Last Friday we spoke
with a member of an initiative called the Reproducibility Project at the
University of Virginia which recently reran 100 psychology experiments and
found that in over 60 percent of them they were unable to replicate the
findings. The results of the study, which were published last week in Science, have generated alarm that the
field of psychology is in poor shape, however according to Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern
University and the author of the forthcoming book How Emotions Are Made: The New Science of the Mind and Brain,
the failure to replicate is not a cause for alarm; but is in fact, a normal
part of how science works. She joins me
today to discuss the study and why she feels that its results are not a cause
for alarm.
When the drug Truvada came onto the market it caused a fair
amount of controversy and created a divide in the HIV/AIDS activist community,
with some people arguing that it was the answer to finally combating the
epidemic and others arguing that it would only encourage sexual risk-taking by
providing a false sense of security.
Now, two and a half years into a large Truvada as pre-exposure
prophylaxis (PrEP) program in San Francisco, we are starting to get some answers about the effectiveness of the drug to prevent HIV infection among
those at very high risk of contracting the virus as well as the effect it has
on the safe-sex practices of its users.
Joining me today to discuss the program and its results is Benjamin Ryan
a writer who covers health care POZ Magazine. You can also follow Ben on twitter.
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