NATIONAL POST | If you could erase the worst memory of your life, would you? Scientists are working on a pill for that
The 60 souls that signed on for Dr. Alain Brunet’s memory manipulation study were united by something they would rather not remember. The trauma of betrayal. For some, it was infidelity and for others, a brutal, unanticipated abandonment. “It was like, ‘I’m leaving you. Goodbye,” the McGill University associate professor of psychiatry says.
BLOOMBERG | How Governments Use Immigration to Boost Their Economies
Daniel Béland, director of the Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University in Montreal, says Canada’s method has made immigration less divisive an issue than in other countries. “There is strong support for economic immigration, that it’s important for the country, demographically and economically,” he says. “The debate is more about how many immigrants and how we can tweak the point system.”
MONTREAL GAZETTE | A ceremony and cookies celebrate Macdonald campus's fair trade designation
McGill University’s Macdonald Campus has become Canada’s 37th Fair Trade campus. The Macdonald Campus in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue now joins McGill University’s downtown campus in “their efforts to weave the Fair Trade philosophy within the academic community, and facilitate the choice and use of Fair Trade certified products,” Fairtrade Canada said in a statement.
CBC | English Montreal School Board files legal challenge to Bill 21
While Section 23 has been tested in court, McGill University's faculty of law Dean Robert Leckey said that, to his knowledge, Section 28 has not. "There really hasn't been court interpretation of what Section 28 means," said Leckey. The section was added to the charter as extra protection to guarantee the equality of men and women. It has to mean something."
MONTREAL GAZETTE | There's lots of meth in Montreal pee
Drug use is average to below average in Montreal compared to other cities — except when it comes to methamphetamine, a new study measuring the presence of illicit drugs in raw sewage has found.
THE CONVERSATION | Spotlight on economic and social innovation marred by racial bias and exclusion
Innovative entrepreneurs who are racialized are being left out of the social and economic innovation circles. Wendy Cukier, a professor of entrepreneurship and strategy at Ryerson University, and Suzanne Gagnon, assistant professor in organizational behaviour at McGill University, wrote that racialized people are not being included in leadership roles in this innovation space, nor do they get the funds to do the work in the community they know best.
CBC | Cindy Blackstock to receive honour from Sudbury's Laurentian University
Cindy Blackstock's background is in social work, and she's now executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society — an organization she co-founded — as well as a professor at McGill University in Montreal. She will be awarded a Doctorate of Laws from Laurentian University in Sudbury on Saturday.
MONTREAL GAZETTE | Underfunding leaves Canadian climate science in a sorry state
The sorry state of Canadian climate science was recently documented by the report Investing in Canadian Climate Science, which, among other things, showed that over the previous decade, Canada’s funding of atmospheric climate science was about half of comparable international levels and was microscopic compared to its fossil fuel subsidies or pipeline buyouts, says Shaun Lovejoy, professor of physics at McGill University.
CTV NEWS | Cundill History Prize reveals three women as finalists for its literary award
Three books about political movements that shaped global history are in the running for this year's Cundill History Prize. A representative for the prestigious McGill University award says for the first time all the finalists for the US$75,000 prize are women.
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THE SCIENTIST | Scientists Need to Demand Better Antibody Validation
Medical science has a problem, and everyone knows it. Imagine driving a car with a navigation system that is right just half the time, or doing math with a calculator that knows only half the multiplication table. It’s simply not rational, yet scientists are doing something similar when we use antibodies in research, says Peter S.
MONTREAL GAZETTE | Cell phones, teens and mental health
I periodically get asked about cell phones and whether they are dangerous. The short answer is they are not and do not seem to increase the risk of developing brain cancer or any other form of cancer. I do worry about cell phones, though. I worry about their impact on the mental health of young people, says Christopher Labos, Montreal doctor and associate with the McGill Office for Science and Society.
THE GLOBE AND MAIL | How do our brains fall for disinformation?
Part of the reason people fall for false content lies in the way our brains take in information, says neurologist Lesley Fellows, a professor at McGill University who has studied how the brain makes political decisions. Our brains are constantly and heavily filtering the world around us through a framework of biases and stereotypes created through our experiences. It’s a general feature of the brain.
NATIONAL POST | Climate change threatens crops, water for billions around globe: study
Canadian research is part of an extensive global climate change study that has found billions of the world’s poorest people are at risk. “There’s a great potential for the problems to occur where people have the least ability to cope with it,” said Elena Bennett, who studies ecological systems at McGill University and is one of the paper’s 21 co-authors.
MONTREAL GAZETTE | Hundreds of Quebec parents flock to Fortnite lawsuit
Jeff Derevensky sees first-hand how kids get addicted to video games like Fortnite. He is head of McGill University’s International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems and High-Risk Behaviours. The psychologist treated many young people whose lives have been turned upside-down by their dependence on video games.“They do it excessively and they can have physical problems, like they don’t have enough sleep because they’re playing all night long.”
NATIONAL POST | Election has been mostly free of mis- and disinformation, research shows
Canada’s election has so far been “largely clean” but misinformation and disinformation may start emerging during the final week of the campaign, a researcher warns.
The Digital Democracy Project, an initiative from the Public Policy Forum and McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy, collaborated with New York University’s Center for Cybersecurity to look at ads on Facebook during the first several weeks of the election.
