A cornucopia of fascinating leads! Among other things, I wondered how Wansink's apparatus would have worked if Tantalus had been one of his experimental subjects. But then I realized that one of the underlying assumptions of all science, not just soup-science, is that divine meddling is excluded.
Regarding "About 75% of kids agreed to go with a female stranger, and about 50% agreed to go with a male stranger." I realize the humor of Mastroianni's post, but, such studies are valuable. Charles Nelson's lab is famous for studying the ongoing development of children who grew up in the Romanian orphanages. They use a variant of this question for former orphans. A confederate goes to the home of the former orphan to find out if the former orphan will leave with a stranger. Typically developing children are wary of leaving with a stranger and say No (from memory, it seemed the 'yes' rate was a few percent). The former orphans are willing to leave with a stranger at high rates (like, 75%).
Nelson's claim is that growing up in a family teaches children how to be wary of strangers. So now... what do we make of the Chinese data... One difference may be that Nelson's confederates when to the child's home, and the Chinese study took place on school grounds. School grounds are normally supposed to be safe and school administrators frequently need to fetch a child for testing or other purposes.
Yeah in that Chinese study, I think the children might have thought the researchers were just other teachers from the same school (& school grounds in big cities in China must be heavily monitored by security cameras anyway).
But it's kind of funny to imagine the researchers running around the school trying to catch those kids xD
My thesis advisor when I was doing fMRI research in 2010-2011 explicitly encouraged me to try to find any kind of significance. She didn't even realise what was wrong about it. Safe to say I did not pursue academia.
Enjoyed the Watson quote. But "my own specified world to bring them up in" is a bit of let-out. And in my dialect of English, "gumption" is an obsolete term for something like "hardwork + initiative", rather than chutzpah/cheek.
I recognize that Mastroianni's point is that IRBs are time consuming and strange. Let me add: IRB offices sometimes make mistakes. I supervised a high school student who wanted to learn how virtual reality compares to 2D screens. We laboriously worked through an IRB application, complete with parental consent and teen assent forms, and my dept chairperson signed it as required. After two+ months, the IRB wrote that our study did not need any IRB.
I do not understand how this IRB is allowing us to ask questions of minors without IRB approval.
Here is what my university's IRB wrote me. I can make no sense of this. My uni's IRB is so busy I don't want to bug them for an answer, as that could hold up someone else's study (even, a study by one of my own undergrad honors students).
Dear Professor Caldwell-Harris,
On March 22, 2024, the IRB determined that the above-referenced protocol does not meet the definition of ‘human subjects’ as defined in 45 CFR 46.102(e), as such, IRB approval is not required. Per the protocol, questions will be asked of high school students about their experiences with 2D versus virtual reality on object recall. Basic and non-identifiable demographic questions will be asked of the students.
Please note, this determination applies only to the activities described in the IRB submission and does not apply should any changes be made to the project. Please contact the IRB office prior to implementation of any significant changes to ensure that further review is not required.
If you have any questions, please contact the IRB office...
A cornucopia of fascinating leads! Among other things, I wondered how Wansink's apparatus would have worked if Tantalus had been one of his experimental subjects. But then I realized that one of the underlying assumptions of all science, not just soup-science, is that divine meddling is excluded.
dead link to dynomight, correct link is https://dynomight.substack.com/p/fahren-height
thanks for the catch!
Regarding "About 75% of kids agreed to go with a female stranger, and about 50% agreed to go with a male stranger." I realize the humor of Mastroianni's post, but, such studies are valuable. Charles Nelson's lab is famous for studying the ongoing development of children who grew up in the Romanian orphanages. They use a variant of this question for former orphans. A confederate goes to the home of the former orphan to find out if the former orphan will leave with a stranger. Typically developing children are wary of leaving with a stranger and say No (from memory, it seemed the 'yes' rate was a few percent). The former orphans are willing to leave with a stranger at high rates (like, 75%).
Nelson's claim is that growing up in a family teaches children how to be wary of strangers. So now... what do we make of the Chinese data... One difference may be that Nelson's confederates when to the child's home, and the Chinese study took place on school grounds. School grounds are normally supposed to be safe and school administrators frequently need to fetch a child for testing or other purposes.
Yeah in that Chinese study, I think the children might have thought the researchers were just other teachers from the same school (& school grounds in big cities in China must be heavily monitored by security cameras anyway).
But it's kind of funny to imagine the researchers running around the school trying to catch those kids xD
Nice iNaturalist shoutout! Great things happen there. It is one of the last good places on the internet, like Wikipedia and this substack
It is! There's a fun NYT article about the quality of the community at iNaturalist: https://web.archive.org/web/20230331153730/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/us/inaturalist-nature-app.html
Thanks!! Very nice article.
This made Monday fun!!
dear adam,
thank you as always for this wonderful science and sentences like these:
"Eighteen soldiers agreed not to fart and then entered a simulated flight chamber to see if flying makes you gassier"
“I talk a lot and also I rarely talk”
much love and thanks!
myq
My thesis advisor when I was doing fMRI research in 2010-2011 explicitly encouraged me to try to find any kind of significance. She didn't even realise what was wrong about it. Safe to say I did not pursue academia.
I read entire "Why you can't trust MTurk data"
I appreciate the authors including the fact that they had "very large" language models in one study.
Too bad Pliny was wrong. My knives could use sharpening.
Enjoyed the Watson quote. But "my own specified world to bring them up in" is a bit of let-out. And in my dialect of English, "gumption" is an obsolete term for something like "hardwork + initiative", rather than chutzpah/cheek.
I recognize that Mastroianni's point is that IRBs are time consuming and strange. Let me add: IRB offices sometimes make mistakes. I supervised a high school student who wanted to learn how virtual reality compares to 2D screens. We laboriously worked through an IRB application, complete with parental consent and teen assent forms, and my dept chairperson signed it as required. After two+ months, the IRB wrote that our study did not need any IRB.
I do not understand how this IRB is allowing us to ask questions of minors without IRB approval.
Here is what my university's IRB wrote me. I can make no sense of this. My uni's IRB is so busy I don't want to bug them for an answer, as that could hold up someone else's study (even, a study by one of my own undergrad honors students).
Dear Professor Caldwell-Harris,
On March 22, 2024, the IRB determined that the above-referenced protocol does not meet the definition of ‘human subjects’ as defined in 45 CFR 46.102(e), as such, IRB approval is not required. Per the protocol, questions will be asked of high school students about their experiences with 2D versus virtual reality on object recall. Basic and non-identifiable demographic questions will be asked of the students.
Please note, this determination applies only to the activities described in the IRB submission and does not apply should any changes be made to the project. Please contact the IRB office prior to implementation of any significant changes to ensure that further review is not required.
If you have any questions, please contact the IRB office...