Jens Foell: “Facts are just opinions”

Neuropsychologist Jens Foell explains how difficult it is to get real facts – and what helps if you don’t have them.

For example, the marshmallow test, carried out at Stanford University in the late 1960s, has since become very well known, especially among parents. He studied the willpower of children. If you eat one candy right away, you won’t get another one. But if they can control themselves for a few minutes and don’t grab it right away, they will be rewarded with another piece of candy. The surprise many years later: Those who were able to pull themselves together as children made it further in life. That sounded logical, it fit the ideal of the time, performance and discipline. But did the experimental setup really allow for that?