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‘Echo chambers’ in political and public scientific debate are a growing concern, but how prevalent are they and how can scientists measure their influence?
Disciplinary divides and diverse views on the role of ethical review in the social and behavioural sciences shape interpretations of the recent Common Rule changes. Challenges lay ahead in creating a shared standard for all those engaged in research that involves human subjects.
Social networks are not a new phenomenon — people have always associated with like-minded others — but the advent of social media has led to a vast increase in the amount of social information that we see. We need data and experiments to understand how this information shapes our political landscape.
The research community should move to fill the regulatory gap for large-scale social data left by the recent revisions of the Common Rule, argues Julia Ingrid Lane.
The Common Rule's incoherent approach to ethics regulation will change little in the way institutional review boards and researchers interact, says Robert Dingwall.
New regulations for research that involves human subjects deregulate much ordinary social and behavioural science research. The new rules support greater flexibility for researchers and institutional review boards, while affording the greatest protection for research participants.
The assumption of rationality is at the heart of action explanations. A Bayesian model of theory of mind, which explicitly relies on this assumption, can predict with high accuracy the inferences that people make about the mental states underlying others’ actions.
People who purchase liberal books have distinct tastes for science compared with those who purchase conservative books. This raises questions about the existence of ‘echo chambers’ on matters where science can inform political debates.
Inequality and unfairness are not the same thing. Starmans, Sheskin and Bloom summarize evidence showing that people are bothered not by economic inequality, but rather by economic unfairness.
A Bayesian theory of mind model is shown to infer and quantify the mental state and judgements of humans in decision-making scenarios. The model is a key step towards enabling machines to ‘intuit’ human thoughts and desires.
Lefebvre et al. present behavioural and neural evidence showing that the ‘optimism bias’ is a manifestation of a general cognitive tendency for preferential learning from positive, compared with negative, outcomes.
Using a large-scale analysis of publication records and a random-walk model, Jia and colleagues show that the evolution of scientists’ research interests throughout their careers is characterized by a regular and reproducible pattern.
TROVE2, a gene implicated in inflammatory response and autoimmunity, is also associated with enhanced memory for emotionally charged events in post-traumatic stress disorder.
A co-purchase network analysis of data from two of the United States’ biggest online booksellers reveals a stark division in the types of scientific literature read by liberals and conservatives. Selective exposure may limit cross-partisan understanding.
