Acknowledgments

This book builds on the work of researchers who have devoted their careers to understanding both psychology and the public communication of psychological science.

We are particularly indebted to the scholars whose work on the replication crisis has strengthened the field: Brian Nosek and the Center for Open Science, the Open Science Collaboration, and the many researchers who have participated in large-scale replication projects. Psychology is stronger for their efforts.

We owe a debt to Scott Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, John Ruscio, and Barry Beyerstein, whose 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology blazed the trail that this book follows. Their rigorous, fair-minded approach to evaluating popular claims set the standard.

The researchers whose work we discuss throughout these pages — from John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth to John Gottman, from Carol Dweck to Angela Duckworth, from Daniel Kahneman to Amy Cuddy — deserve recognition not only for their contributions but for the complexity of those contributions, which popular culture has often flattened. Where we point out that a finding has been oversimplified, this reflects on the simplification, not on the original research.

Special thanks to the science communicators who model how to share psychology accurately: Stuart Ritchie, Jesse Singal, Neuroskeptic, and the many science journalists who resist the pressure to sensationalize.

This book is released under a Creative Commons license because we believe that critical thinking tools should be freely available. We thank the open-access and open-education movements for making this possible.

Finally, we thank every reader who is willing to question what they think they know. That willingness is the first and most important step.