On Feb 14, 2009, at 7:55 PM, sparaig wrote:
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <vajradh...@...> wrote:
On Feb 14, 2009, at 7:15 PM, sparaig wrote:
Interesting because one of the researchers is probably the most
qualified man in the world to comment on EEG, having been the
section
editor of the state of the art work on Human
electroencephalography,
esp. electroencephalography and meditation. Davidson's also the man
who's systematically mapped the correlates of alpha.
These guys ain't no slouchers. ;-)
Bias in a specific field of interest is orthogonal to expertise.
Well, not exactly, the greater the level of expertise, the more
likely
a researcher has biases, just because.
I don't see that. These guys who are at the forefront of their fields
have their reputations on the line with every study they publish. It
behooves them to uphold the highest standards of practice.
So the fact that Davidson literally wrote teh book on the
significance of
EEG asymmetry doesn't imply he's more likely bound to theories that
support his published work, as opposed to theories and research that
call into question his work?
Jujst about every philsopher of science I'm familiar with from Kuhn
to Lakatos
points out the exact opposite: established figures in a field tend
to be
the least open-minded about theories and studies that conflict with
their own
theories and findings.
If a researcher is truly interested in rigorously applying a null
hypothesis--in other words if s/he has some integrity--s/he should be
looking for whatever they can to find what might falsify it, to the
point of being hypervigilant.
I would suspect the opposite of what you describe could be true in
honest inquiry.
