Re: The "decline effect"
Posted by
Tom Carter on
Dec 13, 2010; 4:46am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-decline-effect-tp5827610p5829692.html
<base href="x-msg://355/">Nick -
There seem to me to be some good parts, and some not so good parts, to the article.
Back when I used to teach "Science, Technology, and Human Values" I had my students read this article from Science (about salt and diet, and science, and public policy):
There is more to the story, but there are some good points in there . . .
About neutron coupling ratios . . . here's something to contemplate:
Clearly the saddest part is the declining life expectancy of the neutron (down to 886 seconds, from over 1000 in 1960). Maybe someone should do a correlation study with global warning . . . it would be a shame to see neutrons go extinct :-(
WRT Paul Brodeur -- obviously his biggest mistake was not having Julia Roberts (or Cher?) play him in a biopic :-)
tom
On Dec 11, 2010, at 11:46 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
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
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