A recent report suggested that we prefer confident rather than diffident experts...even when the confident ones are wrong. There are two kinds of experts: the folks who are very, very confident about what they know - and the folks who are very, very aware of the limits of what they know. A football running back is a confident expert - hit the hole, hit it fast, hit it hard. (Even the Minnesita Vikings recognize this!) Running back-style experts say things like - DRINK TWO GLASSES OF RED WINE A DAY!!!!! A scientist is usually a tentative expert - see the data, see the limits in the data, present the highly qualified possibilities of what the data might mean if we can get more data that look a lot like the data we just reported. Can we get people to listen to the second kind? read more

So, I drank the Kool-Aid, jumped the shark, sold my first-born for a tulip.  However you put it, I joined the ranks and now engage in behavior that is difficult to describe with any dignity.  In times gone by, saying what I do out loud was likely to get your shins rapped with a cane, your ear yanked from its socket, and your teeth flossed with a redolent bar of Glenn's Sulphur Soap.  Let's be frank and cut to the chase.  I tweet. I suppose I could say that I twitter, but that probably doesn't help me. I joined Twitter, and I blame Psychology Today!  Specifically Pamela Rutledge and Moses Ma, who recently reported on their experiences with Twitter. Now, I am the social media equivalent of the guy at the party who keeps trying to talk about serious things while other people are trying to concentrate on their next beer pong shot or figure out whether to cue up the Taylor Hicks playlist or the Taylor Swift playlist (I have been assured that they are different...