Where that title came from

I could not think of a good title for this post. My first try was “An institutional model for the persistence of false belief, but I don’t think it’s helpful to describe scientific paradigms as ‘true’ or ‘false.’ Also, boo on cheap laughs at the expense of academia,” and later attempts were even worse. At one point I was using this self-referential piece of crap: “This title of this post is terrible, but at least it’s short.” That’s like Paul Auster on a really really bad day, it’s Raymond Smullyan without the cleverness, it’s just horrible.

Every once in awhile, I come up with a good title for a post (as you can see by scanning these and these). And some of my articles have good titles. But typically I struggle. On the positive side, I’m in good company. Updike was a poor titler too. Donald E. Westlake—that’s a guy who knew how to do it. In fact, hey! I’ll pick a title from that list of unused Westlake book titles. “The Trumpets of Lilliput” it is. Really too bad the man couldnt’ve lived another 50 years so he could’ve written all those books for us.

The funny thing is, I have no problems coming up with good lines. And that list doesn’t even include the classic, “Survey weighting is a mess.” Titling, though, that’s another thing entirely, a challenge all its own.

17 thoughts on “Where that title came from

  1. Some good lines indeed. But I made a glowing globe lamp that hung from its electrical wire and it was great! So I don’t know if I agree with that one.

  2. Your lines reminded me that someone recently sent me this

    Guernsey McPearson’s dictionary: Academic researcher. One who, apart from being motivated by tenure, fame, money and professional ambition acts always from the purest of motives and whose work can therefore always be trusted, which is just as well since nobody ever checks it.

    And I then I noticed this one – Uninformative prior. A statistical concept that exists only in the imagination of uninformed Bayesians.

    Now I can add
    46. (on priors) “They don’t have to be weakly informative. They can just be shitty.”

  3. I got a kick out of #2

    2. “People don’t go around introducing you to their ex-wives.” (why model improvement doesn’t
    make it into papers)

    I have had to enumerate the names of all my husbands. LOL JUST KIDDING.

  4. “Every once in awhile, I come up with a good title for a post (as you can see by scanning these and these). And some of my articles have good titles. But typically I struggle”

    I’m still not sure about how, and when, i appreciate clever/interesting/whatever titles of scientific papers, or even scientific writing itself. I think it is important to put the science first, which to me implies things like clarity in writing and being descriptive.

    I dislike reading papers that involve long-winded, fancy, sentences (which is probably why i dislike reading novels). I do however like play on words, or making connections to other (non-scientific) stuff in order to try and make something clear in a different way. However, i think when i like that stuff, it is always an “extra” thing that follows the clarity and descriptive part, and does not stand in the way of them.

    I have not done much writing, or publishing for that matter, but i am still pleased with most of what i have written. Sometimes this involved very “dry”, descriptive titles and main text, and sometimes this involved more “creative” titles, and main text, that only later appeared to me to have different meanings/layers/interpretations that i had not thought of when choosing the title and text.

    I think the general process with both was something that just popped into my mind and felt “right” at the time.

      • “I don’t see your titles. You are a very clear writer.”

        I was trying to state something more generally without using my own writing as examples. But here is what i meant with 1) “descriptive” titles/writing, and 2) more “creative” titles/writing where i only later found out several possible alternative interpretations:

        1) “Associations between psychologists’ thinking styles and accuracy on a diagnostic classification task”

        https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-012-0081-3

        That was a paper based on my thesis back in 2011/2012, and i can still remember one of my co-authors saying he liked the title which i thought was a sarcastic remark. I was used to reading lots of titles that were trying to make a pun, or stating massive conclusions, etc.

        I tried to be careful in avoiding both these things, which is probably what resulted in that “dry” and “descriptive” title. I (still) think it fits nicely though with my experiment upon which the paper was based, and me trying to be very “careful” concerning the conclusions and goal of the paper itself.

        2) “Making the most of tenure in two acts: An additional way to help change incentives in Psychological Science”

        https://psyarxiv.com/5vsqw/

        I think i wrote this (very short) “paper” in 2 days. It was born out of frustration, “not giving a f#ck anymore”, and lots of listening to music, drinking coffee, and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes (i haven’t smoked in about 6 months now).

        I used the words “acts”/”act” in the title and headings of the paper itself, to refer to researchers actually “doing something” about the whole mess in psychological science, and to refer to the headings/structure of the paper. I later looked up the word “act” and found other definitions/meanings that i could also (possibly) connect to the paper.

        E.g. see http://www.dictionary.com/browse/act

        1) “Act” in the sense of “be motivated by” possibly fits with the whole “incentive” stuff (which i was also trying to mock in a certain way) in the title, and content of the paper itself.

        2) “Act” in the sense of “fulfill the function of” or “pretend to be” may also be appropriate, because on a certain level, the paper uses “tenure” as a way to talk about other things.

        (Side note: this in itself can also be seen as “making the most of tenure”, next to a different interpretation which is that tenured psychology professors could “make the most” of their tenure by changing the “incentive structure”. In a way then, the title of the paper has 2 meanings/interpretations).

        3) “Act” in the sense of “a main division of a play”. Due to the headings of the paper, and the content below these 2 headings, i think this also is a valid interpretation/connection. In “making the most of tenure: act 1” i quoted Meehl and talked about “negative” stuff, and in “making the most of tenure act 2” i tried to provide new goals/inspiration. In a way it could be seen as representing 2 acts of a play when looking at content, (main) writer, and goal of the text.

        4) “Act” in the philosophy sense of “the principle or power of operation” and “realization, as opposed to potentiality” possibly fits nicely with me citing the philosopher Locke (as a possible counter view to all these possible “incentives” possibly influencing folks). I think it also fits nicely with the actual text, and goal of the paper, with the several mentions of “realization” in it.

        5) “Act” in the sense of a “short performance by one or more entertainers” possibly also fits with the paper. If nothing else, perhaps it was at least entertaining in some way or form to read. At least it was to write :)

        Anyway, these interpretations/connections were not (all) clear to me when writing it. The title, and the text, for the most part just popped into my head, and “felt right”. When concluding it, i said to my mother it might be the best thing i have written. Note that i said “best” not “good”, it’s all relative. But i will, and have, settled for “best”, because that’s all i can do.

  5. Here is a goodie from Andrew

    ’10. “We need all g of these things. Any f of them would not be enough.” (on a lettered list with
    seven items)

    I was thinking that Snoop Dog’s Nuttin But a G thing is good enu-F.

  6. I came back to this blogpost because 1) I participated in it at the time, and this blogpost always kind of stuck with me, and 2) I have written two recent manuscripts for which I used titles from existing titles (one of a blogpost and one of a paper). I changed some words of these original titles to make it fit with the content, and goal, of my manuscripts, and I used the original work in the introduction of my manuscripts.

    To me this made clear that titles of blogposts or papers can be inspiring and/or functional in and of itself (at least perhaps to a certain extent). Although I don’t know for sure, I think the titles of the blogpost and the paper got stuck in my head somewhere and/or somehow, and popped up at the time I was thinking about the title. Or perhaps these titles even contributed to thinking about the content and/or goal of the manuscripts, and/or to the writing of the manuscripts in the first place.

    This all perhaps also might be a nice example of how many different things in scientific writing can influence matters in many different ways. For instance, both of these titles of the blog and paper were also used as (part of) titles of blogposts on this statmodeling blog. Perhaps the original titles of the blogpost and the paper may have even contributed to them being discussed on this blog. And perhaps I became aware of the blogpost and manuscript because I followed this blog at the time. So perhaps the titles of the original blogpost and paper contributed to them being discussed on this statmodeling blog, which may have led to someone else becoming aware of them, which in turn may have inspired, influenced, etc. the title and content and writing of a new manuscript.

    It also reminded me of something I read somewhere on another blog (can’t remember which one) where someone wrote something along the lines of (if I remember correctly): you never know exactly who might read something you write, and/or how what you write might influence someone, and/or what kind of effect what you write might have on someone. I thought that was interesting to think about, also from a scientific point of view. Citations are nice and all (or not), but there are many ways in which a paper or blogpost can contribute to science. And perhaps many of these possible ways are not “measurable”. And perhaps many of these possible ways in which a paper or a blogpost can contribute to science will never be known to the author of the paper.

    As a side note: perhaps “good lines” can also be used as titles for papers, and/or perhaps “good lines” can be slightly altered to become a title. Looking at the list of “good lines”, perhaps there are some that can be fitting, descriptive, and catching titles for papers:

    44) “Inference is not the inverse of a hypothesistest”
    49) “Inference is normal science. Model-checking is revolutionary science”
    74) “Statistics is applied statistics”

    • “Good lines”, just like good titles, can perhaps also be useful in and of themselves. I can clearly remember looking for the title of a paper by Meehl, for instance, because I wanted to use a particular “good line” from it. In that case I remembered the “good line”, and not the title of the paper.

      Some “good lines” are perhaps useful because they use words, or analogies, that may result in the reader better understanding things, or viewing things from a different perspective. In that way, “good lines” can be part of the toolkit of a scientific writer. Although I usually dislike scientific authors who use unnecessary “big” words, and long sentences, and write like they really wanted to be a poet or a fictional novelist, I reason there is a place for “good lines”, analogies, “creative” writing, etc. in scientific writing.

      I have used several possibly “good lines” in my own writing, and they seem to have come from reading certain sentences or words from others, and my mind subsequently (seemingly automatically) slighly altering them to try and make a point. They also (still) give me joy when reading them. In a half-finished manuscript, for instance, I have tried to make a point concerning the term “publish or perish” and the possibly problematic issues in academia/science. I wondered whether publishing many manuscripts is largely instrumental because it helps with the ultimate goal of receiving funding. I subsequently wondered whether in discussions about the possibly problematic issues in academia/science, “publish or perish” should actually better be replaced by “pass the hat or perish”, or “funded or faded”, or “financed or finished”, or “backed or begone”, or “subsidized or subsided”.

      • “Some “good lines” are perhaps useful because they use words, or analogies, that may result in the reader better understanding things, or viewing things from a different perspective.” & “In a half-finished manuscript, for instance, I have tried to make a point concerning the term “publish or perish” and the possibly problematic issues in academia/science.”

        I also thought about writing something about “submitting” your work to a journal. Given all the (possibly problematic) issues concerning peer-review and for-profit publishing companies, and the different definitions and interpretations of the word “submit”, I have tried to think of another “good line”. Here we go:

        I wonder whether when you “submit” your work for review and subsequent publishing in a scientific journal you might be “submitting” your work in the “presenting (something) to the consideration or judgment of another”-interpretation, but you might also be “submitting” in the “to accept or give in to the authority, power, or will of another”-interpretation.

    • Quote: “So perhaps the titles of the original blogpost and paper contributed to them being discussed on this statmodeling blog, which may have led to someone else becoming aware of them, which in turn may have inspired, influenced, etc. the title and content and writing of a new manuscript.”

      1) A blogpost by Bargh from 2012 titled “Priming effects replicate just fine, thanks” was discussed on this statmodeling blog in a post dated February 12, 2016 with the same title. I wrote a manuscript in which I questioned a few things, and tried to make a few things clear, with the title “Psychological Science replicates just fine, thanks” (posted on SSRN August 17, 2022).

      2) A paper by Smaldino & McElreath from 2016 titled “The natural selection of bad science” was discussed on this statmodeling blog in a post dated June 1, 2016 with the same title. I wrote a manuscript in which I questioned a few things, and tried to make a few things clear, with the title “The natural selection of bad psychological scientists” (posted on SSRN August 17, 2022).

      I think both titles of the original blogpost and the original paper, and the mentioning of them on this statmodeling blog, may have contributed to thinking about, and eventually writing the two manuscripts.

      • All those titles are pretty short. I think I like that.

        It also reminded me of a paper I recently looked up again by Cohen, J. (1990) titled “Things I have learned (so far)”. Again, I am pretty sure I remembered this paper in large part due to the title. I also found the content of the paper interesting, and I found the paper to be a welcome change regarding the writing style/approach compared to many scientific papers I read at the time.

        Side note: perhaps it would be a nice, amusing, and/or interesting topic for a blogpost to have people list their favorite titles of scientific papers, and why they think so. Could perhaps be because of many different reasons that may become clear, and this possibly could be interesting or amusing to read for others (in addition to possibly reading the papers mentioned).

        • Titles of blogposts and papers, and the mentioning of them on this statmodeling blog, can possibly contribute to thinking about, and eventually writing, manuscripts as I wrote earlier.

          I think I can now also add that comments on a blogpost, and engaging in a discussion on a blog, can also possibly contribute to thinking about, and eventually writing, a manuscript.

          I wrote a manuscript titled “Things I have wondered (so far)” (posted on SSRN February 14, 2023) about my wonderment concerning problematic people, entities, issues, and processes in Psychological Science. The manuscript uses the paper by Cohen, J. (1990) titled “Things I have learned (so far)” regarding the approach, title, and introduction of this manuscript. And the manuscript contains the two “good lines” concerning “submitting” papers to journals and “publish or perish” I wrote on here earlier.

          All in all, it is perhaps a nice example of how things might be inspiring, combine, and interact, and eventually result in the writing and publishing of a manuscript.

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