Those mean psychologists, making fun of dodgy research!

Two people separately sent me this amusing mock-research paper by Brian A. Nosek (I assume that’s what’s meant by “Arina K. Bones”). The article is pretty funny, but this poster (by Nosek and Samuel Gosling) is even better! Check it out:

I remarked that this was almost as good as my zombies paper, and my correspondent pointed me to this page of (I assume) Nosek’s research on aliens.

P.S. I clicked through to take the test to see if I’m dead or alive, but I got bored after a few minutes. I gotta say, if Gosling can come up with a 10-item measure of the Big Five, this crew should be able to come up with a reasonably valid alive-or-dead test that doesn’t require dozens and dozens of questions!

10 thoughts on “Those mean psychologists, making fun of dodgy research!

  1. The article mentions Bob Zajonc a couple of times. Bob was on my dissertation committee and an eminent scholar.

    He would also likely have appreciated the joke. Bob once showed a film of some social facilitation work on chickens, and then revealed he’d put subliminal Kentucky Fried Chicken ads throughout the film.

  2. I’m not an expert on those word association timed tests, but don’t they need that number of sets and trials in order to get enough data to be able to detect differences, assuming a relatively small effect size? This type of test was the basis for one I remember seeing on detecting racism, that was a pretty interesting test.

  3. A dead or alice IAT! I just love it! (hey, the Iat is short enough for psych research. Sometimes we require longer onres. Then we pay them, and use our friends, and hope they will stay ones friends….)

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  5. Pingback: Gelman: Those mean psychologists, making fun of dodgy research! « Stats in the Wild

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