My impression is, that economists in general don't have a good grasp of math

I don't think the biggest problem is economists' grasp of math. Rather, it's that (a) the people implementing the economists' mathematical theories don't have a good grasp of the math, and (b) economists don't have a good grasp of the people their math is supposed to model.

FTFA:

Tepper, Duick's attorney, said he discussed the campaign with Toyota's attorneys earlier this year, and they said the "opting in" Harp referred to was done when Duick's friend e-mailed her a "personality test" that contained a link to an "indecipherable" written statement that Toyota used as a form of consent from Duick.

Tepper, said that during those legal negotiations, Toyota's lawyers claimed Duick signed the written legal agreement, which they said amounts to "informed written consent." [emphasis added]

I work in research with human subjects, and there is no way this constitutes informed consent.

If Toyota wants to argue that the fine print spelled it out and it's her fault she didn't read it carefully enough, maybe they can win the case through legalistic hairsplitting. But if they buried it in fine print and incomprehensible language, they're jerks no matter what.

But they're making a much broader claim if they're calling it informed consent. Informed consent means that she comprehended what was going to happen to her as a result of agreeing. In other words, "informed consent" isn't just a statement about the objective content of the opt-in statement -- it's an assertion about the state of mind of the person who gave consent. If she had truly given informed consent, then not only would she have no legal claim, but she'd have no moral claim either (because she'd have known what she was getting into). But it's blindingly obvious that that isn't true here.

Oh internet... Is there nothing you won't show naked?

Nope.

It depends what you mean by "how long" -- how long in a given day, or how long between vacation periods? Cognitive psychologists have demonstrated that the spacing of study occasions is highly important for learning and long-term retention. The education literature is full of studies on summer learning loss. So Obama isn't just making this up out of nowhere -- he's basing his proposal on a substantial body of empirical research.

Sounds like you and your American friend were both making the same mistake.

And why wasn't this published? The very conclusion is that we should be more careful when trusting fMRI results and conduct more testing before jumping to conclusion.

Perhaps because what he's saying isn't new? As far as I can tell he's merely restating a substantive point that was recently made by someone else, which attracted substantial publicity as well as sober rebuttals (along the lines of: nobody actually uses the flawed statistical methods that you're critiquing). All this guy is doing is illustrating the point in an absurd and attention-grabbing way.

Everybody in this thread and below seems to think the monitors are going to be used for medical monitoring. But the summary doesn't say that, and I doubt that's the case.

Heart rate monitors are pretty commonly used in cardio training to help individuals identify an optimal level of exertion to benefit from their workout. Presumably, giving heart rate monitors to different kids with widely varying fitness levels might allow a gym teacher to tailor activities to each kid and help them track their own, individual progress. I'm not sure that the tech is really necessary for 7th and 8th graders, but it's not as harebrained as medical diagnosis.

it is very common in this age range of employees

And there's the key. It isn't about texting or any other technology. It's about the fact that a 17-year-old is still maturing and still learning how to be a responsible adult.

You didn't always know how important it is to show up on time and be fully mentally engaged with your job. At some point along the way you had to learn that. If you don't remember not knowing that when you were a teenager, it's okay. You probably didn't even realize what you didn't know because you were, you know, a teenager.

"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers." - Socrates, 400 BC

Stop trying to turn it on the poster. We can see through your canard.

I think /.ers will realize before turning the first page that even the most ridiculously complex security system can be thwarted by stickies posted to people's monitors.

What I suspect many /.ers do not adequately consider is that the most ridiculously complex security systems are especially likely to be thwarted by user behavior.

The folks who design security systems need to realize that human beings are part of the system (i.e., pay attention to usability and to the peculiarities of human cognition, motivation, and behavior). If they cannot get past blaming users, they will simply continue to design computationally elegant but functionally ineffective security systems.

83% of cancer patients but fewer than 83% of healthy volunteers

Let me introduce you to my friend Reverend Bayes.

Except that if you actually click through the word "Altruism" to the writeup, you'll see that they mention kin selection and reciprocity in the very first paragraph.

Also, the word "altruism" is not outmoded in the scientific literature. Nor is it a synonym for helping behavior. In fact, that seems to be the source of your confusion. Altruism refers to behaviors that benefit others but not the individual doing the behavior -- and in the context of TFA (and many philosophical discussions), evolutionary advantage is not considered "real" altruism. "Altruism" is thus being used here to refer to helping behavior that confers no evolutionary advantage. Which is why it is a mystery from an evolutionary perspective. QED.

factor in how much of your tax dollars when into that and then get back to us with a valid point....

Gee whiz, I don't know whether I can handle the math. Somebody help me out, what's 44 cents minus zero?

The "obvious" answer that everybody is mentioning is that condoms reduce sensitivity. However, it is a fact that some men use condoms consistently, some men use them some times and not others, and some men avoid them whenever possible. "It feels like a garden hose" is a vague and general statement about condoms that offers little useful information about the nature of those differences. Something else must be going on. Are some men using condoms wrong? Are some men overestimating the reduction in sensitivity, perhaps because of preconceptions? Are some men underestimating the risks associated with unprotected sex?

"Wasted tax money" is a red herring designed to give people an excuse to titter and dismiss this research without thinking it through. The obvious applied goal of this research would be to get more men to use condoms when having potentially risky sex. If you can identify the relevant factors (between men, between their partners, between situations) you might be able to increase condom usage. That has the potential to reduce STI and HIV infections and unwanted pregnancies. The real problem with this research is that it threatens to suggest something other than "abstinence until marriage and then one opposite-sex partner for life" as a potential model for a safe and satisfying sex life.

Technically I'm going to be Godwinning the discussion, but for what it's worth, I'm not accusing anybody of anything, just throwing in some historical background...

Early in the 20th century, a lot of very prominent, very reasonable people thought eugenics was a good idea. People like Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Alexander Graham Bell were all supporters. It's only with the perspective of history (the horrors of WWII) that eugenics has been so widely viewed as a bad thing, because the holocaust was (among other things) a case of eugenics taken to an extreme.

As a result, I think the historical evidence gives a lot of people enormous hesitation and unease about whether and how genetic screening / artificial selection can be done ethically. The Nazis were an extreme case and nobody is saying we're anywhere near that. (Tangent: Is that like an anti-Godwin? Does that mean I win the discussion?) But we need to figure out, as a society, where to draw lines so that we don't go down a slipperly slope. And for many people, the line is that we can screen out traits that will cause clear and unambiguous suffering, as long as the suffering is an intrinsic part of the condition and not a societal response (as would be the case, for example, for somebody born gay in a homophobic society).

Bottom line, I think things like eye and hair color remind people too much of where eugenics has gone horribly, horribly wrong. And it's not just a matter of parents' individual choice, because if enough people do it, it changes the makeup of society and the gene pool for all future generations. So I think it is very reasonable that people want to make sure the technology doesn't outpace the ethical deliberations, so we can figure out rules and lines to draw.