photo cred: my dad
This is the quarterly links ‘n’ updates post, a selection of things I’ve been reading and doing for the past few months.
First up, a series of unfortunate events in science:
(1) WHEN WHEN PROPHECY FAILS FAILS
When Prophecy Fails is supposed to be a classic case study of cognitive dissonance: a UFO cult predicts an apocalypse, and when the world doesn’t end, they double down and start proselytizing even harder: “I swear the UFO is coming any minute!”
A new paper finds a different story in the archives of the lead author, Leon Festinger. Up to half of the attendees at cult meetings may have been undercover researchers. One of them became a leader in the cult and encouraged other members to make statements that would look good in the book. After the failed prediction, rather than doubling down, some of the cultists walked back their statements or left altogether.
Between this, the impossible numbers in the original laboratory study of cognitive dissonance, and a recent failure to replicate a basic dissonance effect, things aren’t looking great for the phenomenon. But that only makes me believe in it harder!
(2) THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT AND A LIE FOR THE TRUTH
Another classic sadly struck from the canon of behavioral/brain sciences: the neurologist Oliver Sacks appears to have greatly embellished or even invented his case studies. In a letter to his brother, Sacks described his blockbuster The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat as a book of “fairy tales [...] half-report, half-imagined, half-science, half-fable”.
This is exactly how the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Rosenhan experiment got debunked—someone started rooting around in the archives and found a bunch of damning notes. I’m confused: back in the day, why was everybody meticulously documenting their research malfeasance?
... continue reading