Yes, the Wagenmakers et al. reply, which is now in press at JPSP (I can no longre recall if that piece circulated arouund the TIPS listserv - I've been following so many Bem discussions on so many listservs that I've lost track), makes this point very forcefully - basically arguing that Bem consistently presents exploratory research (post hoc fishing expeditions) as confimratory. I liked their reply a lot, BTW, and would recommend it highly to those more interested in this issue. It's available here:
http://www.ruudwetzels.com/articles/Wagenmakersetal_subm.pdf Again, apologies if someone had already sent this link (I need to work on fine-tuning my precognitive powers...). ....Scott ________________________________________ From: Bourgeois, Dr. Martin [mbour...@fgcu.edu] Sent: Friday, January 14, 2011 7:48 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE: Re:[tips] Alcock on Bem I find it interesting that Bem didn't address what I see as the three most serious criticisms of his research: that he advocates (and presumably practices) changing his hypotheses after looking at his data, that he used one-tailed tests to examine controversial predictions, and that he created two-item, ad hoc measures of constructs for which we already have well-validated measures (indeed, he selected his items from these validated measures). ________________________________________ From: Mike Palij [m...@nyu.edu] Sent: Friday, January 14, 2011 7:33 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Cc: Mike Palij Subject: Re:[tips] Alcock on Bem On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 00:21:54 -0800, Allen Esterson wrote: >Mike Palij wrote of Bem's response to Alcock's critique of the former's >ESP experiments: >>It is curious that one of Bem's criticism's of Alcock's >>review is that it is "too long" (where have I heard such >>pointless criticisms before?). > >I wondered about the context in which Alcock would make such a curious >complaint, but a search on the article failed to bring up the quoted >words. Looking through the article, all I could find is this: > >"Alcock challenges both my experimental procedures and my statistical >analyses. His article is quite lengthy, and so I will here focus only >on his two most frequently recurring criticisms, one concerning >experimental procedures and one concerning statistical analyses." This indeed is the passage that I paraphrased with "too long" and not as a quote. Perhaps I should not have had the quote marks on "too long" but I believe that I accurately represent Bem's view unless, of course, he is using length as an excuse to avoid certain criticisms which might be difficult to deal with (e.g., the mixed nature of the design used in experiment 1). >Assuming I haven't erred in some way, this is hardly the same as >criticizing the critique for being "too long". Shouldn't quotation >marks be reserved for words actually used? (I think that question >answers itself. :-) ) It is better to view the quote marks as "scare quotes" instead of a direct quotation; consider what the Wikipedia (yadda-yadda) entry on scare quotes says: |Alternatively, material in scare quotes may represent the writer's |concise (but possibly misleading) paraphrasing, characterization, |or intentional misrepresentation of statements, concepts, or terms |used by a third party. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes >Given the immense controversy invoked by his highly controversial >experimental claims, Bem is in all likelihood very busy at the moment, >so I don't find his focusing at this stage (his article is not yet >published!) on a limited number of items in one online critique out of >the many challenges he is facing particularly reprehensible. Be that as >it may, he evidently did not say that it was "too long". This is very charitable. Bem is an emeritus professor at this point of his life and I assume that he is not teaching any classes (the emeritus profs I know don't teach for the most part), so, unless he is supervising a research empire with hundreds of undergrads, graduate students, post-docs, and associated personnel, I don't think that he is all that busy. An examination of his publications since 2004 (he became emeritus in 2007) shows that 4 out of 6 pubs are book reviews, one is on sexual issues, and the final (most recent) is the "Feeling the future" paper. This averages out to about one publication per year, only two of which are empirical research reports. What Bem does with his time is his own business but I find it unlikely that in retirement he is as busy as when he was a full-time faculty (I can only think of Murray Glanzar as one person who as an emeritus continued to have grant funded research that kept him busy at a level comparable to the level before retirement). For Bem's pubs, see: http://dbem.ws/pubs.html#2000 The uncharitable interpretation of someone saying that a list of criticisms is too long or some such thing is that it can be considered a sign of disrespect or contempt, that is, the person making the statement is implicitly stating the points being made are not worth addressing, that they have no merit, and do not materially affect the argument or research being presented with explaining the reasons why this view is being held (note that the person doesn't have to defend these opinions/positions). However, if the points avoided can be interpreted as falsifying the argument being made, then saying the counterpoints is too long is just one way to avoid acknowledging those potentially falsifying points. Again, Bem did not address the problem with his Experiment 1, instead he said that Alcock had difficulty in understanding the design while the editor and reviewers did not. This does not explain why Bem maintains 50% as a chance response level when 40 of his subjects were presented with three stimulus conditions and chance performance here would be 33%. Was he too busy to explain what was going on here? If so, why? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: mbour...@fgcu.edu. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13390.2bbc1cc8fd0e5f9e0b91f01828c87814&n=T&l=tips&o=7888 or send a blank email to leave-7888-13390.2bbc1cc8fd0e5f9e0b91f01828c87...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: slil...@emory.edu. 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