Physicist Jessica Wade noticed a lack of Wikipedia pages for underrepresented scientists. In 2018, she began writing one Wikipedia page a day devoted to a woman scientist who did not have a Wikipedia page. Wade has created nearly 1,800 pages (including this one for Kim Cobb, a climate scientist) (Silva, 2022). The Association for Psychological Science (APS) has encouraged psychological scientists and their students to write or edit Wikipedia pages on psychological concepts since 2011 when APS president Mahzarin R. Banaji issued the challenge (Bender, 2012). While it is still important to make sure the psychological knowledge on Wikipedia is solid, Jessica Wade has a point. The people matter, too. Part of it is recognizing people for their work, but mostly it’s about our students (and the general public) seeing the diversity of the psychological community. The Women in Red WikiProject is devoted to turning Wikipedia’s red links for women into blue ones. The red links are for content that should have a wiki page but don’t. At least not yet. The project editors note that as of November 2022 “of 1,913,852 biographies [on Wikipedia], only 371,041 are about women” (Wikipedia, 2022). For those of you reaching for your calculators, that is almost 20%. The Women Scientists WikiProject has a similar goal specifically for scientists. If anyone is interested in creating a WikiProject specifically for psychologists/psychological scientists/cognitive scientists/behavioral scientists who are from underrepresented groups, this Wikipedia page explains how to go about it. However, one may certainly create pages without participating in a WikiProject. If you’d like to put your students to work creating biographies, there is no shortage of candidates. Some of APA’s presidents have Wikipedia pages, but many do not, such as Frank Worrell (2022), Jennifer F. Kelly (2021), Sandra L. Shullman (2020), Rosie Phillips Davis (2019), and Jessica Henderson Daniel (2018). Similarly, some of the APS presidents do not have Wikipedia pages, such as Barbara Tverksy (2018-2019). While presidents of these organizations may be a fine starting place, APA and APS award winners—particularly the lifetime achievement recipients—are worth a look. Perhaps there are rock stars at your institution or in your field who are deserving of a Wikipedia page. If you would like to build a Wikipedia biography assignment into one or more of your courses, I encourage you to start with APS’s Wikipedia Initiative page. While the focus here is on classroom assignments, I imagine that if your psychology club or honor society wanted to build pages, that would work, too! References Bender, E. (2012). Papers with a purpose: The APS Wikipedia Initiative’s first year. APS Observer, 25. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/papers-with-a-purpose Silva, C. (2022, November 15). Meet the person who added 1,767 underrepresented scientists to Wikipedia. Mashable. https://mashable.com/article/small-talk-jessica-wade Wikipedia. (2022). Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red&oldid=1124298018 ... View more

Interested in the history of psychology? Check out this series of 5-minute history videos! Today's video features James McConnell, who found a chemical basis for memory by studying worms. ... View more

I have used some of my free time this summer learning more about some areas where, well, I could learn more. Hormones would be one of those areas. To give me some current information and a bit of historical background, I turned to Randi Hutter Epstein’s book, Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything. For an overview, it is an informative and entertaining read. This for example: Beginning in the 1920s, and for nearly twenty years, [Vienna physiologist, Eugen] Steinach pioneered one of the most popular and controversial rejuvenation treatments. He claimed that vasectomies boosted sex drive, intellect, energy, and just about anything else that withered with age. Steinach believed that blocking the exit of manly juices (which is what a vasectomy does) prompted a congestion of them, much the way a traffic jam causes a pile-up of cars. If you rate success by the quantity and quality of scientific evidence, vasectomies for rejuvenation don’t rank high. If, on the other hand, you rate success by testimonials plus the number of paying customers, the practice was a global sensation. It was so popular, in fact, that Steinach’s name became a verb: to Steinach meant to do a rejuvenating vasectomy. Sigmund Freud was Steinached. William Butler Yeats, the poet, was Steinached. (pp. 72-73) Raise your hand if you were familiar with that bit of Freudian trivia. You will want to remember this, because I would not be surprised if this is the topic of a Stephen Chew trivia question at the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP). ["At what age was Freud Steinached?" Answer: 67.]  If nothing else, you can give "Steinached" as your answer to any trivia question you don't know. It would give you the opportunity to talk about Freud's vasectomy, which you certainly must be itching to do.  As for Freud, if you live by speculation in lieu of data... Steinach did not perform vasectomies, however, he did guarantee that your vasectomy would be rejuvenating if he was present to supervise. No word on whether Steinach supervised Freud’s vasectomy (he probably did since they were friends) or if Freud found his vasectomy rejuvenating (he probably did since he provided a testimonial).   One last comment before we can all stop thinking about Freud and his testicles. There is something strangely beautiful about testimonials driving that vasectomy-for-rejuvenation craze. The words testimonial and testis share the same etymological root, a root that means “witness.” Not all witnesses are created equal, however. I prefer my witnesses to have data derived from established research methods. Or at least that would be my standard before I allowed anyone near my testicles. If I had testicles. ... View more