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Almost 6 in 10 Americans said they blame President Trump for the violent insurrection that took place Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol

and half believe social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter — which have banned him from their platforms — should not continue to restrict Trump after Wednesday.

Eight in 10 Republicans disagree that Trump is to blame for the violence, don't believe social media companies should continue restrictions on him and don't trust that results of the 2020 election were accurate.

In February-March 1616, the Catholic Church issued a prohibition against the Copernican theory of the earth’s motion.

This led later (1633) to the Inquisition trial and condemnation of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) as a suspected heretic, which generated a controversy that continues to our day.

In 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. This book elaborated the (geokinetic and heliocentric) idea that the earth rotates daily on its own axis and revolves yearly around the sun

When he was 16, Galileo enrolled at the University of Pisa to study medicine, at his father’s urging. Instead, though, he became interested in mathematics and shifted his focus to that subjec

Galileo left the school in 1585 without earning a degree.

Galileo didn’t invent the telescope—Dutch eyeglass maker Hans Lippershey is generally credited with its creation—but he was the first person to use the optical instrument to systematically study the heavens.

Aristotelian thought had dominated mathematics and astronomy for centuries, until revolutionaries like Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei challenged those views.

The mathematization of physics was a crucial step in the advancement of science. It was realized that the mathematical tools we had at the time weren’t strong enough.

By trial and error, Kepler worked and worked until finally, he hit upon the shape that worked—elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus. It turned out to perfectly fit the known observations.

Some people welcome face coverings for reasons ranging from the convenient and expedient to the more complex and psychological. But is this a helpful coping mechanism?

Since I've been wearing the mask, my awkward interactions with friends and family have significantly reduced,” he says. Now, he goes to the shops whenever he wants, without worrying about whom he might see. He hopes that, even after the pandemic ends, it will still be socially acceptable to wear a mask.

Some welcome the way face coverings reduce or change interactions that might otherwise spark social anxiety. But is this a helpful coping mechanism – and what happens when the pandemic comes to an end?

economics needs rethinking in the wake of a disastrous crisis, a crisis that was neither predicted nor prevented.

it’s important to realize that the enormous intellectual failure of recent years took place at several levels. Clearly, economics as a discipline went badly astray in the years — actually decades — leading up to the crisis. But the failings of economics were greatly aggravated by the sins of economists, who far too often let partisanship or personal self-aggrandizement trump their professionalism. Last but not least, economic policy makers systematically chose to hear only what they wanted to hear. And it is this multilevel failure — not the inadequacy of economics alone — that accounts for the terrible performance of Western economies since 2008.

Hardly anyone predicted the 2008 crisis, but that in itself is arguably excusable in a complicated world.

The good news is that much of what we miss about our routines and customs, and what makes them beneficial to us as a species, has more to do with their comforting regularity than the actual behaviors

The key to coping during this, or any, time of upheaval is to quickly establish new routines so that, even if the world is uncertain, there are still things you can count on.

Human beings are prediction machines.

The Aha! Moment: The Science Behind Creative Insight

For most of us, it usually occurs at the most inopportune times; never when we’re searching for it.

To Archimedes, it happened in the bathtub. Newton experienced it while wandering an apple orchard. Arthur Fry: church. Each encountered an epiphany, that powerful moment of spontaneous insight. Archimedes shouted Eureka! upon realizing how to calculate density and volume; to Newton came the law of universal gravity; to Arthur Fry, Post-it notes.

Lack of clear enunciation, unusual accents or poor electronic transmission can all serve to mislead one’s own perceptions. Most mishearings substitute one real word for another, however absurd or out of context, but sometimes the brain comes up with a neologism.

If a mishearing seems plausible, one may not think that one has misheard; it is only if the mishearing is sufficiently implausible, or entirely out of context, that one thinks, “This can’t be right,” and (perhaps with some embarrassment) asks the speaker to repeat himself, as I often do, or even to spell out the misheard words or phrases.

While mishearings may seem to be of little special interest, they can cast an unexpected light on the nature of perception — the perception of speech, in particular. What is extraordinary, first, is that they present themselves as clearly articulated words or phrases, not as jumbles of sound. One mishears rather than just fails to hear.

The most common problem that we can make as message senders is coding our thought, feeling or need in a way that has a low chance of being understood by the receiver.

if you don't know certain words or the message is too complex, then there is a low chance of really understanding it.

no single person is 100% at fault for any communication problem.

The pair argue, on the basis of their own BBC Prison study and real-life instances of prisoner resistance, that people do not yield mindlessly to toxic environments. Rather, in any situation, power resides in the group that manages to establish a sense of shared identity.

The original studies have attracted huge controversy, not only because of their ethically dubious nature, but also because of the way they have been interpreted and used to explain historical events such as the supposedly blind obedience to authority in the Nazi era. Haslam and Reicher have again been at the forefront of counter-arguments.

because those attempting a replication lack the necessary research skills, make statistical errors, or fail to perfectly match the original research design.

Ambiguity and vagueness in clinical practice guidelines reduce the likelihood of clinician adherence. They lead to inconsistent interpretation and, in turn, to inappropriate practice variation and medical errors.

mbiguity and vagueness have been the subject of considerable attention in linguistics and philosophy

From watching and participating in debates over the years regarding Reaganomics, patterns of logical fallacies and factual errors repeatedly arise among critics on the Left.  As the troublesome facts demonstrating the failures of Obamanomics accumulate, we find that almost religiously minded supporters of President Barack Obama can't deal with those facts, and exhibit analogous logical fallacies.

Some critics falsely argue that Reagan increased payroll taxes which are paid much more by lower and moderate income workers.  The payroll tax rate increases of the 1980s were adopted under President Carter and the Democratic Congress in 1977.  The Greenspan Commission Social Security rescue plan adopted in 1983 only advanced a couple of these already scheduled payroll tax rate increases by a year or two.  But the ultimate plan for payroll taxes is to phase them out entirely in favor of lower cost personal accounts to finance the benefits currently financed by those taxes, as discussed in previous columns in this space.

Decolonisation is not always a welcome concept in some quarters of academia.

Academics are much happier asserting that knowledge is power than they are conceding that power is knowledge.

In turn, these seemingly irrational flaws in judgement can lead to perpetual distortion, inaccurate judgement, and illogical interpretation -- all of which are key ingredients in the widening of cultural rifts, the deepening of global disparity gaps, and the general intensifying of political upheavals.

forming culturally cohesive social circles based upon similar viewpoints, and unconsciously referencing only those perspectives which reaffirm our deeply entrenched beliefs

innate tribal desire to be socially accepted, we tend to favour the thoughts, ideals, and sentiments of those with whom we racially, culturally, and ethnocentrically identify with most.

I understand why scientifically minded people experience profound frustration at the nonsense, particularly when we’re forced to consider the public health implications of the anti-vaxxer movement which has been blamed as the root cause for recent outbreaks of measles in the US, a viral infection which can prove devastating for babies and young children. Misinformation can cause immense suffering and we should do our utmost to dispel the lies.

Too many people in scientific spheres seem to revel in dismissing flat-Earthers and anti-vaxxers as garden variety nut-jobs and losers. It may be cathartic – but it’s not productive.

It’s interesting that for a scientific community so perennially pleased with itself, we all seem to be making the same fundamental attribution error by ignoring the notion that belief in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories is propelled by external pressures of fear, confusion and disempowerment. Instead we seem too often satisfied with pinning the nonsense on some bizarrely flourishing individual idiocy.

On Thursday, the FBI arrested three men, Patrik J. Mathews, 27, Brian M. Lemley Jr., 33, and William G. Bilbrough IV, 19, with firearms charges, and they had plans, an official said, to attend a Virginia pro-gun rally. This followed Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's declaration of a temporary state of emergency after authorities learned that extremists hoped to use the anti-gun control rally planned next Monday -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Day -- to incite a violent clash.

These arrests add to mounting evidence that a decades-old and violent white-power movement is alive and well, perhaps even gaining strength. White power is a social movement that has united neo-Nazis, Klansmen, skinheads, and militiamen around a shared fear of racial annihilation and cultural change. Since 1983, when movement leaders declared war on the federal government, members of such groups have worked together to bring about a race war.

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How do scammers use language to trick their victims?

Researchers often have pondered the psychology of how and why certain people fall for scams, especially ones that appear to be so obvious to others. Scammers target certain human traits, including vulnerabilities that can be easily exploited, such as naiveté, overconfidence in one’s intelligence or abilities, an overly optimistic expectation of immediate success in life, or a desire to feel good about helping others. As communication on the internet has gotten more sophisticated, so have the scams. Many still fall for it, as con artists continue to target businesses as well as individuals.

Nigerian 419 cons (the number refers to the fraud section of the Nigerian Criminal Code) are practically the oldest scams on the internet. They can actually be traced back to the 1920s, in the form of a confidence trick most gothically known as the Spanish Prisoner. The victims are asked to pay out more and more money to release the wealthy relative of your respectable foreign correspondents (who naturally doesn’t exist), cruelly imprisoned in Spain, in return for a large reward (that never comes).

Benoit Monin, assistant professor of psychology at Stanford University, showed college students 80 photos of faces, then asked them which ones they recognized from among the 40 they'd seen in an earlier session. The more attractive the photo (as rated by another group of students) the more likely it was to be recognized—regardless of whether the face had been seen before.

"The face's attractiveness actually changes your perception of your past," in this case, the perception of whether you've seen the face before. The shortcut may lead to errors, but it may also help us manage our busy lives, says Monin. "We tend to like familiar things, so it makes perfect sense that over time we would use liking as a clue to familiarity."

In what he calls the "warm-glow heuristic," people consider their affinity for a specific person or place as an indicator of familiarity. As with other mental shortcuts, people resort to this heuristic when they lack enough data on which to base their decisions.

But none of the other four deaths were at the hands of the protesters: the only other person killed with deliberate violence was a pro-Trump protester, Ashli Babbitt, unarmed when shot in the neck by a police officer at close range. The other three deaths were all pro-Trump protesters: Kevin Greeson, who died of a heart attack outside the Capitol; Benjamin Philips, 50, “the founder of a pro-Trump website called Trumparoo,” who died of a stroke that day; and Rosanne Boyland, a fanatical Trump supporter whom the Times says was inadvertently “killed in a crush of fellow rioters during their attempt to fight through a police line.”