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Evidence for behavioural interventions looks increasingly shaky

economist.com

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Re: Evidence for behavioural interventions looks increasingly shaky

#41

Post by next_xibalba »

Can an expert in the field dissuade me of my pessimism about psychology as a science? From the outside looking in, it appears to be a field populated by grifters and incompetents who churn out junk knowledge.

Power Posing (Amy Cuddy) Priming (Bargh, Kahneman, and others) Outright fraudsters (Diederik Stapel, Dirk Smeesters) Precognition (Daryl Bem) Disgust & Homophobia (Yoel Inbar) Anchoring (Kahneman and Jacowitz)

Or is it all of human sciences (the scandal of Alzheimer's research comes to mind)?

Re: Evidence for behavioural interventions looks increasingly shaky

#42

Post by MichaelCollins »

vintermann wrote: post #11
martingoodson wrote: post #5

This is a poor headline (from The Economist) that does not reflect the referenced work. The correct interpretation is that nudges need to be tested in the field to find out if they work. This is common knowledge in behavioural science. Experts are not good at predicting which nudges are going to work in practice[1]. Trials are always needed. This is no different to the requirement for drug trials. Drugs are not relea…

I wonder if the problem with "nudge" is that for publicity reasons, people only call it a nudge if it sounds like a tiny thing that doesn't sound like it would work. If it's an obvious intervention, such as a default option in a pension form, or higher prices on tobacco, or condom vending machines in hotel restrooms, they don't call it a nudge anymore. And I also have the feeling some of these may be babies that the…

Nudge does seem to imply some degree subtlety. In a colloquial sense, >100% tax rates on cigarettes is more of a shove than a nudge.

Re: Evidence for behavioural interventions looks increasingly shaky

#43

Post by simplMath10 »

martingoodson wrote: post #5

This is a poor headline (from The Economist) that does not reflect the referenced work. The correct interpretation is that nudges need to be tested in the field to find out if they work. This is common knowledge in behavioural science. Experts are not good at predicting which nudges are going to work in practice[1]. Trials are always needed. This is no different to the requirement for drug trials. Drugs are not relea…

Germans speak German; wow people store information and take up the routines their understanding of that information implies. Field test complete.

Social science is based on observing the same world as “hard” science. We already have plenty of models and theory about information transmission.

Human biology retains information it’s structure encounters; social science solved.

Wrapping hard science in cultural semantics does not exclude the hard science explanation from being the right explanation. The social science explanation is superfluous and almost intentionally manipulative; professors will give extra fake points for jumping higher. But if the fake points are of little real world value, people don’t care. It’s a parlor trick that works on the ignorant, not a fundamental cognitive function of everyone.

Re: Evidence for behavioural interventions looks increasingly shaky

#44

Post by throwaway0a5e »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #42
vintermann wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the problem with "nudge" is that for publicity reasons, people only call it a nudge if it sounds like a tiny thing that doesn't sound like it would work. If it's an obvious intervention, such as a default option in a pension form, or higher prices on tobacco, or condom vending machines in hotel restrooms, they don't call it a nudge anymore. And I also have the feeling some of these may be babies that the…

Nudge does seem to imply some degree subtlety. In a colloquial sense, >100% tax rates on cigarettes is more of a shove than a nudge.

Pretty much every policy stick short of a bullet seems to be sailing under the flag of a nudge these days.

Re: Evidence for behavioural interventions looks increasingly shaky

#45

Post by JPLeRouzic »

next_xibalba wrote: post #41

Can an expert in the field dissuade me of my pessimism about psychology as a science? From the outside looking in, it appears to be a field populated by grifters and incompetents who churn out junk knowledge. Power Posing (Amy Cuddy) Priming (Bargh, Kahneman, and others) Outright fraudsters (Diederik Stapel, Dirk Smeesters) Precognition (Daryl Bem) Disgust & Homophobia (Yoel Inbar) Anchoring (Kahneman and Jacowitz) O…

> about psychology as a science?

You can easily have the opposite point of view: The so called hard sciences deal with human concepts and not reality. An alien society would not have the same physic or math. Many concepts of our physic are a bit circular or need ad hoc parameters.

Kepler make a good model from data by Tycho Brahe. Newton made an even larger model from Kepler's laws, yet it's only a model. Einstein... you get it. Without Tycho Brahe all the rest would be simply speculations. Without Michael Faraday, would we have Maxwell, and Heaviside?

The Romans did not liked math, and the Bantu migration did not even used writing scripts as we know them. Gengis Khan was able to conquer and create the greatest empire of the world and Mongols of that time used little scripts.

The so called human sciences on contrary deal with reality, it's incredibly complex. There is no real way for us to understand the complexity of reality.

Re: Evidence for behavioural interventions looks increasingly shaky

#46

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

JPLeRouzic wrote: post #45
next_xibalba wrote: post #41

Can an expert in the field dissuade me of my pessimism about psychology as a science? From the outside looking in, it appears to be a field populated by grifters and incompetents who churn out junk knowledge. Power Posing (Amy Cuddy) Priming (Bargh, Kahneman, and others) Outright fraudsters (Diederik Stapel, Dirk Smeesters) Precognition (Daryl Bem) Disgust & Homophobia (Yoel Inbar) Anchoring (Kahneman and Jacowitz) O…

> about psychology as a science? You can easily have the opposite point of view: The so called hard sciences deal with human concepts and not reality. An alien society would not have the same physic or math. Many concepts of our physic are a bit circular or need ad hoc parameters. Kepler make a good model from data by Tycho Brahe. Newton made an even larger model from Kepler's laws, yet it's only a model. Einstein...…

> An alien society would not have the same physic or math

They would have the same math. They might have a different number system.

Re: Evidence for behavioural interventions looks increasingly shaky

#47

Post by BoxOfRain »

cobbzilla wrote: post #38
yourusername wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think nudges are supposed to be subtle enough that you don't notice them. And probably for every not so subtle manipulation we notice there are 5 we don't notice.

Some are meant to be noticed: mandated calorie counts on food menus (nudge to health eating), or dire warnings on cigarette packs (nudge to quit smoking). Neither of these have had any measurable impact on their goals; I welcome evidence to the contrary.

Anecdotally I was still smoking when they brought in mandated gore on British tobacco pouches, very quickly people were joking like 'I got the bloke with a hole in his side, just need the curious baby with a cigarette and I've got the lot' etc. Those who were really bothered by it just got a baccy tin or if they smoked straights, a cigarette case.

What led me to quit wasn't any 'nudging' by the government but simply that vaping is a lot more convenient than smoking and lacked the finger-wagging inherent in other nicotine replacement approaches, and once I was only vaping I could turn down the nicotine over the course of six months or so to spare the worst of the grimness of quitting.

Re: Evidence for behavioural interventions looks increasingly shaky

#48

Post by robocat »

next_xibalba wrote: post #41

Can an expert in the field dissuade me of my pessimism about psychology as a science? From the outside looking in, it appears to be a field populated by grifters and incompetents who churn out junk knowledge. Power Posing (Amy Cuddy) Priming (Bargh, Kahneman, and others) Outright fraudsters (Diederik Stapel, Dirk Smeesters) Precognition (Daryl Bem) Disgust & Homophobia (Yoel Inbar) Anchoring (Kahneman and Jacowitz) O…

The “human sciences” are just freaking hard - for all the reasons you are pessimistic. The “hard sciences” are much easier - less of that soft stuff to work around.

Agree that the humanities are often pants-on-head whacko.

Disclaimer: hard science engineer type.

Re: Evidence for behavioural interventions looks increasingly shaky

#49

Post by tpoacher »

The problem I see increasingly is the conflation of "X as an intervention doesnt work" with "There is no evidence for X", which is two entirely different things.

To give a concrete example: "Stop-smoking interventions commonly fail" equated to "no evidence that stopping smoking improves health".

Re: Evidence for behavioural interventions looks increasingly shaky

#50

Post by nradov »

brandmeyer wrote: post #39
jansan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freddie Sayers made a really, really good comment at the end of his recent UnHerd video about this: "It's not a conspiracy. It's no a communist plot. But what it is, is taking a particular worldview, a view about how society should operate, and removing it from the normal democratic conversation, where people can battle it out, and instead hardwiring it into poerful supranational organizations." Here is the part of t…

> It's not a conspiracy ... poerful [sic] supranational organizations. Come on. You can't claim that something isn't a conspiracy and then invoke world-government conspiracies in the same paragraph and expect to be taken seriously.

It's not a conspiracy. These powerful supranational organizations are doing it out in the open and have publicly stated their intentions. Many of us disagree with their goals, and consider their methods unethical.
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