Congratulations to all our wonderful RAs!

The undergraduate research awards were announced this week, and our lab did great! CONGRATULATIONS to Hoang, Amy, Paula, Idalhi, Fatima, Tina, Shirley, Kelly, Charlene, Vivian, Ghadeer, Elisa and Silvia! And to Ashley and Emily, our wonderful PhD students, for mentoring the undergrads so successfully.

Rejection Collection

I was just admiring our rejection collection. We started the rejection count on December 7, and we're already up to 17 rejections-- Yay, us! [Click here to read about the party we held upon reaching 100 rejections.]

I hate evaluating applications

It's application season again. Everyone is applying for grad school and postdocs and jobs; there are inevitably a lot of rejections, and they hurt. Of course they hurt. We're people; we have egos. And a lot of scientists (including me) have egos that are all about being good at science. It's who we are. So when we apply for something, it doesn't feel like a committee is judging our application; it feels like they are judging us. It's just guaranteed to make a person miserable.

Revise and Resubmit

My co-author and I are revising a paper for the nth time. 3rd? 4th? I don't remember. It's a really good paper. And it actually has gotten much better through this revision process. When we first sent it out, it was a series of three experiments. It was good, I thought. But the journal didn't think we quite nailed down the findings, so they rejected it.

Simonton's Equal-Odds Rule

Dean Simonton studies intelligence, creativity, talent and genius. He has spent a few decades trying to predict which scientists are likely to produce great work, and when in their careers they are most likely to produce it.

Happy Thanksgiving

Gratitude is one of the best emotions. It's easy to fall into the habit of looking forward to things in the future, and thinking that our happiness depends on those things. We think, I'll be so happy when I finally finish this project. But when the project is finished, almost immediately we start thinking of the next project, and we imagine that we'll be happy when it is finished. Or we think that our happiness depends on getting something we don't have yet, like a bachelor's degree, or a PhD, or a job, or a partner. Sometimes I think that I would be very happy if I had a chocolate donut. But when I eat a chocolate donut, I'm usually disappointed.

Psychonomics and SJDM 2017

This past week, Emily was in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia for two conferences: Psychonomics and the The Society for Judgment and Decision Making (SJDM). She presented at both meetings, and also got some time away from the conference to see the sights and take some photos.

International Open Access Week 2017

Most scientific research in the U.S. is paid for by public dollars, so it's only fair that the results should be freely available to the public. In the days before the internet, scientists and students at less-wealthy institutions or in less-wealthy countries (and anyone who was not affiliated with a university) had very limited access to the scientific literature. With the internet, those days are over... or at least they should be.