In our discussion of the Bargh, Chen, and Burrows priming-with-elderly-related-words-makes-people-walk-slowly-paper (the study which famously failed in a preregistered replication), commenter Lois wrote: Curious as to what people think of this comment on the Bargh et al. (1996) paper from Pubpeer: … Continue reading
Remember that “gremlins” paper by environmental economist Richard Tol? The one that had almost as many errors as data points? The one where, each time a correction was issued, more problems would spring up? (I’d say “hydra-like” but I’d rather … Continue reading
Tyler Cowen writes: Avoid criticizing other public intellectuals. In fact, avoid the negative as much as possible. However pressing a social or economic issue may be, there is almost always a positive and constructive way to reframe your potential contribution. … Continue reading
Someone pointed me to this news article by Tim Schwab, “Brian Wansink: Data Masseur, Media Villain, Emblem of a Thornier Problem.” Schwab writes: If you look into the archives of your favorite journalism outlet, there’s a good chance you’ll find … Continue reading
So. A bunch of people pointed me to a New York Times article by Susan Dominus about Amy Cuddy, the psychology researcher and Ted-talk star famous for the following claim (made in a paper written with Dana Carney and Andy … Continue reading
Jonathan Falk points us to this article by Kewei Hou, Chen Xue, and Lu Zhang, who write: In retrospect, the anomalies literature is a prime target for p-hacking. First, for decades, the literature is purely empirical in nature, with little … Continue reading
So. There are erroneous analyses published in scientific journals and in the news. Here I’m not talking not about outright propaganda, but about mistakes that happen to coincide with the preconceptions of their authors. We’ve seen lots of examples. Here … Continue reading
[cat picture] I’ve recently been getting a ton of spam—something like 200 messages a day in my inbox! The Columbia people tell me that soon we’ll be switching to a new mail server that will catch most of these, but … Continue reading
[cat picture] In our recent discussion of Ted doubling down on power pose, commenter Michael raised an interesting question: I think the general attitude of most people who work on communicating science to the public is that their responsibility is … Continue reading
image There’s a motto in poker: Fold or raise, never call. I thought of this after seeing this long interview with Amy “power pose” Cuddy at the Ted talk site. Ted’s really going all in on this one. The interview … Continue reading
We’ve had some recent posts (here and here) about the research of Brian Wansink, a Cornell University business professor who’s found fame and fortune from doing empirical research on eating behaviors. It’s come out that four of his recent papers—all … Continue reading
Someone pointed me to this program of the forthcoming Association for Psychological Science conference: Kind of amazing that they asked Amy Cuddy to speak. Weren’t Dana Carney or Andy Yap available? What would really have been bold would have been … Continue reading
Someone sent me this article by psychology professor Susan Fiske, scheduled to appear in the APS Observer, a magazine of the Association for Psychological Science. The article made me a little bit sad, and I was inclined to just keep … Continue reading
I’ve successfully emptied my inbox: And one result was to fill up the blog through mid-January. I think I’ve been doing enough blogging recently, so my plan now is to stop for awhile and instead transfer my writing energy into … Continue reading
Mon: Splitsville for Thiel and Kasparov? Tues: Here’s something I know nothing about Wed: The “power pose” of the 6th century B.C. Thurs: “99.60% for women and 99.58% for men, P < 0.05.” Fri: Stan on the beach Sat: Michael … Continue reading
Jonathan Sterne sent me this opinion piece by Stephan Lewandowsky and Dorothy Bishop, two psychology researchers who express concern that the movement for science and data transparency has been abused. It would be easy for me to dismiss them and … Continue reading
I want to say “junk science,” but that’s not quite right. The claims in questions are iffy, far from proven, and could not be replicated, but they still might be true. As usual, my criticism is the claim that the … Continue reading
The replication crisis in social psychology (and science more generally) will not be solved by better statistics or by preregistered replications. It can only be solved by better measurement. Let me say this more carefully. I think that improved statistics … Continue reading
Disclaimer: This post is not peer reviewed in the traditional sense of being vetted for publication by three people with backgrounds similar to mine. Instead, thousands of commenters, many of whom are not my peers—in the useful sense that, not … Continue reading
[Note to busy readers: If you’re sick of power pose, there’s still something of general interest in this post; scroll down to the section on the time-reversal heuristic. I really like that idea.] Someone pointed me to this discussion on … Continue reading