Post No.: 0800 Furrywisepuppy says: According to good practice – a scientific study should, beforehand, declare its hypothesis, research design, instruments and materials, procedures and protocols, data management strategy, coding, and statistical analysis plan. All captured data and … Read More
Post No.: 0776 Furrywisepuppy says: Too many laypeople conflate ‘the use of high-tech equipment’ with ‘doing science’ i.e. that someone is being scientific merely because they’re using a fancy scanner or some gadget with flashing lights. The … Read More
Post No.: 0749 Furrywisepuppy says: Although non-private social media channels are open to anyone who wishes to follow them (apart from due to selected government censorships or state-wide firewalls in certain countries), it doesn’t mean people online are … Read More
Post No.: 0742 Furrywisepuppy says: ‘Regression to the mean’ isn’t about how your significant other’s behaviour reverts back to cruelty once your birthday is over. It’s about how, if you’ve just had an extreme result, the next result … Read More
Post No.: 0737 Furrywisepuppy says: Illegitimate historical revisionism (or negationism) and denying acts of atrocity that one’s side had committed is a function of cognitive dissonance, whereby most people believe that they and their own side/ingroup (e.g. forebears) … Read More
Post No.: 0721 Furrywisepuppy says: Magazines and journals are typically partisan towards their particular industries. Don’t ever show that the industry you fundamentally depend on is stagnating or cannot justify its own existence – keep hyping up products, … Read More
Post No.: 0707 Furrywisepuppy says: The ‘survivorship bias’ or ‘survival bias’ is a type of selection bias. It’s the error of focusing on the people/things that made it past some selection process while ignoring those who/that didn’t; usually … Read More
Post No.: 0697 Furrywisepuppy says: Honest reviewers behave altruistically because they voluntarily spend a little of their own furry time to pass benefits onto others because they inform others and keep retailers and manufacturers themselves honest – which … Read More
Post No.: 0684 Fluffystealthkitten says: The paparazzi are independent photographers who take pictures of well-known people, usually while the latter go about their normal life routines. The paparazzi then try to sell these photographs to media outlets – … Read More
Post No.: 0643 Fluffystealthkitten says: It’s been said that some scientific studies lead to conclusions that ‘state the bleeding obvious’. But in many cases they should still be carried out in case they do reveal novel conclusions. One … Read More
Post No.: 0636 Furrywisepuppy says: There are a multitude of cognitive reasons for the denial, or dismissal, of empirical evidence. One is that intentional, directly immoral, instantaneous or imminent threats are perceived to be greater – so … Read More
Post No.: 0616 Furrywisepuppy says: On social media, we’ve got to be highly cautious of coming across ‘false flags’ – where a person pretends to belong to or support one side of an issue in order to give … Read More
Post No.: 0583 Fluffystealthkitten says: Loads of videos that go viral are fake or have been somehow manipulated. So much that goes viral that appears spontaneous is staged with actors rather than naturally occurring. Even many videos relating … Read More
Post No.: 0564 Fluffystealthkitten says: Why is there so much bull**** and lying in this world?.. It’s because it simply evidently works to fool enough voters, prospective customers, potential mates and others. Whether through visual appearances, posturing … Read More
Post No.: 0559 Furrywisepuppy says: We usually think that qualitative information is always subjective or vague (e.g. ‘the dog smells like a rower’s armpit’) whilst quantitative information, involving numbers, is always objective or definite (e.g. ‘the dog measures … Read More
Post No.: 0538 Furrywisepuppy says: ‘Public relations’ (PR) is said to be controlled internally by a company or its agents, whilst ‘publicity’ is said to be not directly controlled by the party that a news story concerns. The … Read More
Post No.: 0530 Furrywisepuppy says: Any ‘health guru’ who wants to make a name for him/herself must ideally come up with some kind of proprietary USP or original piece of insight. So while passing genuinely healthy nutritional advice … Read More
Post No.: 0505 Fluffystealthkitten says: Most real science is incremental i.e. genuine revolutions and paradigm shifts are incredibly rare – science can therefore seem boring to some. Meanwhile, the media and us, their audience, crave to discover and … Read More
Post No.: 0491 Furrywisepuppy says: It would be impossible to sift through all of the academic papers out there in the world ever so we must seek some fluffy shortcuts, such as relying on the verdicts of journalistic … Read More
Post No.: 0479 Furrywisepuppy says: In science, ‘ecological validity’ is the degree to which the settings, materials, procedures, timescales, etc. of an experiment approximate the real world it’s trying to emulate. So when people criticise a laboratory-based experiment … Read More
