Conflicts of interest

I received the following today from Mike Palij at NYU. I think it is appropriate.
----------------------------
An article in today's NY Times reports that U.S. feds will be
cracking down on physicians and surgeons for taking illegal
kickbacks from drug and medical device companies. One
example of this has been Eli Lilly's illegal marketing of Zyprexa
for which Lilly has agreed to pay a $1.4 billion fine. See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/health/policy/04doctors.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=gardiner%20harris&st=cse
or
http://tinyurl.com/bxbkf9

There are new regulations coming into place that would require
drug and device makers to make public (e.g., posted on a website)
what sorts of payments and gifts have given to physicians.
Minnesota has such a program already in place but complaints
about it have already started. Consider the following quote from
the NYT article:

|Dr. Richard Grimm, a Minnesota researcher, twice served on
|government-sponsored hypertension panels that create guidelines
|about when to prescribe blood pressure pills. But when state records
|revealed that he had earned more than $798,000 from drug companies
|from 1997 to 2005, invitations to serve on such panels dried up, he said.
|
|"There's this automatic assumption that if you make money from a drug
|company, you must be corrupt," Dr. Grimm said.

However, elsewhere in the article, the following view is presented:

|A common problem in illegal drug and device marketing cases is
|doctors' willingness to delude themselves into thinking that cash,
|lucrative trips and other kickbacks do not affect them, said Mr. Morris,
|the chief counsel.
|
|"Somehow physicians think they're different from the rest of us," Mr. Morris
|said. "But money works on them just like everybody else."

Freud - link & response for this week

I am fascinated by Freud. In our readings for this week (and the movie we watched on Tuesday), we get the impression that Freud and his ideas were very controversial and disliked. In his time, he was sort of a rebel. He was bringing up ideas that seemed so bogus and unscientific. He attributed everything (it seems like) to sexuality. But he really did contribute a lot to the field and I think it's telling that pretty much anyone in the world would associate his name with the field of psychology.

What is it that made Freud's ideas so controversial? Was it that they were so different than the themes studied by his contemporaries? Or do we still consider them bogus? Do we still consider him a quack? We've discussed this before, but what ideas do we have right now in the field of psychology that in 50-100 years will seem absolutely ridiculous? Or what ideas do we have right now that will last for 50-100 years and only at that time will seem valuable to the field? It's interesting that Freud was sensationalized for his very controversial work in sexuality and psychoanalysis, but the man also studied a lot of other things that we still consider valuable to this day: free association, defense mechanisms, and the subconscious.

I found a link to the Sigmund Freud museum in Vienna, Austria, which is housed in his old apartment. I've visited this museum and found Freud to be a very interesting man with interesting ideas (most of the work housed at this museum is uncontroversial and it details more a history of his life in general and of his clinical practice). I tried to post pictures from my visit but apparently I am technologically illiterate.

2/26 post and review

First, I thought for those of you have not taken psychological disorders, it may be interesting to know what different IQ scores mean and how 'intelligent' the majority of individuals are relative to others. Although this gives a brief account of how the IQ test came to be, a better history is outlined at this cite, which is also useful if you are looking to improve your cognition with any of their fine products for sale at an internet near you! Besides buying into the amazing Audiblox, there are several links along the side of the page and if you click on "Intelligence and IQ", there are several articles on IQ and genetics, IQ and learning disabilities, and how IQ is interpreted.

Now lets talk about what we learned this last week in History and Systems of Psychology, shall we? To remind you, we talked about applied psychology vs. pure basic research. There are many jobs that fall under the applied umbrella including clinical, sports, forensic, industrial, marketing, and testing psychology. Lightner Witmer, founder of the first psychology clinic (and thus, clinical psychology), was a leading proponent of applied psychology whereas Edward Titchener, the founder of structuralism, believed in pure science without regard to utility.

Obviously, there are beneficial components to both applied psychology and pure research for if there were no research, we would not know what to apply, and if there were no application, there would be no point in doing research. I am personally much more interested in the research component of psychology, but I have intentions to use the findings in a way such that everyone can reap the benefits of my discovery.

Despite my love of “knowledge for knowledge’s sake”, I see the application of psychology all around me. Why, for instance, did I choose to buy this particular cell phone? Obviously, it probably works well, has neat technological features, but why must it be black, sleek, and shiny? A psychologist trained in marketing may tell you that it is because many people have black cell phones and I wish to conform, or that I derive a sense of sophistication and class from having a new phone. But did they just guess all this? No! Studies have been done that show how others respond to people differently based on their perceptions of a person’s status and class.

In short, I personally believe research and application go hand in hand regardless of how heavily our psychological predecessors debated such things. I think that one would be silly without the other, and I would like to believe that there is less of a divide today between those who practice and those who research. We are all striving for the same thing: to explain psychological forces in the world and determine how they can be altered for optimal gratification. Do you agree?

Another applied psychology link

Just in case you're not tired of applied psychology yet, I thought I would provide you with a link that is near and dear to my heart: the website to the American Dance Therapy Association. With any luck, I will be attending graduate school to get my master's in dance/movement therapy in the fall, and I thought I would take this opportunity to give you guys a little taste of what this subset of clinical psychology is all about.

Week 5: Applied Psychology in Advertising - Link and reflection

The first thing I think about when people start talking about the psychology (or the "tricks") of advertising is this video:

[youtube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg

Give it a watch; it's less than 7 minutes, and pretty amazing stuff.

So basically, this bloke Derren Brown is a mentalist. That is, he has such an acute understanding of how people's minds work that he can manipulate them without them noticing anything is out of the ordinary. He's done a lot of different things (and I encourage you all to check out his other videos as well, they are quite extraordinary) but this particular example is most applicable to our readings right now. What he does is manipulate two advertising people into creating an advert that matches almost exactly his intended design, though they thought they were working on their own creativity, simply by giving them subliminal imagery on their trip over. It's an example of how gullible we are as a species, but more importantly it shows the awesome power of applied psychology. Granted, this man is exceptional and most people cannot match his results, but he is living proof that the field of psychology has enormous potential for understanding how people's minds work and how it can be applied to our everyday lives.

Assigned readings for week of 3/2

Hey guys Emily and I are leading class discussion this week, so we would like you to read the blue book for Tuesday and the other book for Thursday. THANKS!

reflection and link for 2/27

Here is a link I found that provides some information on psychology in advertising.

http://www.users.muohio.edu/shermarc/p324ads.shtml

This weeks reading were probably my favorite so far. I really liked reading about how psychology began to be put to use in everyday life. I have always been interested in the psychology of advertising and the various strategies used to attract consumers. It is interesting to read about how so many varieties of psychology began to develop at their own pace, with clinical psychology, school psychology, business psychology, and the psychology of law it would have been an interesting and exciting time to be a psychology student. I also really enjoyed reading about Hollingworth's study on caffine for Coke. I kinda felt bad for the guy when the book was talking about his financial situation but one study for Coke will fix that. It was alos interesting to read about Leta Hollingworth and her suggestions for certification of practicing psychologiest. I had a very hard time in class trying to define what seprates a psychologist from just a person giving advice, I was very impressed with Leta's suggestions since they were the first to try and define and legitimize psychologists.