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All volunteers are self-selected. Nature is the right venue. It will spur much more research which is the only way to evaluate the science.

• mattmanser 16y ago
  Admittedly I wasn't clear there about the volunteers, these are people who volunteered via a BBC programme called 'Bang goes the theory' and I suspect probably also recruited via the BBC's website. They do not represent a broad demographic, they are extremely biased. They are not, and never will be, a good group to base any sort of scientific test on. It violates the scientific method and these 'results' should never have been published in any serious form. To be frank it is medieval quackery. Owen should go read some Karl Popper and bow his head in shame for even trying to draw any conclusions from results obtained by recruiting test subjects from a tv programme. I'm not saying that he's wrong, he may be totally right. But his test was inherently flawed, yet he presents his results to Nature? He should never have written to Nature and his 'test' is as scientifically significant as 'Ask HN: Which browser do you use?'. It happens all the time, but it's really beginning to piss me off.
  • robg 16y ago
    Yup, college undergrads are the perfect research subjects - easily available and inexpensive. That said, wouldn't Popper care more about replication and falsification then with sample design?