Awesome Journal Articles

Affect, culture, and morality, or is it wrong to eat your dog?
Haidt J, Koller SH, Dias MG.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 1993 Oct;65(4):613-28.

Are disgusting or disrespectful actions judged to be moral violations, even when they are harmless? Stories about victimless yet offensive actions (such as cleaning one's toilet with a flag) were presented to Brazilian and U.S. adults and children of high and low socioeconomic status (N = 360). Results show that college students at elite universities judged these stories to be matters of social convention or of personal preference. Most other Ss, especially in Brazil, took a moralizing stance toward these actions. For these latter Ss, moral judgments were better predicted by affective reactions than by appraisals of harmfulness. Results support the claims of cultural psychology (R.A. Shweder, 1991a) and suggest that cultural norms and culturally shaped emotions have a substantial impact on the domain of morality and the process of moral judgment. Suggestions are made for building cross-culturally valid models of moral judgment.

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Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials -- Smith and Pell 327 (7429): 1459 -- from the British Medical Journal.

Objectives To determine whether parachutes are effective in preventing major trauma related to gravitational challenge. Design Systematic review of randomised controlled trials. Data sources: Medline, Web of Science, Embase, and the Cochrane Library databases; appropriate internet sites and citation lists. Study selection: Studies showing the effects of using a parachute during free fall. Main outcome measure Death or major trauma, defined as an injury severity score = 15. Results We were unable to identify any randomised controlled trials of parachute intervention. Conclusions As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health, the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.

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Exorcism-resistant ghost possession treated with clopenthixol.
Hale AS, Pinninti NR.
Br J Psychiatry. 1994 Sep;165(3):386-8.

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Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: Problems with using long words needlessly. DM Oppenheimer - Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2006

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Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: Its Effects on a Male Asiatic Elephant
This was published in SCIENCE! (albeit in 1962)

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Pair of lice lost or parasites regained: the evolutionary history of anthropoid primate lice.
Reed DL, Light JE, Allen JM, Kirchman JJ.
BMC Biol. 2007 Mar 7;5:7.

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An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep Over Various Surfaces.
HARVEY J. T. ; CULVENOR J. ; PAYNE W. ; COWLEY S. ; LAWRANCE M. ; STUART D. ; WILLIAMS R.
Applied Ergonomics, vol. 33, pp 523-531.

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