Re: The "decline effect" and the RTQ method
Posted by
Roger Critchlow-2 on
Dec 12, 2010; 5:22pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-decline-effect-tp5827610p5828511.html
On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 7:24 AM, ERIC P. CHARLES
<[hidden email]> wrote:
[ ... ]
On a more serious note
(and the previous part was fairly serious already): Given that half the "major
discoveries" promoted in psychology are assuredly garbage, how does this
surprise you? Are you a "hard-science" snob, and only surprised because this is
happening to physicists? There are a million reasons why an initial report of a
phenomenon might overestimate the effect size. Some reasons are malicious
(i.e., drug company funded studies as to the effectiveness of new drugs),
others are benign (i.e. sampling error, unforeseen methodological shortcomings
in initial tests, biased acceptance and promotion of "sexy"
results).
Whole academic industries arise over non-existent effects:
Piaget's "A-non-B error", menstrual synchrony, and infant's "innate
mathematical abilities." Once the discipline is formed, it is very hard to
unform.
-- rec --
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org