Weird Science always seeks ethical approval before tying someone up
Ars Technica » Scientific Method 2013-08-25
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Yes, researchers actually got permission to tie people up and threaten them. We can thank the Institutional Review Board of UCLA for approving this one, where "participants were strapped tightly to a wooden chair using six nylon webbing straps attached just above the ankles," after which they "were shown images of angry white male faces." All this to find out that people who are incapacitated think threatening figures are taller than they actually are.
In Norway, men have started using their personalities as contraceptives. Though they may not be aware of it. Two researchers, one of them Norwegian, decided to examine the relationship between a variety of personality traits and fertility in Norway (for the life of me, I do not understand why). And they found a remarkably specific effect: for men only, neuroticism depressed fertility—but only among men born after 1956. The effect remains even after controlling for relationship status, income, and education. The authors aren't sure whether the men themselves are deciding to skip having kids, or if their partners are deciding having one with them isn't a good idea.
Left out of the old-boy's club, but in a positive way. There's good news and bad news for women in the corporate world. Even as they have slowly gained ground in high-level corporate jobs, they're being largely left out of one aspect of corporate life: fraud. A study of 436 people charged with fraud found that women were significantly under-represented among people charged with these crimes. The bad news? When women are involved, they're generally very peripheral to the plot, and profit less from their involvement.
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