It’s worth noting a few things from Bad Science that I’m catching up on:
- Sniffer dogs react to their handlers, not their unerring instinct to find drugs. I guess the experiment needs to be done with drugs rather than sausages, but the principle seems right.
- Experimenters can teach us to fake the signals in brain scanning lie detectors. So there are still no effective lie detectors.
- Cigarette packaging is brilliantly designed (and tested) to make us feel that some cigarettes are safe. Mild and light they are not. All harm, all of the time. Makes me sad to have been a Marlborough Light smoker for my slightly-less-than-a-decade of smoking a bit. Why not have gone for the Reds, Camels Ducados and Gitanes?