A human year equates to seven dog years. A man’s maternal grandfather determines whether he will go bald. Dietary cholesterol raises blood cholesterol. We use only 10% of our brains. These statements are all false. The dog-to-human age ratio has been repeated since the thirteenth century, with zero scientific basis…

“You’re leaving academia. I can’t believe it!” exclaimed a good friend and fellow law professor. “No,” I corrected him. “I’m not leaving academia. I’m starting a blog and writing books for the general public. That’s all.” “But you’re ruining your scholarly significance,” he asserted. …

No one is above self-delusion. This thought kept buzzing in my head as I was doing research related to a book I’m currently writing. Brilliant scientists — on a regular basis — fool themselves. We tend to think that we’re above cognitive biases and subjective distortion. The “I’m not biased”…

The 27-year-old director had a major problem on his hands. The star of his movie, Bruce, was high maintenance — even by Hollywood standards. Bruce was a mechanical shark, lovingly named after the director’s lawyer. But the shark couldn’t do the one thing he was built to do: swim properly…

An experimenter walks into a room and gives you these three numbers. 2, 4, 6. She tells you that the numbers follow a simple rule, and your job is to discover the rule by proposing different strings of three numbers. The experimenter will then tell you whether the strings you…

No five words in the English language make me cringe as much as “Let’s think outside the box.” Coming from someone who writes about contrarian thinking and non-conformity, that sentence might strike you as odd. After all, you redefine the status quo by stepping outside of it. But here’s the…

Where were you on January 28, 1986? If you’re American, and you were older than six at the time, the chances are that you know the answer to that question. On that morning, the space shuttle Challenger exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven members of its crew. A…

What’s the worst that can happen? When it comes to creating worst case scenarios, my imagination is particularly vivid. My creativity kicks into high gear as I think about all the awful consequences that can follow from a simple decision gone wrong. …

In her terrific book on creativity, Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert recounts a story about Mike Nichols, who is the prolific director behind many classics including The Graduate (plastics, anyone?). Although people tend to remember Nichols’s hits, many of his films were flops. Some of the flops would appear from time…