Mr. Ippolito
Biology D-Odd
24 October 2016
Goode, Erica. "Why Big Liars Often Start Out as Small Ones." The New York Times. N.p., 24 Oct. 2016. Web. 24 Oct. 2016.
Why Big Liars Often Start Out as Small Ones
This article written by Erica Goode addresses how the brain functioning works and specifically how lying starts out small and evolves overtime. At first, the lies we tell are little "white lies" to make up excuses or to make other people feel better.
Lying has been difficult to study in the scientific world and Dr. Sharot who is an associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London took this study head on alongside her colleagues. Furthermore, for their research, they used brain scanners to learn how the brain reacts in the emotional section when a person lies. In addition, participants in the study were encouraged to lie so then the researchers could get more accurate results. Overall, when people lie, they realized that there was little reaction in the emotional part of the brain. The less reaction in the emotional part of the brain led to larger lies in the future. As a result, the liars lie bigger and with greater ease as time goes on.
While some of the results can be repeated, using brain scanners was not the most effective way of carrying out this research. In addition, the information is difficult to interpret from brain scans. While there were some limitations to this study, it was a start to figuring out people lie and what makes them continue to lie more and more. The one thing that the author can do to make this article more valid is to test their theories on more than the 80 people that were used in their study. My other suggestion would be to develop a more accurate scanner that go in line with the results because then there will be information to interpret and it will also be easier to interpret that information. Furthermore, this author is stating how we need coming up with white lies because it is a "slippery slope" to tell bigger lies in more serious situations. This research is timely based on the election cycle and the issues that are being discussed by the presidential nominees. Lying can become a serious matter even if you start telling little white lies.
Zach Flangos
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
Bio 10
10/23/16
Link to Original Article w/ Citation: link
Goode, Erica. "Why Big Liars Often Start Out as Small Ones." The New York Times. N.p., 24 Oct. 2016. Web. 24 Oct. 2016.
For my comment, I read my classmate Jay’s paper on the article “Why Big Liars Often Start Out as Small Ones” written by Erica Goode. Throughout Jay’s report, there are many instances where I saw excellent work. One aspect of Jay’s paper I truly admired was how he explained the experiment that Dr. Sharot accomplished at the University of London. This showed me what kind of experiments are done when studying cognitive neuroscience. Another thing Jay did very well on was using a widespread of vocabulary. I am glad that there was not much repetition in his report. Lastly, Jay explained the main idea of the article very well, I was persuaded to keep reading on.
Even though Jay wrote a fantastic report, there are a few parts that could have been a bit more developed. One of the things that he could have done a better job of was adding more to his report. Even though Jay was able to get the main idea across and give us a great amount of context from the article, I found his paper to be a bit short and could have been longer. Another thing that could have been improved on was his punctuation. I found a few mistakes in his report that had to do with punctuation. For example, Jay had forgotten to indent his paragraphs. Finally, I believe that Jay’s intro paragraph could have had some more detail in it. I thought that it was a tad short and could have used some more context from the original article or a hook to capture the reader at first glance.
Altogether, I was astonished by some of the things I learned from Jay’s report and the article. For instance, I was shocked to learn that when certain people lie, they lack reaction in the emotional part of our brains. This then leads them to becoming bigger liars in the future since the reaction will keep decreasing. I was also amazed to learn how lying could start to become somewhat of an addiction. As time goes on, each lie a liar creates is a step towards making lying an easier act. Lying is a huge problem in our society!
Lyric Abbott
ReplyDeleteNovember 11, 2016
Core Biology
Current Event #7
Goode, Erica. "Why Big Liars Often Start Out as Small Ones." The New York Times. N.p., 24 Oct. 2016. Web. 24 Oct. 2016.
I read my classmate Jay’s current event article, Why Big Liars Often Start Out as Small Ones which I think he did a very good job writing and I learned a lot from. One aspect he did well was directly addressing what the article was going to be about in the first sentence and this gave me a clear idea of what I was going to be reading, “This article written by Erica Goode addresses how the brain functioning works and specifically how lying starts out small and evolves over time.” The next aspect he writes about is how the research is performed, “For their research, they used brain scanners to learn how the brain reacts in the emotional section when a person lies. In addition, participants in the study were encouraged to lie so then the researchers could get more accurate results” and by including this passage it gave me a better understanding of how the researchers found their results on how lies develop. A third aspect he did well was explaining some of the research that was done which I found very interesting, “When people lie, they realized that there was little reaction in the emotional part of the brain. The less reaction in the emotional part of the brain led to larger lies in the future. As a result, the liars lie bigger and with greater ease as time goes on.” This part of the current event was very important to include because it explains the research very clearly and helped me as the reader better understand the concept of how lies are formed.
Although Jay did a very good job writing this current event and explaining it, there were a few things he could improve upon. One part he could have improved was explaining in further detail about how the research was performed which could give the reader a better idea of the concept of the article and he maybe could have included this passage, “A functional MRI scanning device monitored brain activity, with the researchers concentrating on the amygdala, an area associated with emotional response.” For the future he could correct this error by including the specific parts of how the research occurred when writing another current event. One other aspect that I thought could be improved a bit more is giving a specific example of the research being done about lying which I think would help the reader have a much better understanding of the idea of lying and what kind of research is being done to find out more about the development of lying, “Participants in the study were asked to advise a partner in another room about how many pennies were in a jar. When the subjects believed that lying about the amount of money was to their benefit, they were more inclined to dishonesty and their lies escalated over time. As lying increased, the response in the amygdala decreased. And the size of the decline from one trial to another predicted how much bigger a subject’s next lie would be.” He could have also connected the specific example back to the research which would give a clear explanation of the idea of lying which would tie the whole current event together and I think he can do this for next time.
Overall I think Jay did a very good job writing this current event and I learned a lot more about lying and how difficult and complex the research is. I chose this article because everyone has lied at least once in there life and I thought it would be interesting to read about the research behind it because it is such a common occurrence throughout the human life. This research will change the way humans think because lying is such a common thing that people do that it becomes a regular occurrence and now that researchers have found that one small lie slowly increases to bigger ones, maybe in the future people will start realizing how bad lying actually is and how they should try to prevent themselves from doing it.
Matthew Rizzo
ReplyDeleteNovember 11th, 2016
After reading Jay’s response on an article titled, “"Why Big Liars Often Start Out as Small Ones”, I found many positive attributes that helped convey the message of the article. One of the things Jay did well in the writing of this response is by giving context around the study of lying in which it is stated that for many scientists, it has been hard to study. Another important part of this response is that it states the different techniques that scientists use to determine if someone is lying, which makes the response more complete. In addition, this response credits many of the scientists that helped research lying such as Dr. Sharot, who is an associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London.
While reading this article, I found a few minor mistakes. One mistake that I found was that there were some grammatical and spelling errors in the piece. In addition, the lack of any quotes in this response may leave some readers to question the legitimacy of the article that is being analysed. Nonetheless, this was a good response.
This article and response are very important in that lying is a basic and primal way people interact with each other. Everyday, we will be faced with a lie, and this article shows us how to deal with them and why some people lie very often. Although lying may be seen as a bad thing to do, it also an inevitable part of human communication.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJulia Curran
ReplyDeleteDecember 1, 2016
Biology
Current Events #9
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/25/science/why-big-liars-often-start-out-as-small-ones.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0
Goode, Erica. "Why Big Liars Often Start Out as Small Ones." The New York Times. N.p., 24
Oct. 2016. Web. 24 Oct. 2016.
My fellow classmate, Jay Burstein wrote a very insightful review on the “Why Big Liars Often Start Out as Small Ones.” Jay did an excellent job giving context and background information on brain function and explained how lying often progresses or evolves. Another great aspect of Jay’s review was that he included information from an experiment. He goes into depth describing the research and how the experiment results which strengthens his review. And lastly, Jay used good diction which strengthened his piece and conveyed his point in a more sophisticated and mature tone.
Although Jay wrote a very strong review there are some areas he could improve upon. One area Jay could improve upon is providing more quotes, by pulling quotes from the article it would of further strengthened and backed up his point of view. Another aspect Jay could improve upon is correcting some grammatical or punctuation errors.
Jay wrote a very thorough and detailed review, that provided me with great insight on the article and the topic. It was very interesting and shocking that “coming up with white lies because it is a "slippery slope" to tell bigger lies in more serious situations.”