Methods Newsletter
Wilde Truth: Research Methods for Revolution. Roughly weekly newsletter/blog at the intersection of science and politics.
Offshoot post at the Hertie School Centre for Digital Governance blog, “Rock, Paper, Statistics: Mass screening for rare problems endangers society,” Nov. 2023.
Current Projects
Book on using research methods to resist illegitimate authority including from propaganda science… With lie detection and breastfeeding as a few case studies among others of pseudoscientific, modern reinventions of old, misunderstood technologies.
Articles on breastfeeding case study.
“Neonatal Jaundice and Autism: Precautionary Principle Invocation Overdue,” Cureus Journal of Medical Science, Vol. 14, No. 2, Feb. 2022: e22512.
“Breastfeeding Insufficiencies: Common and Preventable Harm to Neonates,” Cureus Journal of Medical Science, Vol. 4, No. 13, Oct. 2021: e18478.
Lie Detection
iborderctrl.no – A website on an EU-funded automated border security system involving AI lie detection.
“Five Posts on Polygraphs: A Summary,” Oct. 2018.
“Warning Shots of Corruption:Releasing and Revisiting the Polygraph Interviews that Launched My Dissertation Research.” AltGov2, Oct. 2018.
Polygraph research. A new home on the Internet for my interviews, FOIA and other document releases, dissertation and postdoctoral research. Intended as an educational resource for others.
“Lie Detectors On Trial? Science, Security, and Accountability in the Era of the Hague Invasion Act.” Presented at Osaka University (Japan), American Studies Symposium, 19 March, 2016.
“Wilde Truth: The Polygraph Files,” The Memory Hole 2, Dec. 2016. As summarized in this re-release of documents, some of them also released again in Mark Harris’s Wired article “The Lie Generator: Inside The Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings”… I shared related files, including many obtained through years of FOIA and FOIA lawsuits against several federal agencies, interviews, and other muckraking with McClatchy for a multi-part national investigative series here. Some of the documents and sources proved the CIA was breaking the law in domestic interrogations of U.S. citizens and lied to Congress about it. Later I won a Pyrrhic Freedom of Information victory for American educational requestors.
“Refugee Screening: A Brief Introduction and A Request for Equipment,”The Science Creatively Quarterly, Nov. 2016.
“Too Big to Surveil,”political analysis series at Rebel News, a now-defunct independent media outlet with no relationship to the current right-wing Rebel News, with discussion of things like climate change as security threat, the torture business, the recent role of psychologists in U.S. torture, the need to stop defending torture and improve interrogation, and the mathematically demonstrated growing national security threat from growing national security programs, 2015-2016.
Ph.D. dissertation, Jan. 2014.
Neutralizing Confirmation Bias in Technology-Mediated Security Decisions. Dissertation research, 2013.
Miscellaneous
Health
“Dubious Science: Downplaying the Risks of Antidepressants in Pregnancy,” on Mad in America: Science, Psychiatry and Social Justice. December 2022.
“Shame, Name, Give Up the Game? Three Approaches to Uncertainty,” in Diagnoses Without Names: Challenges for Medical Care, Research, and Policy, ed. Michael D. Lockshin, Mary K. Crow, and Medha Barbhaiya, June 2022. (Full text.)
“Overriding Race and Class Bias: Equity in Technology-Mediated Diagnosis.” 2013.
Prejudice
Wilde, V.K., Martin, K.D., & Goff, P.A. Dehumanization as a Distinct Form of Prejudice. Testing, Psychometrics, Methodology in Applied Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 3, September 2014: 1-7.
Jackson, M.C., Wilde, V.K., & Goff, P.A. Seeing Colorblindness: Colorblind Racial Ideology. In What Does it Mean to be Color-Blind?: Manifestation, Dynamics, and Impact, eds. Neville, H.A., Gallardo, M., & Sue, Derald Wing.
Poetry
Poetry performance – founding performer, the Poetry Brothel Berlin.
Poetry books – Vagabonding (2018), Push Coasts (2015, illustrated).
“Fidelity,” Science Creative Quarterly, 2015.
“Infant Morality,” Feathertale, Dec. 2, 2014.
“Where Did I Put the Night?” Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 11, 2010.
“Political Science,” Dissertation Haiku, Mar. 26, 2010.
Misc. (art reviews, information security how-to, op-ed, humor…)
Art reviews (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30), The Delicious Line, April 2017-May 2018.
“A Brief Guide to Combatting Mass Surveillance,” The Science Creatively Quarterly, Dec. 2016. [May 2019 note: The bulk of this remains good, but if you are interested in the topic as a user, please see also McSweeney’s excellent and more recent The End of Trust: An investigation of surveillance in the digital age (2018), especially Soraya Okuda’s “The Postcards We Send: Tips on Staying Vigilant in the Information Age.” If you’re interested in it as a scholar, see also Ross Anderson’s latest.]
“Reform campus rape policy,” Guardian, Nov. 18, 2012.
Six McSweeney’s Reviews of New Food and counting.
“Enhanced Entertainment Techniques,” The Big Jewel, Mar. 11, 2011.
“Deweyan-Pragmatist Playground Games and Rhymes,” McSweeney’s, 2011.
“The Silent Epidemic,” The Morning News, June 2, 2010.
Yankee Pot Roast, various.
“The Wasteful American” science humor series calculating the costs of wasteful American behaviors: Vitamin D, Money, Pasta Water, Hygiene, in The Science Creative Quarterly and Null Hypothesis, variously, 2009-2010.
