It's a kind HN received wisdom that all psychology studies are false or invalid. Personally, I see this blanket dismissal as one of the blind spots of our otherwise intelligent community. Perhaps because so many of us are engineers, and that it strokes our egos to see the softer sciences fail?
Psychology is like trying to debug a program with nearly zero tools, not even a reliable ‘printf(..)’. I don’t think it’s ego-stroking so much as it is just frustration at the seemingly intractable complexity of human behaviour.
> trying to debug a program with nearly zero tools, not even a reliable ‘printf(..)’.
That's called kernel development (from scratch) :P
Abstract of the original paper: > The capacity to infer others' mental states (known as ‘mind reading’ and ‘cognitive empathy’) is essential for social interactions across species, and its impairment characterizes psychopathological conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia. Previous studies reported that testosterone administration impaired cognitive empathy in healthy humans, and that a putative…
So... is this a tentative win for the nurture crowd then? Or did they strictly only show that there is no correlation between testosterone, without going into alternative options? EDIT: glaugh's comment[0] explains why it is not. TLDR: this research debunks earlier research with a similar scope, but more long-term effects of testosterone are not accounted for. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21143846
I don't think nature vs. nurture is a good way of thinking about complicated biological phenomena. For example, take height. We know from recent GWAS[0] that many genes are associated with height[1]. We also know that poor nutrition in early life will lead to severe stunting, regardless of genetics.
My model for thinking about these things is genes delimit the scope of possibilities, environment (some of which is prenatal or early childhood and very hard to change) determines what possibilities turn into reality.
Another victim in the "replication crisis" bloodbath for psychology. Personally, I'm probably going to wait 5 years before I believe any psychology science claim. Especially if it confirms something I already believe in :)
It's a kind HN received wisdom that all psychology studies are false or invalid. Personally, I see this blanket dismissal as one of the blind spots of our otherwise intelligent community. Perhaps because so many of us are engineers, and that it strokes our egos to see the softer sciences fail?
> It's a kind HN received wisdom that all psychology studies are false or invalid.
Not ALL, but the replication crisis has demonstrated that at least 2/3 of such studies can't be replicated.
If you had a communication channel where 2/3 of your packets failed to deliver, I'd say a statement like "this channel isn't reliable" is very justified.
Another victim in the "replication crisis" bloodbath for psychology. Personally, I'm probably going to wait 5 years before I believe any psychology science claim. Especially if it confirms something I already believe in :)
What is the rate of failure for "harder" sciences, does anyone know? In saying that I think there will be a self correcting mechanism in more physically based science. If something can be replicated it can be built upon and new discoveries made. If something can't be replicated it will end up being forgotten about. Also I do think that science needs a way of reporting failed studies and failed replication. At the mom…
In all my time in academia, in my discipline (cross between engineering and physics), I never heard anyone try to replicate a study. No advisor would allow students to "waste" time on it.
They were also pretty open in vocalizing that they didn't believe the result in paper X in journal Y. They knew the problem existed.
Another victim in the "replication crisis" bloodbath for psychology. Personally, I'm probably going to wait 5 years before I believe any psychology science claim. Especially if it confirms something I already believe in :)
It's a kind HN received wisdom that all psychology studies are false or invalid. Personally, I see this blanket dismissal as one of the blind spots of our otherwise intelligent community. Perhaps because so many of us are engineers, and that it strokes our egos to see the softer sciences fail?
Dismissal ("that's not true") is different than skepticism ("I can't trust this to be true"). You're "ego" quip is not very charitable of this community--a more likely and more charitable interpretation is that people don't trust the fields that fail to reproduce, especially those fields that appear to be more interested in advancing an agenda than research (e.g., all of the drama around the implicit association test and it's alleged ability to predict racism, etc).
Abstract of the original paper: > The capacity to infer others' mental states (known as ‘mind reading’ and ‘cognitive empathy’) is essential for social interactions across species, and its impairment characterizes psychopathological conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia. Previous studies reported that testosterone administration impaired cognitive empathy in healthy humans, and that a putative…
So... is this a tentative win for the nurture crowd then? Or did they strictly only show that there is no correlation between testosterone, without going into alternative options? EDIT: glaugh's comment[0] explains why it is not. TLDR: this research debunks earlier research with a similar scope, but more long-term effects of testosterone are not accounted for. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21143846
Nature versus nurture is such a boring debate, honestly. The driving force behind the nature versus nurture debate seems to be people attempting to use science to justify their positions on pop philosophy, but the science rarely actually connects to the pop philosophy position. It's basically: take a specific scientific fact, try to use it to prove a very nonspecific idea (nature or nurture?) and then use that nonspecific idea to prove a very specific idea (for example: criminals can be rehabilitated because it's their nurture, not their nature, that causes them to commit crimes). But that's just thinly-veiled Bulverism: we can just study those specific ideas directly (we know that current rehabilitation methods work well for some crimes and not for others) and the very general ideas of nature versus nurture add nothing to the conversation.
It's a kind HN received wisdom that all psychology studies are false or invalid. Personally, I see this blanket dismissal as one of the blind spots of our otherwise intelligent community. Perhaps because so many of us are engineers, and that it strokes our egos to see the softer sciences fail?
> It's a kind HN received wisdom that all psychology studies are false or invalid. Not ALL , but the replication crisis has demonstrated that at least 2/3 of such studies can't be replicated. If you had a communication channel where 2/3 of your packets failed to deliver, I'd say a statement like "this channel isn't reliable" is very justified.
That's 2/3rd of medical research paper where the standards are the highest. I'd be shocked if the rate was only a mere 66% everywhere else. You'd have to be a fool to take on faith anything published today that wasn't replicated, hopefully more than once.
Trans woman here. Cisgender men and women have different brain structures, and transgender people's brain structures tend to resemble that of the gender that they identify as[1]. So, for example, a trans woman like myself who was born male will have a brain structure that resembles that of a cis woman, not a man. > I know a trans man who, after a few months of testosterone, claimed it was "night and day" in how they…
How can you be so sure that your brain structure is actually different? Are there any scientific tests that can be performed to support this?
So... is this a tentative win for the nurture crowd then? Or did they strictly only show that there is no correlation between testosterone, without going into alternative options? EDIT: glaugh's comment[0] explains why it is not. TLDR: this research debunks earlier research with a similar scope, but more long-term effects of testosterone are not accounted for. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21143846
Nature versus nurture is such a boring debate, honestly. The driving force behind the nature versus nurture debate seems to be people attempting to use science to justify their positions on pop philosophy, but the science rarely actually connects to the pop philosophy position. It's basically: take a specific scientific fact, try to use it to prove a very nonspecific idea (nature or nurture?) and then use that nonspe…
>(we know that current rehabilitation methods work well for some crimes and not for others)
Somewhat off-topic but I find this interesting, can you elaborate on which ones we know this for?
> It's a kind HN received wisdom that all psychology studies are false or invalid. Not ALL , but the replication crisis has demonstrated that at least 2/3 of such studies can't be replicated. If you had a communication channel where 2/3 of your packets failed to deliver, I'd say a statement like "this channel isn't reliable" is very justified.
That's 2/3rd of medical research paper where the standards are the highest. I'd be shocked if the rate was only a mere 66% everywhere else. You'd have to be a fool to take on faith anything published today that wasn't replicated, hopefully more than once.
According to [1], replication rates in psychology varied from 23% to 38%. Social psychology was around 25%, while the more rigourous cognitive psychology was around 50%.