Ken, Because of your good work at attempting to replicate the "Mozart effect", you are by far the most cited TIPS contributor in my classes and in research conferences with my students. You have set a good example.
It is interesting that Animal IRB's often set a standard which makes it difficult to simply perform replication studies with animals. This is sometimes true for human IRB's as well. Replication attempts must be shown to be strongly justified in order to gain approval, the argument being that "we already know that" and shouldn't subject animals to any hardship that "doesn't further our knowledge". Bill Scott >>> Ken Steele 11/07/11 12:08 PM >>> People have asked about who does replication studies, how they get support, and what are the rewards. I haven't been able to participate in this thread because I was in Seattle at the Psychonomic Society meeting where I was presenting results showing a failure to replicate an effect that appeared in Science a couple of years ago. (I am into Study 4 on this particular effect.) I am drawn to praeternatural (or preternatural) effects, i. e. effects which seem inconsistent with the apperceptive mass of experimental psychology effects. You can spot one of those effects easily when a colleague describes a result and then dismisses it completely as "can't be true" or "doesn't make sense." The Bem paper on precognition is a prime example of this type of publication. My usual plan is to replicate the effect and then try to discover the reason for the effect. Discovering the reason for the effect is a win-win situation from my perspective. Either the effect can be explained by known principles (including cheating) or I have discovered an effect that requires we change our thinking about how the world operates. You need some support from your school but you don't need NIH or NSF funding for a lot of work. (A lot of NIH/NSF money is for course buyouts and salaries of the PI and grad students.) You won't get an award from APA or APS for doing this work. Then again, most experimental psychologists will never get an award for their work. The best reward I get is from fellow experimental psychologists who say "Good job; Good science." This happened to me in Seattle and so I am a happy fellow. Ken ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kenneth M. Steele, Ph. D. [email protected] Professor and Assistant Chairperson Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13058.902daf6855267276c83a639cbb25165c&n=T&l=tips&o=13960 or send a blank email to leave-13960-13058.902daf6855267276c83a639cbb251...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=13969 or send a blank email to leave-13969-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
