Just a couple of points. I apologize for the grumpiness of my
response because this is my first email response on a Saturday
morning on a beautiful summer morning (i.e., I'd rather be doing
something else), I haven't finished my first cup of coffee yet,
and the morning meds haven't kicked in yet. ;-)
(1) As a courtesy to others, it would be a fine gesture if a poster
who is singing the praises of some published research and
extolling others to read it do one simple thing: Provide the reference
and/or a link to the article. For the sake of clarity, I believe the
following is the reference for the article being discussed below:
Lilienfeld, S. O., Ritschel, L. A., Lynn, S. J., Cautin, R. L.,
Latzman,
R. D. (2014). Why Ineffective Psychotherapies Appear to Work
A Taxonomy of Causes of Spurious Therapeutic Effectiveness.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(4), 355-387.
If indeed this is the article in question, one can access the article
on the publisher's website; see:
http://pps.sagepub.com/content/9/4/355.short
NOTE: If you are a member of APS, you can get the article for
free, otherwise you'll have to get it through your institution (if
it subscribed to the journal or the Sage group of journals).
However, on scholar.google.com (where I found the article)
there is a link to a PDF of the article which provides the article for
free:
netdna-cdn.com
The link above may not work from this post because from
scholar.google.com it opens to a page with a much longer URL.
Moreover, because I do not know who put the PDF there (it
could have been ONE of the authors but maybe not) nor do
I have any idea who is hosting the website.
In sum, I can understand fanboys being super-enthusiastic about
something they have just read or watched or heard, but I must plead
with you: if you are going to refer to some published work, please
avoid the bad habits that the popular mass media engage in when
describing that published work, that is. PROVIDE A REFERENCE.
NOTE: I now have the article but have not read it yet, so I am
responding mainly to posts below and the abstract of the article.
(2) Another reason for providing the reference for a research article
that one is raving about is to help the reader to better understand
where the ideas and analysis came from. If Scott Lilienfeld were
sole author on the paper then I think the praise heaped upon him
below is appropriate. Problem is that he is not. Here's the full list
of authors from the PPS website:
Scott O. Lilienfeld1
Lorie A. Ritschel2,3
Steven Jay Lynn4
Robin L. Cautin5
Robert D. Latzman6
1 Department of Psychology, Emory University
2 Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
33 C Institute, Cary, NC
4 Department of Psychology, Binghamton University
5 Department of Psychology, Manhattanville College
6 Department of Psychology, Georgia State University
Now, perhaps Scott did ALL of the work on the article as well as
provide the pizza and munchies for meetings with the co-authors
when they met to discuss the writing of the paper. Then again,
maybe some of the other authors actually did make a contribution
which should be acknowledge.
.
It has become the practice of some journals now to provide a
section that identifies what each author contributed to the article
in order to provide information on (a) why the order of authors is
what it is, (b) if an author contributed only to one or two sections
instead writing for all sections, it might be important for a reader
to which sections these were, if for no other reason than plausible
deniability (e.g., Steven Pinker was co-author on a paper where
the data apparently was made-up; when asked how he could not
have known this, he responded that he only contributed to the
introduction and discussion and nothing to do with the data analysis).
Unfortunately, the journal Perspective on Psychological Science (PPS)
has not yet adopted this policy, so, it id difficult to determine who
contributed what and which persons are listed as co-author because
(i) the person in charge owed a researcher for previous researcher
and put that person's name on the paper as restitution (I know of
at least one instance where this has happened; I had an awkward
conversation with the head researcher how the hell did so and
so's name get on the manuscript since he had not done anything),
(ii) a person's lab or clinic or institution or access to their
population
was their contribution and in return they get a co-authorship in
exchange
(again, I know of at least one instance where this has happened),
and (iii) a head of a research group may only read the final manuscript
and provide comments and expect a co-authorship instead of an
acknowledgement in a footnote (how else do expect an author
get 400 publications per year?).
So, I can understand that some people may be enthusiastic about
the article and that Scott sometimes posts here (Hi Scott!) but maybe
Tipsters, as teachers of how sources are to be
