I realize that most of what I will ever write as a scientist is wrong. Not because it is obviously wrong when I write it, or because I don't believe in my own research. But simply because virtually every insight is eventually replaced by some newer and generally more accurate insight. This is true even for the great theories of the likes of Darwin, Einstein, and Newton. And it is certainly true for the minor contributions of the remaining 99.99% of the research population, for whom supersession generally occurs quite rapidly.

Perhaps this sounds depressing, but it's really not. It's just a (negative) way of describing progress. It's a good thing. Scientists should be encouraged to acknowledge the wrongness of their theories, to find out what's so wrong about them, and to replace them by newer theories that are still wrong, but less so. You could even argue that the possibility of being wrong is what differentiates science from opinionist fields such as philosophy, art, and economics.

But the ideal model of a scientist who continually seeks to disprove himself is not very compatible with human nature. Being human after all, scientists hate to be proven wrong, and will go through great lengths (including plain denial) to avoid this from happening. Nevertheless, given a healthy environment, scientists can, to some extent, overcome their innate dislike of being wrong. But only given a healthy scientific environment. And this is, in my opinion, where things go, well... wrong.

Lately, there has …

I recently went back home, to Amsterdam, and my visit coincided with the Dutch elections. I voted for GroenLinks, as I always do. But unlike at previous elections, I had some doubts. Why? Not because I was unsure about GroenLinks' political programme. (I haven't read it.) And not because I was disappointed with GroenLinks' past performance. (I don't really keep track.)

No. Presumably, I was doubting because Femke Halsema stepped down as GroenLinks' leading lady. Halsema was a very cable woman, but more than anything else she was attractive. She has been replaced by Jolande Sap, who might be equally capable, but is not nearly as attractive.

Of course, I'm not the only person who is influenced by such superficial things as facial attractiveness or perceived competence. Quite a few studies have shown that the outcome of an election can be predicted reasonably well by people's initial reaction to pictures of the candidates' faces. And when I say 'initial' I mean within a few hundred milliseconds.

The nice thing about elections (if you're a geek) is that it gives you a lot of data to play with. In case you're interested, you can obtain the results of the Dutch elections in spreadsheet format from here. Using this data, I figured it would be interesting to see if voting patterns are influenced by another subliminal phenomenon: The name-letter effect.

The name-letter effect refers to the phenomenon that people like their own initials so much that they tend to choose professions and …

OpenSesame is a program for creating psychological experiments. Over the past weeks I ran a poll on the OpenSesame documentation site. The aim of this poll was to find out what operating systems experimental psychologists use (or at least those that visit my site). Because psychologists generally develop experiments on their own computer, but run experiments (i.e. test participants) on a laboratory system, I presented two sub-questions:

• Which operating system(s) do you use for creating experiments (i.e. developing the experimental script)?
• Which operating system(s) do you use for running experiments (i.e. testing participants in the lab)?

Based on 327 respondents, the results are quite clear. Windows 7 is the most widely used operating system, both for developing and running experiments. Mac OS comes in second for development, but only third for running—Presumably because Mac OS is largely a consumer OS, and not often found on University lab PCs. Strikingly, more than a decade after its release, Windows XP is still used quite widely. But it's definitely losing ground to Windows 7 and will probably be phased out at most universities in the near future. Windows Vista, the ugly duckling that never quite turned into a swan, is hardly used at all.

A bit surprising (to me) is the fact that so many respondents indicate that they use Ubuntu Linux. Although I'm personally an Ubuntu user, I find it hard to believe that the Ubuntu marketshare among experimental psychologists is 15 to 20%. One confounding …

The video below shows large columns, made up of small line-segments. The columns appear to swing from side to side, like tilted towers. In reality, of course, the columns and line-segments are perfectly vertical. The perceived tilt is illusory.

So what's going on here?

This illusion is a nice demonstration of Gestalt theory, a German a school thought that was developed in the early 20th century by Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Köhler, and Max Wertheimer. Theories in psychology tend to become outdated rather quickly, but Gestalt theory is a notable exception. It is as relevant today as it was a century ago.

In German, Gestalt means 'shape', but in this context it refers to something that is greater than the sum of its parts, or a 'unified whole'. Which, according to the Gestalt psychologists, is a good characterization of perception. If we see a chair, for example, we don't consider the parts of the chair separately, one at a time. ("I see a leg, uhm, another leg... and something that could be a seat.") We simply see a chair. We can see that a chair has legs, of course, but the perception of the chair as a whole comes first. In other words, we automatically group objects together into a single, coherent percept.

This tilt illusion is the result of perceptual grouping. More specifically, in this case we group those line-segments together that are adjacent (law of proximity) and have the same colour (law of similarity). You can see an illustration …

Things are moving quickly in the land of academic publishing. And not necessarily in a bad direction. Just days after the public announcement of PeerJ, another open access venture has opened its doors: Scholastica.

Scholastica is a start-up by a Chicago-based collective of young researchers, designers, and developers. It is a unique concept in the sense that it is not an academic journal per se, but an infrastructure that facilitates the publication of open access journals. So its customers are journal editors, rather than prospective authors. Anyone who wants to start an academic journal, or who seeks a better outlet for an existing journal, can do so with Scholastica, which offers tools to handle all the editorial chores that come with running a journal. And there can be no doubt about it, the Scholastica web portal looks smooth, professional, and, well... good. I suppose that's the benefit of having professional designers and developers in your team.

Photo: Cory Schires (left) and Rob Walsh working on Scholastica.

But the question is, of course, whether Scholastica will be able to attract enough journals to sustain itself. And also, whether Scholastica is different enough: It is modern and refreshing, but still centred around the traditional concept of academic papers published in individual academic journals. 

About these things and more I'll speak with Rob Walsh, one of the co-founders of Scholastica.

Sebastiaan: What inspired you to start Scholastica? Was the project borne out of frustration with the traditional system of academic publishing? Did you …