Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things Intelligence is not rationality

Be curious and humble open.substack.com/pub/gurwinde...

It turns out that protecting hate speech did not create the conditions to protect other kinds of speech; instead, it protected hate and allowed hate movements to take over all the institutions of that might have defended the rest of us.

Generating opposition to universal health care policies in the United States: An analysis of private health industry advertising on Meta platforms In 2019, the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF), a private health industry lobby group, launched a campaign across Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram) to generate opposition to univ...

A new study shows that a lobbying group for the private health insurance industry used Meta platforms to sow doubt about universal healthcare.

Their tactics are familiar. They are those used by the tobacco industry to convince people their products were safe and everyone else was lying.

"The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality."
- James Baldwin

Negative emotion differentiation in adolescents: unpacking linkages with emotion regulation traits and behaviours, rumination, and depression Negative emotion differentiation (NED), or the ability to parse negative emotions (NEs) with precision, is theorised to facilitate emotion regulation (ER), but research examining the link between N...

New Paper! 📣 Have you ever had a clear understanding of your emotions, but you still couldn't seem to stop ruminating on them? In a sample of adolescents, @lisastarr.bsky.social and I looked at emotion differentiation, emotion regulation (traits and behavior), and brooding. 🧵 1/4

Event structure sculpts neural population dynamics in the lateral entorhinal cortex Our experience of the world is a continuous stream of events that must be segmented and organized at multiple timescales. The neural mechanisms underlying this process remain unknown. In this work, we...

Your brain doesn’t just passively track time ⏳ - it structures it.
In @Science.org we show that activity in 🧠 memory circuits (LEC) drifts constantly, but makes sharp jumps at key moments, segmenting life into meaningful events. (1/2)

👉 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Cancers can be detected in bloodstream three years prior to diagnosis Detection of cancer before a clinical diagnosis could give patients and caregivers more time for intervention and may lead to better outcomes because tumors are more likely to be curable

Genetic material shed by tumors can be detected in the bloodstream three years before cancer diagnosis, according to a study led by investigators at Johns Hopkins University.

That study was made possible with federal funding. Now, many studies like this are canceled. hub.jhu.edu/2025/06/04/...

Guns are the leading cause of death of kids and teens, and state laws matter A study from JAMA Pediatrics compares states that have permissive gun laws with others that have strict regulations. The states with tougher rules did not see a rise in gun deaths among children and teens.

A study from JAMA Pediatrics compares states that have permissive gun laws with others that have strict regulations. The states with tougher rules did not see a rise in gun deaths among children and teens.

This was….five months ago

Chewing gum can shed microplastics into saliva, pilot study finds - American Chemical Society Plastic is everywhere. And many products we use in everyday life can expose people to tiny, micrometer-wide plastic particles called microplastics. Now, chewing gum could be added to the list. In a pi...

Gum is ruined www.acs.org/pressroom/pr...

“We’ve Been Essentially Muzzled”: Department of Education Halts Thousands of Civil Rights Investigations Under Trump Since Inauguration Day, the Office for Civil Rights has only opened about 20 investigations focused on Trump’s priorities, placing more than 10,000 student complaints related to disability access and…

Out of the 12,000 civil rights complaints the Education Department has put on hold since Trump took office:
• 6,000 relate to mistreatment of disabled students
• 1,000 are specific to sexual harassment/violence
• 3,200 pertain to racial discrimination

Deny, Defend, Disinform: Corporate media coverage of healthcare in the 2024 presidential elections Corporate media had a hard time finding “big” plans for healthcare because they chose to look for them only in the two major parties’ platforms.

Medicare-for-all: popular with the public, but not included in our political discourse, in part because it’s marginalized and barely discussed by corporate media

fair.org/home/deny-de...

Ambient Temperatures Linked to Psychiatric Symptoms in Youth Colder and warmer ambient temperatures were associated with significant increases in psychiatric issues among adolescents from two population-based birth cohorts in Europe.

Cold temperatures were associated with more internalizing symptoms and heat exposure was associated with more attention problems in adolescents. Interestingly, heat exposure was not associated with increased violence, casting doubt on the “heat-aggression” theory www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...

Association between epigenome-wide DNA methylation changes and early neurodevelopment in preschool children: Evidence from a former impoverished county in Central China Existing epigenome-wide association study (EWAS) investigating the association between DNA methylation (DNAm) and child neurodevelopment have been pre…

Epigenetic changes in preschoolers from a rural Chinese county revealed crucial links to early neurodevelopmental risks.

by Chang R, Wei M (...) Zhang J et 2 al. in Gene #MedSky

📖 read the article:

This is the front page of a fraudulent research article that purported to show a link between vaccines and autism. The word "RETRACTED" is written across it in large red letters. Wikipedia: On 28th February 1998, a fraudulent research paper by physician Andrew Wakefield and twelve coauthors, titled "Ileal-Lymphoid-Nodular Hyperplasia, Non-Specific Colitis, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder in Children", was published in the British medical journal The Lancet.[1] The paper falsely claimed causative links between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and colitis and between colitis and autism. The fraud involved data selection, data manipulation, and two undisclosed conflicts of interest.

Today is Retraction Day, when we observe the anniversary of the retraction (Feb. 2, 2010) of the fraudulent paper that purported to show a link between vaccines and autism. 🧪#medsky

Insurers Failed to Comply With Mental Health Coverage Law, Department of Labor Report Finds The probe found widespread noncompliance and violations of federal law in how health plans and insurers cover mental health care, echoing the findings of a recent ProPublica investigation.

Healthcare insurance companies continue to violate federal mental health law parity law www.propublica.org/article/depa...

As a child psychiatrist it’s been my experience that personality consolidates thru puberty and changes very little thereafter (would estimate 0.9 correlation to adulthood). In my world, pre-pubertal trauma/ACEs heavily influence developmental trajectories of personality

Should the FDA Reconsider Antidepressant Boxed Warnings? For nearly 20 years, antidepressants have carried suicide risk warnings for young people. Now, experts are questioning if the FDA should reconsider these warning labels.

FDA black box warnings that antidepressants could increase risk of suicidal thoughts led to decreased prescriptions and increased suicide rates www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...

Prevalence of adverse childhood experiences among individuals in treatment for substance use disorder: are ACE associated differently across type of abuse and quantity of consumption? This study aimed to 1) describe the prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) in relation to the type of substance used (alcohol or cannabis) among adults seeking treatment for Substance Us...

Newly published research from Greenland. Adverse Childhood Experiences were correlated with adult substance use, particularly cannabis, and more significantly in women www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... in

First paper from my lab, led by a wonderful and bright PhD student, Penny Peng! 🥹 Check it out!

Goldman Sachs asks in biotech research report: 'Is curing patients a sustainable business model?' Goldman Sachs warns sales from the most successful disease treatments are difficult to maintain.

I can hardly think of a better example of the moral decay in modern health care than a Goldman analyst noting that biotech cures for diseases like hepatitis are cool and all, until their success diminishes the business opportunity for pharmaceutical manufacturers.

www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/g...

Love that the graph of lifetime nostalgia evokes the cover of unknown pleasures - a record for which I feel intensely nostalgic

UnitedHealth Is Strategically Limiting Access to Critical Treatment for Kids With Autism Leaked internal documents show that the insurance giant is culling providers of applied behavior analysis from its network and scrutinizing the medical necessity of therapy. Advocates say the company’...

www.propublica.org/article/unit...

This image features a logarithmic map of the entire observable universe. It has a rectangular shape and highlights a number of different celestial objects (not shown to scale), including: The Solar System Comets and asteroids Star systems and clusters Nebulae Galaxies, including the Milky Way Galaxy clusters Cosmic microwave background—radiation leftover from the Big Bang

1/4 🧪 🔭 #cosmology

This graphic by Pablo Carlos Budassi provides a logarithmic map of the entire observable universe, thanks to data (updated as of May 2022) by researchers at Princeton University.

Map source: www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/map-of-th...

(Tap on the image)

Remember with increasing sample size, your averages become more reliable

The Ns justify the means

The Emotional Entitlement Scale --- measures the extent to which people feel entitled to certain emotional experiences (e.g., "I deserve to enjoy life", "I am allowed to feel bad."). psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/...

How UnitedHealth’s Playbook for Limiting Mental Health Coverage Puts Countless Americans’ Treatment at Risk United used an algorithm system to identify patients who it determined were getting too much therapy and then limited coverage. It was deemed illegal in three states, but similar practices persist due...

UnitedHealth aggressively denies care for mental health, particularly for the most vulnerable Americans www.propublica.org/article/unit...

The gap between what farmers get and what consumers pay is staggering, and shameful nfu.org/2024/11/25/t...

The relation of verbal and nonverbal skills to basic numerical processing of preterm versus term-born preschoolers Verbal and nonverbal skills significantly contribute to individual differences in children’s numerical development at the group level. However, less i…

Another very fun collaboration with @tilbegoksun.bsky.social on the relation of verbal and nonverbal skills to basic numerical processing of preterm versus term-born preschoolers. Enjoy! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Informal Caregivers Report Reduced Well-Being, May Not Bounce Back Years Later Individuals acting as caregivers saw a decrease in life satisfaction and mood, alongside increases in depression, anxiety, and loneliness.

A study by @wiebkeb.bsky.social & @mdkraemer.bsky.social shows caregiving lowers life satisfaction and raises anxiety, depression, and loneliness. #SupportCaregivers