A new study analyzing brain scans of 928 people has cast doubt on previous findings that suggested significant differences in brain structure between conservatives and liberals. While the original research claimed conservatives had larger amygdalae (associated with fear) and liberals had larger anterior cingulate cortices (ACCs, involved in uncertainty monitoring), the new study found the differences to be much smaller than originally thought.
Examine, a free weekly newsletter covering science with a sceptical, evidence-based eye, is sent every Tuesday. You’re reading an excerpt –In 2010, while guest-presenting a BBC radio show, the British actor asked scientists to scan the brains of two MPs, one Labour and one Tory, to see if they could detect any differences between the ideological opponents.– reported conservatives had more grey matter in their amygdala, which processes fear.
Or is the fact that political opposition runs so deep that researchers can pick at least some differences between left- and right-wing brains just further evidence that there are factions of society who will never see eye to eye? Cosmologists believed the universe’s expansion was slowing as gravity drew cosmic objects together. Once the universe stops expanding, one theory holds, everything willinto a single point. Perlmutter wanted to measure how much the universe’s expansion had slowed, to see how close we were to the Big Crunch.
The scientific scrutiny came swift and fierce, but his results held true. Perlmutter won the Nobel Prize in 2011 – alongside Australian astrophysicist Brian Schmidt, who had separately discovered the same thing. Professor Saul Perlmutter won the Nobel prize in 2011 and has turned his attention to teaching scientific concepts to the public.The course warns students against confirmation bias, for example, whereby you’re likely to stop looking for an answer once you find evidence that supports your preconceived conclusion. For the same reason Perlmutter spent months double-checking his supernovae results for errors, we should keep searching for information even when we find an answer that suits our cause.
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