
Power Poser: When big ideas go bad - samclemens
http://www.chronicle.com/article/When-Big-Ideas-Go-Bad/238544?key=yop9k7-B1QiWD6aZpWTJrwQaFFjhgu-cumdsNS97tdI-aTlXSFvHWZIy2iA1Y0UfSDdsb1ZES1NjYnd5QTllSDNlSG9LVjAzRUl3NVNrVGZhUzRMSWJ5Q1BGdw
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jchmbrln
_Cuddy wrote that she was "concerned about the tenor" of the discussion
regarding power poses and other disputed studies, worrying that such criticism
could have a "chilling effect on science." Cuddy’s not the only one....Fiske,
a professor of psychology at Princeton, referred to scientists who search for
errors in published studies as "destructo-critics" engaged in "methodological
terrorism."_

Yikes. So when a study is seriously flawed, the bad guy is the one who
uncovered it? I'm more concerned that peer reviewers aren't searching hard
enough for errors.

~~~
dwaltrip
Those statements are so incredibly antithetical to the ethos of science. It
amazes me they could say something like that and keep face among their peers.
My hope is that history does not look kindly on such words.

~~~
Bartweiss
Those comments are shockingly close to just announcing "caring whether my
studies are right gets in the way of my career".

I realize that good social scientists may get stuck falling behind bad ones in
reputation, and I think that's a structural problem. But responding to that
with a demand to stop checking for bad results is shocking, and it's not
something that should be acceptable for a practicing researcher. I hope those
voices don't slow down the effort to reform these fields.

------
mcguire
" _So how did arguably the most popular idea on the internet end up on the
scientific ash heap? For that matter, how could such questionable research
migrate from a journal to a viral video to a best seller, circulating for
years, retweeted and forwarded and praised by millions, with almost no
pushback?_ "

That's easy.

1\. Videos and books aren't peer reviewed. In fact, books and videos by
scientists usually are not even about the science. They are about self
promotion.

2\. Peer review isn't the gold standard of truth. At some level, it's
political. At another, it's just three or four people arguing about what they
believe.

And don't forget...

0\. A single paper has roughly as much chance of being wrong as of being
right, even without methodological issues. Which all research has.

But also...

-1. The power pose thing told people something they wanted to hear. Piltdown man and cold fusion did too. And that recent thing with random cells + lemon juice -> stem cells.

~~~
francoisdevlin
The fact that the presenter is a beautiful, well dressed woman speaking at a
commercial venue certainly helped this get popular.

TED is here to make a buck...

~~~
jmde
Bingo. The fact this is one of the two most popular TED talks says volumes
about TED, and how to interpret TED vis-a-vis the broader scientific
community.

------
Fede_V
This is something other commenters picked up on - but the tragedy of this is
that in the current scientific climate, doing good, unglamorous solid science
has nowhere near the payoff than coming up with feel-good theories and then
marketing the shit out of them.

Peter Thiel said that: "the political people who are nimble in the art of
writing government grants have gradually displaced the eccentric and
idiosyncratic people who typically make the best scientists. The eccentric
university professor is a species that is going extinct fast" \- and that's
exactly right. Cuddy is a terrible scientist, but she's a fantastic
communicator, an engaging speaker, and a great 'seller'.

How do we fix this? Brian Nosek is doing some absolutely fantastic work on
this, and I hope it picks up more traction, but I'd like to see the ecosystem
around scientific communication seriously revamped. There are a few
publications (the Economist and the Atlantic come to mind) that have excellent
scientific writers, but things like TED or Malcom Gladwell's books are a
blight upon science.

~~~
TheCowboy
This article seems like it should have been flagged as part of political detox
week, as it's promoting more emotional than useful discussions.

I do think your first sentence has some truth, but I wouldn't use Thiel as a
reference as it just seems to be an appeal to emotion.

Is there any evidence backing up Thiel's assertion? It sounds like
romanticizing the past and idealizing eccentricity. It's also begging the
question that eccentric/idiosyncratic people make the best scientists.

~~~
Fede_V
I don't think I should have said 'that's exactly right' \- I should have said
'that's partially right'. The funding climate right now is very competitive,
and the ability to obtain funds is more important than it's ever been.

For another example, here is Peter Higgs (the guy who developed the theory
that predicted the boson) discussing modern science:
[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-
higgs-...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-
academic-system). As far as quantitative data about trends in scientific
funding - we have lots of data showing that the funding climate is the worse
it's ever been, but I wouldn't even know how to quantitatively prove that
being 'strategic' is more important now than it was in the past.

------
brohee
_" Fiske says she’s received emails from distraught researchers whose careers
and sense of well-being have been harmed and from young researchers who fear
that they, too, will fall victim to the "destructo-critics." Some, she says,
are leaving the field rather than face such hostility."_

Good, data massagers leaving the field, their feelings be damned, is exactly
what is needed.

------
rl3
One of the most popular TED talks ever turned out to be popsci bullshit
wrapped up in some feel-good narrative? _Imagine that._

Perhaps this will cast doubt on the veracity of other TED talks now.

------
AndrewOMartin
I'd rather call Power Posing a bad idea that went big.

~~~
etrautmann
It's not a terrible hypothesis. The fact that it doesn't replicate doesn't
make it a bad idea to have had in the first place - only one that didn't stand
up to (further) investigation.

~~~
Bartweiss
It was a reasonable idea and worth testing, but I think we should start the
criticism a step earlier than replication. There were a lot of issues with the
original study, both methodological failures (testing saliva after giving
rewards) and academic ones (the admitted p-hacking).

This was a worthwhile experiment that would never have reached initial
publication if held to existing best practices.

------
soneca
Worth mention other similar bad ideas gone big:

[https://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/09/16/ten-famous-
psychology-f...](https://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/09/16/ten-famous-psychology-
findings-that-its-been-difficult-to-replicate/)

------
dhimes
Meta: I submitted this yesterday, even with the exact same alteration of the
original title.

The url that I submitted, however, ended with a different number (238544).

So my question is: Why are web sites doing this? Is this so that they _can_ be
resubmitted to sites like HN (do other sites have these similar rules)? I
might have a clue if my link no longer worked, but it does.

~~~
codezero
The URL path is the same, but they've added a query parameter with
/238544?key=... to the submitted URL.

The query parameter may or may not do anything, it depends on the site, so
presumably it's just ignored and was attached to allow it to be resubmitted.

With that said, HN does allow resubmitting the same URL multiple times with
some wiggle room around the last time it was submitted.

~~~
dhimes
The ?key is part of the email tracker- I get mine emailed to my inbox and
presumably OP does too. But the /238544 looks like a landing page. It's some
sort of route- presumably for tracking- but when you leave the number off you
get a 404 (I try to strip anything superfluous before posting).

~~~
tedunangst
Without the key in the URL, I only get "This content is available exclusively
to Chronicle subscribers", no article. Your submission probably didn't get
much traction because nobody could read it.

~~~
dhimes
Thank you! So some sites use a key even from third-party sites to keep content
from being shared. I knew sometimes we can get in through Google if it's
paywalled, but I didn't know that other sites used a key.

------
arctangent
The original TED talk is still worth watching. Amy Cuddy is a strong
communicator and lessons on public speaking can be learned from that.

As for the efficacy (or not) of the "power pose", it might be worth
considering that for some people it may have a psychological placebo effect.

That is to say: Perhaps if a person believes strongly enough that doing a
thing will make them more confident, then that person's confidence will be
improved by doing that thing.

~~~
goodJobWalrus
Yes, but the replication studies showed that although people did feel more
confident, nothing changed in their actions or in the actions of others toward
them. So, the question is, what is all this newfound confidence good for, if
the result of the meeting is going to be the same?

~~~
arctangent
Good point. Perhaps people just "feel better" (i.e. experience less regret)
with the decisions/actions they would have taken anyway, if they believe they
have taken those decisions/actions with the benefit of some special
knowledge/technique.

------
danieltillett
The whole "power poser" fiasco is a huge warning sign that science is well on
the way to total failure. The problem is that scientists don't learn on their
own, they are taught by other scientists what is acceptable or not. When the
teachers are corrupted all the students follow and nobody knows anymore what
is science.

The really worrying thing is that Cuddy and Fiske believe that they are doing
science. They are amoral, not immoral.

------
wangii
TED used to be on top of my watching list, until I realised it's just another
marketing channel, when ev promoted Twitter on stage. (I have nothing against
ev, and it was a smart/successful marketing move)

------
nick_urban
Except "power poses" do work. I experience a marked increase in my energy and
confidence when taking a "power pose".

Moreover, the "power pose effect" is a subset of the general experience that
posture changes mood. The opposite effect can also be observed. Try
exaggeratedly slouching. It produces a near-immediate decrease in energy and
confidence.

Perhaps hormone levels do not change, but the subjective difference is (for me
at least) undeniable.

Take it for granted for a moment that posture affects mood. In that case, how
do we interpret a failure to reproduce? Could it be a case that they were not
testing exactly what they thought they were testing, but that the folk-
knowledge of posture is still correct?

------
woliveirajr
> "After the book tour was over, one of Cuddy’s co-authors, who had been
> silent on the topic of power poses for years, unexpectedly weighed in. Dana
> Carney posted a 1,000-word statement on her website saying, in unambiguous
> language, that she no longer believed in power poses. (...) She tore into
> her own methodology, calling the sample size "tiny" and noting that the
> effects are "small and barely there in some cases."

Interesting taking some long, like waiting for a book-selling-tour end up, to
then say that you don't believe anymore in what you've studied, and that you
have reasons (and not just a felling) to dismiss your research.

~~~
abecedarius
If you want people to admit their mistakes instead of stonewalling or slowly
walking them back, then your first reaction to someone doing so should
probably be praise. Maybe she's a venal person like you're insinuating, but I
don't know, and most of us reading this don't know either. As a programmer I
know I make mistakes _all the time_ , big and small. We're very lucky to get
so much relatively clear feedback.

~~~
woliveirajr
Yes, you're right. I can't say there was malice, nor was my intention. Just a
bad timing, perhaps, or even that retreat just occurred because the book got
attention.

------
kylebenzle
No surprise here.

Social Science != Science.

Social Science == Talking about what feels "right".

~~~
Kinnard
I bet there's a spectrum, even within 'science'. Some social science is rather
empirically oriented, like demography.

Others are less so, which doesn't make them any less useful, like frontier
thesis:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Thesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Thesis)

And on top of all that, empiricism isn't the only method for discovering
truth!

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Social science is extremely complex and difficult to measure. It's not as
simple as, say, chemistry, where you know the number of protons and electrons
and can easily calculate the energy in reactions.

We may simply lack the apparatus to fully comprehend social science. Neural
networks as they stand might be the key, but they could also be a mere
stepping stone, such as how Aristotle's belief of the world being formed by a
handful of basic "elements" was a sufficient and necessary bridge to our
contemporary understanding of the atomic and subatomic universe.

It's probably not a good idea to take social science findings too seriously,
but that doesn't make it bunk science. Just...imprecise.

~~~
wyager
> that doesn't make it bunk science. Just...imprecise.

The bunk level of a field that claims to be a science can be determined from
its predictive power. The predictive power of almost any social science is
very, very low.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
There is a lot we don't know about why people behave the way that they do.

Even if one's findings turn out to be wrong, that doesn't dismiss the
necessity to study the unknown. Would you have given up on space travel after
the first few rockets exploded on the launchpad?

Ironically, my parent post is being heavily downvoted for stating this
opinion.

~~~
wyager
There's a difference between trying to create a scientific field and
pretending you already have one.

~~~
Kinnard
Wouldn't the process still just be 'science' though even if the results are
forthcoming?

------
coldcode
Changing your pose affecting the chemistry of your body made little sense to
me. Not surprising it can't be replicated.

~~~
GavinMcG
You seem to be endorsing a heuristic that things which don't make sense to you
are false.

That seems obviously wrong to me. But I'm probably misreading your intention,
so what are you trying to say?

~~~
EdHominem
> That seems obviously wrong to me.

What were you using to arrive at that conclusion? :P

