Archive for the ‘Psychology’ Category
The ‘Voodoo Correlations’ saga continues
Saddle up cowpokes, and prepare yourselves, for yet another episode of Voodoo Correlations. The latest salvo comes in the form of a reply authored by Lieberman, Berkman, and Wager. This is an invited paper that will appear in a future edition of Perspectives on Psychological Science alongside the original Vul, Harris, Winkielman, and Pashler paper. […]
The “Ten Commandments of SEM”
Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a confirmatory method that allows researchers to test hypothesized relationships between variables and probe the ways that they influence each other. Rightly done it can be a very useful approach to have in your toolbox of methods. Still, true to most complicated techniques there are few ways to do it […]
The ‘Voodoo Correlations’ debate heats up
It hasn’t taken long for the academically-heated exchanges to begin with regard to the recent Vul, Harris, Winkielman, and Pashler paper. You can’t call out such a large group of authors, say their results are practically meaningless, and not have some of them speak up. One group of authors who were red-flagged as having non-independence […]
Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience
The progress of science is not a continuous, linear process. Instead it moves forward in fits and starts, occasionally under protest. For a young field cognitive neuroscience has made dramatic advances in a relative short amount of time, but there have been some mistakes that we keep making again and again. Sometimes we get so […]
Voodoo Correlations Index
This post serves as an index of the articles that reference the ‘Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience’ debate. The original paper has now been renamed ‘Puzzlingly high correlations in fMRI studies of emotion, personality, and social cognition’. There have been five posts so far, each listed below: [1] Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience: http://prefrontal.org/blog/2009/01/voodoo-correlations-in-social-neuroscience/ [2] […]
The Presidential Election
Politics on a weblog is like picking up a stick of old, wet dynamite. You might grab it and absolutely nothing happens, or it might very well explode in your face. It is for this reason that I try to avoid political discussion on prefrontal.org. Every weblog must have a focus, and there are more […]
Quote of the Week – Gigerenzer
A former chairman of the Harvard Psychology department once asked me “Gerd, do you know why they love those pictures [the fMRI activity maps]?’ It is because they are like women: they are beautiful, they are expensive, and you don’t understand them” – Gerd Gigerenzer
The Neuroscience of Running
Just over a year ago I began running as form of regular exercise. I was looking for an outdoor activity that I could do year-round in New Hampshire and found running to be enjoyable in both warm and cold weather. It took a few weeks to (literally) get up to speed, but I have been […]
Quote of the Week – Feynman
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong” – Richard Feynman
Quote of the Week – Tukey
“The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.” – John W. Tukey, 1986