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My apologies for taking so long between episodes.  I just finished unpacking after a move, which will explain the harsher sound in my outro this time.  The room I'm recording in now is much more echoic than my old recording space.  I also just finished studying for the GREs, as I'm on the march toward grad school application season.  But, never fear, I'm committed to keeping this going.  It's just too much fun!

This episode features a great interview with Commander Mark Russell, Ph.D.  Commander Mark Russell and I discuss Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), with a focus on its use in treating post-traumatic stress disorder in war veterans.  EMDR is a controversial treatment.  We discuss evidence for its efficacy, doubts about its proposed mechanism of action, and Cmdr. Russell's battles with the military hierarchy.  Spoiler: He lost the battle, but he's hoping to win the war.

I came into my research for this episode a knee-jerk skeptic, but I'm leaving more curious than ever.  It works as well as other conventional treatments: the Cochrane review seems to show this pretty conclusively.  But how does it work?  Supporters say that bilateral stimulation of the brain, achieved by inducing rapid horizontal eye movement, helps reprocess the memory.  The more "out there" supporters say that EMDR works by manipulating an as-yet-undiscovered energy field in the brain.  There is evidence to suggest that it works by having the patientperform a distraction task while recalling the memory, and that anydistraction task — Tetris, for example — might help.  What seems clear to me is that some more research into its mechanism is a good idea.

I hope you'll give it a listen, and let me know what you think!  I'm especially interested to see if the conversation changes anybody's mind.  I know it changed mine.  And let me know if I shouldn't have changed mine; let me know why you still think EMDR is bunk!

Download | Duration: 00:40:40

Commander Mark Russell's faculty page at Antioch University, Seattle
British Psychological Society Research Digest reports on a study questioning the mechanism of EMDR
Cochrane review showing EMDR's efficacy
USA Today article chronicling Cmdr. Russell's travails

        

About a week ago, I posted my interview with Dr. David Jacobs, of the International Center for Abduction Research.  My process is to record my introduction before starting the interview, so that if I get some facts wrong the guest can catch me and I can redo the intro.  For example, I mistakenly said that Temple University, where Dr. Jacobs is a tenured professor, was in Chicago, when it was actually in Philadelphia (and I had even written in my notes beforehand that Temple was in Philadelphia; something got lost on the way to my mouth).  Then, I edit the interview, and as I do so I come across things to bring up during my outro, which I record after the interview is edited down.  In the past, it's been a few things, so I've just shared all my thoughts there.  But listening to the interview with Dr. Jacobs, there was so much to add that I didn't want to make the episode longer than it already was.  Below the fold are my long-winded thoughts.<< MORE >>

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This is a fun one.  Skeptics, stick with this one if you can; the psyconodrabble ("The Bunker") at the end will make it worth your while.  In a response of sorts to episode 4, Dr. David M. Jacobs and I discuss the evidence for alien abductions.  Be sure to listen toward the end, we talk about the mean old jerks who call themselves "skeptics."  I have too much to say about this interview, and once you listen, I think you'll understand.  We get into some deep water.  Expect a blog post later in the week about this one.

Download | Duration: 00:42:13

Assorted links:

Dr. Jacobs' organization, The International Center for Abduction Research
Dr. Jacobs' book The THREAT: Revealing the Secret Alien Agenda on Amazon
My interview with Dr. Chris French, a skeptic of the alien abduction phenomenon. 

        

Time for another episode!  This episode is an interview with Dr. Chris French of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit in London.  He's a famed British skeptic, and we have a great discussion.  We start by talking about the Shirley Ghostman incident (check out the YouTube link below), and move on to the topic of his lab's research.  He says that alien abductions can be explained largely by psychological phenomena, including false memories and sleep paralysis.  We spent a while talking about false memories in general, it's a fascinating topic.  At the end, there's a new thing I'm trying to do: drabbles.  Drabbles are 100-word fiction stories.  I wrote one about Dr. French and the topic we were discussing.  I hope you like it!  I'm going to try and do one for each episode going forward.

I think I fixed some of the problems with the audio I was having.  The levels were way off.  Thank you to Michael Britt of The Psych Files and "Dr. Dave" Van Nuys of Shrink Rap Radio for pointing out the problems and helping me fix them.  Check out their podcasts, those two are what got me into psychology podcasting in the first place.

Download | Duration: 00:53:02

Links:
The website for the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit
An abstract for a paper on alien abductions authored by Dr. French
Shirley Ghostman's lame attempt at humor, with Dr. French and other British skeptics
Michael Shermer and Brian Dunning had more recent run-ins Ghostman
A favorite episode of mine from Shrink Rap Radio
A recent episode of The Psych Files on replication of Stanley Milgram's famous experiments

        

This episode is a change in format.  I go solo to explain a particular piece of research.  The article is "Science Versus the Stars: A Double-Blind Test of the Validity of the NEO Five-Factor Inventory and Computer-Generated Astrological Natal Charts," by Alyssa Jayne Wyman and Stuart Vyse.  It appeared in The Journal of General Psychology in 2008.  It touches on a few issues raised in episode 2, my interview with Dr. Glenn Perry.  Let me know how you like it!

Some links:

The abstract of the Wyman & Vyse paper
A short personality test based on the Big Five personality traits
Blog entry outlining the proposed move to make personality disorders based on the Big Five (part 2)
B.R. Forer's 1948 "personality analysis"
Tyler Cowen's tasty, tasty economics blog
Zac Efron

Download | Duration: 00:19:14

        

My last episode was with a staunch proponent of the scientific method.  This time, I interview a critic of the scientific method.  Dr. Glenn Perry is an astrologer with a doctorate in clinical psychology.  He maintains that some phenomena, such as astrology, cannot be detected by scientific methods.  It's a good interview, Dr. Perry does his best to defend his views, and I do my best to push back a little against them while letting him have his say.  It's good for defenders of science to interact with critics of science.  I hope you'll give a listen, take his criticisms seriously, and see if they change your mind.  I'll be updating my blog with more later, so click on that button on your right to subscribe to the RSS feed.

Links:

Dr. Glenn Perry's website
An article from Dr. Perry's website: "From Paradigm To Method In Astrological Research"
Dr. Perry's self-published books
The unaccredited Academy of AstroPsychology

Download | Duration: 00:34:35

        

Below the fold is the transcript of my interview with Dr. Keith Stanovich. I didn't realize how much work it was to transcribe a conversation! I'm thinking of farming out future episodes to a transcription service, but that runs $40-$50/episode, and I'm not interested in spending a whole lot of money into this project quite yet. I haven't even forked over the money to pay for hosting (hence the GoDaddy banner ad up top). Isn't it great to live at a time when this is possible — for nearly free? I've peppered the transcript with links expanding on some topics or terms we referenced in passing, including some blog posts I've written (or will soon write). Some are links to Wikipedia, some are just fun. I may come back and add links as I produce more content and come across more cool stuff; feel free to offer suggestions in the comment section for stuff I can add. I hope you enjoy, leave a comment and show some love!

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Dr. Stanovich said something during our discussion that I wish I caught and followed up on at the time.  We were talking about how people approach psychology with a variety of preexisting biases, and he contrasted this with geology, saying that people didn't have this emotional attachment to how sediments form in the geologic record.  I disagreed at the time, but didn't think it was worth interrupting his flow to bring it up.  There are people who have emotional attatchments to the way sediments formed: Creationists.  According to the "Creation Science" website:

More than 27 billion tons of river sediments enter the oceans each year. Probably the rate of sediment transport was much greater in the past as the looser topsoil was removed and as erosion smoothed out Earth’s terrain. Even if erosion has been constant, the sediments now on the ocean floor would have accumulated in only 30 million years. No process has been proposed which can remove 27 billion tons of ocean sediments each year. So, the oceans cannot be hundreds of millions of years old.

As Dr. Stanovich notes, the pre-existing bias problem appears in every science. It can occur with all the emotional attachment possible in any field. In the United States,nearly one half of the population are creationists. Twice that many (that is, everyone) has these preconceived, emotionally-held beliefs in psychology, though. I wonder what differences arise when trying to inform laypersons about evidence disproving the Judeo-Christian creation myth versus informing them about evidence disproving the "we use 10% of our brain" myth.

        

Download | Duration: 00:34:04

        

Hello everyone, and welcome to episode zero of Psyconoclasm. Today is April 15, 2009. Psyconoclasm is a podcast where we examine psychology and related fields with a skeptical, scientific eye, trying to determine fact from fiction, educated guess from total nonsense. My name is David Bradley, and I am your host. Today I want to provide a little background on myself and this project. Psyconoclasm is what's known as a portmanteau (and I know I totally botched the pronunciation on that). It's a new word formed by fusing two other words: in this instance, psychology and iconoclasm. In the Intro to Psychology textbook I once read, it says that the etymology, or origin, of the word comes from the root psyche and the suffix -ology. -Ology means study or learn, so psychology is the study of the psyche. Psyche is a Greek word that can be loosely translated as “soul,” meaning the innermost part of life. It comes from the Greek myth of Psyche, which I won't get into here, but I'll link to it on the website, www.psyconoclasm.com. Psychology, then, can be thought of as the study of what it means to be human. Or animal. Or, even, a plant – but that last bit is the subject of another episode, I'm sure. A more formal definition I found in my textbook is this: psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. If you ever take an Intro to Psychology course, I've saved you the trouble of reading the first page.

Iconoclasm has several meanings. Originally, it referred to a group of people who destroyed the religious icons of their own culture. The word today, then, refers to someone who breaks from or disdains the dogma and traditions of his own culture. Colloquially, the word is used to refer to someone who is a contrarian by nature. What I hope to do is something similar. I want to put rational pressure against all ideas pertaining to psychology, from the mainstream to the fringe, and see what cracks and what doesn't. I want to destroy the icons that are not based in truth. I don't want to be a blind iconoclast, more nihilist than anything else. Instead, I want to expose as false those things taken on faith, and in doing so strengthen those things taken on evidence. I want to be a considered iconoclast in the field of psychology. I want to engage in: psyconoclasm.

I subscribe to a number of podcasts about various topics, including science and specifically psychology. While listening to some of them, I got the feeling that the hosts didn't apply rational thought or the scientific, skeptical way of thinking. They had guests on with fascinating claims and areas of expertise, but I was left wishing that the interviewer had pushed back a little more, if you know what I mean.

Each week or so I'll post an interview or solo content exploring some aspect of psychology. It'll be between 20-40 minutes, unless there's something super-compelling I want to post. Perhaps it'll be an interview with an expert on Emotional Freedom Technique, or someone explaining the usefulness of the Stanford Prison Experiment, or someone debunking claims of subliminal advertising. I may offer up a critique of an article in the popular press that reads more like a press release than a news piece. If anyone has any ideas for show topics or segments, feel free to e-mail me, David Bradley, at host@psyconoclasm.com.

And speaking of me, let me give my credentials: I have none. I graduated from Boston College in 2007 with a bachelor's degree in history. I've taken a half-dozen undergraduate psychology courses. I'm no expert. But, I don't think we need to be experts to examine these topics. We can't be experts in everything, so we need to be able to sift through what real experts say, what fake experts say, what the media say, and what our own intuitions say on a variety of topics. I hope you'll e-mail me to let me know what you think as you listen to this podcast, and let me know when I've neglected or discounted the opinion of a real expert, been taken in by a bad experiment, been too trusting of media accounts, or given my own biases – of which I know I have many – preference over the facts.

Thank you for listening to what I hope will be the most boring episode of Psyconoclasm. Psyconoclasm is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. You can reach me by e-mailing host@psyconoclasm.com, I promise to get back to you. Opening and closing music by Spiraling, from the Podsafe Music Network, available at music.podshow.com. I'll close with a quote from Carl Sagan, appropriate to launch this podcast series: “We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.” Talk to you soon.