the psychologist vol 28 no 10 october 2015 www.thepsychologist.org.uk Out of this world A special feature takes psychology into alien territory letters 782 what would you say to an alien? 800 news 788 psychology in deep space 804 careers 840 eye on fiction: the alien in us all 808 looking back 816 close encounters 812 Contact The British Psychological Society the psychologist... St Andrews House 48 Princess Road East ...meets Leicester LE1 7DR 0116 254 9568 [email protected] www.bps.org.uk The Psychologist What would you say to an alien? 800 www.thepsychologist.org.uk Jon Sutton talks to Douglas Vakoch, clinical www.psychapp.co.uk [email protected] psychologist and Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the Search for tinyurl.com/thepsychomag Extraterrestrial Intelligence 800 @psychmag ...features Research Digest www.bps.org.uk/digest Psychology in deep space 804 www.twitter.com/researchdigest Nick Kanas considers issues and Advertising countermeasures Reach 50,000 psychologists at very reasonable rates. 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International panel Vaughan Bell, Uta Frith, Alex Haslam, Elizabeth Loftus the psychologist vol 28 no 10 october 2015 the issue ...features In 1948 British astronomer Fred Hoyle wrote: ‘Once a photograph of the earth, taken from outside, is New voices: The flat landscape 820 available… a new idea as powerful Clementine Edwards considers emotional deficits in schizophrenia, in the as any in history will be let loose.’ latest of our series for budding writers (see www.bps.org.uk/newvoices) For some time I have wanted to lift The Psychologist free from earthly ...reports shackles, pausing to look back at our blue planet before forging ahead news 788 to the stars in search of powerful Cheltenham Literature Festival; malnourishment; good childhood; hearing voices; new ideas. This, finally, is an ‘out of A-level psychology; fear in organisations; psychological terms to avoid; and more this world’ issue. We meet a clinical psychologist society 824 who is Director of Interstellar President’s column; what ‘good’ looks like for children; PsyPAG; and more Message Composition at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. ...debates Frankly, that would be enough. But we also have close encounters, letters 782 aliens in fiction, psychology in deep psychology’s non-stick frying pan: the debate continues; confidence intervals; space and lessons from historical ADHD; the real world column on ‘migrants’; and more hoaxes. This might be one of our ...digests more ‘out there’ editions, but I am convinced it’s grounded in serious what happened when psychologists tried to replicate 100 previously published and sensible science. I’m also findings?; political skills in the workplace; what is it like to be a refugee with hopeful you will humour me at psychosis?; ‘interpersonal gazing’; and what do long distance runners think https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/ about?; in the latest from our free Research Digest (see www.bps.org.uk/digest) 794 aliens-are-coming-look-busy – if we had credible warning of an imminent ...meets alien invasion, how would humanity – and psychologists – react? careers 840 Dr Jon Sutton we meet Doyin Atewologun, and psychology graduate Melanthe Grand Managing Editor @psychmag interviews her mother, Chartered Psychologist and novelist Voula Grand one on one 856 with Jo Silvester, Professor of Organisational Psychology ...reviews Oliver Sacks – an extraordinary life; the Wiley Handbook of Genius; How to Have a Better Brain; the Amazing World of M.C. Escher; People, Places and Things at the National Theatre; Edinburgh Fringe Festival; Uta Frith on her involvement with Horizon’s ‘A Monster in My Mind’; and more 850 The Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee Big picture centre-page pull-out Catherine Loveday (Chair), Phil Banyard, motion illusions in static patterns: Olivia Craig, Helen Galliard, Harriet Gross, images and words from research by Rowena Hill, Stephen McGlynn, Peter Johannes Zanker Olusoga, Tony Wainwright, Peter Wright read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk Do we eclipse other sciences? LETTERS Phil Banyard (‘Where is our non-stick frying pan?’, Letters, about psychology, than is popularly supposed. September 2015) bemoans what he perceives to be a lack of Sir Arthur Eddington, scientific leader of the expedition useful discoveries in psychology. Does any of what we do as and huge advocate of Einstein’s theory, felt enormous pressure psychologists amount to more than ‘a hill of beans’, in contrast to gain the ‘correct’ result. A devout Quaker, Eddington had to the glorious achievements of other sciences? In a fit of physics noted that the heavens on 29 May 1919 (the day of the eclipse) envy, Banyard declares Einstein’s general theory of relativity had seen fit to deliver a particularly favourable alignment of ‘spectacularly tested’ during the 1919 solar eclipse, when light celestial bodies for ‘weighing light’, as he put it (see Eddington, was shown to be bent ‘to the amount predicted’. 1920). However, the technology of the time was simply not up However, Banyard ‘spectacularly’ misfires with this example. to delivering the precision required (accurate testing of general There are several errors worthy of discussion in such retellings relativity had to wait another 40 years and more). Interpretation of the myth of the 1919 eclipse ‘proof’ of general relativity, not of the fuzzy results was influenced by knowing what least an enormous misunderstanding of how science actually works. Remember the ‘discovery’ of cold fusion? Genuine T scientific discovery is not like an IM S election or a football match, a one-off ANDERS contest (Newton 0; Einstein 1); rather, it must survive many rigorous validations through replication and triangulation of results. However, given the central argument of Phil Banyard’s letter – that physics trumps psychology – I wish to concentrate on the particular irony of deploying the eclipse myth here: what really happened in 1919 tells us much less about physics, and much more A few years ago I treated a 66-year- old woman. She had suffered with psychological distress from age 16 and in that time had been in and out of mental hospitals and had experienced the full range of psychotropic medicines plus several bouts of ECT. When I met her she was pretty much housebound and socially isolated, she was alienated from her children and she lived a life of by intrusive thoughts of becoming violent but within three months of a constant misery and anxiety due to her towards other people. straightforward application of exposure extreme OCD. This was largely manifest I am not a particularly expert therapist and response prevention, a technique that THE PSYCHOLOGIST NEEDS YOU! …and much more We rely on your submissions throughout the publication, and in return we help you to get your message across to a large and Letters contribute diverse audience. These pages are central to The Psychologist’s role as a forum for communication, discussion and controversy among all ‘Reach the largest, most diverse audience of psychologists in the UK members of the Society, and we welcome your contributions. 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