5 ms·

A quote: "There seems to be a simple way to instantly increase a person’s level of general knowledge. Psychologists ..." Ahh. Psychologists. Expectations calib

by lutusp 13y ago

A quote: "There seems to be a simple way to instantly increase a person’s level of general knowledge. Psychologists ..." Ahh. Psychologists. Expectations calibrated. "Expecting to know the answers made people more likely to get the answers right." Ah, yes -- that conclusion should be easy to rigorously quantify, explain in neuroscientific terms, turn into a general theory, and replicate before anyone assumes we're doing actual science. But no one will shape a theory, there will be no replications, and this study, like 99% of psychology studies, will disappear without a trace, only to be inadvertently repeated years from now by someone who will arrive at the opposite conclusion.

AdrianRossouw 13y ago
you dare question a website with 'scientific' in the URL? I like your moxie. I recall reading something posted recently about how the way the grants in social sciences is set up ensures that you get a whole lot of papers that have a catchy 'truthy' hook to them, which will then get disseminated by the mainstream media and quickly forgotten. It basically turned the fields into little more than generators of soundbites.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > you dare question a website with 'scientific' in the URL? I like your moxie. Yep, I had a lot of nerve doing that. :) A while ago, in an article I noted that Wikipedia defined neuroscience as "the scientific study of the brain and nervous system", while psychology was defined as "the study of the mind, partly through the study of behavior." Within hours of my article's appearance someone inserted the word "scientific" into psychology's definition. Solved that problem. > I recall reading something posted recently about how the way the grants in social sciences is set up ensures that you get a whole lot of papers that have a catchy 'truthy' hook to them, which will then get disseminated by the mainstream media and quickly forgotten. Yes, even to the extent that two studies arrive at opposite conclusions but don't notice each other (and no one points out the contradiction). My favorite example of overlooked contradictions are two current, well-regarded psychological theories -- Grit and Asperger Syndrome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait) : "Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait, based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term goal or endstate coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective." So according to the Grit contingent, focusing on a few activities, or just one, is a "good thing", and typical of successful people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome : "Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's syndrome or Asperger disorder, is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests." So according to the Asperger contingent, focusing on a few activities, or just one, is a mental illness. How can this happen? The answer is that there's no central defining theory in psychology, so people are free to draw conclusions that don't need to be compared to tested, defining principles like relativity or evolution. > It basically turned the fields into little more than generators of soundbites. Well put. :)
  - vidarh 13y ago
    > So according to the Asperger contingent, focusing on a few activities, or just one, is a mental illness. You chose to ignore the requirement of "significant difficulties in social interaction". These are also not the only diagnostic criteria. When you make comments like this, it becomes very hard to take your other criticisms of psychology seriously, as it raises the question as to what else you're ignoring/leaving out or unaware of. The entire point of a syndrome is that it is a grouping based on the presence of a certain set of required symptoms combined by some threshold of additional symptoms, rather than a clearly identifiable underlying cause. Many individual symptoms of a syndrome can be perfectly normal on their own or even strong desirable at certain degrees, but become substantial problems for the individuals involved when combined together, or when the trait is too intense. There's in other words no contradiction between the positive treatment of grit vs. the description of Asperger syndrome as a disorder.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      >> So according to the Asperger contingent, focusing on a few activities, or just one, is a mental illness. > You chose to ignore the requirement of "significant difficulties in social interaction". These are also not the only diagnostic criteria. But much field experience shows that the absence of the full symptom set doesn't prevent the diagnosis, therefore the comparison is valid. During its tenure as a serious syndrome Asperger's diagnoses went completely out of control, due to ambiguous diagnostic criteria and (my point) how much like normal behavior the symptoms are. Allen Frances, the editor of DSM-IV (the edition that introduced Asperger's), now thinks the inclusion of Asperger's was a mistake that led to what he now describes as a "phony epidemic" of diagnoses. Over the protests of many psychologists, Asperger's has been removed from the new DSM. > There's in other words no contradiction between the positive treatment of grit vs. the description of Asperger syndrome as a disorder. False. The contradiction is obvious -- they both describe the same behavior. And when it was pointed out that many very successful people exhibited Asperger's symptoms (or "Grit" symptoms, depending on one's outlook), psychologists responded by labeling those people mentally ill. As a result, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, and Bill Gates have been labeled mentally ill. The evidence? They accomplished something noteworthy by focusing their attention on a few activities, or just one. But you're missing the point, which is that psychology proceeds based on descriptions, not explanations. Asperger's is a description without an explanation. "Grit" is a description without an explanation. Science requires explanations. This is why the DSM, psychiatry and psychology's central authority, is in the process of being abandoned as unscientific. > There's in other words no contradiction between the positive treatment of grit vs. the description of Asperger syndrome as a disorder. That's true, and it shows what's wrong with psychology -- its superficiality and willingness to accept mere descriptions in lieu of explanations.
nixy 13y ago
> "Expecting to know the answers made people more likely to get the answers right." Well, yes, if someone expects you to know the answer it seems pretty straight forward that you would be more inclined to make a guess rather than saying "I don't know." All of us who ever watched a quiz show on TV know that people who guess an answer instead of passing will sometimes get it right. More often than people who pass, actually.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >Well, yes, if someone expects you to know the answer it seems pretty straight forward that you would be more inclined to make a guess rather than saying "I don't know." And what makes you think that they didn't account for the "I don't knows"? It generally surprises me how, from reading an 100 high mile description of an article, some commenters always assume (without any evidence) that the results are due to some extremely naive methodological mistake.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    But did they account for the "I don't know so I'll just randomly pick something" vs the "I should know this, so I'll reason about it" groups? If you're teaching a subject to someone, you will often come across situations where what is lacking is not knowledge, but confidence or willingness to apply the knowledge. I see that often in my son, and I've seen that at work: People say they don't know, or make a crap guess even in situations where I know that they know the actual answer. Often some prodding or "confidence boosting" will make them produce the real answer very quickly, and often subsequent answers appears to be forthcoming a lot quicker. It'd be very surprising to me if you can't systematically improve peoples response by increasing their confidence in their ability to answer. The more interesting question to me is by how much, and with how little encouragement.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > ... some commenters always assume (without any evidence) that the results are due to some extremely naive methodological mistake. Since the article doesn't presume to explain its results, the presence or absence of mistakes is moot. Science isn't about descriptions -- that's metrology. The threshold of science is crossed when someone dares to offer a testable, falsifiable explanation. But in psychology, that rarely happens, and psychology has no central defining theories (explanations) such as are found in scientific fields.
zipdog 13y ago
It would be interesting to know what the questions were (or even what genre) - to get a better sense of the significance of getting them right. Unfortunately there is no indication in this article, or the abstract of the paper, and the journal article itself requires a subscription.
pradocchia 13y ago
explain in neuroscientific terms Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? The article draws attention to a phenomenon that isn't predicted by current theory. Before a predictive theory has been developed, there is even some censorship or bias risk in using neuroscientific terms.
- AdrianRossouw 13y ago
  his point is that these studies never seem to get to that point. they never even seem get to the point of forming a predictive theory. 'seem' is the operative word here.
- lutusp 13y ago
  >> explain in neuroscientific terms > Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? Not in science. In science, the explanation is both the cart and the horse. No explanation, no science. Einstein didn't win a Nobel Prize for noting that electrons are emitted by a metal surface, he won for explaining why they are emitted. Had Einstein been a psychologist, publishing the fact that electrons are emitted (for simply describing) would have been enough. > The article draws attention to a phenomenon that isn't predicted by current theory. That's uncontroversial, since there are no theories in psychology, only descriptions. This, by the way, is why the director of the NIMH recently decided to abandon the DSM, to so-called "bible" of psychiatry and psychology, on the ground that it only contains descriptions and therefore has no scientific value (the DSM will remain as a diagnostic guide): http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... Quote: "... symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment ... Patients with mental disorders deserve better." > Before a predictive theory has been developed, there is even some censorship or bias risk in using neuroscientific terms. I think there's little risk in asking "Where's the science?"
  - pradocchia 13y ago
    In science, the explanation is both the cart and the horse. I'm sorry, but no. Observation comes first, then hypotheses, then prediction, then verification. Explanations go from proposed to confirmed, but they are certainly not the genesis of scientific knowledge. The phenomenon itself must come first, otherwise all you have is the fitting of facts to theory. So, we have observations w/out a coherent, compelling, or generally agreed-to theory. If and when a successful theory is developed, it will predict observations to date and predict more effects not yet observed or observed and ignored. Well, that sounds like a pretty exciting field of science, actually.
coldtea 13y ago
>Ahh. Psychologists. Expectations calibrated. A, a positivist reductionist. Expectations on intellectual sophistication and ability to comprehend the world beyond simplistic models calibrated.
- lutusp 13y ago
  >> Ahh. Psychologists. Expectations calibrated. > A, a positivist reductionist. With respect to psychology, given its history, the burden isn't on me to avoid faulty generalizations, it's on psychology to overcome the weight of its past. > Expectations on intellectual sophistication and ability to comprehend the world beyond simplistic models calibrated. At a time when the director of the NIMH has decided to abandon the DSM on the ground that it's not scientific enough to take seriously? http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... Quote: "The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity ... Patients with mental disorders deserve better." What appears to be a simplistic generalization is, in this case, the result of much reflection and analysis, and a reluctant but legitimate conclusion.
- jasonkolb 13y ago
  I think the phrase you're looking for is "ad hominem".
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - coldtea 13y ago
    I don't think "ad scientum field" is any better than an "ad hominem". Not to mention that mine was not an ad hominem in the first place. I attacked an epistemology/methodology "positivism/reductionism" that he exhibited (as far as I can tell), not his person.
floobynewb 13y ago
This is a real thing. There appear to be intimate connections between the mind and the body, in both directions. Levels higher up the hierarchy of dynamical systems within an organism appear to direct the function of lower systems. It's feedback loops all the way down.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > There appear to be intimate connections between the mind and the body, in both directions. That may be true, but only one of those can be studied scientifically.
  - floobynewb 13y ago
    I'm not sure I follow. There's nothing mystical about the idea. The hypothesis is testable as shown by the research. The data currently looks to support it. I'm not sure why you are saying it is unscientific. I grant you there may be alternative explanations for the data, but it is often true that science has been lead astray by incorrect framing of the question, but it's still science...
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > I'm not sure I follow. The mind is not -- cannot be -- a source of empirical evidence. Science requires empirical evidence. > The hypothesis is testable as shown by the research. What research is that? Which scientific theory did the research either shape, or test, or potentially falsify? > I'm not sure why you are saying it is unscientific. The article describes, it doesn't explain. Science requires explanations, explanations that can be generalized into principles, tested, and potentially falsified. > I grant you there may be alternative explanations for the data ... But the data aren't explained, they're described. Test subjects were more likely to answer correctly if they received positive encouragement. That's a description. No one has tried to explain or generalize that description, turn it into something falsifiable. > it is often true that science has been lead astray by incorrect framing of the question, Absolutely true. > but it's still science... Absolutely false.
guelo 13y ago
The article includes a bunch of references to placebo effect research by neuroscientists.

by lutusp 13y ago

AdrianRossouw 13y ago

you dare question a website with 'scientific' in the URL? I like your moxie. I recall reading something posted recently about how the way the grants in social sciences is set up ensures that you get a whole lot of papers that have a catchy 'truthy' hook to them, which will then get disseminated by the mainstream media and quickly forgotten. It basically turned the fields into little more than generators of soundbites.

lutusp 13y ago
> you dare question a website with 'scientific' in the URL? I like your moxie. Yep, I had a lot of nerve doing that. :) A while ago, in an article I noted that Wikipedia defined neuroscience as "the scientific study of the brain and nervous system", while psychology was defined as "the study of the mind, partly through the study of behavior." Within hours of my article's appearance someone inserted the word "scientific" into psychology's definition. Solved that problem. > I recall reading something posted recently about how the way the grants in social sciences is set up ensures that you get a whole lot of papers that have a catchy 'truthy' hook to them, which will then get disseminated by the mainstream media and quickly forgotten. Yes, even to the extent that two studies arrive at opposite conclusions but don't notice each other (and no one points out the contradiction). My favorite example of overlooked contradictions are two current, well-regarded psychological theories -- Grit and Asperger Syndrome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait) : "Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait, based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term goal or endstate coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective." So according to the Grit contingent, focusing on a few activities, or just one, is a "good thing", and typical of successful people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome : "Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's syndrome or Asperger disorder, is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests." So according to the Asperger contingent, focusing on a few activities, or just one, is a mental illness. How can this happen? The answer is that there's no central defining theory in psychology, so people are free to draw conclusions that don't need to be compared to tested, defining principles like relativity or evolution. > It basically turned the fields into little more than generators of soundbites. Well put. :)
- vidarh 13y ago
  > So according to the Asperger contingent, focusing on a few activities, or just one, is a mental illness. You chose to ignore the requirement of "significant difficulties in social interaction". These are also not the only diagnostic criteria. When you make comments like this, it becomes very hard to take your other criticisms of psychology seriously, as it raises the question as to what else you're ignoring/leaving out or unaware of. The entire point of a syndrome is that it is a grouping based on the presence of a certain set of required symptoms combined by some threshold of additional symptoms, rather than a clearly identifiable underlying cause. Many individual symptoms of a syndrome can be perfectly normal on their own or even strong desirable at certain degrees, but become substantial problems for the individuals involved when combined together, or when the trait is too intense. There's in other words no contradiction between the positive treatment of grit vs. the description of Asperger syndrome as a disorder.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    >> So according to the Asperger contingent, focusing on a few activities, or just one, is a mental illness. > You chose to ignore the requirement of "significant difficulties in social interaction". These are also not the only diagnostic criteria. But much field experience shows that the absence of the full symptom set doesn't prevent the diagnosis, therefore the comparison is valid. During its tenure as a serious syndrome Asperger's diagnoses went completely out of control, due to ambiguous diagnostic criteria and (my point) how much like normal behavior the symptoms are. Allen Frances, the editor of DSM-IV (the edition that introduced Asperger's), now thinks the inclusion of Asperger's was a mistake that led to what he now describes as a "phony epidemic" of diagnoses. Over the protests of many psychologists, Asperger's has been removed from the new DSM. > There's in other words no contradiction between the positive treatment of grit vs. the description of Asperger syndrome as a disorder. False. The contradiction is obvious -- they both describe the same behavior. And when it was pointed out that many very successful people exhibited Asperger's symptoms (or "Grit" symptoms, depending on one's outlook), psychologists responded by labeling those people mentally ill. As a result, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, and Bill Gates have been labeled mentally ill. The evidence? They accomplished something noteworthy by focusing their attention on a few activities, or just one. But you're missing the point, which is that psychology proceeds based on descriptions, not explanations. Asperger's is a description without an explanation. "Grit" is a description without an explanation. Science requires explanations. This is why the DSM, psychiatry and psychology's central authority, is in the process of being abandoned as unscientific. > There's in other words no contradiction between the positive treatment of grit vs. the description of Asperger syndrome as a disorder. That's true, and it shows what's wrong with psychology -- its superficiality and willingness to accept mere descriptions in lieu of explanations.

nixy 13y ago

> "Expecting to know the answers made people more likely to get the answers right." Well, yes, if someone expects you to know the answer it seems pretty straight forward that you would be more inclined to make a guess rather than saying "I don't know." All of us who ever watched a quiz show on TV know that people who guess an answer instead of passing will sometimes get it right. More often than people who pass, actually.

coldtea 13y ago
>Well, yes, if someone expects you to know the answer it seems pretty straight forward that you would be more inclined to make a guess rather than saying "I don't know." And what makes you think that they didn't account for the "I don't knows"? It generally surprises me how, from reading an 100 high mile description of an article, some commenters always assume (without any evidence) that the results are due to some extremely naive methodological mistake.
- vidarh 13y ago
  But did they account for the "I don't know so I'll just randomly pick something" vs the "I should know this, so I'll reason about it" groups? If you're teaching a subject to someone, you will often come across situations where what is lacking is not knowledge, but confidence or willingness to apply the knowledge. I see that often in my son, and I've seen that at work: People say they don't know, or make a crap guess even in situations where I know that they know the actual answer. Often some prodding or "confidence boosting" will make them produce the real answer very quickly, and often subsequent answers appears to be forthcoming a lot quicker. It'd be very surprising to me if you can't systematically improve peoples response by increasing their confidence in their ability to answer. The more interesting question to me is by how much, and with how little encouragement.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > ... some commenters always assume (without any evidence) that the results are due to some extremely naive methodological mistake. Since the article doesn't presume to explain its results, the presence or absence of mistakes is moot. Science isn't about descriptions -- that's metrology. The threshold of science is crossed when someone dares to offer a testable, falsifiable explanation. But in psychology, that rarely happens, and psychology has no central defining theories (explanations) such as are found in scientific fields.

zipdog 13y ago

It would be interesting to know what the questions were (or even what genre) - to get a better sense of the significance of getting them right. Unfortunately there is no indication in this article, or the abstract of the paper, and the journal article itself requires a subscription.

pradocchia 13y ago

explain in neuroscientific terms Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? The article draws attention to a phenomenon that isn't predicted by current theory. Before a predictive theory has been developed, there is even some censorship or bias risk in using neuroscientific terms.

AdrianRossouw 13y ago
his point is that these studies never seem to get to that point. they never even seem get to the point of forming a predictive theory. 'seem' is the operative word here.
lutusp 13y ago
>> explain in neuroscientific terms > Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? Not in science. In science, the explanation is both the cart and the horse. No explanation, no science. Einstein didn't win a Nobel Prize for noting that electrons are emitted by a metal surface, he won for explaining why they are emitted. Had Einstein been a psychologist, publishing the fact that electrons are emitted (for simply describing) would have been enough. > The article draws attention to a phenomenon that isn't predicted by current theory. That's uncontroversial, since there are no theories in psychology, only descriptions. This, by the way, is why the director of the NIMH recently decided to abandon the DSM, to so-called "bible" of psychiatry and psychology, on the ground that it only contains descriptions and therefore has no scientific value (the DSM will remain as a diagnostic guide): http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... Quote: "... symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment ... Patients with mental disorders deserve better." > Before a predictive theory has been developed, there is even some censorship or bias risk in using neuroscientific terms. I think there's little risk in asking "Where's the science?"
- pradocchia 13y ago
  In science, the explanation is both the cart and the horse. I'm sorry, but no. Observation comes first, then hypotheses, then prediction, then verification. Explanations go from proposed to confirmed, but they are certainly not the genesis of scientific knowledge. The phenomenon itself must come first, otherwise all you have is the fitting of facts to theory. So, we have observations w/out a coherent, compelling, or generally agreed-to theory. If and when a successful theory is developed, it will predict observations to date and predict more effects not yet observed or observed and ignored. Well, that sounds like a pretty exciting field of science, actually.

coldtea 13y ago

>Ahh. Psychologists. Expectations calibrated. A, a positivist reductionist. Expectations on intellectual sophistication and ability to comprehend the world beyond simplistic models calibrated.

lutusp 13y ago
>> Ahh. Psychologists. Expectations calibrated. > A, a positivist reductionist. With respect to psychology, given its history, the burden isn't on me to avoid faulty generalizations, it's on psychology to overcome the weight of its past. > Expectations on intellectual sophistication and ability to comprehend the world beyond simplistic models calibrated. At a time when the director of the NIMH has decided to abandon the DSM on the ground that it's not scientific enough to take seriously? http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... Quote: "The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity ... Patients with mental disorders deserve better." What appears to be a simplistic generalization is, in this case, the result of much reflection and analysis, and a reluctant but legitimate conclusion.
jasonkolb 13y ago
I think the phrase you're looking for is "ad hominem".
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 13y ago
  I don't think "ad scientum field" is any better than an "ad hominem". Not to mention that mine was not an ad hominem in the first place. I attacked an epistemology/methodology "positivism/reductionism" that he exhibited (as far as I can tell), not his person.

floobynewb 13y ago

This is a real thing. There appear to be intimate connections between the mind and the body, in both directions. Levels higher up the hierarchy of dynamical systems within an organism appear to direct the function of lower systems. It's feedback loops all the way down.

lutusp 13y ago
> There appear to be intimate connections between the mind and the body, in both directions. That may be true, but only one of those can be studied scientifically.
- floobynewb 13y ago
  I'm not sure I follow. There's nothing mystical about the idea. The hypothesis is testable as shown by the research. The data currently looks to support it. I'm not sure why you are saying it is unscientific. I grant you there may be alternative explanations for the data, but it is often true that science has been lead astray by incorrect framing of the question, but it's still science...
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > I'm not sure I follow. The mind is not -- cannot be -- a source of empirical evidence. Science requires empirical evidence. > The hypothesis is testable as shown by the research. What research is that? Which scientific theory did the research either shape, or test, or potentially falsify? > I'm not sure why you are saying it is unscientific. The article describes, it doesn't explain. Science requires explanations, explanations that can be generalized into principles, tested, and potentially falsified. > I grant you there may be alternative explanations for the data ... But the data aren't explained, they're described. Test subjects were more likely to answer correctly if they received positive encouragement. That's a description. No one has tried to explain or generalize that description, turn it into something falsifiable. > it is often true that science has been lead astray by incorrect framing of the question, Absolutely true. > but it's still science... Absolutely false.

guelo 13y ago

The article includes a bunch of references to placebo effect research by neuroscientists.