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« A few not very memorable Memorial Day weekend links | Main | 3 QD Science Prize, 2011 »

May 30, 2011

Comments


Black doll, White doll. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybDa0gSuAcg

This is what a friend who is a whiz at both statistics and biology had to say about Kanazawa.

[H]is research kind of sucked. i know plenty of researchers who want to explore 'politically incorrect' topics who are angry about kanazawa because his publicity whore-mongering and shoddy statistics makes the whole area totally off limits. i don't think it is true, but a friend once joked that someone should look at kanazawa's bank account and see if he's getting secret payments for anti-evolutionary psychology activist groups or something, cuz he basically has discredited it just by himself in the past 5 years. his usage of statistics is so bad that it is hard to believe that he isn't doing this on purpose, but he could just be stupid.

Kanazawa may be in a pickle now at the London School of Economics. But as you said, let it be about his shoddy scientific methods and not the topic which is being termed as hate speeech by many. But I agree with your point. There is not "value" to all research just because one can do it. Evolutionary psychology is in any case a field fraught with all sorts of social minefields. When scientists make sweeping conclusions based on spurious data, it is not a surprise that some begin to call the whole field pseudo-science.


One of my research professors, in graduate school, commented on the value of learning psychological statistics. She said, without hesitation, "It gives you power over people who do not know statistics." Coming to know her research over the next couple of years only served to diminish, further, the low esteem I had of her as a researcher.

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