Link Feast

Cracking the Skull Open
Most of our organs can be treated as repairable machines. Why can’t we treat mental illness by simply fixing the brain? asks Joe Herbert at Aeon magazine.

A New Take on Academic Readiness
Psychologists, medical educators and other behavioral scientists are helping to develop so-called noncognitive tests for college admissions and other educational purposes, writes Tori DeAngelis in the APA Monitor.

The Unbearable Loneliness of Creative Work
A new study described by Ruth Graham at the Boston Globe suggests that workers who spend the day doing things like generating new ideas spend less time at home, and have fewer cognitive resources left by the time they get home, which likely has implications for their relationships.

Sleep Paralysis, YouTube, Magic and More
Ella Rhodes for The Psychologist reports from the European Skeptics Congress.

Why Public Beheadings Get Millions of Views (video)
In a disturbing — but fascinating — newly posted TED talk, anthropologist Frances Larson examines humanity’s strange relationship with public executions … and specifically beheadings. As she shows us, they have always drawn a crowd, first in the public square and now on YouTube. What makes them horrific and compelling in equal measure?

How Scientists Fool Themselves – And How They Can Stop
Humans are remarkably good at self-deception, writes Regina Nuzzo at Nature. But growing concern about reproducibility is driving many researchers to seek ways to fight their own worst instincts.

We Can’t Predict Who Will Commit a Mass Shooting. Gun Control Is the Only Way Out
Mass shootings are just too rare for any other approach to really work, argues Jesse Singal at New York’s Science of Us.

An Ace Up The Poker Star’s Sleeve: The Surprising Upside Of Stereotypes (audio)
The latest instalment of NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast, presented by Shankar Vedantam.

The Science of Sounding Smart
At Harvard Business Review, Juliana Schroeder and Nicholas Epley described their experiments that suggest it is easier to convince people of your intellect by speaking to them, than by making your case in written form.

Sex Differences in the Brain
How male and female brains diverge is a hotly debated topic, writes Margaret McCarthy in The Scientist, but the study of model organisms points to differences that cannot be ignored.