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Correlating Psychopathy With Speech Patterns
florescent_beige writes "Researchers from Cornell and UBC report that analysis of speech patterns using Wmatrix, along with something called the Dictionary of Affect in Language (see a demo here), shows that psychopaths speak differently from other people, at least statistically (abstract). Although they say that these differences are 'presumably beyond conscious control,' the authors do not say if the method has any predictive use. Regardless, the popular press has already gone headline-nonlinear about it."
Eh, it is difficult to predict which papers will create a media firestorm and which won't. It often only seems obvious in retrospect that a given subject will be the sort that creates a media circus. This is a form of hindsight bias.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias. Paper titles that are descriptive, amusing and more memorable are not a bad thing.
The disorder, disease, or syndrome label works under the assumption that there is something wrong with the person in question. However, many things classed as those don't mean the person thinks incorrectly, but rather differently. It wasn't too long ago that homosexuality was considered a mental disorder in the DSM.
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