Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
In recent years, it has become painfully clear that psychology is facing a “reproducibility crisis,” in which even famous, long-established phenomena — the stuff of textbooks and TED Talks — might not be real…
One by one, researchers have tried to repeat the classic experiments behind these well-known effects — and failed. And whenever psychologists undertake large projects…they typically succeed, on average, half of the time.
Ironically enough, it seems that one of the most reliable findings in psychology is that only half of psychological studies can be successfully repeated.
:
But skeptics have argued that the misleadingly named “crisis” has more mundane explanations. First, the replication attempts themselves might be too small. Second, the researchers involved might be incompetent, or lack the know-how to properly pull off the original experiments. Third, people vary, and two groups of scientists might end up with very different results if they do the same experiment on two different groups of volunteers.
It comes as news to me that anyone was even making the attempt. I have long understood psychology to be a “soft science.” It qualifies as a scientific discipline only just barely, out of the sense that there’s a reality out there that is worth studying. But that the standard requirements applied to all others, which are really just prerequisites for conducting a valid experiment, were out of scope due to the nature of what was being studied.
Rather like economics. You can compile histories of this thing happening and then that other thing subsequently happening, then you can look for patterns. But you can’t truly reproduce these “experiments” according to a strict interpretation of that word in a scientific context, because you can’t isolate. Economics is the study of how everything is necessarily connected to everything else, and there’s always something spoiling the process. It’s the same with psychology. Those skeptics in that third group have it right. The old maxim about snowflakes, no two being identical, that’s true of people as well.
It is dangerous to intermix soft sciences like this, with hard sciences like physics, astronomy, geology, et al. Lacking the tools to replicate or to falsify, the discipline inevitably deteriorates into a hodge podge of theories that endure because they’re interesting…to someone. And then a credentialed priesthood arises around the unverified theories, because for something to be interesting, someone has to be around to find it so. The old thing about the tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it, you know? Someone has to say “That’s an interesting theory” in order for someone else to say “The experts say this causes that…”
So we require credentialing, so those high priests can say “That’s a good theory because I say it is one, and who are you to take issue?”
If all of our science deteriorates into that layer, we will have no science and we will know nothing.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.