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When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

nytimes.com

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Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#81

Post by throwawayjava »

mattmcknight wrote: post #66
throwawayjava wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "scientific venue" has been corrupted That's a pretty strong accusation. Do you have any evidence? Cuddy herself, in the linked article, even asks: "Why not come to a conference or hold a seminar?" I don't think you're wrong about the lack of quality reviewing, but I also think that blogs and Facebook and articles in pop sci news venues are pretty shitty places to address the quality of editorial review. And yo…

"That's a pretty strong accusation. Do you have any evidence?" Fiske is the journal editor. Fiske is allowing articles with weak stats to get published. Fiske is publishing her defense in that journal. Fiske is not publishing critical articles in that journal. That's corruption based on her position of authority. Cuddy just had sloppy stats and her results failed to replicate. Notice how you deceptively switch to Cud…

> Fiske is publishing her defense in that journal

APS Observer is a magazine, not a journal.

Furthermore, Fiske was not the president of APS or an editor of the Magazine when that article was published. And even if she were, what's the problem? I see letters from the editor in most magazines I read on a very regular basis.

Finally, the claim that Fiske was construing her opinion on conduct as a scientific fact is just... well.

I'll refrain from calling you corrupt or deceptive because it was probably just a misunderstanding :-)

> Notice how you deceptively switch to Cuddy from Fiske

I actually have no idea what you're trying to say or what this refers to. Can you be more explicit?

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#82

Post by sliverstorm »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #43
geofft wrote: post #5

It occurs to me that the replication crisis largely came into being because scientists are rewarded for publishing papers that demonstrate some effect and not for publishing papers that fail to demonstrate anything, and so the right fix would have been to fix the broken incentives. But apparently (if this article is to be believed) no such change in incentives has happened - the only thing is that there are now also…

> having the misfortune of the one-in-twenty chance of getting a really interesting false positive at p = 0.05 means you either have to double down on the study Or you could get a large sample size to bring the p down to 0.01 or whatever. You know, do science.

You say that like it's free.

It's entirely reasonable, IMO, to do more "exploratory" studies at p = 0.05, and then do a follow-up on promising studies at p = 0.01

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#83

Post by michaelt »

projektir wrote: post #72
dwaltrip wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we should be teaching scientists that staking their identities on particular results is to be resisted as much as possible. Science is about finding approximations of truth that are least influenced by the local context. The whims of a particular scientist's ego (especially if you are that scientist!) make for a rather nasty contextual influence. Of course, this is a difficult ask, but constantly striving tow…

> Perhaps we should be teaching scientists that staking their identities on particular results is to be resisted as much as possible. But does this make sense? Can a scientist survive without doing this? Can a scientist get very far without results right now? Is this a problem of the scientist, or perhaps the social/economic expectation?

Personally if I was going to stake my professional reputation on a set of results, I'd expand from an exploratory study with a 20% chance of being wrong to a more rigorous study with, say, a 0.1% chance of being wrong.

Of course, that's much easier for people in STEM than it is for social scientists.

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#84

Post by sliverstorm »

geofft wrote: post #5

It occurs to me that the replication crisis largely came into being because scientists are rewarded for publishing papers that demonstrate some effect and not for publishing papers that fail to demonstrate anything, and so the right fix would have been to fix the broken incentives. But apparently (if this article is to be believed) no such change in incentives has happened - the only thing is that there are now also…

Steadily doing good science, where good science is expected not to produce results much of the time, continues to have no support.

We say this, but I haven't heard any particularly good ideas on how to build such a system that isn't also easy to game. How do you ensure the failed studies were actually worth doing? Is peer review of study design feasible?

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#85

Post by skybrian »

dwaltrip wrote: post #45
skybrian wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stakes matter. A million dollar poker game might be structurally identical to a game played for fun, but its effects on the people involved are very different. We wouldn't expect the players in these two games to think the same way. Talking about the stakes is in direct conflict with the scientific ideal of focusing on the science without talking about its effects on the scientists involved. For example, from Gelman'…

Perhaps we should be teaching scientists that staking their identities on particular results is to be resisted as much as possible. Science is about finding approximations of truth that are least influenced by the local context. The whims of a particular scientist's ego (especially if you are that scientist!) make for a rather nasty contextual influence. Of course, this is a difficult ask, but constantly striving tow…

It's not like people don't learn about scientific ideals. Everyone involved certainly knows them well enough to at least pay lip service to them.

But you also can't prevent people from learning about how the world works: the rewards and penalties that will affect their careers.

Even if you could, teaching students a myth about what a career in science is like would basically be malpractice.

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#86

Post by rukuu001 »

gt_ wrote: post #70
rukuu001 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do strongly believe that Cuddy was overly punished for being a woman, and being prominent in the field. Theres a pattern of successful women receiving extreme levels of hate (Kathy Sierra et al). I'm not aware of this happening to guys.

>I'm not aware of this happening to guys. Can you be more specific? Or do you mean this in a general sense? Because isn't this obvious ignorance if so?

Apologies, I could have been more clear.

What I mean is that I haven't heard of guys receiving death, rape etc threats accompanied by doxxing (ie 'this is his address, let's go get him') at the levels I've heard about with women[0].

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#87

Post by throwawayjava »

mattmcknight wrote: post #67
throwawayjava wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I re-read the comment, and disagree. The preceding sentence is: Fiske controls the venue and is (mis-)using the "scientific venue" to denounce her critics I'm having trouble finding a charitable way to read the claim that someone is misusing a scientific venue. And much more to the point, I doubt even more that the subject of those sentences (or the e.g. tenure/promotion committee of that subject) could be reasonably…

How's this- Fiske publishes a letter critical of Gelman, with no peer review of said letter, in her journal. She then claims her letter is "science" because it is in a scientific journal, while his self-published piece is "methodological terrorism." In a sense, both pieces are self-published, and she is using the mantle of Science to falsely claim that her self-publishing is superior because of the authority of her p…

> She then claims her letter is "science"

Please link to the place where she actually makes this claim.

> in her journal

Not hers, and not a journal.

> while his self-published piece is "methodological terrorism."

She actually outlines the practices that ought to be singled out as unprofessional and unacceptable in the second to last paragraph, and none of those are mere self-publication.

Have you considered the possibility that both sides are wrong? That this is crap science, and that the conduct of certain groups of people rallying against crap science is overzealous to the point of cruelty?

Finally, it's also worth noting you've COMPLETELY proven Fiske's point about social media: sure, there are some valid critiques. But there are also people being absolutely vicious to people actually trying to science because of very trivial and obvious misunderstandings (e.g., because they think that APS Observer is a journal). I think to some extent that's a reasonable price for free discourse when things stay online and especially when they're anonymous, but you're calling a real person with a real job on the line corrupt because you made an incorrect assumption (that would've taken you 10 seconds of googling to correct).

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#88

Post by urschrei »

throwawayjava wrote: post #49
lliamander wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As I indicated up-thread, I'm mostly on your side of these politics. I know, and I think we are mostly in agreement. I generally don't like seeing individuals dragged through the mud. It's also somewhat unfair to judge her actions pre-replication crisis by our standards post-replication crisis. I also agree that a single study failing to replicate is not an instance of malice or incompetence, in fact I think all sc…

> Then maybe one should more hesitant about promoting those results? We definitely agree on this. I think all the TED science stuff is silliness. Cuddy's mistake was both being a serious scientist and being a popular TED speaker. Popular TED speakers make BS science claims all the time , but they aren't scientists so it doesn't matter. But I wouldn't advocate for firing someone because they disagree and think TED is…

Cuddy wasn't fired, or even denied tenure, though it's probably not a coincidence that she's no longer (or not currently) on the tenure track at HBS.

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#89

Post by Balgair »

geofft wrote: post #5

It occurs to me that the replication crisis largely came into being because scientists are rewarded for publishing papers that demonstrate some effect and not for publishing papers that fail to demonstrate anything, and so the right fix would have been to fix the broken incentives. But apparently (if this article is to be believed) no such change in incentives has happened - the only thing is that there are now also…

Oh, so, 'Capital S' Science[0] has moved on from publish-or-perish to funding-or-famine. Most researchers are in 'famine' and their spouse is financing their lifestyle of crazy hours and stress (love is strange, for sure). Some are in 'funding' and they generally get all the cash from grant agencies. Where I am, each square foot of your research is ~$420/month for rent, including your office. Then you start buying lab equipment and do research. The incentives are heavily skewed towards making cash, no matter the method.

Also, if you haven't been following the 'X-ray Carrots' fiasco, that is a BIG deal in science and Science. VERY short summery: Andrew Wansink at Cornell made up a bunch of data and results, he published them, he got caught. One of these papers was about calling carrots as 'x-ray carrots' makes kids eat more of them, hence the name of the fiasco. Here's a good way into the mess [1]. Anyway, some papers were retracted, there was an investigation, yadda yadda. Now, in 'normal' science, he would have been banished from the field for this nonsense. But in 'finding-or-famine', he got off essentially scot-free. Nothing happened, really. He's still the head of the department (AFAIK), he still brings in cash, the FDA still is using his findings. This is a huge blow to science and a huge boon to Science.

The existential crisis is now out in the open: you can cheat with impunity, publish whatever, if you get caught nothing will happen, just bring in the dollars.

Now is not a good time to go to grad school. I think they're just going to have to throw out ALL US based bio-science (at least) from about 2003 to whenever heads start rolling. It's all crap, maybe, who knows.

[0] Science and science are different, though look similar. Big Science is the grant machine and the big money side of science. Splashy, barely replicated, large clean buildings, pensions, perfectly fit for corporate needs. Think Big Tobacco, BPA plastics stuff, power poses like Cuddy's, that kinda stuff. It's like the difference between the Military Industrial Complex and actually kicking down doors in Mosul. 'Little s' science is what you are probably thinking of when you think of science generally.

[1]http://andrewgelman.com/2017/04/06/dear-cornell-university-p...

Re: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

#90

Post by conistonwater »

throwawayjava wrote: post #64
conistonwater wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think "corrupted file", not "corrupt official". The key difference is that there is a primary purpose for their existence (a file stores data, a scientific process produces good and reliable findings), and something can be corrupted (no longer suitable for its purpose) without malice involved. To call an official corrupted, you need to allege malice, to say that a file is corrupted, you only need to show that it's no…

edit: My defense of my reading isn't necessary; just see OP's sibling post. I interpreted their post correctly.

Ugh, yeah.
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