{"id":541,"date":"2009-06-10T00:10:17","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T07:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/?p=541"},"modified":"2026-03-06T13:28:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T20:28:34","slug":"voodoo-perspectives-on-psychological-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/2009\/06\/voodoo-perspectives-on-psychological-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Voodoo Perspectives on Psychological Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

I received my May 2009 issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science<\/em> 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 than original articles, but such is the case here. <\/p>\n

It has been quite fascinating to read the original Vul et al. paper once more with the added context of the comments. Ed Diener made a very good point in his Editor’s Introduction: by publishing the article online before it appeared in an APS journal Vul et al. effectively short-circuited the comment process, giving his article a window of time without published criticism or opposition. The comments add a new, and I believe necessary, dimension to the discussion.<\/p>\n

If you are still interested in the debate then I highly recommend sitting down for a while and reading through the comments. Also, don’t forget to check out the new Kriegeskorte, Simmons, Bellgowan, and Baker<\/a> (2009) article in Nature Neuroscience and a new commentary by Poldrack and Mumford<\/a> (2009) on Voodoo Correlations in SCAN.<\/p>\n

\n

\"perspectiveslogo\"<\/p>\n

The full online table of contents from the APS:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.psychologicalscience.org\/journals\/pps\/4_3.cfm<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Articles in Perspectives<\/em> related to Voodoo\/Puzzling debate:<\/p>\n

Editor’s Introduction to Vul et al. (2009) and Comments<\/a>
\nEd Diener<\/p>\n

Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition<\/a>
\nEdward Vul, Christine Harris, Piotr Winkielman, and Harold Pashler<\/p>\n

Commentary on Vul et al.’s (2009) “Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition”<\/a>
\nThomas E. Nichols and Jean-Baptist Poline<\/p>\n

Big Correlations in Little Studies: Inflated fMRI Correlations Reflect Low Statistical Power. Commentary on Vul et al. (2009)<\/a>
\nTal Yarkoni<\/p>\n

Correlations in Social Neuroscience Aren’t Voodoo: Commentary on Vul et al. (2009)\t<\/a>
\nMatthew D. Lieberman, Elliot T. Berkman, and Tor D. Wager<\/p>\n

Discussion of “Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition” by Vul et al. (2009)<\/a>
\nNicole A. Lazar<\/p>\n

Correlations and Multiple Comparisons in Functional Imaging: A Statistical Perspective (Commentary on Vul et al., 2009)<\/a>
\nMartin A. Lindquist and Andrew Gelman<\/p>\n

Understanding the Mind by Measuring the Brain: Lessons From Measuring Behavior (Commentary on Vul et al., 2009)<\/a>
\nLisa Feldman Barrett<\/p>\n

Reply to Comments on “Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition”<\/a>
\nEdward Vul, Christine Harris, Piotr Winkielman, and Harold Pashler<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10,12,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cognitive-neuroscience","category-mri","category-psychology","category-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":583,"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions\/583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}