This talk was most definitely for fun — an after-hours audience, with beer. The format of Bettakultcha talks is 20 slides for 15 seconds each (they transition automatically), and you can talk about anything you want. This was my first time using hand-drawn slides; I had fun. Annotations were added afterwards so this made some kind of sense when uploaded :) And no, I don't get any kind of kickback for mentioning Paper for iPad. I just think it's brilliant.

1. I gave this talk at Leeds @bettakultcha on 17th April 2012. It
doesn’t really have a title, but I guess it could be called
“Some rants about psychology that I need to let out.”
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2. I’m just going to come out and say it — I’m Chris, and I used
to be a psychologist. I have a few things to get off my chest
…

3. Cab drivers used to ask me “so, what do you do?” and I’d tell
them, and there would be this awkward pause, and then
they’d say “So … are you psychoanalysing me now?”

4. When you tell people you’re a psychologist, they ascribe to
you some kind of Terminator-like x-ray vision, with which
you can read their thoughts. Sorry, nope. Can’t do it.

5. Even the term “psychoanalysis” specifically refers to
Freudian-style “lie down on the couch and tell me about your
mother” stuff. It’s not even science; it’s basically
unfalsifiable.

6. Okay, here’s another one. I hear this a lot: when someone’s
in two minds about something, people sometimes refer to
them as being all “schizophrenic”.

7. But they’re thinking of multiple personality, a totally
separate disorder — schizophrenia is an illness characterised
by fractured perceptions, delusions and hallucinations.

8. Symptoms like paranoia and delusions can make people with
schizophrenia act unusually, which in turn reinforces their
likelihood of social isolation. It’s pretty pernicious :-/

9. Okay, here’s another one: people only use 10% of their
brains. How many of you have heard this? Yeah, well, it’s
probably bollocks. Sorry about that.

10. If you’re only using 10% of your brain, you’re probably in a
coma :-/

11. We have billions and billions of brain cells — about the same
as the number of stars in our galaxy (ish). They’re all doing
something pretty much all the time.

12. And all of this is stuffed inside something that’s about the
size and weight of a bag of sugar, which is pretty cool really.

13. This is a depressingly common myth — though one
apparently rather popular among my undergraduate
psychology class, half of whom then went on to fail it.

14. Here we all are. Nine hundred of us rammed into two
adjacent lecture theatres. I know what you’re thinking — yes,
I went to university with a load of tits.

15. Psychology, like other sciences, starts with a hypothesis. It
might be based on observation, or just something you
thought of in the shower. (No, not those shower thoughts.
Tsk.)

16. What you do next is design an experiment or observation to
test that hypothesis, with the aim of remaining impartial and
not biasing the outcome.

17. Ah, statistics. Students hate this part. They come to
university thinking “I’m going to be Cracker!” and then have
to do stuff with numbers. But the numbers are important,
because …

18. … you need them to form a sensible conclusion about your
hypothesis. If you don’t have data, it’s just your opinion. But
data can meaningfully inform your next hypothesis …

19. Unfortunately, we’re actually too good at believing
neuroscience — adding unrelated neuro jargon or brain
pictures to your story actually makes it more persuasive >.<

20. … which puts us into this irrecoverable tailspin …

21. So next time someone asserts something about the brain,
ask them how they know. Demand data! And think critically
about the psychology-related language they, and you, use.

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