Feb 18, 2023 07:51 PM
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critic...pretty-bad
INTRO: We love putting names to things, especially if those names are scientific. Just look at the variety of phenomena people love to refer to as the Dunning-Kruger effect: the idea that other people (not me!) overestimate what they know, the sighting of someone being aggressively wrong, or simply the belief that dumb people don’t know they are dumb.
The fact that science has studied a phenomenon and plastered a name over it feels good. But sometimes, when we dig into the origin of these scientific stories, we discover they have been heavily distorted in the telling. For example, the creation myth of modern placebo research, which has Dr. Henry Beecher running out of morphine while treating World War II soldiers and improvising with a saline solution to surprising results, simply crumbles when investigated. There is no primary source to support this story, but what a story it is!
Today, yet another scientific myth must come down. You may have heard that, a long time ago, factory workers were studied and their work environment was changed in different ways. No matter what the scientists did, the workers’ productivity increased. It’s the idea that being part of a study changes our behaviour, perhaps because of the attention we are receiving. This is known as the Hawthorne effect and it played a role in the inception of the human resources departments we have today.
But when we transport ourselves back a century to study what actually happened at the Hawthorne plant, we discover a series of experiments whose designs would not pass muster if a modern-day high schooler proposed them... (MORE - missing details)
INTRO: We love putting names to things, especially if those names are scientific. Just look at the variety of phenomena people love to refer to as the Dunning-Kruger effect: the idea that other people (not me!) overestimate what they know, the sighting of someone being aggressively wrong, or simply the belief that dumb people don’t know they are dumb.
The fact that science has studied a phenomenon and plastered a name over it feels good. But sometimes, when we dig into the origin of these scientific stories, we discover they have been heavily distorted in the telling. For example, the creation myth of modern placebo research, which has Dr. Henry Beecher running out of morphine while treating World War II soldiers and improvising with a saline solution to surprising results, simply crumbles when investigated. There is no primary source to support this story, but what a story it is!
Today, yet another scientific myth must come down. You may have heard that, a long time ago, factory workers were studied and their work environment was changed in different ways. No matter what the scientists did, the workers’ productivity increased. It’s the idea that being part of a study changes our behaviour, perhaps because of the attention we are receiving. This is known as the Hawthorne effect and it played a role in the inception of the human resources departments we have today.
But when we transport ourselves back a century to study what actually happened at the Hawthorne plant, we discover a series of experiments whose designs would not pass muster if a modern-day high schooler proposed them... (MORE - missing details)