Debunking the Lorentz System As a Framework For Human Emotions 124
New submitter Enokcc writes "In a series of research articles it was claimed that a famous system of nonlinear differential equations originally used to model atmospheric convection can also be used to model changes in human emotions over time. It took an amateur in psychology with a computer science background to notice how extraordinary these claims were, and with the help of experts on psychology he has now published a critique. The latest of the questionable research articles (with 360 citations) is now 'partially withdrawn.'" Notably, skeptic Nick Brown's paper is co-authored by Alan Sokal, famous for exposing nonsense by less diplomatic means.
Researcher (Score:5, Interesting)
A noted psychological researcher (can't remember his) during a TED Talk said (to paraphrase) "ignore all psychological and neurological research in your lifetime because they more than likely got it wrong.'
For decades, we were taught that the brain doesn't grow new neurons and then neurogenesis was discovered.
debunking the easily debunkable (Score:5, Interesting)
You can bet that if there had been a strong lobby or interest group invested in the results of this paper, there would be strong counter-claims and attacks on people trying to debunk it. That's the case in many papers in economics, for example: their data is shaky, their models arbitrary, and their conclusions absurd, but one or the other political party uses it to justify its economic policy, it acquires a lobby, and becomes unassailable.
But even in papers where merely a lot of scientific careers and reputations are at stake, you can't overturn established dogma until the proponents of that dogma have retired or died.
Debunking pointless papers like this, papers that don't do any harm, actually is itself harmful, because it gives the erroneous impression that "the system works" and errors get corrected. The only errors that get corrected in science are those that don't have a lobby.
Rosenham Experiment (Score:5, Interesting)
Whenever there's an enormous new "objective" trend in psychology or social science, I always think of the Rosenhan experiment.
In a nutshell, volunteers went to different psychiatric hospitals in the US, complaining that they all suffered from (made up) voices in their heads. They were all admitted under different psychological disorders. At this point, they all acted completely normally and told staff they no longer heard voices. In all cases, they were only released once they'd submitted to treatment, and "made better".
In a follow up after the original paper, psychiatric hospitals challenged Rosenhan to send more volunteers, and the hospitals asserted they would spot them easily. He agreed, and after three months the participating hospitals said that they had weeded out 42 imposters.
Rosenhan hadn't sent a single person to the hospitals.
It's a perfect example of how inaccurate psychology is once it relies on distinct catagories like "insane" and "sane". A "positivity ratio" as created by Fredrickson is absolutely no different.
Like in any field the "experts" are often anything but.
Insights are one thing, but constantly trying to hammer objectivity into something so complex as human behaviour is always going to be flawed.
A healthy academic field would debunk itself (Score:5, Interesting)
What's so sad for me about this whole story is that took an amateur and an outsider to debunk this research, and only after an ivy league school set up an entire institute for this snake oil. Now they're saying "oops, sorry, our bad for trusting the bunk we read in the peer-reviewed journals" but why weren't experts in psychology doing this debunking themselves? And why didn't it happen immediately upon the publication of this bunk? Why didn't UPenn take a second look at this crap before they devoted an institute to it? And why is the US government putting serious money into programs based on it?
All of this stuff will eventually get walked back in the coming backlash (one hopes), but the fact that psychologists themselves were not able to recognize the crap in their own journals should be a serious wake up call for that whole discipline. If a psychology department wants to have an elite faculty, I say that at least two should be highly skilled in data-analytic methods and devote most of their research activity to undercutting the work of others. Also, a lot more research money should go into replicating experiments that the field takes as significant. Unlike other people who post here, I do think that psychology is a real science, and one of the most valuable sciences we have. The fact that it's being done badly does not make it a pseudo-science. But it does highlight the urgency of drastic reform in the field. Like I said, this should be a wake-up call. Psychology departments of the world should all be resolved to never let this kind of disaster happen again.