On Fri, 20 Oct 2017 20:03:43 -0700, Christopher Green wrote: >Interesting article, but I thought it made the usual journalistic error >of personalizing the story too much, making readers come away >feeling for the people instead of understanding the problem.
Although I agree that there is too much personalization (I believe this is done so that the reader can (a) see the person described as more as a relatable person), and (b) borrowing some of the writing conventions from fiction to make what would be a dry nonfiction story more interesting. In an article like this, I can accept it. However, after a long hiatus, I am teaching Introduction to Psych and find that the textbook is filled with too many personalized examples or what I would call "cutesy" examples that to simplify the presentation and make it more accessible to undergraduates. I think that this helps students maybe to understand the presentation (or develop the illusion of understanding) which will be challenged when they try to read actual empirical research articles (e.g., "hey, where's the main character? Where's the dramatic action and tension? etc.). That being said, from a 'qualitative research" perspective, I think it is interesting to see what a person who has published a piece of research that cannot be replicated is feeling and thinking. Amy Cuddy appear to be a highly capable and skilled person who though she has given up on academia (at least for now) will make out all right (kinda like John B. Watson, if you know what I mean). The larger issue of the replication crisis, the pressures to publish popular (to the general public not the scientific community) articles, and to get external funding, I think, will be lost on the general reader. Seeing how these factors affect a likable character is perhaps the only way to show what these factors are and can do to a person. Another thing to keep in mind is that this article uses a person who is basically good but was incautious. It might have been more interesting if the person being covered was Diederik Stapel who seems to be a much darker person and who appears to have inentionally done bad things. One could say that bad science arises from good people doing "incompetent" research and "bad" people doing fraudulent research, among other things (e.g., following fads that focus on the weong things). -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@mail-archive.com. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=51592 or send a blank email to leave-51592-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
