Cracking cases with nuclear forensics

Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy; photographer Jason RichardsOak Ridge National Laboratory’s Joe Giaquinto investigates chemical clues fortrace-level radioactivity. Giaquinto leads ORNL’s Nuclear Analytical Chemistryand Isotopics...

Read More

Eyewitness identification reforms may have unintended consequences

Eyewitness identification reforms may have unintended consequencesResearch by a University of California, Riverside psychologist raises serious questions about eyewitness identification procedures that are being adopted by police departments across the United States.  These new procedures are designed to reduce the kinds of false identification...

Read More

How we get directions wrong

Credit: Kyoto University  Using virtual three-dimensional mazes together with functional magneticresonance imaging (fMRI), researchers from Kyoto University investigatedwhether a person's preconceptions could be represented in brain activity.Ever...

Read More

Write standing: It worked for Woolf. Hemingway. Roth. Why not you?

Thomas Jefferson and his stand-up desk.Søren Kierkegaard wrote standing.As did Charles Dickens.And Winston Churchill.Philip Roth.Add to that Vladimir Nabokov and Virginia Woolf.Plus Ernest Hemingway.What are we waiting for?*  *  *  *  *New...

Read More

How to use eyewitness identifications: Cautiously

As a science geek, I do watch the many true-crime shows, especially those that rely on forensic science to identify and convict culprits.  But as this latest series of reports indicate, the science isn't perfect, in fact in some cases, the science is plainly flawed.Fortunately, researchers and defense attorneys are aware of the flaws and can use...

Read More

Forensic sciences 'fraught with error'

Forensic sciences are 'fraught with error'"People tend to seek, perceive, interpret, and create new evidence in ways that verify their preexisting beliefs."Researchers review various high-profile false convictions and provide an overview of classic psychological research on expectancy and observer effects and indicates in which ways forensic science...

Read More

Bite-mark analysis can lead to false convictions

www.pjstar.comAt least 24 men convicted or charged with murder or rape based on bitemarks on the flesh of victims have been exonerated since 2000, manyafter spending more than a decade in prison. Source: The Peoria Journal Star.  Bite-mark analysis...

Read More

Why superstitions are hard to shake

www.ebay.tvThe power of magical thinking:Why superstitions are hard to shakeWhen sports fans wear their lucky shirts on game day, they know it is irrational to think clothing can influence a team's performance. But they do it anyway.  Even smart,...

Read More

Religious beliefs don't always lead to violence

Yesterday, a woman in Muslim garb was escorted out of a political rally sponsored by a leading candidate for office - for the only reason of her clothing.  As she exited, she was loudly booed and subjected to intolerant cat-calls.Not a pretty event.Is there a better way?  Can we learn to be more tolerant of other's political, ethnic, and...

Read More

Reading Fiction: Zoning out or deep thinking?

Credit: © Sergey Nivens / Fotolia  (Stock image)Real-time brain scans show that when people read stories that deal with thesecore, protected values, the "default mode network" in their brains activates. Zoning out or deep thinking?Reading...

Read More

Understanding your character's sixth-sense for danger: Here's how it works.

Credit: © Dario Lo Presti / FotoliaAnxious individuals detect threat in a different region of thebrain from people who are more laid-back.Characters having a sixth-sense for danger borders on cliché, a trope even.Yet, many if not most clichés are...

Read More