6 ms·

Please make sure to read the full paper before jumping to conclusions! This was not a fully randomized study! The main outcome of the study was that couples th

by yarcob 6y ago

Please make sure to read the full paper before jumping to conclusions! This was not a fully randomized study! The main outcome of the study was that couples that participated in ANY treatment had similar outcomes. The benefit was compared to a "No treatment" group. But the article fails to mention that this "no treatment" group was not randomly selected!! The "no treatment" group was made up of couples that refused treatment, or failed to participate in treatments because of scheduling constraints. So a less misleading headline might be: Couples that refuse relationship counselling have higher divorce rates. But that would surprise noone.

haffi112 6y ago
It's getting really tired how unreliably scientific results are reported in the mainstream media. Is anyone building a (crowdsourced) fact checker to validate these kinds of claims that I could install as a browser extension?
- gnicholas 6y ago
  The worst part is this isn't even a mainstream media source. This is coming from a university!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ErikAugust 6y ago
    They may have even stronger incentive to juice up a press release.
- d0mine 6y ago
  It is soft science. Almost all results are unreproducable BS
morekozhambu 6y ago
Right, I would like a study on how discussing relationship movies increases the marriage rate for couples.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> Couples that refuse relationship counselling have higher divorce rates. But that would surprise no one. It would surprise some; it's perfectly possible to take the view that counselling causes divorces.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawaylolx 6y ago
  Even less adventurous would be to consider that counselling has no effect. But in any case, the study can only provide information regarding counselling with respect to couples that refuse it, not regarding counselling in general.
  - qznc 6y ago
    Scott Alexander wrote he has no clue if counseling works: > I tell patients to have a consistent weekly meeting with their spouse, maybe a Saturday date night. During the meeting, each of them has to say one nice thing about the other, and then one problem that they want to work on. The other person thanks them for the nice thing and then they brainstorm a solution to the problem. If they both agree to the solution, they have to stick with it at least until the next relationship meeting. A lot of my patients have said this really helps them, have continued the meetings long after the immediate crisis passes, and probably expect the technique was invented by some clever person like John Gottman. I will never tell them that actually I picked it up from a different ex-girlfriend, not even the one who writes relationship advice columns. > In conclusion, I have no idea what makes marriages work, and I am not convinced John Gottman does either. https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/27/book-review-the-seven-principles-for-making-marriage-work/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/27/book-review-the-seven-...
    - watwut 6y ago
      I find the speculation on what the patients think reaching. I also find the origin in terms of which girlfriend of his first suffested it completely irrelevat. It is standard relationship advice that flies around in various forms. I have seen multiple variants of it - the two componentams are regular dates basically and system which creates safe regular times for dealing with issues outside of conflict situation. I mean honestly, the above does not give much trust to him.
ekianjo 6y ago
> This was not a fully randomized study! Which makes it practically useless since most observational studies are poorly controlled.
Epskampie 6y ago
You could also say “discussing movies as effective as therapy” which is quite an interesting find.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Yes, and that is the finding of the actual paper. The kicker is that the movie method takes less time overall and less therapist involvement than the other two techniques tested. I wish people could get past whining about how this isn’t a randomized controlled study and actually look at the findings on their merits.
benkuhn 6y ago
HN should require (non-randomized) in the title for this kind of thing, the same way it requires (2014) or (pdf).
paultopia 6y ago
This is the kind of paper where approaching it with a kind of Bayesian orientation is really helpful. As in: what's your prior on movies cutting the divorce in half? It's almost certainly very small. So either this paper has to have amazingly compelling evidence, or something is wrong.
_pmf_ 6y ago
> So a less misleading headline might be: Couples that refuse relationship counselling have higher divorce rates. But that would surprise noone. Relationship counseling is delegating responsibility for your relationship to a third party. Or, in most cases, transferring blame for your psychological shortcomings to your spouse via a faux neutral third party. (I don't doubt that there are good counselor, but they are probably even rarer than good psychologists.)

by yarcob 6y ago

haffi112 6y ago

It's getting really tired how unreliably scientific results are reported in the mainstream media. Is anyone building a (crowdsourced) fact checker to validate these kinds of claims that I could install as a browser extension?

gnicholas 6y ago
The worst part is this isn't even a mainstream media source. This is coming from a university!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ErikAugust 6y ago
  They may have even stronger incentive to juice up a press release.
d0mine 6y ago
It is soft science. Almost all results are unreproducable BS

morekozhambu 6y ago

Right, I would like a study on how discussing relationship movies increases the marriage rate for couples.

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> Couples that refuse relationship counselling have higher divorce rates. But that would surprise no one. It would surprise some; it's perfectly possible to take the view that counselling causes divorces.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwawaylolx 6y ago
Even less adventurous would be to consider that counselling has no effect. But in any case, the study can only provide information regarding counselling with respect to couples that refuse it, not regarding counselling in general.
- qznc 6y ago
  Scott Alexander wrote he has no clue if counseling works: > I tell patients to have a consistent weekly meeting with their spouse, maybe a Saturday date night. During the meeting, each of them has to say one nice thing about the other, and then one problem that they want to work on. The other person thanks them for the nice thing and then they brainstorm a solution to the problem. If they both agree to the solution, they have to stick with it at least until the next relationship meeting. A lot of my patients have said this really helps them, have continued the meetings long after the immediate crisis passes, and probably expect the technique was invented by some clever person like John Gottman. I will never tell them that actually I picked it up from a different ex-girlfriend, not even the one who writes relationship advice columns. > In conclusion, I have no idea what makes marriages work, and I am not convinced John Gottman does either. https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/27/book-review-the-seven-principles-for-making-marriage-work/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/27/book-review-the-seven-...
  - watwut 6y ago
    I find the speculation on what the patients think reaching. I also find the origin in terms of which girlfriend of his first suffested it completely irrelevat. It is standard relationship advice that flies around in various forms. I have seen multiple variants of it - the two componentams are regular dates basically and system which creates safe regular times for dealing with issues outside of conflict situation. I mean honestly, the above does not give much trust to him.

ekianjo 6y ago

> This was not a fully randomized study! Which makes it practically useless since most observational studies are poorly controlled.

Epskampie 6y ago

You could also say “discussing movies as effective as therapy” which is quite an interesting find.

pmiller2 6y ago
Yes, and that is the finding of the actual paper. The kicker is that the movie method takes less time overall and less therapist involvement than the other two techniques tested. I wish people could get past whining about how this isn’t a randomized controlled study and actually look at the findings on their merits.

benkuhn 6y ago

HN should require (non-randomized) in the title for this kind of thing, the same way it requires (2014) or (pdf).

paultopia 6y ago

This is the kind of paper where approaching it with a kind of Bayesian orientation is really helpful. As in: what's your prior on movies cutting the divorce in half? It's almost certainly very small. So either this paper has to have amazingly compelling evidence, or something is wrong.

_pmf_ 6y ago

> So a less misleading headline might be: Couples that refuse relationship counselling have higher divorce rates. But that would surprise noone. Relationship counseling is delegating responsibility for your relationship to a third party. Or, in most cases, transferring blame for your psychological shortcomings to your spouse via a faux neutral third party. (I don't doubt that there are good counselor, but they are probably even rarer than good psychologists.)