In addition to what Chris said below, I offer a few other possibilities. We have to clarify with the utmost detail our operational definitions to permit replication, and being a "young" science we have not always settled on standard ways to measure things, so instead of saying how social-support effects us, we must specify what sub-scales of what measures of social support correlated with etc etc etc. And because many of the "things" we study are constructs, articles must prove that such-and-such a construct actually exists, so you have to plow through factor loadings and eigenvalues etc etc.
Also, there are many of us are studying small effect size phenomena (must avoid Type I false claims) so we must fill the journals with statistics (hopefully effect sizes and CIs!) to get it published. We DO have to separate ourselves from junk science. Is it also possible that our methodological expertise outpaces the content of our discoveries? So what pops into view on our journals is the methodology. On the other hand, when you have a clear finding, I'd say go for the great writing. Many Psych Science articles are well written, perhaps because they select clear findings of appeal to a wide audience. When this thread appeared I thought of articles that were great to read, and one that came to mind was Ken Steele's (fellow TIPSTER) Psych Science article on the Mozart effect (what year was that?) - readable, informative, etc. Ken, care to share publishing secrets? ========================== John W. Kulig, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Coordinator, University Honors Plymouth State University Plymouth NH 03264 ========================== ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christopher D. Green" <[email protected]> To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, January 6, 2012 5:24:23 PM Subject: Re: [tips] Why does published research have to be so cryptic Because, science is (correctly) written explicitly to appeal to the intellect rather than to the emotions (unlike almost every other form of writing), so scientists make something of a fetish (okay, "a show" if you find "fetish" too pejorative) of writing it as un-excitingly as possible. Slightly less cynically, scientists typically find that everyday categories do not "carve nature at its joints" (to borrow a phrase), so they have to invent exotic new terms (or repurpose relatively obscure old ones) to capture the various portions of everyday language that go together "in nature" (energy, mass, element, phylogeny, personality, intelligence) and that makes it hard (and boring) for "laypeople" to read. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 [email protected] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================== ============= On 1/6/12 2:50 PM, Michael Britt wrote: I just finished reading another research article for possible use in an upcoming podcast and while I think the study itself was well done, I am once again left wondering why it all has to be so boring. I mean, we tell students (at least I did) that we do research because we're curious about human behavior. We usually do research because we've observed something about ourselves and we want to understand it better. After this initial curiosity we usually talk about our research idea with friends and colleagues over lunch. We even get excited about it. Now, of course, the research process itself is a serious matter and I am not saying that we need to dumb down the process (blah, blah, blah). I'm just saying that what comes out the other end - the published article - is typically so mindnumbingly boring to read. And it's not just that. The other thing that discourages me is that all the curiosity, all the excitement the researchers probably had at the start of the process is nowhere to be found in the publication. In fact, I'm not even clear as to what the researchers saw as important (even potentially interesting) about this research I just read. Isn't there a way to capture ANY of the initial excitement? Can't we have a section in which researchers are allowed to tell us what the applications of the research are to "real life"? I know they sometimes do this in the Discussion, but you'd often be hard pressed to find it. We criticize lawyers for their cryptic legal documents - what about us? No wonder students hate research methods. We've sucked the "wonder" out of it. Michael Michael A. Britt, Ph.D. [email protected] http://www.ThePsychFiles.com Twitter: mbritt --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected] . To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=430248.781165b5ef80a3cd2b14721caf62bd92&n=T&l=tips&o=15138 or send a blank email to leave-15138-430248.781165b5ef80a3cd2b14721caf62b...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected] . To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13338.f659d005276678c0696b7f6beda66454&n=T&l=tips&o=15141 (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) or send a blank email to leave-15141-13338.f659d005276678c0696b7f6beda66...@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=15153 or send a blank email to leave-15153-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
