WFU in the news: July 15-21, 2024

FEATURED NEWS

See why everyone gets the Monty Hall Puzzle wrong
By Allison Parshall | Scientific American
Social psychologist John Petrocelli had participants play the Monty Hall game over and over, allowing them to repeatedly observe that the prize is more often behind the “switch” door—but it took many trials for these participants to learn that they should be switching. He then ran the test with a series of coin flips. How long would it take you to notice that the coin was biased and landed heads-up 2/3 of the time instead of 1/2? “Most people think they would start to recognize that after about 40 flips. But they don’t,” Petrocelli said. His research has attributed this lack of learning to what he calls “kick-in-the-pants” thinking, or counterfactual thinking. – 7/16/2024

NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL

Disentangling media bias
Mirage News
New research by Wake Forest economics professors Tommy Leung and Koleman Strumpf examines front-page editorial bias in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Leung and Strumpf examined more than 100,000 articles alongside data from 22 million tweets to determine if editorial bias or consumer demand determined the length of time an article remained on the front page. – 7/17/2024

Inside the Project 2025 plan to gut climate regs
E&E News
It’s generally harder for an agency to justify standards if their costs exceed their benefits. Stan Meiburg, a former EPA acting deputy administrator now head of Wake Forest’s Sabin Center for Environment and Sustainability, said the Reagan-era move to embrace cost-benefit analysis gave cost considerations the upper hand. “Costs are specific and tend to be more quantifiable, and benefits tend to be more diffuse and less quantifiable, even though, in aggregate, they are larger.” – 7/18/2024

US Supreme Court overturns Chevron doctrine
The Lancet
In the majority decision, Chief Justice John Roberts said the ruling does not overturn previous decisions that were based on Chevron deference, noted Stan Meiburg, a former EPA Deputy Administrator and current executive director of Wake Forest’s Sabin Family Center for Environment and Sustainability. “They seem to have closed the door on accepting challenges to, say, ambient air quality standards.” Federal agencies have been anticipating that the Supreme Court might overturn Chevron deference, Meiburg said. – 7/21/2024

REGIONAL & TRADE

The complicated past and present of Winston-Salem’s Confederate soldier statue
By David Ford | WFDD-FM (Winston-Salem, NC)
Dean of the School of Divinity Corey Walker said Civil War history has always been a battleground around American memory and what it means to be a nation. “And so, when you have the development of these Civil War statues in the late 19th century, it was about creating a particular narrative of the history of the nation and the history of a region,” he said. “And so that narrative was a narrative that served particular purposes.” – 7/19/2024

Wake Forest researchers find lack of competition contributes to news bias
By Paul Garber | WFDD-FM (Winston-Salem, NC)
A new study from Wake Forest University suggests a lack of competition among news outlets contributes to media bias. Economists Tommy Leung and Koleman Strumpf looked at stories on the websites of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. They used an artificial intelligence tool to calculate the political leanings of tens of thousands of articles published between 2021 and 2023. The results show more biased stories tended to stay on home pages longer – even when less slanted stories received the same amount of reads and social media attention. – 7/17/2024

AI-generated disclosures have the potential to block patentability of human ingenuity
By Malisheia O. Douglas | The National Law Review
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office continues to seek stakeholder input on AI-generated disclosures and patentability. Law professor Raina Hague reasons that since the patent statute mandates judging obviousness “at the time the invention was made,” examiners must consider the sophistication of generative systems available to the PHOSITA at the time of the invention, which is, at the latest, the time of the first application. – 7/19/2024

The 5 stages of organizational conflict
World of Software
Morey Graham, director of Alumni & Donor Services at Wake Forest, said she and her team use Docs to optimize reporting and reduce update meetings, consolidate workflows and improve cross-departmental alignment. “We can now collaborate within one system and have visibility into critical data. This allows our various teams to report progress, identify workload and capacity issues, and plan in a more accurate way,” she said. – 7/19/2024

LOCAL

Political experts discuss Republican messaging as RNC wraps up in Milwaukee
By Kelly Kendall | WXII-TV (Winston Salem, NC)
Politics professor John Dinan said one of the RNC’s key themes has been unity among Republicans.“The fact that the party seems so unified, that’s going to be a big boost to the party going forward. Republicans are naturally feeling very good about the convention they’ve had and, in contrast to that, the division and the difficult discussions going on inside the Democratic Party,” he said. – 7/18/2024

Local political science professors discuss President Biden’s decision to drop out
By Rebecca Smith | WXII-TV (Winston Salem, NC)
Politics professor John Dinan said that after Biden’s performance at the CNN presidential debate in Atlanta last month, he would most likely be asked to step aside. “You saw a drumbeat of leading Democratic officials, making it known that they had asked the president to step aside. It’s understandable that until the very last moment, you put forward strength and say we would like to continue, and then eventually that strength crumbles, and you bow to the inevitable,” said Dinan. – 7/21/2024

Presidential debate’s climate neglect sparks criticism from NC experts
By Chaewon Chung | Winston-Salem Journal
Stan Meiburg, executive director of Wake Forests’s Sabin Center, emphasized that the world is at an inflection point, where the decisions we make now will shape the country’s energy future for decades to come. “And they include: where the generation of electricity will come from, the conversion or electrification of industrial processes that now use fossil fuels, and transmission lines to get power from where it’s generated to where it’s needed, especially renewable energy,” he said. – 7/19/2024

Berger explains Summerfield deannexation vote, says Rockingham casino is a ‘dead issue’
By Camdyn Bruce | Greensboro News & Record
Politics professor John Dinan thinks any Democrat going against Berger will face an uphill battle. “The district has been a GOP stronghold and Berger is a name and face voters know.” – 7/21/2024

WAKE FOREST NEWS

Wayne awarded 2024 Kanter Award for Excellence in work-family research
Wake Forest School of Business
Business professor Julie Wayne received the prestigious Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research. The award, presented by the Center for Families at Purdue University and the Boston College Center for Work & Family, celebrates the best work-family research articles published during a calendar year. Wayne’s paper, “Who’s Remembering to Buy the Eggs? The Meaning, Measurement, and Implications of Invisible Family Load,” published in the Journal of Business and Psychology, was selected from among 2,500 articles. – 7/21/2024