I suggest that students start with more recent research and use the reference sections of the recent articles to trace the topic back 20-30 years. This, by the way, is to be done using APA's _Thesuarus_ since the key terms tend to change over time. Al Al L. Cone Jamestown College <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> North Dakota 701.252.3467 X 2604 http://www.jc.edu/users/faculty/cone -----Original Message----- From: Stephen Black [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 1999 1:08 PM To: TIPS Subject: Value of "old" research: a dissenting view On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, Mark Casteel wrote: > Steven [not me] raises a good point, and one I hadn't considered. > In fact, I'm > guilty of just this on one of my assignments in my Dev Psych class. In that > class, I teach the students how to use PsycINFO. I give them a topic, and > they are required to find 12 references and turn in an APA style reference > list. One of the parameters of the assignment is that an article can't be > older than 10 years. I have done this to teach them how to use the > publication year filter, never considering the implicit message I might be > sending. I'll make sure and change that this year along with a discussion > of why. Thanks Steven. > > At 07:08 AM 10/20/1999 -0400, you [Steven] wrote: > >Dear TIPSters, > >At another institution, I had a colleague who "wouldn't let" students use > >citations that were over 10 years old. That's too bad... it eliminates > >Stroop's work, Crespi's work, Skinner's work, etc. (and my Master's > thesis!... and Paul Brandon said: > More specifically, you might point out the Physics texts still cite > Newton and teach his mechanics), and Biology texts do the same with > Darwin. > As you point out, science builds on and modifies more than it > discards. The first approximation is often good enough for many > practical purposes I won't defend a 10-year rule, but I nevertheless dispute the idea that old studies in psychology may be good enough. It's exactly because we build on and modify what went before that we need to encourage students to look at recent studies. Any quality newly-published study would review previous work, evaluate it, and add a further contribution. A student who focused on the old literature would miss this. Particularly in psychology, so much of the early stuff requires modification or is just plain wrong, that attention to recent work is essential. Some examples, as mentioned above. "Crespi" probably refers to the work relating size of incentive to changes in motivation (rats running for small reward get switched to big, and vice versa). Since then, there's been much debate about the existence of the so-called "elation" and "depression" effects, which became positive and negative contrast effects. A student who cited Crespi without seeing what became of his work would miss it all. Physics and biology are different because basic concepts are far better established in those fields. Even so, a student reviewing mechanics and gravitation would be advised not to stop at Newton but check out what that dude Einstein had to say about the topic. Similarly, it would be embarrassing if a student cited Bohr's conception of the atom as the final word on the topic. As for Darwin, he accepted Larmarkianism (use and disuse) as a mode of inheritance. His principles are sound, but a student would be better advised to check recent essays on evolution as well as the Origin of Species. As a personal example for psychology, I had a student hand in a paper once on IQ. He found some great old texts, written by a British guy who really knew what he was talking about. Cyril Burt. This isn't an either-or thing, of course. I think a reasonable guideline is to tell students not to hesitate to cite the old literature if necessary, but a proper review requires primary attention to the most recent work in the field. -Stephen ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stephen Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470 Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661 Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Department web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy Check out TIPS listserv for teachers of psychology at: http://www.frostburg.edu/dept/psyc/southerly/tips/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------
