Improbable Research

Professor Diederik Stapel, author of the study ”Seeing one thing and doing another: Contrast effects in automatic behavior“, is accused of saying one thing but doing another, according to reports in the Dutch press and elsewhere. DutchNews.nl sums up:

Tilburg professor faked data in at least 30 academic publications

Tilburg and Groningen universities are to take legal action against one of their professors after an investigation showed he had faked research data in at least 30 scientific papers. The fraud is ‘considerable and shocking’, the committee set up to look into Diederik Stapel’s academic publications said in an initial report into the scandal on Monday.

Stapel, who was a professor of social and behavioural sciences at Tilburg, was suspended last month after doubts emerged about research that concluded eating meat makes people anti-social and selfish.

The investigation shows at least 30 academic papers submitted to respected scientific journals contained data that he had invented and there are doubts about several dozen more, the committee said. In total, statistics quoted in 150 papers dating back to 2004 when Stapel worked at Groningen University, are being examined….

BONUS: Ook UvA onderzoekt werk fraudeprofessor

Harold Camping, co-winner of the 2011 Ig Nobel Prize in mathematics, has publicly stated (in an audio recording on Mr. Camping’s web site) that he recognizes his latest mathematical mistake. Mr. Camping thus continues his exemplary record as both a teacher and an eternal student of mathematics. Here are portions of his statement:

We’re living in a day when one problem follows another. And when it comes to trying to recognize the truth of prophecy, we’re finding that it is very very difficult…. Amongst other things I have been checking my notes more carefully than ever…. At least in a minimal way we are learning to walk more and more humble… We are simply learning. And sometimes it’s painful to learn.

The Christian Post has a transcription of the entire statement (which, be warned, Mr. Camping wrote in highly technical language).

BACKGROUND: That Ig Nobel Prize was awarded, on September 29, 2011, to Dorothy Martin of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1954),Pat Robertson of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1982), Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim of KOREA (who predicted the world would end in 1992), Credonia Mwerinde of UGANDA (who predicted the world would end in 1999), and Harold Camping of the USA (who predicted the world would end on September 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end on October 21, 2011), for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.

(Thanks to investigator Bill Ricker for alerting us to Mr. Camping’s statement.)

BONUS: Mr. Camping’s mathematical textbook.

The highlight of the 162nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, in San Diego. will almost certainly be the session about the psychoacoustics of chalkboard squeaking.It builds on the work of 2006 Ig Nobel Prize (in acoustics) winners  D. Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand, who in 1986 published the study ”Psychoacoustics of a Chilling Sound,” The new session is:

Psychoacoustics of chalkboard squeaking

Session: Thursday Afternoon, Nov 03, Time: 3:15
Authors: Christoph Reuter (Musicological Inst., Univ. of Vienna, Vienna, Austria) and Michael Oehler (Univ. of Cologne, Cologne, Germany)
Abstract: “At least since 1975 the “pleasantness” of a sound is discussed from many different angles (Ely 1975; Aures 1984; Halpern et al. 1986; Vaschillo 2003; Neumann & Waters 2006; Cox 2008), but often chalkboard squeaking or scratching a chalkboard with finger nails tops the list of unpleasant sounds. The aim of the presented study is to detect specific parts of the sounds that make chalkboard squeaking particularly unpleasant…. Basically the study is a replication of Halpern et al. (1986), whose methods were extended by several sophisticated sound analysis and re-synthesis techniques and the measurement of some electro-physiological parameters (heart rate and skin resistance) during listening…. Almost all stimuli were rated more unpleasant if the subjects knew about the nature of the sounds.”

(Thanks to investigator Mark Hurst for alerting us to the meeting.)

BONUS: Science Now reports about this research:

…The ratings also changed depending on what the listeners thought the sounds were. If they thought a sound came from a musical composition, they rated it as less unpleasant than if they knew it actually was fingernails on a chalkboard. But their skin conductivity changed consistently even when they thought the chalkboard sound was from music and rated it as less unpleasant….

Of all the things you might imagine you’d find in a professional philosopher’s toolkit, a rubber duck might not be the first to spring to mind. But they are there – and in some abundance.

One of the first scholars to hint at their utility was Frances Howard-Snyder, Professor of Ethics, Religion, Metaphysics departments at Western Washington University, US in her 1993 paper for American Philosophical Quarterly 30 (3):271 – 278. “Rule Consequentialism Is a Rubber Duck.” She pointed out that rubber ducks (along with clothes horses, drugstore cowboys, clay pigeons, stool pigeons, Bombay ducks and hot dogs) have something in common -  “They are not what their names suggest”. She then went on to argue that although the name given to the philosophical concept of ‘Rule Consequentialism’ strongly suggests, perhaps even insists, that it is a form of Consequentialism – “a closer look reveals that it is not”.
Just a year or so later, the rubber duck model surfaced again

As Halloween draws near, some people draw drawings of witches.Which size witch they draw depends on the day, suggests a study resented at the seventieth Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association: August 30-September 5, 1962, in St. Louis, Missouri. The following year, a formal study was published:

“Size of Halloween witch drawings prior to, on, and after Halloween,” Ray A. Craddick, Perceptual and Motor Skills, vol 16, no. 1, 1963, pp. 235-238. The author, at New Mexico State University, explains:

“The sizes of witch drawings on Halloween were significantly smaller than those prior to that date, and drawings 2 weeks after Halloween were larger than either of 2 earlier drawings. Results were discussed in terms of the witch’s representing an ambivalent potential reinforcer, and the need for suppressive activity on the part of the child to control what may be some fear and anxiety in relation to the figure drawn and the time of the drawing.

BONUS: Drawing blood from a witch [from the journal Notes and Queries, Volumes 6-XII, Issue 309, 1885, p. 425. ]

BONUS: Meet Dr. Craddick’s protege, Dr. Shook.