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I think if i were track the number of article pages i read, i'd start feeling less embarrassed by how few books i read. That, or i might stop dithering reading papers. Two studies crossed my desk yesterday that were interesting. One was a study of sheep cognition (they are so like people!): http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0015752
Another is a study about creative people cheating more. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6613.html#original
I wanted to read the study so that i could claim, "Bah, stupid inflammatory headline, can't read technical papers, that's not what it said at all." However, it seems to be a reasonable study, although the methodology for measuring cheating and dishonesty was also developed by the authors.
Note that the methodology might be more accurately stated as a measure of willingness to interpret ambiguous data in order to maximize reward. In experimental physics this behavior is recognized in how one goes about determining how to represent the uncertainties of a measurement. A case study of the history of measurements of some physical constant (ARGH, WHICH ONE??) shows how experimentalists are motivated to keep estimating uncertainties until their measurement will encompass the predicted value. Conversely, if your measurement is bang on the predicted value, you don't spend weeks (or months) going over your experimental procedure to find places where your equipment might have been imprecise enough that your measurement could be reasonably expected to have lots of values.
This case study presents the historic measurement of some constant, and shows the experimental measurements over time with big error bars -- until the theory changed (or a competing theory was proposed) and subsequent measurements had much smaller uncertainties as they aligned on the new predicted value -- as well as the previous measurements.
This is a type of confirmation bias, i guess. I cannot remember what physical constant it was.
Another is a study about creative people cheating more. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6613.html#original
I wanted to read the study so that i could claim, "Bah, stupid inflammatory headline, can't read technical papers, that's not what it said at all." However, it seems to be a reasonable study, although the methodology for measuring cheating and dishonesty was also developed by the authors.
Note that the methodology might be more accurately stated as a measure of willingness to interpret ambiguous data in order to maximize reward. In experimental physics this behavior is recognized in how one goes about determining how to represent the uncertainties of a measurement. A case study of the history of measurements of some physical constant (ARGH, WHICH ONE??) shows how experimentalists are motivated to keep estimating uncertainties until their measurement will encompass the predicted value. Conversely, if your measurement is bang on the predicted value, you don't spend weeks (or months) going over your experimental procedure to find places where your equipment might have been imprecise enough that your measurement could be reasonably expected to have lots of values.
This case study presents the historic measurement of some constant, and shows the experimental measurements over time with big error bars -- until the theory changed (or a competing theory was proposed) and subsequent measurements had much smaller uncertainties as they aligned on the new predicted value -- as well as the previous measurements.
This is a type of confirmation bias, i guess. I cannot remember what physical constant it was.
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