Social media and mental health; ice baths; hungry judges debunked; dodgy parenting advice; and do science and politics mix? Plus even more interesting links
The self citation stuff made me laugh out loud. Incredible chutzpah and editors out to lunch as usual.
The invalid citations thing is good to finally get some hard data on. I noticed that when reading COVID papers but when I tried to tell people nobody really believed me, it seems. The idea that prestigious scientists would routinely add fake citations to their work just seemed so far out of the Overton window of possibilities that it just makes you sound crazy. Yet I find it happening all the time in public health research. And yes it's weird how some fields are more reflective than others. No surprise it's psychology that's investigating bad citations; it's weird, when the "crisis" kicked off my respect for psychology plummeted and I thought it must be one of the worst fields. In recent years my respect had been increasing again, because I learned that other fields have it even worse but don't even talk about any problems let alone try to fix them.. At least psychologists do a good impression of caring.
Same here re the laughter - I’m currently reading about the faked Hitler Diaries for another piece and I had a similar reaction to the guy staining the pages with tea to make them look older. The cheek!
I wish we could get a properly representative survey of different fields and how many scientists (a) know about the replication stuff and (b) are doing something about it in their day-to-day research. We have that 2016 survey from Nature but it’s just of people who happened to be looking at the website. But if you had such a survey I’m pretty sure psychology would be looking much better than several other fields by this point…
Apr 9, 2023·edited Apr 9, 2023Liked by Stuart Ritchie
Dude you're accidentally making it look like what Khaneman did was no big deal. He makes his point with a super sketchy study, but no worries because 12 years later a better one will also show that "hungry judges tend to fall back on the easier default position." ARgh?! ok, I promise to STFU about it now. I still love you.
Glad to see you bring up the fact that the long list of impressive citations most papers have is likely to have many misleading papers. I thought it was just me. I'm sure many people have this problem. You typically skim through the paper looking for the information of interest. Then skim again if you don't find it the first time. And after skimming twice you just don't know. If you really want to know you might read it with more care, and then you are really disgusted when you don't find your information.
I'll bet this is all reinforced when people copy citations directly from other papers to inflate their own list of references. But using AI to aid in editing! An outstanding idea!
Hi Stuart, on your About page you write, "because healthy scepticism is what science is all about."
Can we clarify that a bit? Skepticism is what _science_ is all about, agreed. But our RELATIONSHIP with science seems to be a quite different matter.
Scientists often talk about how skeptical they are, which is true in regards to data. But it doesn't seem true in how they relate to knowledge development overall, where they seem more like blind faith true believers.
This subscriber would like to read more about that, should it interest you.
Just a minor comment: people fasting for Ramadan may be more lenient because kindness and forgiveness are among the values underscored during Ramadan. So there is a confound.
The self citation stuff made me laugh out loud. Incredible chutzpah and editors out to lunch as usual.
The invalid citations thing is good to finally get some hard data on. I noticed that when reading COVID papers but when I tried to tell people nobody really believed me, it seems. The idea that prestigious scientists would routinely add fake citations to their work just seemed so far out of the Overton window of possibilities that it just makes you sound crazy. Yet I find it happening all the time in public health research. And yes it's weird how some fields are more reflective than others. No surprise it's psychology that's investigating bad citations; it's weird, when the "crisis" kicked off my respect for psychology plummeted and I thought it must be one of the worst fields. In recent years my respect had been increasing again, because I learned that other fields have it even worse but don't even talk about any problems let alone try to fix them.. At least psychologists do a good impression of caring.
Same here re the laughter - I’m currently reading about the faked Hitler Diaries for another piece and I had a similar reaction to the guy staining the pages with tea to make them look older. The cheek!
I wish we could get a properly representative survey of different fields and how many scientists (a) know about the replication stuff and (b) are doing something about it in their day-to-day research. We have that 2016 survey from Nature but it’s just of people who happened to be looking at the website. But if you had such a survey I’m pretty sure psychology would be looking much better than several other fields by this point…
Dude you're accidentally making it look like what Khaneman did was no big deal. He makes his point with a super sketchy study, but no worries because 12 years later a better one will also show that "hungry judges tend to fall back on the easier default position." ARgh?! ok, I promise to STFU about it now. I still love you.
Did you notice the other slightly weird aspect of this, which is that Kahneman was the action editor on the original Hungry Judges study?
When he reviewed it the poor man must have been just starving.
Reading your book, great stuff. I loved your small book on Intelligence as well.
Thank you, my friend! Really glad to hear.
Glad to see you bring up the fact that the long list of impressive citations most papers have is likely to have many misleading papers. I thought it was just me. I'm sure many people have this problem. You typically skim through the paper looking for the information of interest. Then skim again if you don't find it the first time. And after skimming twice you just don't know. If you really want to know you might read it with more care, and then you are really disgusted when you don't find your information.
I'll bet this is all reinforced when people copy citations directly from other papers to inflate their own list of references. But using AI to aid in editing! An outstanding idea!
Hi Stuart, on your About page you write, "because healthy scepticism is what science is all about."
Can we clarify that a bit? Skepticism is what _science_ is all about, agreed. But our RELATIONSHIP with science seems to be a quite different matter.
Scientists often talk about how skeptical they are, which is true in regards to data. But it doesn't seem true in how they relate to knowledge development overall, where they seem more like blind faith true believers.
This subscriber would like to read more about that, should it interest you.
Just a minor comment: people fasting for Ramadan may be more lenient because kindness and forgiveness are among the values underscored during Ramadan. So there is a confound.