Acronym

A blog I've started reading recently is TierneyLab: Putting Ideas in Science to the Test by John Tierney, a science columnist at the New York Times. One of the things I just can't resist about his blog are the social science surveys he finds that researchers are using. I assume the researchers use the data as some kind of pretest to do actual, real research. But that's not what draws me to them. They're like the Cosmo quizzes, but smart.

Here's one on ethics. (Interesting to note that in the most Cosmo-like question, a third of the 200+ respondents didn't think it was particularly unethical to go out on a date with someone just to make someone else jealous.)

Here's another one on daydreaming. (Probably the only surprise I have from this one is that respondents said that when they had time on their hands they frequently entertained themselves with their own thoughts. I don't really believe that answer. I think most people watch TV.)