When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy • Hacker News Board

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#21

Post by lliamander » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 6:41 PM UTC

throwawayjava wrote: post #12

lovich wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that not the case anyway? I admit I have no experience contributing but that's from hearing things like how the linux development team runs and people like Sarah Sharp quitting over the abuse. It's given me the impression that if I don't create something that is up to a teams standard from commit 0 then I will be ridiculed in a public forum

Abuse from your own insular community re: a particular project is one thing; public abuse published in some of the most popular print media on the planet resulting in lost jobs/lost job opporunities is quite another.

I certainly have a fair degree of sympathy for Cuddy's losses, but should she have been given the accolades (TED talk, tenure track at Harvard, etc.) in the first place?

Her work was interesting no doubt, and in our scientific age we have always celebrated the novelty and originality of the scientific geniuses that have advanced our understanding.

But the real value of science has always been novelty plus certainty. The scientists who we esteem should be known as much for their industrious management of the empirical process (recruiting replicators, statistical auditors, etc.) as they are for they are for their creative insight.

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#22

Post by phunge » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 6:48 PM UTC

I think it's pretty easy for this discussion to become about personalities and not methodologies. Gelman is pretty brash and speaks his mind, so he could be correct on methodology and have that get lost in the noise.

So I'll give my opinion as a datascientist: null hypothesis significance testing is broken, the whole thing needs to get chucked. It's not fixable, and it's not only p-hacking that's the problem. Go read Frank Harrell, I like his writings on the topic more than Gelman's.

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#23

Post by recursive » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 6:49 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #14

Sounds like straight up sexism to me.

Perhaps you're wearing sexism-colored glasses.

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#24

Post by anotherproj » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #14

Sounds like straight up sexism to me.

> "Although 11 new papers have recently been published that do not show the downstream effects of power posing on behaviors, Cuddy is still fighting for power posing."

Sounds like straight up bad science to me

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#25

Post by throwawayjava » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 6:51 PM UTC

lliamander wrote: post #21

throwawayjava wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abuse from your own insular community re: a particular project is one thing; public abuse published in some of the most popular print media on the planet resulting in lost jobs/lost job opporunities is quite another.

I certainly have a fair degree of sympathy for Cuddy's losses, but should she have been given the accolades (TED talk, tenure track at Harvard, etc.) in the first place? Her work was interesting no doubt, and in our scientific age we have always celebrated the novelty and originality of the scientific geniuses that have advanced our understanding. But the real value of science has always been novelty plus certainty .…

As I indicated up-thread, I'm mostly on your side of these politics.

geofft's comment hits the nail on the head when it comes to what effect this did vs. should've had on her tenure case, I think. A study that fails to replicate is no indication of malice or even incompetence. Some say she should've run self-replications, but how many years self-replication studies are you willing to run on $20k/yr (in fact, how many post-college years have you made 20k/yr for a full-time job)?

At some point you get the quality of science you can pay for, and throwing the grad student under the bus by denying them tenure a decade later is as shitty and spineless as Equifax throwing an IT guy under the bus for what was pretty clearly an organizational failure. IMO.

Re: TED talks, TED is not a scientific venue, and most of the things I hear in TED talks are a hell of a lot less scientific than even Cuddy's most flawed studies. Also, I don't think those sorts of things should weigh much in hiring and tenure cases either way (aside from e.g. a usually marginal "service/outreach" category).

If Harvard hired Cuddy because she gave a popular TED talk, then that was an extremely poor hiring decision by Harvard. But that's a separate issue from the one we're discussing.

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#26

Post by fhood » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 6:53 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #5

It occurs to me that the replication crisis largely came into being because scientists are rewarded for publishing papers that demonstrate some effect and not for publishing papers that fail to demonstrate anything, and so the right fix would have been to fix the broken incentives. But apparently (if this article is to be believed) no such change in incentives has happened - the only thing is that there are now also…

Is this

http://www.frankmcsherry.org/assets/COST.pdf

the paper you referenced?

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#27

Post by throwawayjava » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

lovich wrote: post #19

throwawayjava wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abuse from your own insular community re: a particular project is one thing; public abuse published in some of the most popular print media on the planet resulting in lost jobs/lost job opporunities is quite another.

People use their open source contributions as part of their resume when seeking jobs, correct? That sort of abuse would reach outside the group if you were showing off your contributions as a necessary part of your career. I don't see as wide of a gap in effect on career between open source contributions for engineers and published papers for scientists as you seem to be implying

I think we are violently agreeing on the original question about whether that's bad for the OSS community, though?

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#28

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 7:00 PM UTC

tl;dr Promising young researcher skated on stats and talked up faulty finding, career seriously damaged by lack of replicability; reformers who are too earnest about a good cause (replication, statistical rigor) can be total assholes to well-meaning people who just make mistakes; conflict ensues.

It's OK to be oppositional or confrontational to people based on what they say and do, but self-styled reformists sometimes become personally vindictive in pursuit of their own interests. Picking a fight with a public figure is an easy way to gain publicity, and if your own reputation rests on winning that fight then it can be tempting to carry on into harassment. Gamergate was an extreme example of this.

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#29

Post by yawaramin » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 7:01 PM UTC

09bjb wrote: post #15

yawaramin wrote: post #6

I'm sure there's already been a discussion on how much of the effect of power poses is due to confirmation bias or placebo effect, as opposed to some other physiological or psychosomatic reason. Especially since in the original study the subjects weren't actually told what they were doing, but in Dr Cuddy's talks and books they explicitly are. It's just curious to me that she and Dr Fiske wouldn't catch this crucial…

One note; in general, I think we tend to diminish finding when we find out that the placebo effect is partly behind them. Wrongly, in my opinion. Better reactions might be, "Wow, we take this action and our bodies/brains take care of the rest of the effect through some placebo magic? That's amazing!!"

That's a great point. No one should be able to argue with Dr Cuddy if she decides to make her living pushing this 'placebo-trigger' technique.

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#30

Post by mattmcknight » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 7:02 PM UTC

throwawayjava wrote: post #20

lliamander wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You mischaracterize. Fiske is not criticizing "people who pointed out statistical errors" and begins the entire essay by explicitly stating as such: "Our field has always encourages -- required, really -- peer critiques"! > She is criticizing "unfiltered trash-talk [on social media]... [and] online vigilantes [who] are attacking individuals, their research programs, and their careers". Let me quote Gelman regarding…

Gelman has forged his own path to "fame, fortune, and acclaim". It's not clear to me that this path has actually improved (this particular branch of) science. In fact, by the sound of it, that path may've been at least as destructive as he claims Fiske et al's was. Which isn't an indict of Gelman, as I hardly intuit anything but positive intentions on his part. I'm less concerned with Fiske vs. Gelman and much more c…

"Confining scientific critique to scientific venues"

Fiske controls the venue and is (mis-)using the "scientific venue" to denounce her critics. She is the one refusing to publish the very critiques you describe. The "scientific venue" has been corrupted. The well has not been "poisoned" for further inquiry, rather the necessity of replication and sensitivity to statistical errors has increased. Science was being done sloppily, and Fiske was both a beneficiary of that and in a role where she could have prevented it.