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I swear the UFO is coming any minute

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Re: I swear the UFO is coming any minute

#21

Post by eszed »

clickety_clack wrote: post #19
smsm42 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a common joke that defines psychology as the scientific discipline studying the undergraduate psychology students. That is obviously due to the fact that a lot of research subjects are found where it's easiest to find them - right on campus, and a lot of people who have time and desire to participate in studies (instead of, you know, working) are the students themselves.

I heard there’s a requirement to participate in the studies if you’re in some psychology undergrads.

I was required when I took (two) undergraduate psychology classes. Also, when I was in grad school I did a few, because they paid (I think) £5 per - which was, in the days of £1 Green King pints and no outside income, well worth pursuing.

Re: I swear the UFO is coming any minute

#23

Post by MarkusQ »

maxbond wrote: post #20
MarkusQ wrote: post #3

Surprisingly many things seem to be spoiled by the "too many of the people being studied were actually other researchers trying to study the same thing" (or even more commonly, students being taught about the thing). I suspect the ability to post/apply for jobs with AI "to study ___" has played a part in getting us into our present predicament. If only one researcher did it, the results would be negligible, but if a…

I don't know about the others referenced in the article or what else you might be referring to, but that wasn't the case with When Prophesy Fails or the Stanford Prison Experiment though. That was more or less fraud. The researchers put their thumb on the scale significantly.

Oh yeah. I'm not saying that's the only way things can go off the rails. But with regard to "When Prophesy Fails" specifically, TFA says:

"A new paper finds a different story in the archives of the lead author, Leon Festinger. Up to half of the attendees at cult meetings may have been undercover researchers. One of them became a leader in the cult and encouraged other members to make statements that would look good in the book."

Re: I swear the UFO is coming any minute

#24

Post by Animats »

Mandatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1235/

It's interesting that the proliferation of cell phone cameras has not improved the quality of UFO reports much.

Nor has the availability of automatic UFO-spotting cameras.[1] They pick up drones, flocks of birds, and the International Space Station. But no good UFO shots.

LINEAR and GEODSS, which find near-earth objects and satellites using a pair of large telescopes at each site, have been running for decades, somehow don't seem to be picking up UFOs.

[1] https://www.space.com/spotting-ufos-sky-hub-surveillance

Re: I swear the UFO is coming any minute

#25

Post by maxbond »

MarkusQ wrote: post #23
maxbond wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about the others referenced in the article or what else you might be referring to, but that wasn't the case with When Prophesy Fails or the Stanford Prison Experiment though. That was more or less fraud. The researchers put their thumb on the scale significantly.

Oh yeah. I'm not saying that's the only way things can go off the rails. But with regard to "When Prophesy Fails" specifically, TFA says: "A new paper finds a different story in the archives of the lead author, Leon Festinger. Up to half of the attendees at cult meetings may have been undercover researchers. One of them became a leader in the cult and encouraged other members to make statements that would look good i…

Unless I recall incorrectly, they were undercover researchers in Festinger's employ. Not that many researchers happened to converge on the same very small, obscure cult.

But perhaps I misinterpreted you? I took the impression from your comment you thought several groups of researchers were stepping on each other's toes, but reading it back, I see that you didn't explicitly say that. So perhaps I read that in.

Re: I swear the UFO is coming any minute

#26

Post by BashiBazouk »

clickety_clack wrote: post #19
smsm42 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a common joke that defines psychology as the scientific discipline studying the undergraduate psychology students. That is obviously due to the fact that a lot of research subjects are found where it's easiest to find them - right on campus, and a lot of people who have time and desire to participate in studies (instead of, you know, working) are the students themselves.

I heard there’s a requirement to participate in the studies if you’re in some psychology undergrads.

I took 101 at San Jose State and had to participate in a study as part of the curriculum. It was pretty cool. I went to the NASA Ames research center and did a study of seeing how well people could predict an object being exactly on the side of them. It was small spheres that came at you then went out of view and you clicked a butten when you thought they were exactly on your side. The tech was the most interesting, 90's era VR run on a Silicon Graphics reality engine. We has Iris boxes in the computer art lab but this thing was a much bigger...

Re: I swear the UFO is coming any minute

#28

Post by dylanpyle »

wildzzz wrote: post #16

For the DCA noise complaints, a household (probably the same one as 2015) submitted 19000 complaints in 2016. That's 52 times a day or 3-4 per waking hour.

Reminds me of this stat from the NYT: in 2022, “Nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in New York City […] involved just 327 people”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arre...

Re: I swear the UFO is coming any minute

#29

Post by joemi »

dooglius wrote: post #10
keyle wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Explained in the very first sentence, "This is the quarterly links ‘n’ updates post, a selection of things I’ve been reading and doing for the past few months."

I missed that sentence too. I guess the large heading starting with "(1)" drew my eyes first and felt like the natural place to start reading, while the short sentence or two above it in smaller text subconsciously felt skippable (and was skipped). Even when I went back to read the first sentence, I had to kind of force myself to read the stuff above the first large heading. How odd!
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