Archive for the ‘Psychology’ Category
The Middle Ground in Multiple Comparisons Correction
I got a note last week from a longtime colleague seeking advice on some reviewer comments of their latest paper. In their remarks the reviewer requested that the authors revert the corrected statistical threshold back to an uncorrected level of p < 0.001. The authors were left scratching their heads, wondering how they were going […]
Neuroimaging Statistics Workshop Videos
The Columbia University Department of Statistics hosted a workshop last month titled “Estimating Effects and Correlations in Neuroimaging Data”. Some great folks stopped by to give talks, including Ed Vul, Nikolas Kriegeskorte, Tor Wager, and Andrew Gelman. They recorded everything into Quicktime movies for those of us who couldn’t stop by – click the link […]
Quote of the Week – Coggan
“My ignorance of science is such that if anyone mentioned copper nitrate I should think he was talking about policemen’s overtime.” – Frederick Donald Coggan
My first NIH grant proposal
My postdoc adviser Mike Miller and I spent several weeks last April writing a grant proposal requesting ARRA economic stimulus money to do some aging research. Mike has written several grants before, so he is a bit of a pro. In contrast I have never needed to submit a NIH grant proposal. I had steady […]
Voodoo Perspectives on Psychological Science
I received my May 2009 issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science in the mail last week. This is the issue containing the original Voodoo Correlations paper along with responses from, well, just about everybody. Man, is it chock-full of debate. I don’t know if I have ever seen a journal volume published with more commentary […]
Quote of the Week – Sagan
“The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach […]
The Dangers of Double Dipping (Voodoo IV)
A new article discussing non-independence errors has arrived on the scene, and it is quite good. Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, Kyle Simmons, Patrick Bellgowan, and Chris Baker have authored a Nature Neuroscience paper called ‘Circular analysis in systems neuroscience: the dangers of double dipping‘. It is the same fundamental argument as the original Voodoo Correlations paper (now […]
Matlab finite() function warnings
The latest version of Matlab deprecated the finite() function in favor of isfinite(). This is all fine and dandy in terms of improving the scripting language, but this change currently causes a crapalanche of warnings to be thrown as you use SPM. Usually along the lines of: Warning: FINITE is obsolete and will be removed […]
Quote of the Week – Curie
“I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.” – Marie Curie
Cognitive Neuroscience Society 2009 Review
I had a great time at the 2009 meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) last weekend. This is a conference that I try to attend every year, and I have been successful in that goal for six years now. Below is a list of highlights from the conference. I want to take just a […]