David Berreby
Author, Us and Them: The Science of Identity
David Berreby is the author of "Us and Them: The Science of Identity." He has written about human behavior and other science topics for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Slate, Smithsonian, The New Republic, Nature, Discover, Vogue and many other publications. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Paris, a Science Writing Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory, a resident at Yaddo, and in 2006 was awarded the Erving Goffman Award for Outstanding Scholarship for the first edition of "Us and Them." David can be found on Twitter at @davidberreby and reached by email at david [at] davidberreby [dot] com.
Psi is psychology’s equivalent of the perpetual motion machine in physics. Claims in favor of telepathy, clairvoyance, premonitions or other extra-sensory perceptions were always considered the realm of looney-tunes who […]
Over at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum has nailed the real problem with the deficit-cutting ideas floated the other day by the the co-chairs of President Obama’s Commission of Fiscal Responsibility […]
Psychiatrists see a lot of people who are, to use the technical term, screwed up. Psychiatrists’ talk, then, often turns around curing, or ameliorating, or at least preventing “bad” behaviors […]
Every time I see a row of seaside lampposts, each with a single seagull perched on it, I wonder: Do those birds think we built the highway system for them? […]
Low weight at birth is associated with all sorts of health troubles later in life, so it seems a great idea to give nutritional supplements to pregnant women in developing […]
Yesterday’s post ended by suggesting that a single-minded obsession with population actually distracts people from the difficult realities of the quest for sustainability in this century. Lest this sound like […]
For a few decades in the 20th century, it seemed as humanity’s triumphs of public health were turning into an ironic and deadly trap. Because more babies were surviving infancy […]
When an industrialized nation’s population shrinks, fewer and fewer working-age people have to support more and more retirees.
A few weeks back, the old-school anti-fertility group Optimum Population Trust issued its index of “overpopulated” nations. It names 77 countries which, it says, are “consuming more resources than they […]
With all its inefficiencies, waste and contradictions, democracy may not be equal to our social problems. But it sure is a great model of the human psyche, as writers keep […]
This paper in the current issue of the journal Neuron claims to add some MRI findings to the evidence that human empathy and kindness stop at the border between “our […]
Basketball games, elections and other head-to-head contests seem to affect the testosterone of people who care about them. Some studies have found that testosterone production goes down in fans of […]
At The Guardian site, Martin Robbins has nailed everything that’s wrong with science news on “general interest” websites in this pitch-perfect parody. It gets at the heart of the uneasy […]
As if this weren’t bad enough, Douglas Irwin, an economist at Dartmouth, is out this week with a new grievance against France. He says it bears much of the blame […]
Delusions of control seem built into the human mind, even when they aren’t comforting. More than a few people, for example, would prefer to think hurricanes are punishments for abortions […]
Your friends likely have more friends than you do. Please don’t take that personally. As the sociologist Scott L. Feld was first to point out, this is simply a mathematical […]
In the White House, can a white conservative do more to restrain anti-Islamic bigotry than an African-American progressive? Writing on the anniversary of 9/11, a couple of writers Saturday argued […]
People like to use categories for people (race, religion, nation, class, gender) as explanations for others’ behavior (for example, I was late because there was traffic and I have a […]
Why exactly do fights break out when people are drinking? You might think it’s simple biochemistry—alcohol molecules wreaking changes on brain cells, leading to behavior change, leading to a broken […]
Like any sensible person, I worry about the imminent arrival of Skynet and the Cylons, in the form of artificial intelligences that could be physically, intellectually and perhaps, as J. […]
Science and democracy are supposed to go together like Mom and apple pie. But in the American political arena, they aren’t naturally compatible: To show people Science, you have to […]
It’s a big holiday weekend here in the U.S., so there’s a good chance that before or after reading this, you’ll be driving around lost. If you are a man, […]
An information-saturated society is going to notice plenty of weird correlations, like the Blade Runner curse or the unfortunate fate of American presidents elected in years that ended in a […]
Props to my colleague Lindsay Beyerstein for this great catch yesterday: Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle’s campaign received a donation from someone who listed her employer as “husband” and her […]
Evolution is accepted as the fundamental theory of life because, well, we see evidence of it all around us. Not because it has been irrefutably, mathematically proved—at least not yet.
One of my enduring memories of New York City right after 9/11 was the absence or religious or racial violence. As we stared up at the planeless sky or across […]
Most people consider anonymous sex in public places to be a crude, rude and immoral act. But “all that is rude ought not to be civilized with death,” as Walter […]
“Vision,” Stanford’s Bill Newsome likes to say, “does not happen in the eye. It happens in the brain.” As I mentioned in my last post, this is a general theme […]
The other shoe has dropped in Harvard’s investigation into allegations of scientific misconduct by Marc Hauser, the cognitive psychologist. Harvard announced last week that it had found Hauser responsible for […]
“I don’t want to be married anymore,” writes Elizabeth Gilbert about the start of her pre-life crisis. “I don’t want to live in this big house. I don’t want to […]