On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 17:17:26 -0400, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Krzysztof Kowalczyk wrote:
However, just pointing the fact that its possible that the research migh be wrong is not an argument. You can apply this silly reasoning to any research ever done, especially in psychology, given that isolating primary factors isn't easy in psychological studies.
Indeed, that in itself is probably enough to take the research with the very large grain of salt. Only occasionally do strong claims in psychological studies end up actually being accurate ones. Even correlations in psychology are very error-prone, given how difficult it is to design an unbiased experiment, and causational claims are doubly so.
(Just recently I read an article in a refereed journal giving good reason to believe that _all_ studies done to date on antidepressants are invalid. And that's an area where there's been tons of work with billions of dollars spent on very carefully trying to prove results.)
You're just repeating this extremely faulty argument "some research has been found invalid therefore all research is invalid".
But more importantly, if you dismiss the value of published research, how do you propose we carry on an intelligent discussion? What arguments can I possibly use that you'll accept as valid?
Also, how do you stack up layman's personal opinion (e.g. Timwi's) against published research? Is it of the same value/importance to you? More? Less?
And finally, as quoted by http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000070.html and http://www.uwo.ca/uwofa/ft/6.2/#ph1 :
"... at least two dozen studies over the last three decades have conclusively shown that people who expect to receive a reward for completing a task or for doing that task successfully simply do not perform as well as those who expect no reward at all."
Kohn, A. 1993. Why incentive plans cannot work! Harvard Educational Review nos. 9/10: 45-63.
Note the word "conclusively".
If you proceed to invalidate pretty strong evidence with mere hand-waving, then there's really little point in having a discussion on this subject.
Krzysztof Kowalczyk | http://blog.kowalczyk.info