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Cargo Cult Science (1974)

calteches.library.caltech.edu

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Re: Cargo Cult Science (1974)

#31

Post by swebs »

seibelj wrote: post #2

Out of all the experiments in the soft sciences that captured society’s imagination, one of the most egregious is “Power Posing”.[0] The idea is that you stand like a superhero in front of a mirror and all of these measurable chemical changes happen that improve your abilities. The professor that discovered this phenomena had a famous TED talk, a bestselling book, switched her faculty position to Harvard, and basical…

>It’s absolutely incredible that things got this far in science, or at least the soft sciences.

In 1996, a physics professor submitted a nonsense paper saying that reality doesn't exist and gravity is a social construct. The reviewers didn't understand the paper, but published it anyway since it had all the right political buzzwords.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

Re: Cargo Cult Science (1974)

#32

Post by [deleted] »

harry8 wrote: post #30

Optimising software has frequently been very cargo cult-ish. No measurements at all or measurements that tell you nothing have been pretty common. It seems it's more common to take it seriously now, also tools are better and techniques get written up on blogs and shared, some of the good ones catch on, some of the bad ones eventually fall over. "If experiment doesn't match theory the theory is wrong." Feynman has bee…

[deleted]

Re: Cargo Cult Science (1974)

#33

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

seibelj wrote: post #2

Out of all the experiments in the soft sciences that captured society’s imagination, one of the most egregious is “Power Posing”.[0] The idea is that you stand like a superhero in front of a mirror and all of these measurable chemical changes happen that improve your abilities. The professor that discovered this phenomena had a famous TED talk, a bestselling book, switched her faculty position to Harvard, and basical…

no one could replicate her experiments

... basically rode that to success in her professional and public life

Looks like the experiment has been successfully implemented in real life.

Re: Cargo Cult Science (1974)

#34

Post by bborud »

bborud wrote: post #7
killjoywashere wrote: post #5

> there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on—with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very interesting one. Has anyone found this paper? I searched a few years ago and couldn't find anything.

Me neither, and for this reason I tend to use this paper to see who pays attention. Best case: someone tracks down the missing paper(s). I suspect it may be a joke Feynman played on us to prove a point. :) Good catch.

As for "good catch": I think it took me at least 6 months from I first read the paper before I actually tried to find the research in question. Not finding even a single credible reference was a humiliating and humbling experience. I've looked for it several times over the year since and stille come up empty-handed.

I was giving a talk where I was going to refer to Feynman's speech and I felt I needed to fact-check it.

(I ended up using the speech in the talk I was giving, but I did give a hint at the end that perhaps this speech might possibly contain a joke at our expense, or something along those lines. So as to not look like a total idiot if someone else did a better job of checking the speech faster than I had done :-))

So kudos to you @killjoywashere :-)

Re: Cargo Cult Science (1974)

#35

Post by m463 »

seibelj wrote: post #2

Out of all the experiments in the soft sciences that captured society’s imagination, one of the most egregious is “Power Posing”.[0] The idea is that you stand like a superhero in front of a mirror and all of these measurable chemical changes happen that improve your abilities. The professor that discovered this phenomena had a famous TED talk, a bestselling book, switched her faculty position to Harvard, and basical…

what about the facial feedback hypothesis?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_feedback_hypothesis

Basically, the act of physically smiling may influence the emotion (usually it's the other way around)

Re: Cargo Cult Science (1974)

#36

Post by beerandt »

smnrchrds wrote: post #12
seibelj wrote: post #2

Out of all the experiments in the soft sciences that captured society’s imagination, one of the most egregious is “Power Posing”.[0] The idea is that you stand like a superhero in front of a mirror and all of these measurable chemical changes happen that improve your abilities. The professor that discovered this phenomena had a famous TED talk, a bestselling book, switched her faculty position to Harvard, and basical…

If measurable chemical changes fall under soft sciences, is there any hard science at all? By this definition, chemistry, physics, and biology are all soft sciences.

Yes, but how do you measure posturing? And if you can't (in an objective way) then the claimed cause/correlation doesn't hold up.
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