Aric Sigman is a British psychologist.

Early life

Sigman was born in the United States into a

Jewish family Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

. His father and grandfather were both professors of medicine. He has lived in Britain since 1973.

Career

He has made appearances on day-time TV, such as in 1994 in the role of an Agony Uncle giving advice to children on the Saturday Morning children's programme ''

Live & Kicking ''Live & Kicking'' is a British children's television series that originally aired on BBC1 from 2 October 1993 to 15 September 2001. It was the replacement for '' Going Live!'', and took many of its features from it, such as phone-ins, games, ...

''. He lectures in schools on the subject of PSHE (Personal, social health and economic) education. He has published medical journal articles and has authored books on

alcoholism Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol that results in significant mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognized diagnostic entity. Predomina ...

eating disorders An eating disorder is a mental disorder defined by abnormal eating behaviors that negatively affect a person's physical or mental health. Only one eating disorder can be diagnosed at a given time. Types of eating disorders include binge eating ...

and children's

screen time Screen time is the amount of time spent using a device with a screen such as a smartphone, computer, television, or video game console. The concept is under significant research with related concepts in digital media use and mental health. Scre ...

Controversy

In 2009, an opinion by Sigman was misused as the basis for articles in the ''

Daily Mail The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publish ...

'' and other outlets which falsely implied that using

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

could directly cause cancer. Sigman's article did not mention cancer.

NHS The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

issued a statement emphasizing that Sigman's study was not a systemic review, and the studies cited by Sigman did not support these conclusions. Physician and science writer

Ben Goldacre Ben Michael Goldacre (born 20 May 1974) is a British physician, academic and science writer. He is the first Bennett Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and director of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science at the University of Oxford ...

has said that Sigman's work includes

cherry picking Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data th ...

of other scientist's studies to support a specific view. In response to these claims Sigman said that "It was clear that my article on daycare wasn't a scientific paper." One such example of this is in his use of the paper "The Internet Paradox" in his Article "Well connected? The biological implications of 'social networking'". In this article, he cites the 1998 paper The Internet Paradox", which finds a weak correlation between Internet use and depression/loneliness. However, when the same authors revisited their sample group 3 years later, and found that the observed effects had dissipated, and that "This sample generally experienced positive effects of using the Internet on communication, social involvement, and well-being."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sigman, Aric American emigrants to the United Kingdom Living people British psychologists British people of Jewish descent American people of Jewish descent Pseudoscientific psychologists Jewish British scientists Year of birth missing (living people)