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"Buried in bullshit": on problems with psychology (mentions refusal to give Coyne PACE Trial data)

Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567
"Buried in bullshit" (May 2016).

From magazine of British Psychological Society

On problems with research and the knowledge base in Psychology and what can be done to improve things.

https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-29/may-2016/buried-bullshit

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I found it interesting enough as somebody who reads quite a lot of psychological papers (mainly on ME/CFS) but it only touches on a lot of the issues.
 
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Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567
The task of replication is made tougher because researchers control what information reviewers get exposed to, and journal editors then shape what information readers have access to. If readers want further information, they usually have to request it from the researchers and they, their institution or the publishing journal may place limits on what is shared. One consequence of this is that other researchers are considerably hampered in their ability to attempt replication or extension of the original findings. James Coyne blogged last year (http://tinyurl.com/hjohyp6) about unsuccessful freedom of information requests to prompt the release of data to allow independent re-analysis of a study that was published in an outlet that explicitly promises such a possibility.

Pity you have to follow the link to see they are talking about the PACE Trial.
 
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JaimeS

Senior Member
Messages
3,408
Location
Silicon Valley, CA
Same journal, really cool:

https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-28/march-2015/words-and-sorcery

Back in 1971 Stanislav Andreski’s Social Sciences as Sorcery slammed academics for their inability to write clearly. There was, he argued, an ‘abundance of pompous bluff and paucity of new ideas’, a use of ‘obfuscating jargon’ to conceal a lack of anything to say. This was, Andreski argued, another reflection of modern society’s ‘advanced stage of cretinization’.

Fast forward to 2013 and social psychologist Michael Billig’s superb Learn to Write Badly: How to Succeed in the Social Sciences. Billig, while clearly a fan of Andreski’s ‘gloriously ill-tempered stuff’, would recoil at his use of ‘cretinization’. ‘Here, then, is the centre of my argument’, Billig writes. ‘The big concepts which many social scientists are using – the ifications and the izations – are poorly equipped for describing what people do. By rolling out the big nouns, social scientists can avoid describing people and their actions. They can write in highly unpopulated ways, creating fictional worlds in which their theoretical things, rather than actual people, appear as major actors.’

None of us want to live in that fictional world: a land of bluff and sorcery, of ivory towers, where maps of misunderstanding leave vast wastelands marked only ‘Here be dragons’. Or do we?
 

sarah darwins

Senior Member
Messages
2,508
Location
Cornwall, UK
Same journal, really cool:

https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-28/march-2015/words-and-sorcery

"The big concepts which many social scientists are using – the ifications and the izations – are poorly equipped for describing what people do. By rolling out the big nouns, social scientists can avoid describing people and their actions. They can write in highly unpopulated ways, creating fictional worlds in which their theoretical things, rather than actual people, appear as major actors."

Wow. Yes.
 

JaimeS

Senior Member
Messages
3,408
Location
Silicon Valley, CA
I think one of Lipkin and Hornig's best attributes in their landmark cytokines paper was how easy it was to understand. Apart from the science language as necessary, it was quite clear what they were talking about and what they believed their work had shown.

If you keep it all perfectly vague, you never have to be held to anything. If you're clear, it shows confidence in the work, that your work is open to refutation.