The "decline effect"

Posted by Nick Thompson on Dec 12, 2010; 7:46am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-decline-effect-tp5827610.html

All—

 

Have others seen the article in the New Yorker on the “decline effect”,  the alleged tendency for the effect sizes of well documented phenomena to decline with successive years of replication.   I kept turning back to the front of the article to reassure myself that it was not one of the “Shouts and Murmurs” series.  It is not.   The passage that particularly caught my eye:

 

Many scientific theories continue to be considered true even after failing numerous experimental tests. …  [This] holds for any number of phenomena, from the disappearing benefits of second-generation antipsychotics to the weak coupling ration exhibited by decaying neutrons, which appears to have fallen by more than ten standard deviations between 1969 and 2001. [NY mag, 15 december 2010, p57]

 

 

At least until recently, when the NY-er writes about science, they try very hard not to write anything stupid.

 

What gives?

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

http://www.cusf.org

 

 

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