PSOM Back To Life!
After a long hiatus, PSOM is set to get going again. It’s been about a year since I last posted, and I should perhaps explain why I’ve not been blogging. Last December I left my job as an editor at the Nature Publishing Group to take up freelance writing full-time. Since then I’ve been busy writing as many features as I can, and I’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity to write on a wide range on great topics, from human evolution and Neanderthal genetics, to delusions in romantic love, the psychology of disgust, the biases and pitfalls inherent in decision-making, genetically engineering the immune system, and the causes of breast cancer. I have a few more pieces in press with various magazines, and I’ll post details as the articles become available.
Freelancing is a tough, and at times isolating, business, but if you have work it is greatly rewarding – you get paid to learn about important and interesting topics, speak to some of the best minds around, and then tell other people all about it (with the help of what have, in my experience, been excellent editors). At the same time, it’s not a route to riches and there’s a constant feeling that your efforts should be directed at earning an income – hence the ease of neglecting blogging. It’s time to return to this pursuit though, as it’s both gratifying and a good way of keeping on top of the research I’m interested in (though I can only cover a tiny amount of what grabs my attention – there are only so many hours in a day!).
Anyway, I’m kicking things off again with a piece on the origins of cognitive dissonance – one of the best-studied and most fascinating psychological phenomena of the past 50 years. Hope you enjoy.
See you here again soon I hope,
Dan.
Freelancing is a tough, and at times isolating, business, but if you have work it is greatly rewarding – you get paid to learn about important and interesting topics, speak to some of the best minds around, and then tell other people all about it (with the help of what have, in my experience, been excellent editors). At the same time, it’s not a route to riches and there’s a constant feeling that your efforts should be directed at earning an income – hence the ease of neglecting blogging. It’s time to return to this pursuit though, as it’s both gratifying and a good way of keeping on top of the research I’m interested in (though I can only cover a tiny amount of what grabs my attention – there are only so many hours in a day!).
Anyway, I’m kicking things off again with a piece on the origins of cognitive dissonance – one of the best-studied and most fascinating psychological phenomena of the past 50 years. Hope you enjoy.
See you here again soon I hope,
Dan.
posted by Dan Jones at 5:24 pm
1 Comments:
I hope you do not feel that your new full-time freelance role entails capitulating to the reign of terror and rule of silence on discussions about systematic human biodiversity. (You know, the R-word, not that I've said anything, mind.)
Saletan of Slate may have had to grovel, but Nicholas Wade of the NY Times is getting away with quite a lot.
You gave the fate of the Human Genome Diversity Project, the wilful obscurantism of "Fido the Yak" and other such controversies a good airing in early 2006. I should like to see more of the same- now science is hurtling so fast towards the conclusion that old Charles D was on to something after all with this evolution thingy, as applied to chaps and birds as well as lizards and finches.
It would be mean to leave the whole world of pointy-headed sentimental liberals so far behind what's happening. How about it?
Good luck anyway.
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