Music that makes you dumb...

[javert]

I also believe it could be a joke, his similar "research" about books looks even sillier. But due the fact that so much pseudo-scientific crap is spread out lately I'm forming my friendly stock reply to all that kind of bullshit.

Goldacre's "Bad Science" should be read in schools. Specially now, in the era of over sensationalized media where journalists don't even site sources and promote stupidity which lack any kind of honest research.

Much of the pseudo-scientific crap scares the shit out of me, or, rather, it scares the shit out of me that the news media and entertainment television channels publish that kind of stuff without considering the consequences or the validy. There should be some kind of law against ignorants posing as experts on important issues like diet and health (or some sort of liability law).

People who understand a bit about statistics will only laugh about 'music that makes you dumber' and stuff like that and consider it a curious experiment, and, in all likelihood, he probably just did it to provoke. Perhaps I should use it in the statistics classes I teach.

[javert]

Speaking of experiments with the media, I just recalled something I was involved with when I was a student. We, a bunch of fellow students, decided to set up a fake webcam site claiming to be realtime streaming from a public toilet 'located somewhere in Denmark'. This was back in the 90s when webcams weren't common, and we basically just took a couple of fake photos of the restroom in our hall with us in various poses, pretending to do various things (the best was of me sitting on the toilet bending forward with one of my friends prentending to wipe my ass). The website then just showed these pictures in random order. We set up an email account for the site too, and you wouldn't believe the mail we would get: "why is there nobody in you toilet?", "why's there only men in your toilet" and so forth. The site was mentioned in a French newspapers about human rights on the ineternet and the number of visitors exploded after that. We were even invited to take part in a national television show about the internet (we declined the invitation). They all thought it was real. We couldn't believe it. The site that hosted the pictures (but not the webpage) got taken down when university administrators thought it was real too.

[Endrik]

Much of the pseudo-scientific crap scares the shit out of me, or, rather, it scares the shit out of me that the news media and entertainment television channels publish that kind of stuff without considering the consequences or the validy. There should be some kind of law against ignorants posing as experts on important issues like diet and health (or some sort of liability law).

It's one of the things that disturbs me in globalization, the influence of anglo-american entertainment factor. Everything has to be an big event and with a certain agenda. Magazines are using bunch of dumb, lying esoteric idiots as "experts". People with absolutely no credibility in science are spreading out anti-vaccination propaganda, promoting women to give birth at homes and other crap that is dangerous. Most of the time those same idiots are trying to sell their homeopathic "medicine" that doesn't work at all. What's next, flat-earthers and evolution deniers?

[Musician78]

I always thought country music. I won't let my wife play country music around my daughter just in case.