat nav in your car, you’ll see that, while they think they’re doing 40, it’s actually closer to 36.

And they are EVERYWHERE.

They are usually in one of those wee city cars (especially Fiats, Nissans, Hyundais) or KIAs or Jags (who knew that Jags could only do 40?), only going a few miles (a relief, but there is always someone else to replace them a few miles down the road), with a queue of traffic behind them.

I’ve also noticed that those in the 40 Club are usually hesitant, unconfident, wobble all over the road, and go through 20 and 30 zones doing 40, suggesting that they are not observing the rules of the road or the road signs. You see them in motorway slip roads as well with the traffic backing up behind them.

While the police are so fixated on those speeding they have failed to realise the association between those doing 40 whatever the speed limit is and the alarming behaviours I have just outlined.

Given these behaviours, I think the police should be taking notice, and pulling these drivers over to check that they are fit to drive.

And, the queue of traffic. There are some people who will not overtake under any circumstances no matter how perfect the situation is. These people need to be pulled over by the police too. Hasty drivers get prosecuted because they can be dangerous, but what about hesitant and unconfident drivers? In a queue of traffic, if the first driver is doing 40 in a 60 zone, and the driver behind won’t overtake, this pushes the decision onto the third driver, who then has to make a decision about whether to overtake two cars rather than one.

Likewise, convoys of lorries. When there are two or more lorries behind each other, either one pulls over to let the traffic overtake, or leave a sufficient gap between each other so people can overtake one at a time. As the police like to tell us FRUSTRATION KILLS.

It just all snowballs when you have a driver doing ridiculously slow speeds on open roads with 60 speed limits. It should be about driving to the road conditions not what you feel ‘safe’ doing. If you don’t feel ‘safe’ driving at the appropriate speed then it’s time to hang up the driving gloves

….And Halifax/BOS are taking the piss too….

I had the pleasure (again) of paying over a grand for “set up fees” for my mortgage with Halifax/BOS. I opted for a tracker as it was extremely unlikely that interest would go up in the near future, and despite the “advisor” strongly telling my to go with the fixed rate option (which was more expensive, no surprise there then). But I nearly fell off my seat when I was told it was only for two years.

Why on earth is a tracker mortgage only for two years? It makes no sense to the person taking up the mortgage….

But, this means that, pretty soon, I’ll have the joy of giving them another grand.

I could, of course, look elsewhere for a mortgage. But there is catch. Most of the banks require you to have a current account with them and deposit your pay into it. This seems deeply unfair and the opposite of the competitiveness that the Tories are always banging on about.

Halifax did, however, send me a lovely welcome pack containing tea, coffee, screwdrivers (!), and a Bayliss and Harding gift set. But, I’m sure, it didn’t total £1k….

I think FlyBe are taking the piss…..

….having just forked out nigh on £250 to fly to the south of England, I am delighted to receive an email from FlyBe telling me that I can fly to Dublin or the Channel Islands for £25.

Pray tell, why can I fly to another island for a tenth of what it cost me to travel elsewhere in mainland UK?

It’s the same size plane, similar distance, the seat doesn’t have any fancy extras, such as an ejection button….

And, of course, the big con. For many people, bringing along a bag for the hold is the norm (and if you are disabled, you have no choice). But FlyBe have removed this option from their standard fare and amalgamated it with choosing your seat and the option to change your ticket. I can live without the latter two, but I need the former. This is just a con to justify charging extra extra for hold luggage.

Budget airlines don’t exist anymore so they should stop advertising themselves as such.

Free booze at universities

Apparently, Cambridge spent £3million on wine last year.

And, UCL?
“Almost £18,000 was spent on a farewell party for former University College London provost Sir Malcolm Grant, London Student reported on 16 September. About £2,000 went on 880 bottles of sparkling wine for the send-off on 19 June, although “pictures suggest the bottles far outnumbered the guests”, the paper observed. Another £260 was spent on 200 moustache-shaped cookies in honour of Sir Malcolm’s famous facial hair, with the overall biscuit spend totalling £563, according to figures obtained via a Freedom of Information request. The Abba tribute band Björn Again was paid £8,225 to entertain guests (though a private donor contributed £3,500). UCL students’ union officer Hannah Webb called the expenditure “ludicrous”, especially when cleaners “are still not being paid a living wage”. UCL said that all staff were invited to the event and that spending on food and drink equated to “less than £5 a head”.”
19th September 2013

My current university does not give staff money back that they’ve spent on alcohol for entertaining guests.

Too right.

There is absolutely no reason to provide alcohol at any staff event. Why should staff be getting wankered on someone else’s cheque book?

As a student, are you happy that your fees are going towards your professors having a piss up?

How many pineapple and cheese delicacies can be bought with a bottle of chateau vice chancellor (only senior staff) or Chardonnay Vineger (the rest of us plebs)?? Or books for the library? Or bursaries for working class students? Or a pay rise for the departmental secretary or cleaner?