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If we can't give peer-reviewed, easily repeatable experiments the benefit of the doubt, we are in trouble.



I'd love to, but in case of psychology, many of them (or, conclusions drawn from them) just sound plain nonsense.

EDIT: I'm searching for original paper on Shiv experiment. It might be that cognitive load makes our decision less rational, but I'm not buying choosing salad over cake as a rationality test.

EDIT2: Found it.

http://www.mendeley.com/research/heart-and-mind-in-conflict-...

It seems that they also asked people to rate the rationality of their choice - whether they believe the cake/salad is good for health, a wise choice, etc. Given this data the result and conclusions sound a bit more reasonable.

I try to trust peer reviewed papers (if we can't trust them, what can we trust?), but I also try to keep my bullshit meter well calibrated. There's enough of pseudo-scientific "knowledge" circulating around. Just look at 7-38-55 (spoken-voice-body language) "rule of communication" and 'cone of learning' ("we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, ...") - it gets repeated around all the time, but if you think of it, it makes no sense. And, in fact, it's totally not true. It's just a result of a big misinterpretation of some scientific studies.


You don't think we're in trouble?




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