Milgram, Marshmallows, and Myers-Briggs
August 14, 2018 1:22 AM Subscribe
What's a scientific study that strongly affected the way you think, but which later turned out to probably be wrong? From Zach Weinersmith on Twitter.
The Stanford prison experiment is a fraud? Metafilter is still the place where I learn new things.
posted by Termite at 3:04 AM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Termite at 3:04 AM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
The reproducibility crisis in psychology at the moment means there's plenty more
At the moment?
posted by rokusan at 3:39 AM on August 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
At the moment?
posted by rokusan at 3:39 AM on August 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
How about, when is agism not excusable, like the idea that an eighteen year old's experience is vastly different than a fourty year old's experience, that their knowledge and behavior are categorically different. They're not but people insist they are. What studies exist that I can produce in a crafty second that demonstrate this, or am I being whack?
posted by Taft at 3:58 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Taft at 3:58 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
"Complete garbage, apparently."Yup.
But essentially everything that transparently ridiculous dude, who I can't imagine has only said casually racist things to just me, has done is complete garbage. With his unaccountably continued success, he is essentially a one-man indictment of the field social psychology. I keep a copy of one of his popular utterly absurd textbooks on my shelf as a reminder of just how bad an allegedly academic field can get when talentless hacks lacking basic relevant skills like statistical literacy start a discipline, become senior in it, and then govern each other.
posted by Blasdelb at 4:05 AM on August 14, 2018 [9 favorites]
Learning styles.
posted by Segundus at 4:09 AM on August 14, 2018 [21 favorites]
posted by Segundus at 4:09 AM on August 14, 2018 [21 favorites]
My knowledge of genetics was pretty much Mendelian (the birds and the peas) until about five minutes ago, when I read in the New York Times that horizontal gene transfer is a thing.
Anyone got suggestions for reliable sites that are a bit more organized than a Twitter trail for reading about these things? I would like to understand enough to help me grasp the actual and dodge the woo. For example, I would like to know more about the mechanisms by which plants supposedly signal and cooperate.
posted by pracowity at 4:35 AM on August 14, 2018
Anyone got suggestions for reliable sites that are a bit more organized than a Twitter trail for reading about these things? I would like to understand enough to help me grasp the actual and dodge the woo. For example, I would like to know more about the mechanisms by which plants supposedly signal and cooperate.
posted by pracowity at 4:35 AM on August 14, 2018
That our fingernails and hair continue to grow after we die. For some reason this just stuck in my brain as a kid and I've learned since then that it's actually a bit more nuanced than that:
“So why do myths persist about stubble growing on dead men’s chins and fingernails lengthening? While such observations are false, they do have a biological basis. It is not that the fingernails are growing, but that the skin around them retracts as it becomes dehydrated, making them appear longer. When preparing a body, funeral directors will sometimes moisturise the fingertips to counteract this.” [BBC]posted by Fizz at 4:45 AM on August 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
Taft: the idea that an eighteen year old's experience is vastly different than a fourty year old's experience, that their knowledge and behavior are categorically different. They're not but people insist they are.
Sorry to let you down, but those people might be onto something. Neurobiology and neuropsychology are confident that the Prefrontal Cortex, with its control of Executive Ability (i.e. not being rash and impulsive) is not fully mature at 18, and doesn't finish maturing for several more years. That implies that an eighteen-year-old's experience and behaviour genuinely are different from older adults'.
I don't think that these areas of science have the same replication problems as social psychology, so their findings might well be safe.
posted by vincebowdren at 4:47 AM on August 14, 2018 [20 favorites]
Sorry to let you down, but those people might be onto something. Neurobiology and neuropsychology are confident that the Prefrontal Cortex, with its control of Executive Ability (i.e. not being rash and impulsive) is not fully mature at 18, and doesn't finish maturing for several more years. That implies that an eighteen-year-old's experience and behaviour genuinely are different from older adults'.
I don't think that these areas of science have the same replication problems as social psychology, so their findings might well be safe.
posted by vincebowdren at 4:47 AM on August 14, 2018 [20 favorites]
I have in the past absorbed a ton of claims from the positive psychology people, as part of my general effort to not-be-depressed, although I am too statistically illiterate to assess any of the underlying studies. Still. I assume that even if gratitude or spending time with others or planning acts of kindness are a placebo, they are kind of nice anyway and adequate sleep and exercise seem intuitively necessary for ordinary functioning. Other stuff makes me uneasier. Does growth mindset work? Is ‘flow’ really a thing? I find these to be really useful constructs for organising my thinking and planning, but I do sometimes worry about my credulity in absorbing this stuff from pop science books without any real evaluative tools for rejecting the meaningless or ineffective.
posted by Aravis76 at 5:03 AM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Aravis76 at 5:03 AM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
Race, I suppose. Mainstream science no longer considers race to be a meaningful concept, but a whole lot of prejudice was formerly expressed in racial terms and I'm sure it had its effect on me.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:12 AM on August 14, 2018 [10 favorites]
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:12 AM on August 14, 2018 [10 favorites]
The collapse of ego depletion was another 'Oh. Really?' moment.
Ego-depletion was theorized by Roy Baumeister in 1998 when he did the famous “cookies and radishes” experiment. In the experiment, participants had to use their willpower to resist the urge to eat cookies on the table in front of them, and eat radishes instead.
Afterward, these participants showed significantly less persistence to complete a challenging puzzle than the participants who could eat the cookies. The big idea from that experiment was that when you expend your willpower on one thing, you have less left to take on another.
Amusingly enough, I am forced to wonder if a belief in ego depletion might actually create the effect. Beliefs regarding one's ability to succeed or fail are shown to produce differences in outcome in various tasks, so creating the excuse/doubt seems likely to reduce success rates.
posted by jaduncan at 5:24 AM on August 14, 2018 [6 favorites]
Ego-depletion was theorized by Roy Baumeister in 1998 when he did the famous “cookies and radishes” experiment. In the experiment, participants had to use their willpower to resist the urge to eat cookies on the table in front of them, and eat radishes instead.
Afterward, these participants showed significantly less persistence to complete a challenging puzzle than the participants who could eat the cookies. The big idea from that experiment was that when you expend your willpower on one thing, you have less left to take on another.
Amusingly enough, I am forced to wonder if a belief in ego depletion might actually create the effect. Beliefs regarding one's ability to succeed or fail are shown to produce differences in outcome in various tasks, so creating the excuse/doubt seems likely to reduce success rates.
posted by jaduncan at 5:24 AM on August 14, 2018 [6 favorites]
This is maybe a bit obscure, but in my small field this is a pretty big one that may end up being quite important. It is an opinion piece that made a widely accepted argument about the diversity that could be found in the genomes of bacteriophages, the viruses that infect bacteria. It suggested that bacteriophage genomes are organized like mosaics, with genetic tiles being horizontally transferred to such a degree that classifying them with the conventional hierarchical Linnaean system wouldn't be possible to do in a useful way. It is however unambiguously mostly wrong.
Indeed, the Linnaean system we all learned in secondary school with species, Genera, Families, Orders, Classes, Plyla, Kingdoms, and now Domains only makes sense as a way to understand relationships governed primarily by vertical inheritance. For example, we share a more recent common ancestor with bonobos than we do with bananas, with which we share a more distant common ancestor than we do with butterflies. In the same way someone will share a more recent common ancestor with their sibling than most random strangers, with whom they will share a more distant common ancestor than their second cousin. That our vertical relationship, up and back down, to bonobos, bananas, and butterflies has been disrupted by horizontal transfer does not really impact our ability to understand those relationships with genomic tools because there is a core genome we share with each critter through a vertical relationship. Indeed, the discovery that there are three domains of life by Carl Woese was made possible by how there is one genetic element, a part of the ribosome that translates protein in every living thing we've found so far, that has never been shown to have been horizontally transferred. At least no one has shown it to be horizontally transferred yet anyway, and so we can still rely on looking at which critters have which mutations to it as a reliable indicator of how those critters are vertically related to each other.
This paper alleges that bacteriophages exchange genetic material to such an extent that none of this makes sense anymore. If bacteriophages are defined more by horizontal gene transfer than by vertical evolution, with their whole genomes being composed of mosaic tiles that all get mixed and matched, then we would have no hope of grouping bacteriophages isolated from the environment together by how similar some genomes are to each other and expecting it all to make sense. Indeed, we wouldn't be able to suggest that any two bacteriophages share a more recent common ancestor than than they do with some third bacteriophage, if they were all just mosaics composed of mixed and matched tiles. The Linnaean system would be useless for understanding bacteriophage diversity and we would need to come up with something radically new, perhaps even something that would be useful to taxonomists of other critters once that one precious piece of the ribosome is eventually found to have been horizontally transferred at least once?
It turns out however, that almost all bacteriophages found in nature harbor a largely vertically inherited core gene set and that, for example, less than 4% of genomes directly sequenced in the oceans can't be accounted for in ways that fit the Linnaean system just fine. Many of those 4% also don't fit in ways that are more diverse and weird than can be accounted for in the rampant mosaicism paradigm. Part of the problem perhaps was that one of the two most studied types of bacteriophages, the two most comprehensively understood organisms described by science, probably can be best understood as having a mosaic genome architecture. However, it turns out to just be a very weird bacteriophage that maybe isn't representative of anything other than its weird own self.
This is, thankfully, an amazing thing. Being able to use the Linnaean system means that we could potentially do things like say some groups of bacteriophages are broadly safe for treating antibiotic-resistant infections because we can say that there are meaningful groups of bacteriophages. This will make one of the most promising paths to addressing the antimicrobial-resistant infections crisis, which is projected to kill more people than cancer by 2050, much easier.
posted by Blasdelb at 5:33 AM on August 14, 2018 [32 favorites]
Indeed, the Linnaean system we all learned in secondary school with species, Genera, Families, Orders, Classes, Plyla, Kingdoms, and now Domains only makes sense as a way to understand relationships governed primarily by vertical inheritance. For example, we share a more recent common ancestor with bonobos than we do with bananas, with which we share a more distant common ancestor than we do with butterflies. In the same way someone will share a more recent common ancestor with their sibling than most random strangers, with whom they will share a more distant common ancestor than their second cousin. That our vertical relationship, up and back down, to bonobos, bananas, and butterflies has been disrupted by horizontal transfer does not really impact our ability to understand those relationships with genomic tools because there is a core genome we share with each critter through a vertical relationship. Indeed, the discovery that there are three domains of life by Carl Woese was made possible by how there is one genetic element, a part of the ribosome that translates protein in every living thing we've found so far, that has never been shown to have been horizontally transferred. At least no one has shown it to be horizontally transferred yet anyway, and so we can still rely on looking at which critters have which mutations to it as a reliable indicator of how those critters are vertically related to each other.
This paper alleges that bacteriophages exchange genetic material to such an extent that none of this makes sense anymore. If bacteriophages are defined more by horizontal gene transfer than by vertical evolution, with their whole genomes being composed of mosaic tiles that all get mixed and matched, then we would have no hope of grouping bacteriophages isolated from the environment together by how similar some genomes are to each other and expecting it all to make sense. Indeed, we wouldn't be able to suggest that any two bacteriophages share a more recent common ancestor than than they do with some third bacteriophage, if they were all just mosaics composed of mixed and matched tiles. The Linnaean system would be useless for understanding bacteriophage diversity and we would need to come up with something radically new, perhaps even something that would be useful to taxonomists of other critters once that one precious piece of the ribosome is eventually found to have been horizontally transferred at least once?
It turns out however, that almost all bacteriophages found in nature harbor a largely vertically inherited core gene set and that, for example, less than 4% of genomes directly sequenced in the oceans can't be accounted for in ways that fit the Linnaean system just fine. Many of those 4% also don't fit in ways that are more diverse and weird than can be accounted for in the rampant mosaicism paradigm. Part of the problem perhaps was that one of the two most studied types of bacteriophages, the two most comprehensively understood organisms described by science, probably can be best understood as having a mosaic genome architecture. However, it turns out to just be a very weird bacteriophage that maybe isn't representative of anything other than its weird own self.
This is, thankfully, an amazing thing. Being able to use the Linnaean system means that we could potentially do things like say some groups of bacteriophages are broadly safe for treating antibiotic-resistant infections because we can say that there are meaningful groups of bacteriophages. This will make one of the most promising paths to addressing the antimicrobial-resistant infections crisis, which is projected to kill more people than cancer by 2050, much easier.
posted by Blasdelb at 5:33 AM on August 14, 2018 [32 favorites]
I like the way the thread was almost immediately hijacked by a Fleischmann & Pons truther.
But I'm sad about the marshmallows one, 'cos by it I'd be the most intelligent and successful person in the world. I've been delaying gratification by finding marshmallows revolting for 49 years so far. Had it been radishes, though, I'd have eaten all of those darlings in a flash.
posted by scruss at 5:51 AM on August 14, 2018 [10 favorites]
But I'm sad about the marshmallows one, 'cos by it I'd be the most intelligent and successful person in the world. I've been delaying gratification by finding marshmallows revolting for 49 years so far. Had it been radishes, though, I'd have eaten all of those darlings in a flash.
posted by scruss at 5:51 AM on August 14, 2018 [10 favorites]
Right and Left Brain Dominance. I refused to attempt anything artistic for about 10 years because someone told me I was "left brained".
posted by mmoncur at 6:02 AM on August 14, 2018 [18 favorites]
posted by mmoncur at 6:02 AM on August 14, 2018 [18 favorites]
I recently learned that there is almost no empirical support for the fundamental attribution error except under a small set of very specific circumstances.
posted by Sangermaine at 6:06 AM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Sangermaine at 6:06 AM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
I'm surprised Milgram was mentioned. My understanding was that it had been widely reproduced, and in the thread there's only one mention of it, which says that reproductions found a less strong result than the original (~40% at the far end of delivering 3 full strength shocks instead of the 60% that Milgram constantly found).
posted by fatbird at 6:19 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by fatbird at 6:19 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
Apparently there is evidence that Milgram manipulated the results:
posted by Sangermaine at 6:36 AM on August 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
In 2012, Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram's data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was "troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired." She wrote that "only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter".That Wikipedia article also discusses the successful replication of the experiment over decades around the world. I wonder if these replications also suffered from this same issue of people not believing it was real?
posted by Sangermaine at 6:36 AM on August 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
Study mentioned in above comment: Rutgers Researchers Debunk ‘Five-Second Rule’: Eating Food off the Floor Isn’t Safe*
They're currently seeking funding to determine if "kissing [dropped food] up to God" ensures that food is safe to eat.
*No, that does not link to The Onion
posted by she's not there at 6:52 AM on August 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
They're currently seeking funding to determine if "kissing [dropped food] up to God" ensures that food is safe to eat.
*No, that does not link to The Onion
posted by she's not there at 6:52 AM on August 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
This thread has the potential to devolve pretty quickly, could you all please link to something that shows your debunked ideas are in fact debunked?
posted by skewed at 7:00 AM on August 14, 2018 [15 favorites]
posted by skewed at 7:00 AM on August 14, 2018 [15 favorites]
participants had to use their willpower to resist the urge to eat cookies on the table in front of them, and eat radishes instead
Was there a little dish of butter and some coarse salt next to the radishes? Because I, for one, see a serious methodological flaw in this experiment. #fuckcookies
posted by The Bellman at 7:00 AM on August 14, 2018 [10 favorites]
Was there a little dish of butter and some coarse salt next to the radishes? Because I, for one, see a serious methodological flaw in this experiment. #fuckcookies
posted by The Bellman at 7:00 AM on August 14, 2018 [10 favorites]
5-second rule isn't really a thing
What, you mean all that food that fell into dog poop but which I picked up before 5 seconds wasn't actually good to eat?
posted by Pyrogenesis at 7:20 AM on August 14, 2018
What, you mean all that food that fell into dog poop but which I picked up before 5 seconds wasn't actually good to eat?
posted by Pyrogenesis at 7:20 AM on August 14, 2018
As far as I know the five-second rule was never supported by a scientific study. This twitter thread is about scientific studies that turned out to be wrong, not just erroneous beliefs.
And likewise, it's about scientific studies that turned out to probably be wrong - not just scientific studies that contradict your anecdotal experience of the world or that you disagree with...
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:25 AM on August 14, 2018 [6 favorites]
And likewise, it's about scientific studies that turned out to probably be wrong - not just scientific studies that contradict your anecdotal experience of the world or that you disagree with...
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:25 AM on August 14, 2018 [6 favorites]
please link to something that shows your debunked ideas are in fact debunked?
Who are you, the Wikipedia police?
posted by Segundus at 7:25 AM on August 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
Who are you, the Wikipedia police?
posted by Segundus at 7:25 AM on August 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
Statistician Andrew Gellman has a lot about rebutting underpowered studies.
posted by shothotbot at 7:29 AM on August 14, 2018
posted by shothotbot at 7:29 AM on August 14, 2018
What, you mean all that food that fell into dog poop but which I picked up before 5 seconds wasn't actually good to eat?
It actually was good to eat because it will have some germs, but not a full set of germs, which will make you stronger. The fast germs use all their energy racing around instead of germing. It's the slow germs you have to worry about.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:40 AM on August 14, 2018 [9 favorites]
It actually was good to eat because it will have some germs, but not a full set of germs, which will make you stronger. The fast germs use all their energy racing around instead of germing. It's the slow germs you have to worry about.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:40 AM on August 14, 2018 [9 favorites]
The story of the frog in boiling water was debunked long ago, but it's such a useful parable that we keep it around anyhow.
posted by adamrice at 7:58 AM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by adamrice at 7:58 AM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
your anecdotal experience of the world
The reflexive dismissal of people's experience of the world as "anecdotes" is something that doesn't really hold up so well, the more you think about it.
posted by thelonius at 8:07 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
The reflexive dismissal of people's experience of the world as "anecdotes" is something that doesn't really hold up so well, the more you think about it.
posted by thelonius at 8:07 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
People's experience of the world turning out to be wrong still doesn't answer the genuinely interesting question here anymore than it does in that dumpsterfire of a twitter thread.
posted by Blasdelb at 8:12 AM on August 14, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by Blasdelb at 8:12 AM on August 14, 2018 [5 favorites]
I still see "Rat Park" being circulated.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:17 AM on August 14, 2018
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:17 AM on August 14, 2018
The Bellman: I, for one, see a serious methodological flaw in this experiment. #fuckcookie
Hm. I see a great name for a punk rock band.
posted by rokusan at 8:19 AM on August 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
Hm. I see a great name for a punk rock band.
posted by rokusan at 8:19 AM on August 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
Hm. I see a great name for a punk rock band.
"Ladies and gentlemen! Tonight on stage fuckcookie and Rat Park!"
posted by haileris23 at 8:27 AM on August 14, 2018 [8 favorites]
"Ladies and gentlemen! Tonight on stage fuckcookie and Rat Park!"
posted by haileris23 at 8:27 AM on August 14, 2018 [8 favorites]
Lots of pop psychology about food, like the size of the plate influencing to amount we eat, may be based on cooked research. Cornell food lab scandal.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 8:33 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 8:33 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
3) the Dunning–Kruger effect isn't real, because my whole belief system about 'wtf managers' would collapse.
It is apparently widely mis-understood:
http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/
posted by cron at 9:01 AM on August 14, 2018 [11 favorites]
It is apparently widely mis-understood:
http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/
posted by cron at 9:01 AM on August 14, 2018 [11 favorites]
the 5-second rule isn't really a thing.
I had no idea anyone thought that was a real thing! I always treated it as a joke, knowing there would be bacteria on the dropped food but (context dependent!) was willing to eat it anyway.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:02 AM on August 14, 2018 [8 favorites]
I had no idea anyone thought that was a real thing! I always treated it as a joke, knowing there would be bacteria on the dropped food but (context dependent!) was willing to eat it anyway.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:02 AM on August 14, 2018 [8 favorites]
Lots of pop psychology about food ... may be based on cooked research.
I see what you did there.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:15 AM on August 14, 2018 [6 favorites]
I see what you did there.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:15 AM on August 14, 2018 [6 favorites]
Also, I would have passed the marshmallow test simply because I don't like marshmallows. I don't know how I would have done at a young age if they'd used a food I did like.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:16 AM on August 14, 2018
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:16 AM on August 14, 2018
I had no idea anyone thought that was a real thing! I always treated it as a joke, knowing there would be bacteria on the dropped food but (context dependent!) was willing to eat it anyway.Yeah, I'm getting mocked for including something that popped into my head at the last minute. Clearly I shouldn't have included it. I was more thinking about how we act around food and surfaces, rather than the '5-second rule' itself.
Obviously dropping food in dog poop then eating it is a bad idea. FFS.
But did you know carpet actually transfers bacteria less well than tile or stainless steel surfaces? Because contact surface is a significant factor. So, for example, an apparently clean table or worktop could be less safe than an apparently clean carpet. I mean, who hasn't eaten food that fell off the side of the plate onto the table? When preparing salad, if something fell on the worktop, do you immediately throw it in the bin? Do your kids ever eat anything that fell on the surface of their high chair?
(If it turns out it's just me, then fine, mock me as an idiot).
If it's wet food transfer is basically immediate, so you're reliant on the all food contact hard surfaces being pretty clean, or pretty lucky. Admission to hospital for gastro in england for children is basically 250 per thousand, to 50 per thousand for older children. And that's a fairly benign infection generally. I guess I was trying to say food safety is harder than we often treat it, and failed miserably. Sorry.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 9:43 AM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
The "backfire effect," which has serious limitations and/or can't be replicated, but was a huge deal for awhile in pop culture.
posted by Yowser at 10:02 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Yowser at 10:02 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
Just to be clear, I wasn't mocking you, Absolutely, I was mocking Rutgers.
posted by she's not there at 10:41 AM on August 14, 2018
posted by she's not there at 10:41 AM on August 14, 2018
Sleep in mammals is necessary not for "energy conservation", but so that your brain can drain toxic accumulation products.
posted by benzenedream at 11:02 AM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by benzenedream at 11:02 AM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
So, for example, an apparently clean table or worktop could be less safe than an apparently clean carpet.
I get what you mean, but my tabletops/worktops are cleaned far more often than my carpets! :)
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:05 AM on August 14, 2018
I get what you mean, but my tabletops/worktops are cleaned far more often than my carpets! :)
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:05 AM on August 14, 2018
The Dunning–Kruger effect is widely mis-understood, particularly by people who believe they understand it quite well and use it to explain pretty much everything.
posted by sfenders at 11:27 AM on August 14, 2018 [21 favorites]
posted by sfenders at 11:27 AM on August 14, 2018 [21 favorites]
Lots of pop psychology about food, like the size of the plate influencing to amount we eat, may be based on cooked research. Cornell food lab scandal.Fucking hell. That popcorn study made for such perfect dinner conversation. (I guess we don't know for a fact that one was improperly analyzed.)
Perhaps it's time to apologize to all my friends for making them eat off of small plates.
Thanks for the update.
posted by eotvos at 11:32 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
MetaFilter: your debunked ideas are in fact debunked
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:13 PM on August 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:13 PM on August 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
The point of the five-second rule is to give small children a reason for understanding "if you dropped your cookie on the floor, it's still safe enough to eat" (at least as long as your floor is reasonably clean to begin with), but "if you found a cookie that got dropped earlier" - maybe yesterday, maybe last week, maybe it's been there since someone's birthday - then no, it is not safe; it's had a chance to pick up a lot more bacteria than whatever's on the floor right now.
The cookie you dropped right now is picking up the dirt/bacteria on your floor right now. Whether that's safe to eat is a matter of parental judgment. Last week's cookie has that, and also may have been kicked around over more dirt, licked by the cat, visited by bugs, or nibbled on by mice.
And while it's been tested a few times in laboratories (Mythbusters also addressed it), it was never a widespread scientific claim.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 1:31 PM on August 14, 2018 [7 favorites]
The cookie you dropped right now is picking up the dirt/bacteria on your floor right now. Whether that's safe to eat is a matter of parental judgment. Last week's cookie has that, and also may have been kicked around over more dirt, licked by the cat, visited by bugs, or nibbled on by mice.
And while it's been tested a few times in laboratories (Mythbusters also addressed it), it was never a widespread scientific claim.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 1:31 PM on August 14, 2018 [7 favorites]
I'm old enough that though, like pracowity above, my view of Genetics was Mendelian and was around when they were just finding out about epigenetics. The whole "you can pass on (bad)things that happened to you to your kids" through genetics was a weird Lamarckian flash.
I'd always known you could pass on bad experience type stuff. Don't know why the epigenetics bit bothered me.
posted by aleph at 1:49 PM on August 14, 2018
I'd always known you could pass on bad experience type stuff. Don't know why the epigenetics bit bothered me.
posted by aleph at 1:49 PM on August 14, 2018
I am SO GLAD that marshmallow one turns out to be crap. I've spent the past 20 years knowing, absolutely knowing for a fact, that I would have failed the marshmallow test, and thus, that I was a complete loser who couldn't control my urges and that's why I was a failure and a disgrace.
posted by holborne at 3:01 PM on August 14, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by holborne at 3:01 PM on August 14, 2018 [5 favorites]
Worth checking out this awesome comic about the replication crisis in psych linked in the twitter thread.
posted by kaibutsu at 9:40 PM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by kaibutsu at 9:40 PM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
Greg_Ace: " I always treated it as a joke, knowing there would be bacteria on the dropped food but (context dependent!) was willing to eat it anyway."
The five second rule exists to allow you to feed food that dropped on to your nice clean floor at home to toddlers while still discouraging them from stuffing anything they happen to come across on the ground in their mouths. I'm pretty sure that a a cookie that falls onto even a regular fifthly carpet is a lot safer to eat than random cat or dog turds/condoms/pills/last week's tuna sandwich found in the grass at the park.
posted by Mitheral at 11:33 PM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
The five second rule exists to allow you to feed food that dropped on to your nice clean floor at home to toddlers while still discouraging them from stuffing anything they happen to come across on the ground in their mouths. I'm pretty sure that a a cookie that falls onto even a regular fifthly carpet is a lot safer to eat than random cat or dog turds/condoms/pills/last week's tuna sandwich found in the grass at the park.
posted by Mitheral at 11:33 PM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
For a long time, I thought I had read a study that wearing sunglasses meant you were more likely to get sunburned because something something your eyes sensed UV which initiated something that meant you'd tan vs sunburn, but wearing sunglasses blocked it. So I didn't wear sunglasses for a long time. Then I finally googled it and it was apparently debunked pretty much right away. Whoops. I wonder what my vision will be like in another 10 years?
Also, I read something that said beer hydrates better than water. I'm still not sure if that one is legit or not, because I don't want to know. I like having a beer after my volleyball games, and I'm gonna keep telling myself it's because it helps me hydrate faster than just lame old water.
posted by Grither at 8:26 AM on August 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
Also, I read something that said beer hydrates better than water. I'm still not sure if that one is legit or not, because I don't want to know. I like having a beer after my volleyball games, and I'm gonna keep telling myself it's because it helps me hydrate faster than just lame old water.
posted by Grither at 8:26 AM on August 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
Also, I read something that said beer hydrates better than water.
Well, the water content is going to be roughly the same. But beer also has sugars/starches, just like drinking a sugary athletic drink. So, whether that study is true or not ultimately depends on how you define "hydrate", I think.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:43 AM on August 16, 2018
Well, the water content is going to be roughly the same. But beer also has sugars/starches, just like drinking a sugary athletic drink. So, whether that study is true or not ultimately depends on how you define "hydrate", I think.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:43 AM on August 16, 2018
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The collapse of ego depletion was another 'Oh. Really?' moment. Complete garbage, apparently.
The reproducibility crisis in psychology at the moment means there's plenty more, but I'll pick a couple from other fields.
I was relieved to find that knuckle cracking doesn't give you arthritis, as a persistent knuckle cracker. Lastly, the 5-second rule isn't really a thing. Yes, contact time affects how many bacteria transfer, depending upon food (mostly water content) and surface type but significant amounts can transfer in under a second.
Ones that would do my noodle if they happened:
1) vaccines do increase the risk of autism
2) human-caused CO2 emissions don't significantly affect global climate
3) the Dunning–Kruger effect isn't real, because my whole belief system about 'wtf managers' would collapse.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 2:53 AM on August 14, 2018 [18 favorites]