Super Sexy
New
Nobody pay attention to Chris. He's not pure.
Nobody pay attention to Chris. He's not pure.
But the experiment itself can't test hypotheses, can it?
That's up to the experimenter. So we very much can't ignore what the experimenter says about what hypothesis the experiment was intended to test.
So does the pool of data that Bem collected show a positive effect of precognition for erotic stimulus?But the point is that once you have a pool, it doesn't matter what your intentions were.
Linda
You seem to be saying that if an experimenter sets out to test a hypothesis experimentally, then the experimental test is invalidated if the resulting data can be used to test other hypotheses, even if the experimenter has no intention of testing other hypotheses and doesn't do so.
Are you perhaps attempting a reductio ad absurdum of the criticisms of Bem's paper?
I was thinking that 'don't understand' and 'doesn't make sense' are much the same thing.Linda
Actually, what I said about those criticisms was that they didn't make sense to me. [Note to Super Sexy: That isn't a link.]
Your interpretation makes even less sense to me. By "invalidated", I mean that the statistical test of the hypothesis is made invalid. If that's not what you are saying, all well and good.
I was thinking that 'don't understand' and 'doesn't make sense' are much the same thing.
Okay. I don't think that's the case here.The first implies the second, but not vice versa. Think about someone saying "Two plus two equals five."
Those links aren't working.
Those links aren't working.
Thanks for the heads-up. I think I've fixed them.
The issue isn't whether the label "exploratory" is valid, but rather whether the reported p-values are. If the scientific hypothesis is not sufficiently specific, then it admits multiple statistical hypotheses, each of which, if "significant" could be claimed as a success for the scientific hypothesis.
Reading Bem's paper and the critiques of Wagenmakers, Alcock, and others, one gets the impression that Bem had more degrees of freedom than a naked hippie at Woodstock.
The issue isn't whether the label "exploratory" is valid, but rather whether the reported p-values are.
For example, consider Bem's Experiment 1. Bem writes, "[T]he main psi hypothesis was that participants would be able to identify the position of the hidden erotic pictures significantly more often than chance (50%)," but that "the hit rate on erotic trials can also be compared with the hit rates on the nonerotic trials...," and indeed he reported tests of both hypotheses.
But Bem had even more ways to win in Experiment 1. Bem writes, "In our first retroactive experiment [Experiment 5, oddly enough], women showed psi effects to highly arousing stimuli but men did not. Because this appeared to have arisen from men's lower arousal to such stimuli [wait, what?], we introduced...stronger and more explicit images...for the men [in Experiment 1]. Bem's "main" hypothesis was statistically significant, but it didn't have to be. What if, instead, the result was significant for women, but not for men. Then Experiment 1 would be a successful replication of Experiment 5. Or, what if the result was significant for men, but not for women. Then Bem could claim that the stronger stimuli he introduced for men worked and come up with some hypothesis about why the results for women were non-significant (perhaps they were in the hypothesized direction, but inconveniently "failed to attain" significance).