Dear Tipsters,
I had always regarded the two nursing home studies (experiments, actually) as
interesting and have regularly reported them in my classes. The significant
finding of different death rates in the follow-up study was of particularly
attention-grabbing and almost too good to be true, but I had not seen any
reason to doubt it, even though the sample size was small.
I went back to these two papers to see if I could detect serious errors in
methodology and statistics. Of course, if there was something important that
was not reported, we would not know that. Based on this re-reading I still do
not see any serious errors, although the data on multiple measures could have
been treated with MANOVA rather than ANOVA.
The authors also report various attempt to keep extraneous variables constant –
e.g. raters being blind as to the condition in which people were. In addition,
they express their own surprise at the death rate data and admit that not
everything was known about the patients.
Of course, the matter of replication remains. If this has not occurred, we do
not know what the outcome would be. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there
has been a failure to replicate the results of the exercise-as-placebo
experiment.
So, overall, I still think that the original experiments, as reported, offer
interesting results. Have there been serious criticisms of them that I have
missed?
Sincerely,
Stuart
___________________________________________________________________________
"Floreat Labore"
[cid:[email protected]]
"Recti cultus pectora roborant"
Stuart J. McKelvie, Ph.D., Phone: 819 822 9600 x 2402
Department of Psychology, Fax: 819 822 9661
Bishop's University,
2600 rue College,
Sherbrooke,
Québec J1M 1Z7,
Canada.
E-mail: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> (or
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>)
Bishop's University Psychology Department Web Page:
http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy<blocked::http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy>
Floreat Labore"
[cid:[email protected]]
[cid:[email protected]]
___________________________________________________________________________
From: Michael Britt [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: November 18, 2014 8:20 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: [tips] Psych science.?
This is so discouraging. Eye opening perhaps, but discouraging. I remember
well the nursing home study and I always thought positively of it. I have two
parents in their 90s and I know they are frustrated by their lack of
independence and the loss of control over their lives. But as I reflect on all
this I had to ask myself, "Why would I think that the participants in Langer's
study would lead healthier, longer lives simply because of their ability to
take care of a plant?" Given how complex humans are, and how complex life is,
why would I think that a simple “intervention” like giving people control over
a plant would have such powerful effects? Maybe because I wanted to believe….
As for this counterclockwise “study”…oh boy..at least it is indeed an excellent
point about how eminence doesn’t necessarily mean credible.
I am additionally discouraged because I recently finished reading a published
article which appeared to have been carefully carried out (and which was filled
with all manor of impressive advanced statistical techniques) but in the end
all they really found were essentially correlations. I kept going back to my
underlined sentences and I still couldn’t figure out why this study was
important enough to publish. The hypotheses and the conclusions were
“tortured” into giving up some kind of “significance”.
I need some cheering up: can anyone point to a recently published article they
think was interesting and credibly carried out?
Michael
Michael A. Britt, Ph.D.
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
http://www.ThePsychFiles.com
Twitter: @mbritt
---
You are currently subscribed to tips as:
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>.
To unsubscribe click here:
http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13510.2cc18398df2e6692fffc29a610cb72e3&n=T&l=tips&o=40276
(It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken)
or send a blank email to
leave-40276-13510.2cc18398df2e6692fffc29a610cb7...@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:leave-40276-13510.2cc18398df2e6692fffc29a610cb7...@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=40285
or send a blank email to
leave-40285-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
