Simon Oxenham
The best and the worst of psychology and neuroscience
Simon Oxenham covers the best and the worst from the world of psychology and neuroscience. Formerly writing with the pseudonym "Neurobonkers", Simon has a history of debunking dodgy scientific research and tearing apart questionable science journalism in an irreverent style. Simon has written and blogged for publishers including: The Psychologist, Nature, Scientific American and The Guardian. His work has been praised in the New York Times and The Guardian and described in Pearson's Textbook of Psychology as "excoriating reviews of bad science/studies”.
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Why is a psychologist claiming "patent rights" for a basic psychological technique that he did not invent and does not own the patent for?
Yesterday Facebook updated the News Feed to attempt to prevent the spread of hoax news stories. What will the fallout look like?
According to a story doing the rounds on social media, organ transplant patients can take on the personalities of their donors. Don't believe the hype.
Why did an academic at MIT recently make the absurd claim that half of all children will be autistic by 2025?
Much of what we were taught in school about how to learn has been shown to be comparatively ineffective, so what actually works?
A dark period from the past of psychiatry risks being forgotten, we can't allow that to happen.
Despite widespread belief in the myth that sugar causes hyperactivity, scientists have known for more than two decades that the link is all in the mind.
One image has had an incalculable effect on policy around the world, but is it even remotely representative of what happens in the real world? Children who have been neglected can look forward to a more positive outlook than this image would suggest.
A new study demonstrates how headlines can alter how you perceive the content of news articles.
According to a new study, people want to be interested in brain science - but don't act on that desire - or don't get the chance.
We've known for a very long time that our body language influences others. What we're only now beginning to understand is how our body language alters the way we ourselves perceive the world.
Some neuromyths — incorrect statements about how the brain works — have become "common knowledge," repeated by educators and used to influence everything from public policy to parenting practices. It's time for that to change.
Researchers working on a new project at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University have begun tracking, in real time, cases of false news and the stories debunking them […]
Facebook recently announced that it will display warnings beside satirical content. In this post we look at the flaws and implications of recent research on the spread of false information on Facebook.
When I first heard of Yossarian Lives, a website that bills itself as the metaphorical search engine, I thought “no way!” Good metaphors are inherently artistic and depend on a […]
According to a new study, people living in more liberal countries are happier than people in more conservative countries; but paradoxically, people who consider themselves to be liberal are less happy than people who think of themselves as conservative, regardless of where they live. Why?
Four years ago a paper by Dan Sperber published in the Review of Philosophy and Psychology coined the term: The Guru Effect – the tendency for people to “judge profound […]
What contains more chemicals, apples or love hearts?If, like many people your instinctive response is “love hearts… of course”, you might benefit from a new guide by the group Sense […]
If there was an award for the single greatest hub of pseudoscience on the internet, the website Natural News would well and truly take the crown tin foil hat. Expect […]
Last year America witnessed some of the most cringe-inducing political advertising campaigns of all time, in which the Koch Brothers attempted to convince young Americans to boycott Obamacare. The videos […]
Professor Richard Dawkins was once again recently the centre of controversy after the media suggested that he had claimed children should not be read fairy tales: “I think it’s rather […]
Solstice might just be my new favourite (non-)holiday. As the sun peaks its highest excursion relative to the celestial equator, we experience the longest day and the shortest night. This […]
I’ve just discovered what might just be my new favorite lecture on Youtube. Pseudonymous philosopher Sisyphus Redeemed describes a sample of the many ways we have been wrong throughout history […]
Have you ever found yourself taking an exam, working on a tight deadline, or solving an important time critical problem and becoming stuck; unable to progress because your brain won’t […]
I recently stumbled upon an excellent essay by Steven Poole in Aeon Magazine on teleology (the widely abandoned philosophical idea used to support arguments for intelligent design, that in nature, […]
Eight years ago professor of global health Hans Rosling delivered a TED talk that remains one of the most viewed TED talks of all time. This month at the Nordic […]
Recently a good friend told me over a pint in our local pub that he hadn’t been able to sleep a wink for two nights. He’d been left traumatised by […]
I was very surprised to see the following headline earlier today on a parenting website of all places: Just keep your promises: Going above and beyond does not pay off. […]
If you’re a regular at this blog, you’ll have picked up on my favourite theme – bad science (and bad science journalism) in the world of psychology and neuroscience. The […]
Walk into any modern university lecture theatre and you can expect to see a wall of laptop lids, with students’ eyes peering over them. Past research has demonstrated that laptops […]