ET05 Science for Work

Something a bit different for this episode, as we have an interview with Lorenzo Galli, founder of ScienceForWork. Scientific evidence is one of the core pillars of evidence-based practice, but for organisations and practitioners there are several challenges in this regard. The first is being able to access it in the first place, whether that’s because of a paywall or knowing where to locate studies. But even if you do manage to access academic research, do you understand what the data is telling you? ScienceForWork, is a not-for-profit organisation, who address these challenges directly, by aggregating and evaluating research on a range of people-related issues and make their findings available freely, for all. Pilar is beginning to think that "science" and "research" can become a bit of a fad in themselves, specially anything that's brain related. She recalls a blog article which referenced a study conducted in Colorado State University where three groups of students were shown some fake data about brain imaging, one group with text only, one included a bar graph showing brain-scan results, and one showed pictures of brains. The articles accompanied by brain images were rated significantly higher than the other groups, despite being based on fake data! You can have a read of the study on http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/06/04/whats-more-convincing-than-tal/ Science can also be miscommunicated for a variety of reasons, especially in the media. Richard highlights an article from the Independent about personality traits and wellbeing, as an example of an over-simplification of a complex issue. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/high-well-being-five-personality-traits-need-mental-health-psychologists-a7555516.html What do you think? We’d love to hear from you – [e-mail] @FW_Centre.