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Printed Organs
Kenneth Brayman (University of Virginia)
Someday, people who need organ transplants might be getting biological parts from a 3-D printer. That’s the vision of Kenneth Brayman, who heads transplant surgery at the University of Virginia.
Allergy Season
Lawrence Schwartz (Virginia Commonwealth University)
Allergic reactions to everything from pollen to peanuts are making life miserable for millions. Lawrence Schwartz explains why our bodies over-react to these seemingly benign substances. Schwartz was a recipient of the 2016 Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award.
Duping Delight
Randy Boyle (Longwood University)
People who get a kick out of lying are said to have “duping delight.” Randy Boyle studies human deception at the Longwood Center for Cyber Security. He has devised a questionnaire that measures a person’s propensity to lie.
The Chocolate Diet
Andrew Neilson (Virginia Tech)
Certain properties in cocoa can reduce weight gain. Andrew Neilson says one particular compound in cocoa prevented laboratory mice from gaining excess weight when fed a high-fat diet.
Acting on Food Alerts
Christopher Brady (Virginia State University)
Each year, there are many food recall or contamination alerts, but not everyone heeds the warnings. Christopher Brady looks at the psychological factors that determine which of us will act on the alerts.
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One the segment “Duping Delight…
Randy Boyle said that the polygraph is 98% accurate. While that’s close to the figure from the American Polygraph Association (they say better than 90%), other, more neutral studies say it’s more like 70%. The figure of 65% given for the questionnaire (as it is for polygraphs) is pretty low when you consider the effect of Baye’s Law, e.g. if 10,000 subjects, 500 of whom have a propensity to lie, fill out the questionnaire, there will be 3325 false positives that people have a propensity to lie and 325 true positives (of the 500 who do have the propensity), so ~91.1% of the positive indication of a propensity to lie would be false. This doesn’t seem like a useful test at all.