3 ms·

Most of the studies in the linked APA article have all the hallmarks of the replication crisis: - Small sample sizes (O(100)) - Low correlation coefficients

by dlkf 4y ago

Most of the studies in the linked APA article have all the hallmarks of the replication crisis: - Small sample sizes (O(100)) - Low correlation coefficients - Everybody is predisposed to believe the conclusion (what kind of monster doesn't like nature?) - There is zero incentive to report a negative finding And even if some of the studies do replicate, the response variable is often either self-reported, or performance on some written test or survey: so it's not really clear what we are even measuring. What is the unit of "general connectedness" ? How about "eudaimonic well-being" ? These are not legitimate scientific concepts. Nature is great. I find that a long walk in the woods is a good way to clear my head. But I'm not convinced that these studies add anything to my common sense intuitions about the matter. And by using weak methods to justify something we all already believe (or want to believe), we risk degrading trust in science that will be greatly needed when scientists reach a conclusion that isn't politically convenient.

Helmut10001 4y ago
Beyond that, to me "Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people" is the same as putting a warning sign on car batteries saying "Don't drink the battery acid": This should be entirely common sense. Why would there be no cognitive benefit, when nature is the environment humans evolved in and that sustained life for millions of years?
gmac 4y ago
Two points on this: (1) If you want to know how people feel, I’m afraid self-reports are the gold standard (2) Some other studies have large sample sizes (e.g. this one, which is based on my PhD: https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/49376/1/Mourato_Happiness_greater_natural_2013.pdf https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/49376/1/Mourato_Happiness_greater_...)
- dlkf 4y ago
  > If you want to know how people feel, I’m afraid self-reports are the gold standard "How people feel" can't directly be measured scientifically, but it is a function of many things, some of which can be measured reliably (weight, blood pressure, money, etc). I'd rather have a reliable measurement of quantity that I believe contributes to well-being than a direct measurement of well-being that I think is unreliable. This is brought into sharp relief when you consider the applications of this research. Suppose intervention A is know to promote subjective well being, whereas intervention B is known to promote healthy blood pressure levels. What would you rather spend money on? > Some other studies have large sample sizes This is a fair point. The 2019 Nature study also has large-n. I also like that the authors of that one write "Future studies would ideally collate as much data via non self-report measures as possible." But as far as I can tell, all the large-n studies are observational. As other commenters have pointed out, when the treatment is so general it's really hard to control for confounding factors. The study you've linked (and the 2019 Nature study) both implemented controls, all of which look reasonable. But when we find an effect, we are still left the question: "What if we just missed a major confounder? What if the cumulative impact of small confounders for which we can't control for is responsible for the signal?"
  - bakuninsbart 4y ago
    It's not obvious to me how blood pressure affects happiness, or how you would even prove a link here without asking people how they feel. I also feel like it is important to point out that asking people how they feel is a scientific measurement, you just have to be careful on how to use that data.
    - dlkf 4y ago
      > It's not obvious to me how blood pressure affects happiness People are typically pretty unhappy following a heart attack.
      - bakuninsbart 4y ago
        How much unhappier?
      - smokey_circles 4y ago
        Citation needed
  - gmac 4y ago
    > I'd rather have a reliable measurement of quantity that I believe contributes to well-being than a direct measurement of well-being that I think is unreliable. Sometimes there's a difficult trade-off here, especially since (un)reliability isn't binary. But a heavy prioritisation of reliability over direct measurement (which seems to be your position) is probably why governments have spent decades obsessing over GDP, which is a very poor wellbeing measure for all sorts of reasons.
- 2b3a51 4y ago
  Thanks for posting your paper which I will print out and read properly! Section 3.2 and Table 1: does the 'continuous urban' category cover e.g. a fairly large park in the middle of a city? I can't see a category for 'parkland'. As a concrete example have a look at Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham [1]. It struck me that it is possible to be surrounded by green semi-natural parkland within the inner ring of a city of 1 million. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4515075,-1.9048143,14z https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4515075,-1.9048143,14z
  - gmac 4y ago
    The dataset used is the UK Land Cover Map 2000 [1]. It's at 25m resolution, and urban parkland should show up as the appropriate land cover types: grassland, deciduous forest, etc. [1] https://www.ceh.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2021-11/LCM2000%20dataset%20information.pdf https://www.ceh.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2021-11/LCM2000%20...

by dlkf 4y ago

Helmut10001 4y ago

Beyond that, to me "Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people" is the same as putting a warning sign on car batteries saying "Don't drink the battery acid": This should be entirely common sense. Why would there be no cognitive benefit, when nature is the environment humans evolved in and that sustained life for millions of years?

gmac 4y ago

Two points on this: (1) If you want to know how people feel, I’m afraid self-reports are the gold standard (2) Some other studies have large sample sizes (e.g. this one, which is based on my PhD: https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/49376/1/Mourato_Happiness_greater_natural_2013.pdf https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/49376/1/Mourato_Happiness_greater_...)

dlkf 4y ago
> If you want to know how people feel, I’m afraid self-reports are the gold standard "How people feel" can't directly be measured scientifically, but it is a function of many things, some of which can be measured reliably (weight, blood pressure, money, etc). I'd rather have a reliable measurement of quantity that I believe contributes to well-being than a direct measurement of well-being that I think is unreliable. This is brought into sharp relief when you consider the applications of this research. Suppose intervention A is know to promote subjective well being, whereas intervention B is known to promote healthy blood pressure levels. What would you rather spend money on? > Some other studies have large sample sizes This is a fair point. The 2019 Nature study also has large-n. I also like that the authors of that one write "Future studies would ideally collate as much data via non self-report measures as possible." But as far as I can tell, all the large-n studies are observational. As other commenters have pointed out, when the treatment is so general it's really hard to control for confounding factors. The study you've linked (and the 2019 Nature study) both implemented controls, all of which look reasonable. But when we find an effect, we are still left the question: "What if we just missed a major confounder? What if the cumulative impact of small confounders for which we can't control for is responsible for the signal?"
- bakuninsbart 4y ago
  It's not obvious to me how blood pressure affects happiness, or how you would even prove a link here without asking people how they feel. I also feel like it is important to point out that asking people how they feel is a scientific measurement, you just have to be careful on how to use that data.
  - dlkf 4y ago
    > It's not obvious to me how blood pressure affects happiness People are typically pretty unhappy following a heart attack.
    - bakuninsbart 4y ago
      How much unhappier?
    - smokey_circles 4y ago
      Citation needed
- gmac 4y ago
  > I'd rather have a reliable measurement of quantity that I believe contributes to well-being than a direct measurement of well-being that I think is unreliable. Sometimes there's a difficult trade-off here, especially since (un)reliability isn't binary. But a heavy prioritisation of reliability over direct measurement (which seems to be your position) is probably why governments have spent decades obsessing over GDP, which is a very poor wellbeing measure for all sorts of reasons.
2b3a51 4y ago
Thanks for posting your paper which I will print out and read properly! Section 3.2 and Table 1: does the 'continuous urban' category cover e.g. a fairly large park in the middle of a city? I can't see a category for 'parkland'. As a concrete example have a look at Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham [1]. It struck me that it is possible to be surrounded by green semi-natural parkland within the inner ring of a city of 1 million. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4515075,-1.9048143,14z https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4515075,-1.9048143,14z
- gmac 4y ago
  The dataset used is the UK Land Cover Map 2000 [1]. It's at 25m resolution, and urban parkland should show up as the appropriate land cover types: grassland, deciduous forest, etc. [1] https://www.ceh.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2021-11/LCM2000%20dataset%20information.pdf https://www.ceh.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2021-11/LCM2000%20...