On Sun, 2 Apr 2000, Michael J. Kane wrote:
> I quote from Stanovich's "How to Think Straight About
> Psychology" (5th ed., p. 170):
>
<snip> Wyatt et al. (1984) randomly paired
> 50 unrelated college students of the same sex and of
> roughly the same age.<snip>
> The Wyatt et al. study demonstrates that a "remarkable"
> congruences as specific as this can occur in only 25
> pairs of unrelated individuals, purely on the basis of
> chance<snip>
That's great, Michael. And just after I (privately) told Jeff Bartel
that I doubted that such a study existed.
As for David Likely's contention that unlikely coincidences may well
be fraud, I agree that fraud is not unknown in science, and certainly
not unknown in psychology. But it seems to me it should be the last
hypothesis one entertains, never the first. And it should be raised
only after exhausting all other possibilities, and only when there are
clear indications that something fishy is going on. Even in the case
of the notorious Cyril (and apparently he still has a few defenders),
the fraud accusation was taken seriously only after clear evidence was
obtained in support of it.
In the case of fraudulent twin coincidences, given the number of
people involved in such cases, including the twins themselves, it
could not be perpetuated without a widespread conspiracy among those
involved. In the case of Cyril Burt, remember, he was all alone when
he did the dirty deed (with nary a trace of the elusive "Miss Howard"
to rat on him).
So, I'd say we're not yet ready to move to fraud. The coincidences can
be explained with the help of Lykken et al's (1992) concept of
"emergenesis", together with the knowledge (as above) that not all
"amazing" coincidences are restricted to twins alone. They may simply
reflect the operation of chance and the possibility of making many,
many comparisons.
Emergenesis may also be the answer to Paul's Smith's comment that
separated twin coincidences are not particularly interesting because
they're predictable from the backgrounds and physical characteristics
of the individuals involved. The point is that they're not
predictable, and give rise to the conclusion that people must have
genes for some pretty strange things. Such for a tendency to wear
seven rings on your hands, and giving your son the name "James
Al(l)an". Lykken's idea is that it's the particular _combination_ of
genes you inherit in the poker game of life that predisposes to such
things. Identicals get dealt the same hand, and so have the same
predisposition. But that shuffle will probably never come up again,
and so cannot be passed on.
-Stephen
Reference
Lykken, D. et al (1992). Emergenesis. American Psychologist, 47,
1565-- 1577.
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Stephen Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470
Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661
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