Pensamento Crítico e Desinformação (Fake News) - Confiança perdida: quando a confiança na ciência fomenta a pseudociência

"“As pessoas precisam entender como a ciência funciona e como chega às suas conclusões”, acrescentou Albarracín. "As pessoas podem aprender em quais fontes de informação confiar e como validar essas informações. Não é apenas um caso de confiar na ciência, mas ter a capacidade de ser mais crítico e entender como fazer uma dupla verificação sobre a informação.""

July 26, 2021

Misplaced trust: When trust in science fosters pseudoscience, by University of Pennsylvania

The COVID-19 pandemic and the politicization of health-prevention measures such as vaccination and mask-wearing have highlighted the need for people to accept and trust science.

But trusting science isn't enough.

A new study finds that people who trust science are more likely to believe and disseminate false claims containing scientific references than people who do not trust science. Reminding people of the value of critical evaluation reduces belief in false claims, but reminding them of the value of trusting science does not.

"We conclude that trust in science, although desirable in many ways, makes people vulnerable to pseudoscience," the researchers write. "These findings have implications for science broadly and the application of psychological science to curbing misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic."

"People are susceptible to being deceived by the trappings of science," said co-author Dolores Albarracín, the Alexandra Heyman Nash Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor of the University of Pennsylvania. She said, for example, that COVID-19 vaccines have been the target of false claims that they contain pollutants or other dangerous ingredients. "It's deception but it's pretending to be scientific. So people who are taught to trust science and normally do trust science can be fooled as well."

Albarracín, a social psychologist and director of the Science of Science Communication Division of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, said, "What we need are people who also can be critical of information. A critical mindset can make you less gullible and make you less likely to believe in conspiracy theories."

The study, conducted by Albarracín and colleagues when she was in her former position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was published recently in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

The experiments: Misinformation about a virus and GMOs

For the study, researchers conducted four preregistered experiments with online participants. The researchers created two fictitious stories—one about a virus created as a bioweapon, mirroring claims about the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, and the other about an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory about the effects of genetically modified organisms or GMOs on tumors.

The invented stories contained references to either scientific concepts and scientists who claimed to have done research on the topic or descriptions from people identified as activists. Participants in each experiment, ranging from 382 to 605 people, were randomly assigned to read either the scientific or non-scientific versions of the stories.

Findings

What the researchers found was that among people who did not have trust in science, the presence of scientific content in a story did not have a significant effect. But people who did have higher levels of trust in science were more likely to believe the stories with scientific content and more likely to disseminate them.

In the fourth experiment, participants were prompted to have either a 'trust in science' or a 'critical evaluation' mindset. Those primed to have a critical mindset were less likely to believe the stories, whether or not the stories used seemingly scientific references. "The critical mindset makes you less gullible, regardless of the information type," Albarracín said.

"People need to understand how science operates and how science arrives at its conclusions," Albarracín added. "People can be taught what sources of information to trust and how to validate that information. It's not just a case of trusting science, but having the ability to be more critical and understand how to double-check what information is really about."

The lead author, postdoctoral researcher Thomas C. O'Brien of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, added, "Although trust in science has important societal benefits, it is not a panacea that will protect people against misinformation. Spreaders of misinformation commonly reference science. Science communication cannot simply urge people to trust anything that references science, and instead should encourage people to learn about scientific methods and ways to critically engage with issues that involve scientific content."

The researchers concluded that "although cynicism of science could have disastrous impacts, our results suggest that advocacy for trusting science must go beyond scientific labels, to focus on specific issues, critical evaluation, and the presence of consensus among several scientists... Fostering trust in the 'healthy skepticism' inherent to the scientific process may also be a critical element of protecting against misinformation ... Empowering people with knowledge about the scientific validation process and the motivation to be critical and curious may give audiences the resources they need to dismiss fringe but dangerous pseudoscience."

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How news coverage affects public trust in science

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More information: Thomas C. O'Brien et al, Misplaced trust: When trust in science fosters belief in pseudoscience and the benefits of critical evaluation, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104184

Inteligência Artificial - Vai ser possível parar de construir Inteligência Artificial ruim?

 “Stop Building Bad AI” [Boston Review].

A obstacle to more robust ethical reflection on AI [Artificial Inteligence] development is the presumption that we always have the option of non-deployment. If at some point in the future it turns out that an AI tool is having unacceptably bad consequences, some might say, we can simply decide to stop using the tool then. 

This may be true in some cases, but it is not clear why we should think it is always possible—especially without industry-wide regulation. The labor effects of automation, for example, may well be effectively irreversible. In current market conditions, it is hard to imagine how a company could take back its decision to replace a human-executed task with an AI-driven, automated process. 

Should the company face backlash over its AI tool, current incentives make it far likelier that it would seek to find another way to automate the task rather than rehire humans to execute it. The pressure to automate is now so strong in some sectors that some companies are pretending to have built and deployed AI. In 2016, for example, Bloomberg News reported that personal assistant startup X.ai was directing employees to simulate the work of AI chatbots, performing avalanches of mind-numbing, repetitive tasks such as generating auto-reply emails and scheduling appointments. 

It would be naïve to think that once such tools are actually built and deployed, the work force could easily revert to its pre-automated structure.

apud: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/07/200pm-water-cooler-7-26-2021.html

Política - "cidadãos comuns podem começar a espelhar as emoções raivosas dos políticos sobre os quais lêem nas notícias".

"Se os democratas lerem sobre um colega democrata ficar bravo, por exemplo, eles frequentemente relatam que eles próprios estão com raiva. Em contraste, os eleitores azuis [Democratas] que encontraram informações neutras ou viram uma citação irada de um republicano não experimentaram as mesmas oscilações de emoção."

"O furor político pode se espalhar facilmente: os cidadãos comuns podem começar a espelhar as emoções raivosas dos políticos sobre os quais lêem nas notícias. Esse" contágio emocional "pode até levar alguns eleitores - que, de outra forma, se desligariam da política - a irem às urnas."

 July 19, 2021

Angry politicians make angry voters, new study finds, by Daniel Strain, University of Colorado at Boulder

Politicians may have good reason to turn to angry rhetoric, according to research led by political scientists from Colorado—the strategy seems to work, at least in the short term.

In a new study, Carey Stapleton at the University of Colorado Boulder and Ryan Dawkins at the U.S. Air Force Academy discovered that political furor may spread easily: Ordinary citizens can start to mirror the angry emotions of the politicians they read about in the news. Such "emotional contagion" might even drive some voters who would otherwise tune out of politics to head to the polls.

"Politicians want to get reelected, and anger is a powerful tool that they can use to make that happen," said Stapleton, who recently earned his Ph.D. in political science at CU Boulder.

He and Dawkins, an assistant professor, published their results this month in the journal Political Research Quarterly.

The researchers surveyed roughly 1,400 people online from across the political spectrum, presenting them with a series of mock news stories about a recent political debate. They discovered that when it comes to politics, anger may lead to more anger. Subjects who read about an enraged politician from their own party were more likely to report feeling mad themselves than people who didn't. Those same steaming partisans also reported that they were more likely to get involved in politics, from attending rallies to voting on Election Day.

"Anger is a very strong, short-term emotion that motivates people into action," said Stapleton. "But there can be these much more negative implications in the long term. There's always the potential that anger can turn into rage and violence."

Tempers rising

Anger and politics in the U.S. have long gone hand-in-hand—the nation's second president, John Adams, once referred to Alexander Hamilton as a "bastard brat of a Scotch peddler." But Stapleton and Dawkins' findings come at a time when American politics has grown especially divisive.

According to the Pew Research Center, in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election, "around nine-in-ten Trump and Biden supporters said there would be 'lasting harm' to the nation if the other candidate won." That anger boiled over with deadly results when a mob of supporters of then-President Trump stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Stapleton, who is not related to the Colorado political family, wanted to find out just how contagious those kinds of emotions could be. He will start a position as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Notre Dame in the fall.

"Most political science research to date has focused on what we do when we feel an emotion like anger, rather than how our emotions affect other people," Stapleton said.

Fighting words

To find out how the emotions of politicians might rub off on their supporters, he and Dawkins ran an experiment. The duo wrote a series of news stories about a debate on immigration policy between two candidates for an open Congressional seat in Minnesota. Unbeknownst to the study's subjects, neither the candidates nor their debate were real.

In some cases, the faux politicians used language that tipped into outrage (although it might still look tame in the current political landscape). "When I look at our borders, I'm enraged by what I see," as an example. In other cases, the soap boxers stuck to more neutral language.

The team's results are among the first to show what many Americans have long known—that political anger can be a powerful force.

"We report being angrier after seeing our fellow partisans being angry," Stapleton said. "When the other side is angry, it doesn't seem to affect us much at all."

If Democrats read about a fellow Democrat getting mad, for example, they often reported feeling angry themselves. In contrast, blue voters who encountered neutral information or saw an angry quote from a Republican didn't experience the same swings in emotion.

The study also brought a twist: The people who were the most susceptible to those shifts weren't the die-hard partisans on either side of the aisle. They were more moderate voters.

"The really far left and right are already so amped up," Stapleton said. "But these weakly-aligned partisans who are notoriously less likely to participate in elections were more susceptible to changing their emotions."

For Stapleton, the results carry an important lesson for ordinary voters: When watching the news, people should pay attention to how politicians may try to appeal to or even manipulate emotions to get what they want. But, he added, anger is only part of the picture. In a previous study, he and his colleagues discovered that optimistic people are much more likely to be politically active than pessimists.

"Anger is one way we can get people to vote and get engaged in politics, but it's not the only way," he said. "It doesn't have to be all doom and gloom."

Explore further

Researchers point to populism's appeal to victimhood and resentment

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More information: Carey E. Stapleton et al, Catching My Anger: How Political Elites Create Angrier Citizens, Political Research Quarterly (2021). DOI: 10.1177/10659129211026972

Inteligência Emocional, comportamento-social e locomoção: cruciais para melhor desempenho matemático

“De fato, análises estatísticas específicas (regressão e mediação) mostram que altas pontuações em testes que avaliam o conhecimento emocional, a atividade locomotora e o comportamento social predizem um melhor desempenho matemático desses alunos”, observa Thalia Cavadini, pesquisadora do Departamento de Psicologia da FAPSE e primeira autora do estudo ".

JULY 15, 2021

Emotion, cooperation and locomotion crucial from an early age, by University of Geneva, at Phys.org

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

What are the fundamental skills that young children need to develop at the start of school for future academic success? While a large body of research shows strong links between cognitive skills (attention, memory, etc.) and academic skills on the one hand, and emotional skills on the other, in students from primary school to university, few studies have explored these links in children aged 3 to 6 in a school context. Researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and Valais University of Teacher Education, Switzerland (HEP-VS), in collaboration with teachers from Savoie in France and their pedagogical advisor, examined the links between emotion knowledge, cooperation, locomotor activity and numerical skills in 706 pupils aged 3 to 6. The results, to be read in the journal Scientific Reports, show for the first time that emotion knowledge, cooperative social behavior and locomotor activity are interrelated and associated with numerical skills. These results are in line with the political and scientific consensus on the importance of social-emotional skills in early schooling and suggest that locomotor activity should be added to these fundamental skills.

A growing number of studies are examining the fundamental abilities that prepare children for school and that are particularly crucial for their future academic success. "Among these abilities, 'emotion knowledge' contributes significantly and is a long-term predictor of social behavior and academic success," says Edouard Gentaz, professor in the Department of Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences (FPSE) of the UNIGE and the last author of this study. On the other hand, few studies have examined the links between socio-emotional and academic skills in preschool children. "To fill this gap, we joined forces with the HEP-VS and a team of teachers from Savoie in France and their pedagogical advisor to examine how emotion knowledge, social behavior and locomotor activity are associated and linked to the numerical skills in 706 pupils aged between 3 and 6 years old," continues the Geneva-based researcher. Unlike most research that generally examines school results through reading tests, this study focuses on numerical learning, the performance of which is less correlated with parents' socio-economic level than language skills.

Original tests adapted to the preschool age and educational context

To examine the links between the four variables studied, age-appropriate tests were developed in close collaboration with 33 volunteer teachers, who participated in an interactive workshop in which they were trained to set up, perform and evaluate the different tests in a standardized manner. Thus, emotion knowledge was assessed through two emotion comprehension tasks. The first measured the recognition of the primary emotions of anger, fear, joy and sadness as well as a neutral facial expression and the second measured the understanding of the external causes underlying these emotions in others. This second task was subdivided into two different subtasks: the teacher successively presented the student with five drawing scenarios illustrated by a picture of a character with a blank face facing a particular situation (e.g., "This boy has just received a present for his birthday') and then asked the student to indicate, among five illustrations of facial expressions, the one that corresponded to what the character felt in each situation, first by pointing to it (non-verbal responses) and then by naming it. The assessment of mathematical skills included three numerical tests. For example, the first test sought to assess whether students understood that the cardinal of a collection does not change when the spatial arrangement or nature of its elements is modified: the teacher placed a photograph in front of the student showing four collections of objects (two of which were composed of the same number of elements) and asked the student to indicate which collection contained the largest number of objects, which contained the fewest, and which two collections contained the same number.

Working closely with the teachers and their advisor, the psychologists developed observation grids to assess the locomotor activity and social behavior of the pupils. For locomotor activity, the grid created made it possible to rate the children's performance on an agility course consisting of various installations on the ground and in the air. As for social behavior, the grid developed made it possible to evaluate the children's reactions and attitudes during the practice of two different team games (one with a ball and the other without) observed by the teachers.

Key skills to promote numerical learning

The results of this study reveal that emotion knowledge, locomotor activity and social behavior are interdependent and associated with pupils' numerical skills from the age of 3 to 6 years. "Indeed, specific statistical analyses (regression and mediation) show that high scores on tests assessing emotion knowledge, locomotor activity and social behavior predict better mathematical performance in these students," notes Thalia Cavadini, researcher in the Department of Psychology at FAPSE and first author of the study. "Thus, our results are in line with the scientific consensus on the importance of social-emotional skills at the beginning of schooling and suggest that locomotor activity should be added to these fundamental skills," she concludes. Furthermore, this study is the first to show that emotional, social and locomotor skills promote school learning in toddlers.

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Using play to 'school' children's emotions

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More information: Thalia Cavadini et al, Emotion knowledge, social behaviour and locomotor activity predict the mathematic performance in 706 preschool children, Scientific Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-93706-7

Journal information: Scientific Reports

Etnia, Gênero e padrão de beleza: -"Um estudo de 25 anos com mulheres negras relaciona o uso frequente de relaxantes capilares à base de soda cáustica a um risco maior de câncer de mama", no The Conversation, por Kimberly Bertrand,

"Um estudo de 25 anos com mulheres negras relaciona o uso frequente de relaxantes capilares à base de soda cáustica a um risco maior de câncer de mama", no The Conversation, por Kimberly Bertrand, professora assistente de medicina, Universidade de Boston
...
O Estudo de Saúde da Mulher Negra da Universidade de Boston acompanhou 59.000 mulheres afro-americanas autoidentificadas por mais de 25 anos, enviando questionários a cada dois anos sobre novos diagnósticos e fatores que podem influenciar sua saúde.

Usando esses dados em nosso próprio estudo, minha equipe de epidemiologistas e eu descobrimos que mulheres negras que usaram produtos para cabelo contendo soda cáustica pelo menos sete vezes por ano durante 15 ou mais anos tiveram um risco aumentado de aproximadamente 30% de câncer de mama positivo para receptor de estrogênio em comparação com usuários menos frequentes.

...
https://theconversation.com/25-year-long-study-of-black-women-links-frequent-use-of-lye-based-hair-relaxers-to-a-higher-risk-of-breast-cancer-163563

25-year-long study of Black women links frequent use of lye-based hair relaxers to a higher risk of breast cancer, at The Conversation, by Kimberly Bertrand, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Boston University

he Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

Frequent and long-term use of lye-based hair straightening products, or relaxers, may increase the risk of breast cancer among Black women, compared with more moderate use.

Boston University’s Black Women’s Health Study followed 59,000 self-identified African American women for over 25 years, sending questionnaires every two years on new diagnoses and factors that might influence their health.

Using these data in our own study, my team of epidemiologists and I found that Black women who used hair products containing lye at least seven times a year for 15 or more years had an approximately 30% increased risk of estrogen receptor positive breast cancer compared with more infrequent users.

The Conversation is a news organization dedicated to facts and evidence

The minimal association between hair relaxers (with or without lye) and breast cancer risk for moderate users is generally reassuring. But the elevated risk for the heaviest users of lye-based hair products – which included about 20% of study participants – is concerning.

Why it matters

There is an urgent need to address racial disparities in breast cancer.

Black women diagnosed with breast cancer are 40% more likely to die from the disease than white women. While systemic factors such as delays in diagnosis and poorer health care likely contribute to this disparity, they don’t seem to fully explain the survival gap between Black and white women.

Black and white women have the same lifetime risk for breast cancer, but Black women are often diagnosed with more aggressive forms earlier in life. kali9/E+ via Getty Images

Black women are more likely than white women to develop highly aggressive breast cancers that have higher mortality rates, but researchers don’t really know why. However, scientists do know that chemical hair relaxers, more often used by Black women, contain potentially harmful chemicals, including possible carcinogens and chemicals known as endocrine disrupters, which can interfere with hormone function and could raise breast cancer risk. In the Black Women’s Health Study, 95% of women reported past or current use of these products.

This study fills a knowledge gap on the potential health effects of a consumer product popular among Black women. Given these findings, women may want to be cautious about the types of personal-care products they choose.

What still isn’t known

Because the Black Women’s Health Study did not have information on specific brands of hair relaxers, my team and I could not determine which specific ingredients might be most relevant for breast cancer risk. In addition, because we asked about hair relaxer use before 1997, the results of this study may not apply to products on the market today.

Though our findings suggest a link between the use of certain types of hair relaxers and breast cancer, epidemiologic studies such as this one cannot definitively prove that hair relaxers cause breast cancer. Additional research is needed, especially on currently available products.

What other research is being done

Evidence from animal and other experimental studies support a possible link between chemicals included in hair relaxers and cancer development. Studies on hair relaxer use and breast cancer risk in people, however, have had inconsistent results, possibly because of differences in the types of products used or asked about.

What’s next

Thanks to 59,000 study participants in the Black Women’s Health Study, our research team continues to investigate risk factors for breast cancer and other diseases in Black women. By understanding what causes disease and learning about ways to lower risk, society can move one step closer toward eliminating health disparities.

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