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For fun this summer, to learn about confirmation bias, we mind-travel to the great and prosperous town of Biasville, where the people have odd names and the drama never ends. It’s not hard to find Biasville: You can get there by traveling through Emotion Junction, Ingroup Outpost, Heuristic Harbor (aka, the Mental Shortcut), Faux Memory Lane, Overconfidence Overpass, or—shudder—the Valley of Dissonance.…
Watch out! That medicine will make you sick! You’ll regret taking it!” Words hold immense power over our minds and bodies. Just as Dumbo believed in the magic feather and flew across the circus tent—even after he learned the feather was a placebo, an empty talisman—our beliefs can shape our experiences in unexpected ways. However, there is a darker side to this phenomenon—the “nocebo” effect. Brace yourself as we now step into the darker shadows of the circus tent and…
Citizen Science by Jamie Zvirzdin ‘Science Says So’: Sifting Evidence-Based Science from Pseudoscience If I got a gold nugget whenever someone said, “Studies show” or “Researchers discovered,” then, a) I’d have mountains of gold, and, b) I’d give it all away for people to be more honest about their information sources and their supposedly scientific methods. We save ourselves so much time, energy, and money by knowing the difference between evidence-based science and pseudoscience, between good and bad research. During…
Citizen Science by Jamie Zvirzdin False Alarms in Science and the Media: Examining Cause and Effect When we moved into a house in 2018, I was delighted by the 1970s appliances that came with it, particularly a gas stove. Not only did it have an enormous oven underneath the range, but also a smaller oven hanging above. Two ovens and a gas range! What luxury! Alas, the gas stove has since struggled and the one remaining oven that works keeps…
Citizen Science by Jamie Zvirzdin Introduction to Citizen Science: Finding Intellectual Security Imagine you’re sitting in science class. On the paper before you, there’s a homework problem you don’t understand. You raise your hand to seek clarity, but the teacher responds, “Oh, that problem is easy! Just use your intuition.” The teacher then rattles off a bunch of specialized words—science jargon—you just learned. “Thanks,” you say out loud, but your muddied thoughts are joined by the cold chill of shame:…
Morning Coffee Miracle: A Return to the Power of Local Community By JAMIE ZVIRZDINRICHFIELD SPRINGS – When I first visited my husband’s family in Richfield Springs back in 2007, my new grandma-in-law, Joyce Zvirzdin, told me what a thriving place Richfield Springs had been, how bustling the downtown area used to be—the restaurants, the spas, the shops, the cafés. I told her I wished I could have seen it. Fast-forward to May 31, 2021, when the whole Zvirzdin family went…
‘Subatomic Writing’ AuthorChallenging Old Notionsof Science Communication By TED MEBUST OLNEY, MD – Sitting alone in the back corner of the Richfield Springs Public Library, science writer and researcher Jamie Zvirzdin diligently crafted her latest publication, presumably with coffee in hand. It was October of 2018, six months since Zvirzdin and her son, Max, were forced to flee from Managua, Nicaragua following an outbreak of political upheaval that had flooded the capital’s streets with police and protestors. Her husband, Andrew,…