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these questions tend to overlook the way IQ tests are designed. As a neuropsychologist who has administered hundreds of these measures, I can tell you that their structures reflect a deeply embedded bias toward intelligence as a function of reading skills

The Roberts-Scalia debate is part of a longstanding argument about how judges should interpret laws passed by Congress.

the chief justice embraces an approach called “purposivism,” while Justice Scalia prefers “textualism.”

In Judge Katzmann’s account, purposivism has been the approach favored for most of American history by conservative and liberal judges, senators, and representatives, as well as administrative agencies. Purposivism holds that judges shouldn’t confine themselves to the words of a law but should try to discern Congress’s broader purposes.

The Delaware senator was, in fact, hearing what Bush's top deputies -- from cabinet members like Paul O'Neill, Christine Todd Whitman and Colin Powell to generals fighting in Iraq -- have been told for years when they requested explanations for many of the president's decisions, policies that often seemed to collide with accepted facts. The president would say that he relied on his ''gut'' or his ''instinct'' to guide the ship of state, and then he ''prayed over it.''

What underlies Bush's certainty? And can it be assessed in the temporal realm of informed consent?

Top officials, from cabinet members on down, were often told when they would speak in Bush's presence, for how long and on what topic. The president would listen without betraying any reaction. Sometimes there would be cross-discussions -- Powell and Rumsfeld, for instance, briefly parrying on an issue -- but the president would rarely prod anyone with direct, informed questions.

The word “bias” commonly appears in conversations about mistaken judgments and unfortunate decisions. We use it when there is discrimination, for instance against women or in favor of Ivy League graduates

the meaning of the word is broader: A bias is any predictable error that inclines your judgment in a particular direction. For instance, we speak of bias when forecasts of sales are consistently optimistic or investment decisions overly cautious.

Society has devoted a lot of attention to the problem of bias — and rightly so

In learning any art the important things to learn are, first, Principles, and second, Method. This is true of the art of producing ideas. Particular bits of knowledge are nothing, because they are made up [of] so called rapidly aging facts. Principles and method are everything.

So with the art of producing ideas. What is most valuable to know is not where to look for a particular idea, but how to train the mind in the method by which all ideas are produced and how to grasp the principles which are at the source of all ideas.

Every really good creative person…whom I have ever known has always had two noticeable characteristics. First, there was no subject under the sun in which he could not easily get interested — from, say, Egyptian burial customs to modern art. Every facet of life had fascination for him. Second, he was an extensive browser in all sorts of fields of information.

Candidates accordingly believed that being caught in an outright lie could damage their careers. (As Daniel Patrick Moynihan reportedly said,&nbsp;“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”) They tended only to bend the truth, not break it.

At least four factors since the 1970s have lowered the cost for politicians who lie and, more important, repeat their fabrications through their attack ads. First is the overall decline in respect for institutions and professionals of all kinds, from scientists and lawyers to journalists and civil servants.

Second are changes in media regulation and ownership

"The stakes are clear," Clinton wrote of the slate of cases now pending before the court. "In a single term, conservative justices could undermine virtually every pillar of the progressive movement."

"Those who care about the fairness of elections, the future of unions, racial disparities in universities, the rights of women, or the future of our planet, should care about who appoints the next justices," Clinton wrote.

The current demographics of the Supreme Court are what make the coming election such a relevant issue.

While&nbsp;data for almost all of the studies published as recently as 2011 were still accessible, the chances of them remaining accessible fell by a whopping 17 percent each year. Each year. For research from the not-that-distant early 1990s, data availability dropped to as little as 20 percent.

A recent study of Supreme Court decisions—the rhetorical documents of the highest judicial body in the land—found that&nbsp;49 percent of the web links cited&nbsp;within those decisions are now dead.

many services that claim to offer that rarest of digital commodities — privacy — don’t really deliver. Read the fine print.

Snapchat’s privacy page explains that private images are stored on someone’s phone — and on its own servers. “Forensically, even after they are deleted,” Snapchat says, those images can be retrieved. Whisper’s privacy page says the company owns the intellectual property, both images and text, that people post; Whisper reserves the right to sell that stuff to third parties. And Telegram, while seemingly less innocuous with its claims, nonetheless leaves out something you might want to know: someone can just take a screenshot or picture of that “private” conversation.

Don’t have a smartphone yet? They still know where you are and where you’ve been. The American Civil Liberties Union released a report this year that found that technologies that let governments scan license plates are being used to build databases of vehicle locations across the United States.

kea’s investigations were conducted for various reasons, including the vetting of job applicants, efforts to build cases against employees accused of wrongdoing, and even attempts to undermine the arguments of consumers bringing complaints against the company. The going rate charged by the private investigators was 80 to 180 euros, or $110 to $247, per inquiry, court documents show. Between 2002 and 2012, the finance department of Ikea France approved more than €475,000 in invoices from investigators.

the spying cases occurred in a country that, in the digital age, has elevated privacy to a level nearly equal to the national trinity of Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité.

Last month, the company’s current chief, Stefan Vanoverbeke, and financial director, Dariusz Rychert, were questioned along with Mr. Baillot for 48 hours by the judicial police before being placed under formal investigation. That set in motion a process in which the next step, if it comes, would be the filing of criminal charges.

The questions from the justices suggested that they were divided along the usual lines — conservative and liberal —

That, coupled with his earlier judicial opinions, gave gay rights advocates reason for optimism by the end of the arguments, which lasted two and a half hours.

Justice Kennedy said he was concerned about changing a conception of marriage that has persisted for so many years

leads to both the erasure and criminalization of marginalized communities, has had dire consequences for both the psyches and lived experiences of black people in the United States since at least the 18th century,

“This is the press, an irresponsible press,” he said. “It will make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

Many studies have tackled implicit racial bias in law enforcement, health care and the&nbsp;legal field. In recent years, the phrase has become a buzzword used to broadly frame bigotry and racism as something so entrenched that some people aren’t aware that they subconsciously harbor racist feelings, associating black skin with negative behavior

There are, it turns out, people in the corporate world who will do whatever it takes, including fraud that kills people, in order to make a buck. And we need effective regulation to police that kind of bad behavior, not least so that ethical businesspeople aren’t at a disadvantage when competing with less scrupulous types.

Well, we used to know it, thanks to the muckrakers and reformers of the Progressive Era. But Ronald Reagan insisted that government is always the problem, never the solution, and this has become dogma on the right.

an important part of America’s political class has declared war on even the most obviously necessary regulations. Too many important players now argue, in effect, that business can do no wrong and that government has no role to play in limiting misbehavior.

It does three things—1) explains what motivated reasoning is; 2) explains how it’s threatening to the legal system (because motivated/biased interpretations of court findings and opinions by opposed groups of citizens threaten the very idea of court neutrality); and 3) takes a look at the Supreme Court’s 2010 term (and one bizarre Scalia dissent in particular) in this context.

There is thus an inherent risk that citizens will perceive decisions that threaten their group commitments to be a product of judicial bias. The outcomes might strike them as so patently inconsistent with the facts, or with controlling legal principles, that they are impelled to infer bad faith.

Kahan suggests it undermines the justice system if battling groups of advocates (say, the American Constitution Society and the Federalist Society) are constantly blasting court opinions from diametrically opposed perspectives, and using motivated reasoning to do so. At some point, as this continues, you wind up legitimating the claim that really, courts don’t know anything special or have any particular expertise—it’s all just opinion, and biased opinion at that. This precipitates a “neutrality crisis” over whether courts can really judge fairly.

Eyewitness testimony has long been an important part of most judicial systems around the world. However, over the last three decades, psychologists have consistently proven how tenuous the memories truly are, and how easily they can be altered or even manufactured through the power of suggestion.

creating such faux memories in the brain, demonstrating that the manipulation of a specific subset of neurons in the mouse hippocampus can cause the animals to falsely remember a fear of a foot schock.

same optogenetic technique to essentially transfer a fear memory from one situation to another.

Ultimately, culture matters more than politics, and when the leader of the free world inflicts cultural damage this severe, he’s doing far more harm than a few judicial appointments can remedy. Conservatives used to understand this reality. In fact, we once made this argument with great clarity and power.

It’s time for conservatives to remember the cultural power of the presidency. It’s time for us to understand that Trump’s persona is — certainly for now — more influential than his policies. Sure, seek lower tax rates and better judges. Sure we praise him when he’s right and critique mistakes. But we must lift our eyes from the strike zone and look at his overall impact. And that means not holding back from speaking the larger, more important truths.

Krauthammer was right. Trump’s conduct yesterday was a “moral disgrace.” He exacerbated divisions that have existed since before the nation’s founding. He gave the vicious and vile alt-right it’s most important public victory. If he keeps it up, his “agenda” will be a footnote to history. Hate, division, and rage will be his true legacy, and that legacy will have far greater consequence than any policy he manages to pass.

Science sets out what we think is true – but when it gets stuck, it’s time to explore what we think isn’t

science has always advanced in small steps, paving the way for occasional leaps. But sometimes fact-collecting yields nothing more than a collection of facts; no revelation follows. At such times, we need to step back from the facts we know and imagine alternatives: in other words, to ask “what if?”

That was how Albert Einstein broke the bind in which physics found itself in the early 20th century. His conception of a scenario that received wisdom deemed impossible – that light’s speed is always the same, regardless of how you look at it – led to special relativity and demolished what we thought we knew about space and time.

1. History helps us develop a better understanding of the world.

You can’t build a framework on which to base your life without understanding how things work in the world. History paints us a detailed picture of how society, technology, and government worked way back when so that we can better understand how it works now.

2. History helps us understand ourselves.

Isn't there quite enough to learn about the world today? Why add to the burden by looking at the past

Historical knowledge is no more and no less than carefully and critically constructed collective memory. As such it can both make us wiser in our public choices and more richly human in our private lives.

Without individual memory, a person literally loses his or her identity, and would not know how to act in encounters with others. Imagine waking up one morning unable to tell total strangers from family and friends!

This new activity of hunting started an evolutionary arms race. Over millions of years, both predators and prey evolved more complex bodies that could sense and move more effectively to catch or elude other creatures.

Eventually, some creatures evolved a command center to run those complex bodies. We call it a brain.

Your brain’s most important job isn’t thinking; it’s running the systems of your body to keep you alive and well. According to recent findings in neuroscience, even when your brain does produce conscious thoughts and feelings, they are more in service to the needs of managing your body than you realize.