If You Can't Change What You Believe, You Don't Believe It

Can you believe what you read?

What you believe versus what you think they believe: a neuroimaging study of conceptual perspective-taking.

Social communication requires shared representations as well as a cognitive flexibility for successful interactions between self and other. What neural mechanisms underlie the ability to distinguish between our own perspective vs. the perspective of others at a conceptual level? In this PET study subjects who were medical students were asked according to the experimental conditions to respond t...

Can you believe what you read in medical journals?

(Chest 1992; 101:1417-19) T he Editor of the ACP Journal Club, Dr. R. Brian Haynes, maintains that “About 9() 1)ercelit of any journal ill l)e publications of prelmniinary studies. Only a small pr porti I) ‘ill l e studies that should he applied in clinical practice. Physicians have to he able to detect those that are appropriate for clinical practice aniong (Itlite a variety that aren’t.” Do 1...

Can you believe what you read in the papers?

The number of reports of clinical trials grows by hundreds every week. However, this does not mean that people making decisions about healthcare are finding it easier to obtain reliable knowledge for these decisions. Some of the information is unreliable. Systematic reviews are helping to resolve this by bringing together the research on a topic, appraising and summarising it. But the quality o...

You can't not believe everything you read.

Can people comprehend assertions without believing them? Descartes (1644/1984) suggested that people can and should, whereas Spinoza (1677/1982) suggested that people should but cannot. Three experiments support the hypothesis that comprehension includes an initial belief in the information comprehended. Ss were exposed to false information about a criminal defendant (Experiments 1 and 2) or a ...