Experts for the Media

National Football League fantasy drafts are underway in preparation for the season — and that means millions of fantasy football coaches are already overthinking their lineups.

Before they blame a bad draft slot or a fluke injury for bombing from one week to the next, they might want to look in the mirror and give their head a shake. That’s because there’s good science behind those bad fantasy football decision.

Renee Miller, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, studies cognitive biases and literally wrote the book on bias in fantasy sports. She plays fantasy football, too.

She warns that our brains are wired to interpret fantasy football results in ways that are suboptimal and illogical.

“Biased thinking occurs in everyday life and work, and in fantasy sports,” Miller says. “Through the course of a season, you can see a full range of the ways cognitive bias affects a person’s weekly fantasy matchups.”

Here’s the good news: Miller says we can untangle those wires if we know what to look for.

Among the biggest culprits are what Miller calls “the endowment effect” (overvaluing and clinging to players you drafted high), “recency bias” (falling in love with last week’s star), and “confirmation bias” (cherry-picking stats that support what you already believe).

But especially beware of Week One. Thanks to the “primacy effect,” those games early in the season loom larger in memory than later ones. One hot debut or a disappointing flop can warp a coach’s thinking for weeks.

The result? Lineups driven more by emotion than logic — and possibly a lot of pick sixes.

Biases aren’t all bad, though. Sometimes instincts pay off. First impressions and recent performances sometimes hold fast.

But the best fantasy players, Miller says, know when to slow down and think systematically. They stay skeptical, challenge their gut reactions, and accept that they’ll be wrong sometimes.

So before you rage-drop that underperforming wide receiver or crown your Week One sleeper a superstar, remember, the smartest move might be to take a look in the mirror and give your head a shake.

Miller is available for interviews for journalists covering fantasy sports. Connect with her by clicking on her profile.

The Stones didn’t need another hit. With six decades of chart-topping albums, sold-out tours, and songs woven into popular culture, their place in rock history has long been secure.

Yet the band’s scheduled release of another studio album, “Foreign Tongues,” on July 10, raises questions about how late-stage work can impact the legacy of the Stones and other enduring musical acts.

For John Covach, director of the Institute of Popular Music at the Univeristy of Rochester and a leading scholar of rock music, that’s where the real story is. 

“Every late-career album asks us two questions,” Covach says. “What does it say about where the artist is now? And does it change how we hear everything that came before?”

It’s a question that could be applied to artists from Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney to Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young. Sometimes late work reflects an unexpected creative renaissance. Sometimes it simply reinforces an artist’s legacy. Sometimes it challenges audiences to rethink musicians they thought they already understood. Sometimes it becomes a footnote to their career.

“An artist's latest act can in many ways be as revealing as their first,” Covach says.

Covach, who co-edited The Cambridge Companion to the Rolling Stones (Cambridge University Press 2019) and whose online course on the music of the Rolling Stones has enrolled thousands of students worldwide, says reporters covering the Stones’ new album have an opportunity to explore broader issues that resonate across popular culture:

• Can new work meaningfully change an artist’s historical legacy?
• Why do some musicians continue creating well into their seventies and eighties while others stop?
• Can a new release introduce younger listeners to artists whose biggest hits predate them by decades?
• How do critics — and fans — judge new music from legendary performers differently than music by younger artists?
• What determines whether late-career work becomes an essential part of an artist's catalog — or a historical footnote?

Covach has spent decades studying the evolution of popular music, and his books and scholarship have helped shape how the genre is taught. He is also a frequent media commentator on the cultural significance of major artists and musical milestones.

Click on his profile to connect with him.

Researchers at the University of Rochester have discovered a better way to turn seawater into drinking water as climate change, population growth, and drought intensify pressure on freshwater supplies.

Desalination, as the process of converting saltwater to freshwater is known, has been used for some time. But desalination methods commonly used today have significant drawbacks: they require large amounts of energy and generate brine waste that can damage marine ecosystems.

Enter University of Rochester optics and physics professor Chunlei Guo and his research team, who have developed a solar-thermal desalination technology that converts seawater into drinking water without chemical additives and without producing the harmful brine.

Their system uses a specially engineered solar panel made of “superwicking” black metal etched with ultrafast lasers that allow it to absorb light and attract water. The panels have a laser-treated “active” region that pulls a think layer of water across the surface, absorbs sunlight, distills the water, and deposits leftover salts and minerals onto the untreated “passive” region.

The technology also transforms waste into a resource. Instead of generating brine, the process captures salts in solid form, creating opportunities to recover valuable minerals. Guo's team has already demonstrated the ability to extract lithium, a critical component in rechargeable batteries, from salt-rich water sources.

For reporters covering sustainability innovation, Guo is available to discuss:

• Why desalination is becoming increasingly important worldwide
• The environmental challenges associated with current desalination technologies
• How solar-powered desalination works
• The role of advanced materials and laser engineering in water purification
• Recovering valuable minerals such as lithium from seawater
• The future of sustainable water and resource management

With an estimated 2.2 billion people worldwide lacking access to safely managed drinking water, Guo's research offers a glimpse of how next-generation technologies could help address both global water shortages and growing demand for critical minerals.

Researchers recently explained their method in a paper published in Light: Science & Applications.

Journalists can connect with Guo by contacting Luke Auburn, director of communications at the University of Rochester’s Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, at luke.auburn@rochester.edu.