Lack Of Skepticism Research Articles

Who gets duped? The impact of education on fraud detection in an investment task

Many financial scandals appear to depend on a lack of skepticism on the part of their victims. Sophisticated investors trusted Bernie Madoff, for example, despite early warning signs of implausible returns. Our study investigates how education explains fraud detection in financial decision-making. In a simple survey, economics and finance students are asked to make an investment recommendation from among four hypothetical funds, including one based on Madoff’s fund. We use Truth Default Theory to explain our results. We show that education increases the likelihood that students are suspicious of Madoff’s fund, and that for students whose suspicions are aroused, education makes them less likely to choose the Madoff fund.

Embracing the other: Revisiting the epistemological foundations of family systems therapy.

Family systems therapy originated in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s through the work of innovative thinkers and clinicians. However, despite the creative contributions of the mentioned colleagues and of later innovations in family therapy theory and practice, it seems as though the dominant culture of establishment psychiatry in the United States (and in most Western countries) to this day has not seriously incorporated relationships, social context, or community connectedness into the treatment of individuals with psychiatric diagnoses. For the "psychiatric" patients diagnosed according to the DSM-5, the dominant underlying epistemological perspective is the medical "scientific" paradigm. Within this approach there is a dearth of reflections about the truthfulness of so-called "empirical facts" and a lack of skepticism about the techniques of "measurement" of the psychiatric illness. The alternative, relationship-oriented, context-sensitive, and community-connected thinking paradigm is highlighted here in contrast to the "psychiatric" foundation. This paradigm consists of (a) the awareness that all human Subjects (including "psychiatric" clients) are constituted as such by their relational connection to others; (b) the awareness of our sensitivity to and embeddedness in a socio-economic, cultural, and racial context; and (c) the awareness of our involvement in and connectedness with many kinds of communities.

Who Gets Duped? The Impact of Economics and Finance Education on Skepticism in an Investment Task

Many financial scandals appear to depend on a lack of skepticism on the part of their victims. For example, sophisticated investors trusted Bernie Madoff, despite early warning signs of implausible returns. Our study investigates how education and personality explain skeptical behavior in financial decision making. In a simple survey, economics and finance students are asked to make an investment recommendation from among four different hypothetical funds, including one based on Madoff’s fund. We find that perceptions of the suspiciousness and ethicality of the Madoff fund affect a participant’s recommendation. In turn, these perceptions are affected by education and personality, with more education leading to higher suspicions.

Engaging problems on trigonometry: why were student hard to think critically?

This research study aimed to determine the causes of difficulties for students to think critically in solving trigonometric problem. 29 first semester students of the UNISSULA mathematics education program participated in this study. Data collection techniques used mathematic test and unstructured interviews. The math test given is a trigonometric problem. The result of research indicated that there were four factors that caused the students difficult to think critically. Those four factors are lack of skepticism on math problem, learning of school mathematics that did not emphasize critical thinking, student ignorance about critical thinking, and motivation was limited only to solve math problems.

A Person-Situation Approach to the Examination of Professional Skepticism: Consideration of Time Pressure and Goal Framing

Regulators believe increased skepticism improves audit quality (e.g., PCAOB 2011; Frazel 2013), and a lack of skepticism contributes to audit deficiencies (e.g., Doty 2011a, 2011b; PCAOB 2012). Therefore, in order to achieve as great a level of professional skepticism as appropriate in each audit situation, it is important to more thoroughly understand the various influences on skepticism. While prior research suggests personality traits and state (situational) factors influence professional skepticism (e.g., Hurtt 2010; Nelson 2009), this literature tends to focus on either skepticism as a trait (e.g., Hurtt 2010) or state factors that influence skeptical behavior (e.g., Bowlin et al. 2012), rather than viewing state skepticism as a separate component of the attitude of skepticism. In our experiment using professional auditors, we measure and disentangle the trait and state components of professional skepticism, and examine the influence of both on auditor behavior. Furthermore, we examine whether two situational factors, time pressure and goal framing, affect state skepticism. We find that auditors higher in state professional skepticism display a higher level of skeptical behavior, and that an increase in state skepticism has a greater effect on auditors with low trait skepticism than high trait skepticism. We also find a positive relationship between time pressure and state skepticism. We offer conclusions for practice and research.

Does the MMR vaccine cause autism? How uncritical acceptance of information can have disastrous consequences.

One of the most damaging medical controversies in several decades has been sparked by the publication of a fraudulent paper in 1998 claiming that a link between autism and the administration of the MMR vaccine had been found. The crisis is proving to be very difficult to remedy, as vaccination rates plummeted and have still not fully recovered. Fueled by media attention and ill-informed celebrity spokespeople, this poorly conducted study has received dangerous amounts of attention and support. Even with ever-increasing scientific evidence against the claim, the lack of skepticism and critical analysis of research has resulted in children being put in danger of preventable diseases by leaving them unvaccinated.

The Microbiome Studies in Metabolic Diseases have Advanced but are Poorly Standardized and Lack a Mechanistic Perspective

Copyright: © 2014 Pekkala S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. During the last decades hundreds of studies have reported the association of Gut Microbiota (GM) with obesity and related metabolic disorders [1]. However, recently the microbiome studies were criticized about the lack of skepticism [2]. The author of the article questioned the role of GM in different diseases and asked whether the detected differences between the subjects biologically matter? We do believe that the role of microbiota in metabolic diseases is true. The impact of GM on human health should not be surprising since our gut shapes up the symbiotic habitat for at least 100 trillion microbial cells that count up to 100-fold more genes than our genome [1].

Spider-Man? Sure! The neuroscience of suspending disbelief

When 'transported' by stories or plays or movies, we feel no skepticism at, say, Spider-Man's webbing his way among the skyscrapers. Following Coleridge, we have called this phenomenon, the 'willing suspension of disbelief'. Psychological experiments show, however, that during our experience of any narrative, we do not suspend disbelief. We believe, and then we partly disbelieve. Our brains link reality-testing to action and the possibility of action to change what we are perceiving. If we cannot change it, our brains need not test its reality, and they don't. When responding to works of art, Kant and other aestheticians point out, we are 'disinterested'. We know that we cannot or will not act to change artworks. We therefore accept such unrealities as Spider-Man. In situations where we must act (hypertext) or can act (watching DVDs), we may not experience the same lack of skepticism.

Ethical Issues in Communicating Science

Most of the publicized work on scientific ethics concentrates on establishing professional norms and avoiding misconduct. The successful communication of science is the responsibility of all involved in the process. In one study, the increased incidence of autism and other social developmental disorders in males was investigated by examining individuals with Turner's syndrome (XO females). In the national newspaper this became Genetic X-factor explains why boys will always be boys. The steps by which a study on developmental disorders, published in a highly prestigious journal, was transformed into an article in the science section which 'explained' the socially expected gender-based behavior of genetically normal children are fascinating and, unfortunately far too typical. The scientists wrote an excellent article that has just one sentence at the end that hesitantly suggests that the findings might, with further study, have some relevance to understanding normal behavior. The general interest article in the front of the journal gave a good account of the research, but suggested more strongly that there could be an in-built biological dimorphism in social cognition. This was misrepresented in the press as proof of gender differences that undermines the trend towards sexual equality, and both illustrates cultural bias and provides fodder for feminist critiques of science. The study has been made to appear to be biased in favor of justifying the social structure of society, and yet it was the translation from the scientific study to national news that produced this transformation to biased genetic determinism. It is poor communication of the actual science, coupled with a lack of skepticism on the part of the public, that contributes to such a misapplication of science. Scientists should resist the urge to generalize their results to make them more compelling. The science community should not allow misconstructions of scientific facts to go unchallenged. Journalists, for both the scientific publication and the newspaper, should resist the inclination to embellish the finding with social significance that is not present. For their part, readers must be doubly skeptical of any finding that appears to underwrite any current social hierarchy. We are all responsible for a communication and interpretation of science that is as accurate and socially responsible as possible.

Beyond the ‘learning society’: what have we learnt from widening participation research?

This article emerges from a recent review of evidence, conducted by the authors and others, on the lifelong barriers to widening participation in higher education in England. This has led us to a consideration of the quality and relevance of the research activity in this large field of endeavour, and to the creation of a typology of the kinds of widespread problems we then encountered. These include pseudo‐research, poor quality reporting of research, deficiencies in datasets, analytical errors, a lack of suitable comparators, obfuscation, a lack of scepticism in general, and the regular misattribution of causal links in particular. The article discusses each of these, and illustrates them using generally high‐profile research studies and publications. We found a substantial proportion of non‐empirical pieces. Of the remainder, we found a substantial proportion that did not report sufficiently well their methods or their findings. Of the remainder that were empirical and did explain their methods and findings sufficiently, we found a substantial proportion in which the findings could not support the conclusions drawn from them. The article ends with a plea for a great deal more ‘learning’ and openness to new ideas among those engaged, lifelong, in researching lifelong learning.

The Alleged Pragmatism of T. S. Eliot

Before gaining recognition as a poet, T.S. Eliot pursued a doctoral degree in philosophy. His dissertation on the philosophy of F.H. Bradley has been a source of longstanding critical dispute. Some read the dissertation as a defense of Bradley’s views, while others read it as a repudiation of Bradley in favor of a kind of American philosophical pragmatism. This essay considers whether the dissertation can be properly characterized as pragmatist, despite Eliot’s enthusiastic and repeated dismissals of William James’ philosophy of truth. Eliot comes closest to a Jamesian view of belief when he writes of the endless ways we can carve up a goose without bones, a metaphor for our ability to take any side in an argument when there are no criteria for determining the single correct position. But he refuses to adopt a pragmatic account of truth that would conclude from the practical equivalence of various epistemological theories that none gets “closer to the truth” than any other. Instead, he suggests that a correct answer to our epistemological questions exists in the “nature of reality,” and that this nature can be discovered through logical inference. In maintaining this assumption, Eliot parts ways with James’ pragmatism. He would later part ways with academic philosophy as a whole, less for its impracticality than for its pervasive lack of skepticism toward itself: “almost every philosophy seems to begin as a revolt of common sense against some other theory, and ends – as it becomes itself more developed and approaches completeness – by itself becoming equally preposterous – to everyone but its author.”

Putting the world back on the map

The anchor of Sky TV's World News Tonight says that the hands down winner for the most frequently asked question about his new job is whether he wants to join the likes of Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys as a tough interrogator of politicians and top government officials. He writes: "Although I am certainly flattered that people would even consider putting me in the same category as those two icons of British journalism, the short answer is no... That style is just not something to which I am well suited, nor is it something to which I aspire." Rubin continues: "In my view, the function of the British and American media is the same, but the form is often different. Much of the difference in form is a direct result of differences between the American and British governmental systems... Some British reporters seem to think that their often aggressive treatment of Prime Ministers should be the norm and the deference of American reporters somehow reflects their lack of scepticism or tendency to be 'in the tank' for whoever occupies the Oval Office."