<story><title>How a middle aged CS major debunked a classic positive psychology finding (2013)</title><url>https://narratively.com/nick-brown-smelled-bull/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>setgree</author><text>I worked with Nick a few times in a previous job and he was a reviewer on a paper I wrote; he was really nice and professional, and his feedback was constructive and incisive.&lt;p&gt;The movement he&amp;#x27;s part of is fundamentally disagreeable (in the &amp;#x27;big five&amp;#x27; sense [0]), and some of its prominent characters, as you might expect, have reputations for being interpersonally difficult [1]. Collectively they&amp;#x27;ve been labeled &amp;quot;data thugs&amp;quot; [2] and accused of &amp;quot;methodological terrorism&amp;quot; [3], which is why I think Nick&amp;#x27;s fundamental goodness is an especially valuable asset. We&amp;#x27;d gain a ton of social value from certain reforms to the scientific research apparatus, and, IMO, being kind when delivering pointed critiques helps a difficult pill go down. That&amp;#x27;s different than pulling your punches; it just means staying focused on the thing you actually want to change.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Big_Five_personality_traits&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Big_Five_personality_traits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;@OmnesRes&amp;#x2F;the-dumbest-fucking-thing-ive-ever-read-8653e2409ec4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;@OmnesRes&amp;#x2F;the-dumbest-fucking-thing-ive-e...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.science.org&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;meet-data-thugs-out-expose-shoddy-and-questionable-research&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.science.org&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;meet-data-thugs-out-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;what-has-happened-down-here-is-the-winds-have-changed&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;what-has-h...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pdonis</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; being kind when delivering pointed critiques helps a difficult pill go down&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;While I am sympathetic to this, I think it fails to recognize a very important thing that we expect, or at least should expect, from people who claim to be doing science: that every scientist is responsible for sanity checking &lt;i&gt;their own&lt;/i&gt; work before making any claims based on it. As Richard Feynman said, your first duty as a scientist is to not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool.&lt;p&gt;That means every scientist needs to be an expert in whatever fields are relevant to the work they&amp;#x27;re doing. If a scientist is going to make claims based on some purported correspondence between human psychology and fluid dynamics, they need to be an expert, not just in human psychology, but also in fluid dynamics; and if they&amp;#x27;re not, they need to not make the claims, no matter how enthusiastic they are about them. And the scientists who published the claims that Nick and his colleagues debunked were &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; experts in fluid dynamics, and knew it, yet they chose to publish anyway.&lt;p&gt;And that kind of thing, if science as an institution is going to be trustworthy, &lt;i&gt;cannot&lt;/i&gt; be handled by kind words when delivering pointed critiques. It has to be labeled as what it is: not just being mistaken, but being scientifically dishonest, by making claims that you do not have the expertise to make. In a sane world, scientists who did that would be stripped of the label &amp;quot;scientist&amp;quot;, the same way we disbar dishonest lawyers or revoke the medical licenses of dishonest doctors. At the very least, it justifies language that does not include kind words, but the opposite.&lt;p&gt;I have no problem with using kind words when calling out a scientist who is just mistaken. But I don&amp;#x27;t think kind words are called for when a scientist knowingly publishes claims that they don&amp;#x27;t have the expertise to evaluate for themselves.</text></comment>
<story><title>How a middle aged CS major debunked a classic positive psychology finding (2013)</title><url>https://narratively.com/nick-brown-smelled-bull/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>setgree</author><text>I worked with Nick a few times in a previous job and he was a reviewer on a paper I wrote; he was really nice and professional, and his feedback was constructive and incisive.&lt;p&gt;The movement he&amp;#x27;s part of is fundamentally disagreeable (in the &amp;#x27;big five&amp;#x27; sense [0]), and some of its prominent characters, as you might expect, have reputations for being interpersonally difficult [1]. Collectively they&amp;#x27;ve been labeled &amp;quot;data thugs&amp;quot; [2] and accused of &amp;quot;methodological terrorism&amp;quot; [3], which is why I think Nick&amp;#x27;s fundamental goodness is an especially valuable asset. We&amp;#x27;d gain a ton of social value from certain reforms to the scientific research apparatus, and, IMO, being kind when delivering pointed critiques helps a difficult pill go down. That&amp;#x27;s different than pulling your punches; it just means staying focused on the thing you actually want to change.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Big_Five_personality_traits&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Big_Five_personality_traits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;@OmnesRes&amp;#x2F;the-dumbest-fucking-thing-ive-ever-read-8653e2409ec4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;@OmnesRes&amp;#x2F;the-dumbest-fucking-thing-ive-e...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.science.org&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;meet-data-thugs-out-expose-shoddy-and-questionable-research&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.science.org&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;meet-data-thugs-out-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;what-has-happened-down-here-is-the-winds-have-changed&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;what-has-h...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>motohagiography</author><text>If this generalizes, seems like someone with a graph database, some basic calculus, and an archive of papers citation data could pull the rug out from under entire disciplines, specifically ones that are informing public policy these days.  These &amp;quot;data thugs,&amp;quot; they seem like what we hoped hackers would be.</text></comment>