![[A cartoon of the brain, with pictures of a heart, a thought bubble, music notes, numbers, a molecule, and words.]](https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/files/2021/09/brain-5662029_1920.jpg)
We humans have a unique capacity to acquire language, even as adults. However, if you have ever used Duolingo, you might have realized that children are more successful at acquiring languages than adults. This observation is puzzling; since adults are smarter than children, shouldn’t it be the other way around? One set of explanations for this paradox focuses on parsing — that is, applying our knowledge of grammar as sentences unfold incrementally…
Tag: methods
Collecting drinking data: There’s an app for that
![[A photo of a person drinking a beer while also on their mobile phone.]](https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/files/2021/06/cell-phone-drinking-01.jpg)
Why do college students really drink alcohol in excess, even if they probably shouldn’t? Addiction researchers have been studying this topic for decades. They’re interested in learning more about alcohol use, the reasons for drinking, and the consequences of heavy drinking. Typically, addiction is studied by having people come into a psychology lab, fill out questionnaires, or maybe do some computerized tasks. More recently, however, scientists wanted to step out of their offices and understand real-world drinking behavior. But, how do they do that? Picture these scenarios…
What does it mean for science to be falsifiable?
![[Two black swans nuzzling on murky water.]](https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/files/2021/06/BlackSwans.jpg)
Science is falsifiable. Or at least, this is what I (like many Americans) learned in many of my high school and college science classes. Clearly, the idea has appeal among scientists and non-scientists alike. But what exactly does “falsifiable” mean? And why is it valued by some scientists, but dismissed or even considered actively harmful by others?
Science with Nemo: Ethics of Care in Animal Research
![[animated GIF of seven tropical fish of various kinds, who are all in plastic bags, floating in the ocean. The image captions one fish, speaking, who asks the group, “Now what?”]](https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/files/2020/12/nemo-end.gif)
We are all familiar with the plot of Finding Nemo: a scuba-diving dentist takes a small clownfish, Nemo, from a reef, keeps him in a fish tank in his office, and Marlin (Nemo’s father) goes on a whirlwind adventure to rescue his son. Obviously, Disney’s creative fiction is just that — fiction. However, many millions of fish are kept in tanks in the real world, for both recreation and research. Although we cannot know the fate of home-kept fish, for fish used in scientific research, there are specific rules for ethical treatment and proper care for fish of all kinds. How and why do scientists use fish in research anyways?
Ethics in Research: What is the IACUC?
![[Picture is Kanzi, a male bonobo, participating in a touchscreen research task investigating syntax processing in great apes]](https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/files/2020/04/Kanzi-touchscreen.png)
The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 was brought about by two major media publications. In Sports Illustrated, Pepper, the Dalmatian, had disappeared from her family’s front yard, only to have been found at an east coast hospital and after having been euthanized, following an experimental medical research study involving an early model of a pacemaker. Pepper had been snatched from her owner’s front yard, and then sold for use in medical research, all without their knowledge…
Ethics in Research: What is the IRB?
![[A human silhouette made of small data points.]](https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/files/2020/04/data.png)
Across many fields, scientific research involving humans has a dark history, and many studies conducted in the past are completely unethical both in their original contexts and now. In America, examples include the Tuskegee Study on syphilis, which ran for over 40 years, and Henrietta Lacks’ ovarian cancer cells which were used in scientific research for decades without her or her family’s knowledge…
Science without a Degree: What is Citizen Science and How to Get Involved
Louis Pasteur once said, “Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.” The act of doing science should not, and cannot, be confined to people in lab coats with multiple degrees squinting at computer screens and scribbling on whiteboards. Exploring the natural world around us should be something everyone can take part in, and that’s what citizen science is…
Groundhog Day 2020: Probability in perspective
This post is from ScIU’s archives. It was originally published by Lana Ruck in February 2018 and has been lightly edited to reflect current events. Tomorrow will be the 134th official Groundhog Day in the United States. Celebrated in Canada, Germany, and the U.S., the holiday derives from a long-standing German-Dutch tradition, which we’ve been… Read more »
A skeptic’s guide to statistical significance
“There’s no safe amount of alcohol,” CNN reported. This year the largest ever study on the health risks of alcohol was released, attracting mass media attention and igniting a science journalism furor over its interpretation. In the study, researchers found a significant increased in risk of death for individuals who consume even one drink a day…. Read more »
The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) initiative: A brief look
Even for non-researchers, it is important to be informed about the various initiatives that change the way we do science and, ultimately, the way scientists choose to spend government dollars. In the wake of the 10-year anniversary of RDoC’s inception [1], I would like to unpack this commonly misunderstood acronym that is popping up in… Read more »