Random Ramblings of a Raconteur

Subbotsky and Quinteros are not particularly convincing. Their main result seems to be the different behaviour in the low-risk condition. Psychologists seem to assume, all their subjects are stupid. (more…)

In Lorenz the real result is a significant improvement of the collective estimate under social feedback, which is the opposite of what the title and wording in the report imply. By taking group diversity as an estimate of the residual error, it grows relative to that estimate, (more…)

Carrier seems totally irrelevant. Sexual selection always leads to dimorphism and humans are not optimised for standing but for long distance running. (more…)

According to Johnstone the much vaunted Teamfähigkeit can lead to arbitrariness in decisions, if there’s too much of it around. Some people need to put the subject at hand above their standing amongst their peers.

Kean reminds me of Feynman again. (more…)

The results by Duckworth are not really unexpected. Insofar it’s surprising, that to my knowledge this question has not been asked before. (more…)

Erickson, especially the comment by Coen, Lawlor, and Kenny, is a gross example of wishful thinking distorting the reporting of results that did not come out as expected. (more…)

A quiet week. Last week science arrived twice, this week not at all again.

Here’s the link to this week’s complete list.

The Indus civilization did not live along the Indus after all, according to Lawler.

Gioia and Fessler have important safety implications for children and young adults. (more…)

There was a commentary to Clément in science’s online magazine.

Rak and Wang are an example for a coupled and nonlinear connection between diet and symptoms. Dietary treatment based on simple linear assumptions is bound to fail.

Here’s the link to this week’s complete list.

At first glance Walton looks just too good to be true and my first assumption was, this would turn out to be a case of a longitudinal study changing what it tries to observe (Zwane, pnas 108 (2011), 1821). Closely looking at the methods I could find nothing to fault them though, and it does indeed seem to be valid. (more…)