Misperception

Public opposition to commercial nuclear power plants began with the misperception that the plants could explode like nuclear weapons. The nuclear industi-y made progress in dispelling this misperception, but suffered major setbacks when an accident occurred at the Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania and at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the USSR. 

In survey after survey, we find that a majority of respondents personally favor nuclear energy but only about 20% or so believe that a majority of the public in their community shares their view. This misperception about public opinion is at least partly due to the fact that opponents of nuclear energy have typically been more outspoken than proponents. It s a problem, especially when policymakers hold this misperception, because it inhibits their willingness to take actions that they believe to be right but unpopular. 

Finally, attitudes about the power of certain drugs (drug myths and positive expectancies) can cause problems for some people. Usually these myths are completely false and not supported by research. Other myths may have some kernel of truth to them, but usually those beliefs do not tell the whole story about drug effects. Often, beliefs in these myths create misperceptions about the power of drug use that are difficult for professionals to intervene upon. Usually these myths proclaim the drug s ability to make a person more likeable and sociable, more physically powerful, more intellectually capable, more energetic, and more sexually potent and attractive. 

Other kinds of misperceptions and errant beliefs cause trouble for people with drug problems. Since drug use often involves behavior that would naturally hinder a person s ability to think clearly about life circumstances, it likely is no... 

Experience to date reveals the great majority of PMNs to be submitted by large companies, those with annual sales in excess of 100 million dollars. These data alone do not permit either a conclusion that small companies develop very few chemical products nor a conclusion that the PMN requirements of TSCA have severely hindered small chemical companies in their new product innovation efforts. Reference was made to a published study by the Chemical Specialties Manufacturers Association (CSMA) which found that a misperception by industry of PMN testing requirements was a principal reason for the apparent decline in introduction of new products by small ingredient manufacturing firms. 

Failures of patient adherence (due to misunderstanding of or failure to read instructions, misperceptions about drugs, bad taste or even appearance of drug formulation, competing advice e.g., from friends, suicide attempts) as well as some bizarre problems such as suicide pacts and homicide attempts. 

Studies of the safety, efficacy, effectiveness, and delivery of pediatric psychopharmacology treatments are among the most important public health issues facing child psychiatry today. Misperceptions about pediatric... 

Despite the fact that most drugs are excreted into breast milk in amounts too small to adversely affect neonatal health, thousands of women taking medications do not breast-feed because of misperception of risk. Unfortunately, physicians contribute heavily to this bias. It is important to remember that formula feeding is associated with higher morbidity and mortality in all socioeconomic groups. 

In still other cases, the obstacle to awareness is cultural rather than personal. Thus Robert Levy (1973) argues that in Tahiti, the misperception of depression as mere fatigue is the rule rather than an idiosyncratic exception. When a Tahitian,... 

Conversely, harmful drugs may be seen as harmless. Whereas the misperception of short-term harm is unlikely, long-term damage may well go unnoticed. In some cases, it may essentially be unnoticeable. Asking why the skilled clinicians of antiquity failed to notice the organic lesions caused by alcohol, jean-Charles Soumia (1986, 20) answers that the failure was... 

The arguments in favor of forebrain mechanisms in dreaming presented here are designed in part to counter the widespread misperception that activation-synthesis regards REM sleep as the exclusive correlate of dreaming, that the forebrain in sleep does only what the brain stem tells it to do, and that dreaming is entirely nonsensical due to the... 

Another approach is to realize that this problem is not unique to d-ASCs. One can have illusions and misperceptions in the ordinary d-SoC. Before the rise of modern physical science, all sorts of things were imagined about the nature of the physical world that could not be directly refuted. The same techniques that eliminated these illusions in the physical sciences can also eliminate them in state-specific sciences dealing with nonphysical data. All observations must be subjected to consensual validation and all their theoretical consequences must be examined. Those that do not show consistent patterns and cannot be replicated can be distinguished from those phenomena that do show general lawfulness across individuals. 

Codeine plays a relatively minor role in the overall picture of opioid prescription drug abuse. Evidence indicates that proper prescribing of codeine for legitimate medical concerns does not greatly increase the risk of addiction and abuse. Those in the medical community agree that more education is needed on both sides to help prevent the potential for abuse and addiction, so that patients tmly in need are not denied access to codeine based on misperceptions and fear. The benefits for individuals and society are great when chronic pain is treated safely and effectively. 

Edinger JD, Fins AI. The distribution and clinical significance of sleep time misperceptions among insomniacs. Sleep 1995 18 232-239. 

The diagnostic criteria for insomnia can indeed become very precise. Insomnia in the ICSD [3] was defined as the complaint of an insufficient amount of sleep or not feeling rested after the habitual sleep episode , which might denote that sleep quantity and quality should be considered as equivalent. However, there were actually two quantitative requirements in ICSD for the diagnosis of insomnia at least 20 min sleep latency and at the most 6.5 hours total sleep time, otherwise the condition was considered as sleep state misperception also called pseudoinsomnia [3],... 

Common sense s misperception about this fact leads often to argue from a position of belief rather than a position of knowledge, when it comes to discuss sustainability issues. 

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