Geoffrey W. Sutton PhD, Psychology and Culture

  Pants on Fire 2023 Geoffrey W. Sutton & Bing AI CLIMATE SCIENCE and the Unscientific MIND Challenging Thoughts About Climate Science and Psychological Explanations   Climate science has become a political football. The teams of political rivals seek to exploit research about climate science to score points they can trade in for political power. Their fans cheer and sneer and look for penalties. Now a scientist seems to reveal a weakness. Good scientists can look back on their studies and those of others to identify what should have or could have been considered. It’s the never ending quest we read in scientific journals, “more research is needed.” Patrick Brown is a climate scientist. He’s caught some attention for his opinion piece about other variables that could account for the world’s wicked wildfires. Shannon Osaka does a good job of telling the complex story in WAPO, but I’m not sure the details will change the game. But then he changes fields to bec...

At this point, the research supports the value of wearing a face mask plus taking other precautions like eye protection, physical distancing, and hand hygiene. Masks alone are not enough.  Meta-analysis Study published in    The Lancet June 27 2020    What they did: The research team examined virus transmission among people on six continents. Here's a quote from the article: We did a systematic review of 172 observational studies in health-care and non-health-care settings across 16 countries and six continents; 44 comparative studies were included in a meta-analysis, including 25 697 patients with COVID-19, SARS, or MERS.    Conclusions so far: The risk for infection is highly dependent on distance to the individual infected and the type of face mask and eye protection worn. From a policy and public health perspective, current policies of at least 1 m physical distancing seem to be strongly associated with a large protective effect, and distances of 2...

Amidst the many lessons that clergy will share between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, are timeless stories of human nature. The gospel narratives tell the story of Jesus' purpose driven death, but we also see the role of the crowds and societal leaders in killing Jesus, the author of the Christian faith. Whipping up the Crowd On Palm Sunday, a crowd in Jerusalem welcomed Jesus as their king. The crowds were enthusiastic. On Good Friday, a crowd welcomes a political revolutionary (Barabbas) and calls for the death of Jesus. According to Mark , the religious leaders “stirred up the crowd.” The governor, Pilate, recognized what was happening and bowed to the demands of the crowd’s request, “crucify him.” The crowd secured the death penalty and the political rulers whipped and mocked the “King of the Jews.” Whipping People Effective leaders know the power of crowds to effect change. Jesus was a clear and present danger to the way of life for the religious le...