I saw in a recent issue of the Times Literary Supplement that you have been critical of the “chambermaid” study which purported to show that people were losing weight without changing their diet or exercise. I agree that this study did not show what it claimed.
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
Summary There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research.
Related work | Data Counterfactuals
Adjacent research areas and starting papers, curated in Semble and synced into the site.
Papers and peer reviews with evidence of ChatGPT writing
Retraction Watch readers have likely heard about papers showing evidence that they were written by ChatGPT, including one that went viral. We and others have reported on the phenomenon. Here’…
Books
I did recently buy the ARM book and I am finishing to read it from cover to cover. It is the first time I find a book with an easy to follow, consistent and extremely didactic material for regression analyses. If you have come to this blog looking for information on the book I highly recommend it.
What happened to Science Goodreads and how do we rebuild it? A 65 million dollar question (at least) - CAIROS Blog
The story of the rise and fall of Mendeley
The marketplace of rationalizations
Recent work in economics has rediscovered the importance of belief-based utility for understanding human behaviour. Belief ‘choice’ is subject to an important constraint, however: people can only bring themselves to believe things for which they can find rationalizations. When preferences for similar beliefs are widespread, this constraint generates rationalization markets, social structures in which agents compete to produce rationalizations in exchange for money and social rewards. I explore the nature of such markets, I draw on political media to illustrate their characteristics and behaviour, and I highlight their implications for understanding motivated cognition and misinformation.
Things You Lose - The Forge Literary Magazine
Things You Lose, a short fiction by Kelli Dianne Rule
Debunking every Anti Transgender Argument Part 1: Trans Women in Women's Sport
The revolt of the reader | The Observation Deck
Reading is important to me. While I’m not a quick reader nor an especially voracious one, I have found that long-form reading has had a profound influence on me over my life. And because reading is important to me, writing is too: writing not only allows us to convey our ideas, but the very act forces us to test and distill them — at once making our ideas more robust while providing the vehicle by which to share them.
What Theory is Not, Theorizing Is
The Physics and Metaphysics of Social Powers: Bridging Cognitive Processing and Social Dynamics, a New Perspective on Power through Active Inference
Public Body Vulnerabilities
From the Met Office to the UK Health Security Agency to the Office for National Statistics, the UK relies on independent expert bodies to generate evidence, regulate complex industries, and hold government to account. This reference guide maps how 44 of those bodies are constituted and how their independence could be eroded by a determined government.
Social Capital - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Atmosphere
The problem Atproto is solving
How does AI impact skill formation?
Two days ago, the Anthropic Fellows program released a paper called How AI Impacts Skill Formation. Like other papers on AI before it, this one is being treated as proof that AI makes you slower and dumber. Does it prove that?
Social research
Social research is research conducted by social scientists following a systematic plan. Social research methodologies can be classified as quantitative and qualitative.[1]