Scientific American: Brain Images Make Inaccurate Science Ne

How to lie with images.

A study in the journal Cognition this month shows that the public views news stories as more scientifically sound when accompanied by a flashy brain image.

Researchers presented 156 subjects with news stories based on flawed science. Subjects rated the stories as more credible when accompanied by a colorful brain image as opposed to a bar graph, a colorful topographic map or no graphic at all.

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Urethral Catheterization: A Historical Review

A follow-up to my previous post.

I'm surprised he's surprised

Mark Liberman at Language Log is surprised that a writer might not be good at math.

I gather from this that there are educated, intelligent and otherwise skilled adults who are not sure how to turn two numbers into a percentage change, and that some of them are working as public relations professionals. I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm just truly and sincerely surprised.

Let's see if I can help Mark understand. First, in my experience most writers in PR, advertising, or communications have humanities educations. Remember back in college there were all those people taking English courses and their parents would say, "What are you going to do with that?" Well, that's what they're doing with that. And second, if the last time you were asked to figure out a percentage change was 20 years ago, when you were more focused on the cute potential mate in the seat across the way, you might be a little rusty.

[Update: I'm SOOOO misunderstood (see Mark's update to his OP). I don't blame Mark--I wasn't feeling very verbose yesterday. By pointing out that most writers are have humanities education, I didn't mean to dump on English majors. I have a degree in English. I meant actually, to poke a little fun at Mark's intellectual snobbery. First of all, most writers have a different specialization than scientists. And second, they really don't want to be doing their jobs. The joke in advertising is that they are all frustrated novelists.

As for this:

But, but, percentages are taught in the 5th grade

c'mon, how much does anybody remember from 5th grade? And to the previous point, it's not like writers are doing math every day (figuring tips is easily fudged).

As for Holly Cordner's claim

If you can’t even do elementary math, how did you get through your formal education? How did you get a college degree?

I'd say pretty easily, I don't know about her school, but Temple only required a "Math for Humanities" course that was pretty pathetic. Anyway, it's really besides the point. English majors spend a lot of time learning about other things. Their expertise is elsewhere. They don't need to double major in math.]

Obligatory prescriptivist rant

Yesterday Leonard Lopate had Patricia T. O'Connor on for a regular language discussion, this time on pronunciation errors. I caught the tail end of the show and was predictably incensed. You can listen to the show here.

I posted some comments on the discussion board. It's moderated, so I don't know if they will make it on there (update: that was quick!). Here they are:

As a phonologist, I'm pretty disappointed by the lack of expertise of your expert, Ms. O'Conner. Especially when it comes to basic phonetics, phonology, and American dialect differences. Many of the questions listeners brought up have been studied extensively by American dialectologists and linguists. I suggest she look into that work before the next scheduled appearance. A good place to start is the American Dialect Society (on the web at www.americandialect.org).
In response to Jim's question above: the pronunciation of [or] as [ar] in NY (and other parts of the mid Atlantic] happens when the the [r] starts a new syllable in the word. You get it in 'sorry' but not 'for'. That said, all Americans pretty much have the [ar] in 'sorry' (unlike Canadians) but only some dialects extend it to other words like 'orange', 'Florida', or 'moral'. And many people have some idiosyncratic uses. For example, I (a native of SE Pennsylvania) have it in most of these words except 'moral'.
Some Brits may also have this pronunciation, although the only evidence I have for that claim is Roger Daltry's pronunciation of 'moral' in "Won't get fooled again". He clearly sings 'The m[ar]als that we worshipped were all gone.' I don't know if that is him affecting an American pronunciation or his native one.

On the show a caller asked about [shtreet] for [street]. This is also a common phonological variation in American speech. It appears to be anticipatory assimilation of the [s] to the place of articulation of the [r]. A similar rule is found in Swedish where an [s] following an [r] is pronounced as [sh], for example [morshan] meaning "Mother".

Monday link

Mark Liberman has a long, but interesting read on science journalism at Language Log: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004783.html

Key points:
- Read the primary sources. (It’s surprisingly easy and doesn’t need to be expensive. Use the public library to get access)
- Academics should make their work free (Mark neglects to mention The Rutgers Optimality Archive and LingBuzz)