Why so negative? ∞
Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.
I deal with a lot of controversial subject matter. I debunk and criticize many products, services and ideas, which many perceive as “negative” … while I perceived it as “ethical” and generally have a lot of fun taking my subject matter seriously.
I’ve been writing about my so-called negativity off and on for years. I’ve prepared a compilation of tales of outrageous hate mail, quotes and comics and quite a bit of whimsy and eye-rolling, the ethics and tactics of debunking, what it’s like to be an “enemy of massage,” and — my favourite — “advanced negativity,” a discussion of how cynicism is baked into science in the form of the null hypothesis.