Science News for Writers

Credit: © IMG_191 / Fotolia   Clashes between the use of faith vs. scientific evidence to explain the world around us dates back centuries. If I understand the research in this report and in other studies posted here, the seeming conflict between faith and science resides in each of us due in part to the structures of our brains combined with how each individual's brain is genetically constructed combined with the fact that of the twenty or so "modes" of our brain, only one can grab the attention of our conscious and aware self at a time. Recent research (below in related stories) shows differences between conservative and liberal thought processes; conservatives tending to more dominant amygdala reactions and liberals tending to more frontal lobe responses.  (This is my extremely simplistic explanation of our immensely complex brains.)  The importance of this is that political views are as much genetically controlled as based on logical conclusion. Now...

Credit: Spanish National Police A 19-year-old woman forced into prostitution and rescued by the Spanish National Police in Madrid has a bar code on her wrist. The tattoo also displays the amount of money she owed her traffickers: 2,000 euros. The woman had multiple injuries from being beaten. Men who buy sex have much in  common with sexually coercive men Findings support decades of research Men who buy sex have less empathy for women in prostitution than men who don't buy sex and are more likely to report having committed rape and other acts of sexual aggression, according to a new study. The study of 101 men in the Boston area who buy sex and 101 men who do not -- all of whom were promised confidentiality -- indicates that the perspective of sex buyers has similarities to that of sexual aggressors. "Our findings indicate that men who buy sex share certain key characteristics with men who are at risk for committing sexual aggression," s...

wegotthiscovered.com Tony Shalhoub as Adrian Monk, a San Francisco detective who suffers obsessive compulsive disorder, created by writer and producer Andy Breckman. The television detective Monk was an enjoyable character, solving crime despite being portrayed as being nearly crippled by his obsessive compulsive disorder.  What attribute of the Monk character made him effective at solving crime?  Or rather, what attribute might the writers have picked up on that made him able to solve crimes that baffled others? As this research points out it was his imagination.  He was obsessive because he could imagine the germs on every door knob and so on, so he had a well developed ability to picture "what-ifs." This in turn gave him the ability to imagine all sorts of possible solutions that those of us lacking a hyper-imagination would miss. I don't know that this was the writer's thought process, but it came through in Monk's thought processes. Here's...

Credit: © 135pixels / Fotolia " Put simply, women are evolved to invest far more in a  relationship than a man," researchers say.  "Women  experience more emotional pain following a breakup, but they also more fully recover ." I've long felt that in most ways, women are stronger and more resilient than men.  As I read more research, conclusions from a number of studies across the board back this feeling up.  For example, large corporations with women on the board of directors perform better, make higher profits and are less likely to go into bankruptcy.  Other research shows women make more responsible leaders, tuned in more closely to those they lead. They tend to be better managers.  The list goes on. Won't anyone say anything good about men?  Well, we're bigger.  And usually stronger.  And, uh. . . I'll work on this list during the day, see if I can think of anything else. Here's the report with a link to the full r...

For anyone who has suffered depression, you're aware of the hours spent chewing the cud of your negative thoughts.  It's something that you live with day in day out.  For a writer who has not experienced this, understanding how a character's internal dialog runs on a loop, over and over again is important to understand to fully develop that character. Here's the story with a link to the original story in the attribution . *  *  *  *  * Depressive ruminations and the idling brain New analysis explores neural processes behind depressive rumination Depressed people often find themselves preoccupied with guilty, shameful, or self-defeating thoughts for large parts of their day. These thoughts not only distract from other activities but also fail to resolve the underlying life issues. Further, the ideas that receive focused attention in these depressive ruminations are frequently quite distorted and lead to distress. Darkness Visible : A Memoir ...

Majority rule: Why conformity  can actually be a good thing " Our whole world is made up of things that we  do that are good for us, but we don't know why ."  Like to go your own way? Most of us actually prefer to follow the pack, according to UBC research. That's one of the outcomes from a study published in Evolution and Human Behavior that examines how mathematical models predict human behavior. The research tested theories about when people should rely on "social information" -- information that we learn vicariously from others -- and when we should choose to go it alone. Nurturing Independent Thinkers  by Michael Bosher Order new or used from Powell's Books "People are conformist -- and that's a good thing for cultural evolution," said Michael Muthukrishna, a Vanier and Liu Scholar and recent PhD recipient from UBC's department of psychology. "By being conformist, we copy the things that are popular in ...

Brian Doyle-Murray as Frank Shirley in the must-see-every-holiday- season classic, Christmas Vacation, written by John Hughes. Came across this study from 2012 while researching an article.  It sure explains a lot. . . not just how the CEO, Frank Shirley, came to make his disastrous cost-cutting decision in the movie Christmas Vacation written by John Hughes.  It explains how so many bone-headed decisions are made by business executives and owners. In simplest terms, our brains can either be analytical or empathetic, but not both at the same time because being one shuts down the other.  Why would this be?  There has to be an evolutionary advantage to this dichotomy.  If soldiers on a battlefield feel empathy toward an enemy, would they pull the trigger?  Would a caveman be able to feed his family if he thought, "Oh, look Bambi."  So there is a reason we're wired this way. Today, this phenomena can lead to disaster, as happened to the Grisw...