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That's fair, but I found this portion of Gladwell's response interesting: > Chabris does not like this study. He thinks it involved too few subjects and that i

by md224 13y ago

That's fair, but I found this portion of Gladwell's response interesting: > Chabris does not like this study. He thinks it involved too few subjects and that its findings were not replicated by a subsequent study. Alter and Oppenheimer disagree. They say that the version of desirable difficulty that they explore has been confirmed on numerous other occasions. This is the kind of intramural argument about the nature and value of evidence that social scientists have all the time. So who am I supposed to trust here? Who has the higher epistemic ground, Chabris or Alter & Oppenheimer? The problem is that I don't know what the scientific consensus is on the validity of that study. I'm not sure whose side I should be taking. Are Alter & Oppenheimer bad scientists trying to pass off a poor study as robust scholarship? Or is there a valid difference of opinion here?

snowwrestler 13y ago
This piece was written by Gladwell in response to Chabris. Between the two of them, Chabris, as a PhD holder and tenured professor, clearly has the higher ground when it comes to understanding the science in question. Yes, Gladwell mentions Alter and Oppenheimer in his writing, but remember that the knock against Gladwell is that he selectively brandishes science when it suits his narrative. He's just doing that again here. The fundamental complaint from Chabris is that Gladwell did not even acknowledge the existence of any controversy on this subject in his book. He simply picked the study he liked best and wrote about it as if it were fact.
abalone 13y ago
It's not uncommon for researchers to dispute follow-up studies that fail to reproduce their results. Their reputations are at stake, if it points to methodological errors (which seems to be the case here). The problem here is Gladwell didn't even hint that there is significant doubt about the methodology of study he cited. Note his dismissive term for it: a "intramural argument". Chabris just "doesn't like" the study, as if it's a shirt in a color that doesn't suit him. These are not equivalent things. It's not just a difference of opinion or who tells a better story or who has more letters after their name. What matters is the science behind it, and Gladwell is intentionally perverting it in the service of a better story. That's a huge disservice to the public when it comes to popularizing science.
bambax 13y ago
> Alter and Oppenheimer disagree But they're not the ones who can decide whether subsequent studies replicated their findings or not! It's up to the scientific community as a whole to decide. The problem is, no one is really interested in replicating earlier findings, and even less in invalidating them. What people want is produce new and interesting (unexpected, curious) results that gets the authors noticed. Many such studies never get replicated (see the famous one about how talking to students about old age makes them walk slower), and nobody cares. So this part of Gladwell's response is even more disingenuous than the rest.

by md224 13y ago

snowwrestler 13y ago

This piece was written by Gladwell in response to Chabris. Between the two of them, Chabris, as a PhD holder and tenured professor, clearly has the higher ground when it comes to understanding the science in question. Yes, Gladwell mentions Alter and Oppenheimer in his writing, but remember that the knock against Gladwell is that he selectively brandishes science when it suits his narrative. He's just doing that again here. The fundamental complaint from Chabris is that Gladwell did not even acknowledge the existence of any controversy on this subject in his book. He simply picked the study he liked best and wrote about it as if it were fact.

abalone 13y ago

It's not uncommon for researchers to dispute follow-up studies that fail to reproduce their results. Their reputations are at stake, if it points to methodological errors (which seems to be the case here). The problem here is Gladwell didn't even hint that there is significant doubt about the methodology of study he cited. Note his dismissive term for it: a "intramural argument". Chabris just "doesn't like" the study, as if it's a shirt in a color that doesn't suit him. These are not equivalent things. It's not just a difference of opinion or who tells a better story or who has more letters after their name. What matters is the science behind it, and Gladwell is intentionally perverting it in the service of a better story. That's a huge disservice to the public when it comes to popularizing science.

bambax 13y ago

> Alter and Oppenheimer disagree But they're not the ones who can decide whether subsequent studies replicated their findings or not! It's up to the scientific community as a whole to decide. The problem is, no one is really interested in replicating earlier findings, and even less in invalidating them. What people want is produce new and interesting (unexpected, curious) results that gets the authors noticed. Many such studies never get replicated (see the famous one about how talking to students about old age makes them walk slower), and nobody cares. So this part of Gladwell's response is even more disingenuous than the rest.