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The psychological research community doesn't care about their work actually working or proving something valuable nearly as much as their care about maintaining
by glesica 12y ago
The psychological research community doesn't care about their work actually working or proving something valuable nearly as much as their care about maintaining their status.
I was nodding my head and prepared to take you seriously until this sentence. Turns out you're just another HN reader angry at the academic community because you once had a lazy professor or something.
- fiatmoney 12y agoThat's a very lazy inference on your part. It's uncontroversial, even within academia, that there is a large amount of statusmongering going on that is orthogonal to "real work". It doesn't imply they don't care at all about the underlying research, but academia is an industry like any other with its own priorities and incentives, and the people who rise to the top are the sort of people who are good at sussing those out. In particular you can view IRBs and the like as a form of entry-restriction by entrenched actors that tries to keep disruptive research from competing.
- glesica 12y agoThe fact that there is a great deal of statusmongering says nothing about the relative importance of the "real work" and "statusmongering" in the eyes of people involved. So no, it isn't a lazy inference, the original comment made a mean-spirited and totally unsubstantiated claim and I pointed that out.
- RA_Fisher 12y agoThe field receives a pretty scathing review in The Cult of Statistical Significance. The summaries offered there are pretty damning: http://www.amazon.com/The-Cult-Statistical-Significance-Economics/dp/0472050079 http://www.amazon.com/The-Cult-Statistical-Significance-Econ...