Thank you Linda. If you follow that link, you only get a summary which says the
z on mortality was re-calculated, whence if became “marginally significant.”
When you actually go to the original erratum, you find that, upon
recalculation: z dropped from 3.14 to 1.74, (p=.0818). There is no reason to
get overly-moralistic about the .05 level, but I think it is fair to say that
p>.08 would not have been published, especially in JPSP.
Going back to the original article, one sees that they calculated that z on the
proportions, and did an arcsine transform on them first. Interesting because if
you did a 2-way Chi-square on the raw frequencies (which would be the more
common way to handle them):
died lived Total
plant 7 40 47
no-plant 13 31 44
Total 20 71 91
Chi-square (df=1) = 2.84, p > .05 (chi-square crit = 3.84)
One can only guess why they went for the more exotic statistic.
Interestingly, these frequencies generate a whopping Odds Ratio of 2.40 but,
still, it is not significant (z=1.66)… and no one in psychology was using Odds
Ratios back in 1977.
The more common (in psych) effect size measure of phi (.177) looks even worse
because of the imbalance in the table.
Chris
…..
Christopher D Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada
[email protected]
http://www.yorku.ca/christo
………………………………...
On Nov 18, 2014, at 3:51 PM, Tollefsrud, Linda <[email protected]> wrote:
> The “obscure erratum” link in Coyne’s article leads to this:
> http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/36/5/462/
>
>
> L. Tollefsrud
>
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of R. Trent Codd
> III
> Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2014 2:37 PM
> To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
> Subject: Re: [tips] Psych science.?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I don't see the beginning of the thread for some reason so I'm not entirely
> sure what you are referring to (although I have a good guess). Might you be
> referring to James Coyne's recent commentary about Ellen Langer's research?
>
> If not, you might find his thoughts on the matter interesting (although I
> suspect you may have already seen this & that this is what you are referring
> to):
>
> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/eminent-harvard-psychologist-mother-of-positive-psychology-new-age-quack/
>
> Trent
>
> On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 2:55 PM, Stuart McKelvie <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 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"
>
> <image001.jpg>
> "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] (or [email protected])
>
> Bishop's University Psychology Department Web Page:
> http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy
>
> Floreat Labore"
>
> <image002.jpg>
>
> <image003.jpg>
> ___________________________________________________________________________
>
>
>
> 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]
> http://www.ThePsychFiles.com
> Twitter: @mbritt
>
>
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