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Richard Feynman on reproducibility in science: "When I was at Cornell, I often talked to the people in the psychology department. One of the students told me s

Richard Feynman on reproducibility in science: "When I was at Cornell, I often talked to the people in the psychology department. One of the students told me she wanted to do an experiment that went something like this--it had been found by others that under certain circumstances, X, rats did something, A. She was curious as to whether, if she changed the circumstances to Y, they would still do A. So her proposal was to do the experiment under circumstances Y and see if they still did A. I explained to her that it was necessary first to repeat in her laboratory the experiment of the other person--to do it under condition X to see if she could also get result A, and then change to Y and see if A changed. Then she would know that the real difference was the thing she thought she had under control. She was very delighted with this new idea, and went to her professor. And his reply was, no, you cannot do that, because the experiment has already been done and you would be wasting time. This was in about 1947 or so, and it seems to have been the general policy then to not try to repeat psychological experiments, but only to change the conditions and see what happens." (from "Cargo Cult Science")

nerdfiles 14y ago
http://webjournal.nerdfiles.net/2012/04/03/this/ http://webjournal.nerdfiles.net/2012/04/03/this/ Notice the date. That was the date. What is interesting is that they are engaging in an activity that wishes to avoid reproducibility. They allow "facts" and "ideas" to swap. Articles like http://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/5828 http://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/5828 exist. There's the Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. All that theorizing needs to record facts. To do that, we need to be able to follow what the hell is going on without blatant wankery like with Anthony Crick or early John Searle's "foot in the mind" rubbish or Dennett's everything's-a-scientist metaphysics. Philosophers got the descriptivist bug with Experimental Philosophy. Linguistics has always been largely descriptivist. Now psychology is to do the same. Who cares that they may have false theories, let's see if they've described anything. As Fraiser obviously demonstrates, psychologists have had their Golden Age. Psychology needs management.

nerdfiles 14y ago

http://webjournal.nerdfiles.net/2012/04/03/this/ http://webjournal.nerdfiles.net/2012/04/03/this/ Notice the date. That was the date. What is interesting is that they are engaging in an activity that wishes to avoid reproducibility. They allow "facts" and "ideas" to swap. Articles like http://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/5828 http://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/5828 exist. There's the Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. All that theorizing needs to record facts. To do that, we need to be able to follow what the hell is going on without blatant wankery like with Anthony Crick or early John Searle's "foot in the mind" rubbish or Dennett's everything's-a-scientist metaphysics. Philosophers got the descriptivist bug with Experimental Philosophy. Linguistics has always been largely descriptivist. Now psychology is to do the same. Who cares that they may have false theories, let's see if they've described anything. As Fraiser obviously demonstrates, psychologists have had their Golden Age. Psychology needs management.