See also: Robbers Cave: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/apr/16/a-real-life-lord-of-the-flies-the-troubling-legacy-of-the-robbers-cave-experiment Milgram Experiments: https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/behind-the-shock-machine Marshmallow test: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmallow-test/561779/ Bystander effect: https://www.thenation.com/article/missing-story/ I distrust any psychology study that isn't recent and has large implications. Considering I heard this story a year or so ago in a podcast, I'm pretty sure this "expose" is nothing new under the sun. I do remember posting or reading this incredibly long article on here about the depths of psychological science and the repercussions of these debunks on the field, but I can't find it right now. Edit: FOUND IT!
Our prof went out of his way to discredit Zimbardo when I took Psych 201 in 1995. I think the problem is that there's an utter and total disconnect between pop psychology, the shit you read in Vox or the Atlantic or anywhere that isn't behind a paywall, and clinical psychology, the shit that gets integrated into the DSM and billing codes. From that perspective these articles are doing a public good.
The thing that makes my blood boil about dumb shit like "antifragile" is that it's a made up word for a word that already exists: "stable". Either he decided to make up a new name because if he used the correct name, people would google "stability" and then think to themselves, "Wow these equations were described many, many years before anyone currently on planet Earth was born," and it would be bad for sales. Or he is so bad at research that he just thought of something and unilaterally decided it was novel. I had not heard of him until antifragile came out and he as all of a sudden on every TV and radio program. However, I have never and will never read anything by him based on this set of facts.
My financial planner advised both me and my wife to come up with - and popularize - a unit of measure or industry-related term and apply our names to it. Within industry, being able to describe something in terms of one's name - "His pomposity is at least 4 kleinbl00s" - gives you professional marketing opportunities. It's possible that Taleb knew this and decided that there was no possible way he could assign his name to something and not be laughed out of academia so instead he coined other terminology to give himself a 2nd-degree association. I would say Carlton Sheets is at least a Taleb and a half away from originality. Tim Ferris? two or three Talebs.
Have you, by any chance, compiled a list of books you'd recommend in a heartbeat? I keep stumbling onto popular authors and books, only to find how reeking of bullshit they are. Nassim Taleb was on the list, with his Antifragile, which sounds like something I could use.
Snark, but a useful question. I would argue that recent studies are much more likely to be vetted by the social media bounty hunting of tearing down research you don't like. The gauntlet faced by a paper on arxiv is very different than the gauntlet faced by a paper reviewed by six guys before being published in a dead-trees journal 30 years ago. What does this paper look like in 2018 instead of 1998?
I agree that sunshine is the best medicine. The snark was aimed mostly at the reproducibility problem that exists in science generally, and in psychology in particular. We have gotten very good at amassing data, but I think we have a long way to go in making sense of it.
I read an article in scientific american back in 1995 or so that argued compellingly that the treatment of animal models in the modern scientific establishment couldn't help but drive them crazy, thereby effectively nullifying every single psychological study based on animal research. I have yet to read another study saying animal models are valid despite their treatment. I do think it's noteworthy that most of our addiction models are based on animal research, and that the Rat City studies of the 60s where community and normalcy were emphasized have contradictory results. Therefore the Rat City studies are obviously fringe science.
I think Rat City was an experiment in torture to prove the population explosion would kill us all and was the inspiration for the Secret of NIMH. Rat Park is the study you were thinking of. It's getting play in the recovery community now. Addiction studies seem particularly hard to conduct. I've been looking for an actual reliable source for the effectiveness of AA for over a year and I can't find one. The rate of its effectiveness ranges from 5% to 95% depending on who you ask. I have given up on finding a number for the purpose of that thing I've been writing and posting here and will go with "no one can agree on its effectiveness" as my answer.
You're right. "Rat City" is my local roller derby league.