When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy
nytimes.com

This is the same Susan Fiske who called people who pointed out statistical errors in psychology papers "methodological terrorists". http://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/21/what-has-happened-down-he... The apple does not fall far from the tree.

(Also, as a side note, I'd fully expect that CS is at least as vulnerable to the same thing. McSherry et al.'s COST work is a good example of something that seems far worse than p-hacking: instead of having a clearly defined hypothesis and publishing the 1-in-20 papers that falsely state it's true, as in other fields, there's nothing clearly defined in scalable systems and 20 out of 20 people who build something excessively complicated can get a paper out of it.)

She is criticizing "unfiltered trash-talk [on social media]... [and] online vigilantes [who] are attacking individuals, their research programs, and their careers".

It's the same tension the article is referring to, between civility and public discourse. On one hand, you'd really like an open dialog about the quality of evidence presented. On the other hand, there's a real price to be paid when people are too worried about public humiliation to risk doing science on certain questions or working with certain people.

As the quote from Jay Van Bavel put it, "It's become like politics — we’ve created two camps of people who shouldn’t be in two camps in the first place"

This point resonated with me even though I'm on your side of those politics. What effect would it have on the OSS community if any even slightly bad code you write could end up in a hit piece published by The Atlantic, and if fact you witnessed people on Facebook saying your colleague, who maybe did write some kinda bad code that one time but is on the whole competent, is a charlatan who doesn't deserve the title of "programmer"?

http://andrewgelman.com/2017/10/18/beyond-power-pose-using-r...

I thought that Gelman wasn't presented in the best of light, especially his awkward quotes about not wanting to engage in "interpersonal conflict". But he called the piece "excellent and fair to all sides" and was pretty gracious in response to Cuddy's criticisms and how the NYT portrayed him. I honestly wasn't a huge fan of the article but re-reading it after a bit of sleep, and knowing that Gelman thought it was strong, I appreciated the issues it brought up. Certainly has to be one of the longest stories about p-hacking/p-curves in mainstream media.

I sympathize with Cuddy and have no doubt that among the legit attention that Gelman and other critics have directed toward her, she's faced hatemail sparked by dumb sexism, which makes it easier to tar the legitimate criticism as being sexist.

I do think Cuddy needs to face legitimate criticism. She may not have been a malicious fraudster, but ignoring criticism after a long time is not much different than actively being deceptive. I also can believe that she faces hostile criticism that isn't equally distributed among all the other researchers who used weak, but previously acceptable standards. And I don't think sexism can be dismissed outright, if people find it safer to talk shit to a woman compared to a man.

What I wish the story had more of was how scientific criticism is done outside of Gelman's blog. Gelman is the main scientist/research I follow on the topic. Apparently some see his snarky critique as toxic, and Gelman says he is intending to reevaluate the way he writes about things so that his point doesn't get lost in cheap jokes. How do other blogs do it? I'm somewhat sympathetic to Gelman because I perceive that there is significant institutional resistance (and few incentives) to re-examine and correct a peer review study, and being harsh/edgy/rude and beating the drum over time might be the only way to get scientists to care? But that doesn't mean his critique can't be refined for the benefit of his mission.