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> Students were asked a series of brain teaser questions. One group of students was told that the questions were invented at their university; the other group
by tripe 17y ago
> Students were asked a series of brain teaser questions. One group of students was told that the questions were invented at their university; the other group was told they were invented in a far away university. Thinking that the test came from far away somehow raised the creativity of the subjects. They answered more questions correctly.
Sheer tripe. Out of two groups, one is going to do better. If the first group had just happened to do better, we'd be reading an article about how thinking something is "close" makes it more "concrete" and raises your creativity, because it's easier to think of things that are tangible -- or whatever other Just-So story they'd invent. The second group didn't have its creativity "raised"; it just happened to be the group that won the coin flip.
- xsmasher 17y agoAre you saying the difference between the performance of the two groups wasn't statistically significant, or that their methodology is flawed, or that their results were not reproduced in other studies? It's possible that their theory is bullshit, but it seems like you're discounting the data it is based on without cause.
- nopassrecover 17y agoHe is saying that in one single test of two groups, one of the teams has to win. Deciding that they won because of 'x' after the fact is not science.
- philh 17y agoThey decided to see if X would help one team win before they collected results.
- nopassrecover 17y agoOh okay I missed that. I still question the statistical significance of a single experiment. Still interesting though.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- roundsquare 17y agoI usually assume that SciAm does a decent job of making sure they print credible articles. So I would generally assume that the experimental design was good.