No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 1:06 AM UTC

msrenee wrote: post #159

pessimizer wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> results that speak for themselves. This is exactly how a midwife explained to me why she uses magic crystals. She told me that there's science, and there's results, and that she's seen the crystals work.

Obviously they don't work by magical vibration, but are you sure they don't work at all? If the midwife feels and acts more confident from having that tool or the mother feels more relaxed because she thinks they will make the process easier, then the crystals do, in fact, work. They just don't work through the mechanism those individuals think they do.

Post by TameAntelope » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 1:16 AM UTC

sacrosancty wrote: post #168

TameAntelope wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just one specific analysis using a very narrow definition of "nudge", one that doesn't even begin to encompass the work being done at those "300 "research" departments"? Further, isn't this using the same data from the original meta analysis that did find "of small to medium size" effect[0]? Why would this, alone, undo decades of research and clear, bright-line conclusions such as the ones cited in my sibl…

I think social scientists have lost the right to the benefit of the doubt. They don't preregister their trials. They don't publish their negative results. They're notoriously bad at statistics, notoriously let their political beliefs distort their conclusions, notoriously scatter their work over thousands of arbitrary, hard-to-compare small-sample-size studies instead of concentrating their resources. I don't think i…

Post by manwe150 » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 1:21 AM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #102

xyzzy123 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If defaults don't work then Google wasted 15 billion dollars last year paying Apple to be in the search bar... I guess there must be further detail in the paper and I will have to read it to understand the nuance.

Defaults very clearly work in matters such as consent to organ donation. In countries where you need to opt out of organ donation, few people bother to do so. Another question is whether this increases the total amount of successful donations. I was looking around for studies and found this one [1], which basically says "in some countries, yes". [1] https://behavioralpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Does...

Post by harry8 » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 1:23 AM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #173

sacrosancty wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think social scientists have lost the right to the benefit of the doubt. They don't preregister their trials. They don't publish their negative results. They're notoriously bad at statistics, notoriously let their political beliefs distort their conclusions, notoriously scatter their work over thousands of arbitrary, hard-to-compare small-sample-size studies instead of concentrating their resources. I don't think i…

> I don't think it matters if this criticism is right or not. Okay, you and I care about very different things.

Post by rayiner » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 1:43 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #166

rayiner wrote: post #7

Remember, Obama appointed a regulatory czar based on this science: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/magazine/16Sunstein-t.htm...

Obama would have appointed Sunstein no matter what book he wrote, because he was one of UChicago's superstar professors (and was at the same time being aggressively courted by schools around the country; he ended up, of course, at Harvard). His appointment was notable not so much for "nudges" as for the fact that Sunstein was probably one of the most conservative appointments Obama made.