I am shocked by this as I find myself mostly able to remember the moments when I took a photo... like, I went to a wedding last week, and I have a really strong memory of most of the photos I took even though I have not yet looked at any of them . I would have assumed the process of paying careful attention to a scene with the goal of capturing "the perfect moment" makes that moment itself special and unique, not jus…
Were these posed photographs? I find this effect happens on candid photographs or action shots, both of which I consider much more valuable than posed photographs.
No: I don't really enjoy posed photographs and don't bother taking them.
At a more meta-level, they basically failed to replicate their own paper (they disproved the main hypothesis). Which shows exactly what the big problem is: you just throw some ideas out, do some statistical analysis, and presto, you are "a scientist discovered a new thing"
This is a big success. We need more scientists willing to publish dead ends and ideas that turn out to be wrong. At the very least it hints at future areas of research. A lot of great science involves testing common sense and finding it's wrong. They could have hacked their way to a positive result, good on them for not.
As a molecular biologist whose been in the field for nearly a quarter of a century (ouch, I'm old), I can't tell you how important your comment is. Too many times I've been to conferences where a small group of researchers is informally discussing a common roadblock in a procedure or technique and one in the group says, "We found out months ago that you can't use compound Y because it inhibits X downstream". For the love of all that is good, why didn't you publish that?! You could have saved countless combined hours and materials for other labs and increased the rate of progress. We all know the answer: Reviewers and editors want to publish flashy new discoveries, not fizzled experiments. Online discussions and open access has helped the issue, but the underlying pressure on scientists to publish only positive findings and leave out the critical trial-and-error data must end as it is is essentially fudging research and does a disservice to other researchers and science as a whole, intended or not. Whew, that was cathartic. I'll fade back into the shadows now.
At a more meta-level, they basically failed to replicate their own paper (they disproved the main hypothesis). Which shows exactly what the big problem is: you just throw some ideas out, do some statistical analysis, and presto, you are "a scientist discovered a new thing"
This is a big success. We need more scientists willing to publish dead ends and ideas that turn out to be wrong. At the very least it hints at future areas of research. A lot of great science involves testing common sense and finding it's wrong. They could have hacked their way to a positive result, good on them for not.
I completely agree, it was a really big relief when I read the last 3 sentences of the abstract. I was expecting the typical "sensationalist" ending where surprise, surprise the original hypothesis of the researchers turned out to be true, unbelievable.
This is a big success. We need more scientists willing to publish dead ends and ideas that turn out to be wrong. At the very least it hints at future areas of research. A lot of great science involves testing common sense and finding it's wrong. They could have hacked their way to a positive result, good on them for not.
As a molecular biologist whose been in the field for nearly a quarter of a century (ouch, I'm old), I can't tell you how important your comment is. Too many times I've been to conferences where a small group of researchers is informally discussing a common roadblock in a procedure or technique and one in the group says, "We found out months ago that you can't use compound Y because it inhibits X downstream". For the…
I'd like to take the effort to thank you for staying true to the pursuit of real science and trying to demand that others meet the standards. A well-tested negative result is not a failed experiment, it is one less option to pursue.
As I've been known to tell junior engineers that ask how to become expert in some field, "the easiest way is to fail in every possible way without repeating yourself. Whatever is left is correct. Note that I didn't say that's the fastest way." Gaining new knowledge is always a combination of discovering both dead ends and possible successful paths.
This might be similar to the "write it down so you can stop thinking about it" effect. I often have an idea, e.g. for a blog post, that I just can't seem to get rid of. My mind just keeps turning it over and over. Then I write a draft, and poof I stop thinking about it. The fact that I usually don't finish turning the draft into a real post is a separate problem. ;) There really is something about "offloading" those…
That's one of the key things I learned when I read the Getting Things Done book. If I'm stressing out about the number of different tasks I need to get done, capturing them (whether writing them down, putting them in Trello, etc.) helps me to not dwell on them, allowing me to more easily focus on a single task.
I am shocked by this as I find myself mostly able to remember the moments when I took a photo... like, I went to a wedding last week, and I have a really strong memory of most of the photos I took even though I have not yet looked at any of them . I would have assumed the process of paying careful attention to a scene with the goal of capturing "the perfect moment" makes that moment itself special and unique, not jus…
When I first read about this effect years ago, it was accompanied with the advice that careful study of the scene which you are photographing is enough to offset the effect (and perhaps even amplify memories). I suspect that in "casual" photography, the photographer is simply focused on getting the camera turned on, pointing it in the right direction, and remembering to press the shutter, rather than the scene itself…
Another anecdote in favor of this idea: most of my "visual" memories from my last 2 vacations were scenes and moments that I either photographed, or wanted to photograph but didn't for some reason or other.
This study is confounded and made unnecessarily complicated by using Snapchat. The experimental design should have been to instruct participants that during two (of the three) sessions they will be required to take a photo of each painting using the native camera app; and photos from one of the sessions will be available for reference during the test.
I am shocked by this as I find myself mostly able to remember the moments when I took a photo... like, I went to a wedding last week, and I have a really strong memory of most of the photos I took even though I have not yet looked at any of them . I would have assumed the process of paying careful attention to a scene with the goal of capturing "the perfect moment" makes that moment itself special and unique, not jus…
I bet that it would change if you actually looked at each of them right after taking.
I wonder if you'd get different results with analog photography. I'm really into film photography and I find I remember the motives I'm shooting quite well. Maybe that's because with film you're more deliberate in what you shoot and due to the sense of anticipation to seeing the final result.
The study tested people who would lose access to the photos immediately or delete them intentionally, and they still succumbed to the effect... so I'd expect it would be similar for analog. I think the the more important distinction you mentioned is that photographers who are a bit beyond amateur are more likely to analyze what they're shooting, and therefore remember it.
They have still seen them after taking, which is what might actually be a trigger for the discussed offloading effect.