On Science and Poverty
Science is weird. In practice, it might be one of the only vocations that rewards you on how well you deceptively use mathematics to make an argument. The only other jobs like this that i can think of, might be accounting and perhaps mathematics itself. But honestly, no experiment is a failure with the right set of statistics. Not getting what you want? Have you tried rearranging the graph? Have you tried limiting the analysis to only pregnant, left-handed, summer-born women under the age of 20? If not, get right on top of that.
I just finished an experiment that essentially just proves that people are faster at making responses with their right hand. I wonder why this could be... Well, it neither confirms nor denies the question i was trying to answer, so i guess it would make it's own paper! I think i'll title it "Eccentricity effects on responses with task-irrelevant spatial information: an analysis on handedness". I mean, people mostly never get past the titles of these papers anyways. Really, people only gather papers so they can have a longer list of citations in their own papers. People get older, they specialize in more exotic things, but they are still trying to pull of the same shit you did in grade school. It's a wonder you don't catch people submitting to journals in 14 font with 2.5 spacing.
One of my friends describes her lab experience as basically "designing experiments that bores babies to tears", although now i can't remember if this was in conversation or via facebook quotes, it hardly matters at this point. I have seen it happen and have come to the conclusion that developmental cognitive science just serves as a way to torment children. It a literature built out of looking behaviors, and occasional reachings. Last week i happened to be at a "cognitive science" get-together, which basically meant drunk advisors. At one point i happened to mention that the foam bat i was carrying seemed like the perfect toy, and that i wished i had one of my own. One developmental psychologist bet me that any child would prefer a cardboard toy.
"nah, i mean look at this foam bat, it has everything. You can hit stuff, but it's still soft enough to sleep on, and it's purple so it's not hard on the eyes."
"look i'll prove it to you."
"no, thats okay really."
"No, lets get a 3 year old down here. HEY IRA!"
"We really don't have to do this."
"No, it'll be fun, lets see who is right." Said the almost too insistent DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGIST..... "come on Ira, which do you like better."
When he of course proved the professor right, everyone screamed and laughed. The child, apparently not ready for this scientific break through, ran to his father and started to cry.
I do the same thing, but with adults. Of course, adults seldom cry in front of strangers, so i rarely find myself in that situation, but i often get looks of contempt and hatred. "This will be a simple experiment," I tell them "you are going to press this button whenever a green object appears, and that button whenever a red object appears. Got it? Good, now remember, press the buttons as fast as you can!" What i don't tell them, is that there will be 1300 trials of the same 16 pictures, over and over again. They generally stumble out of the experimenting room after an hour, blinded by the light of the outside world. The few that haven't had their will beat out of them through constant keyboard responses, look at me like i just stole the last hour they had on earth. Others just look confused.
An undergraduate runs subjects for me in another experiment, a hellish little thing that requires people to repeat 4 digits over and over again while colored boxes fly around the screen. It's slightly more complicated than that in design and purpose, but that pretty much tells you what you need to know from the participants point of view. Some people just flat out give up after a half-hour, and just walk out of the experiment. I mean, of course ethically we have to let them leave, but couldn't you just suck it up? I mean, imagine what we go through! we have to listen to you, and your frog voice, repeat numbers for an hour. And it isn't just you, we have 20 of you guys to get through this week. Or rather, we would have 20, if word didn't get out that we have a study that basically tortures people for an hour. Not too many people have been signing up. Those who do, do not show up. Oh, if only there was a vengefully god for this sort of thing.
If there is, i'm fairly sure that i'm the target of its wrath. Yesterday i woke up with a negative balance of 1000 dollars. That's funny, i said to myself, i don't remember those gummy worms costing that much. Apparently when i authorized the school for the "minimum balance" on my tuition at the end of February, some how i had set my "effective day" right, but not my "withdraw" day (through an arcane site that still tells me it's September). Consequently, they arbitrarily decided to withdraw my funds on the 6th, even though the "minimum" balance had gone from 700 dollars to 1900 dollars. What a world, where you can waste a Thursday making sure your rent check doesn't bounce when you are gainfully employed and not on crack, and then go spend 8 hours learning how to use a 3d computer graphics program and be happy with the difference.
It looks like i'm on a five dollar a day budget for a while. Though i did spend over half of my daily allotment to buy a beer at the end of my 12 hour Friday. Maybe it is the fact that it was the first beer i had in a week, or the fact that it costs more than i can legitimately spend, but that bud light tasted heavenly. Well, not really heavenly, more like honey, so they might have just got my order wrong. Yes, that must have been it.
I just finished an experiment that essentially just proves that people are faster at making responses with their right hand. I wonder why this could be... Well, it neither confirms nor denies the question i was trying to answer, so i guess it would make it's own paper! I think i'll title it "Eccentricity effects on responses with task-irrelevant spatial information: an analysis on handedness". I mean, people mostly never get past the titles of these papers anyways. Really, people only gather papers so they can have a longer list of citations in their own papers. People get older, they specialize in more exotic things, but they are still trying to pull of the same shit you did in grade school. It's a wonder you don't catch people submitting to journals in 14 font with 2.5 spacing.
One of my friends describes her lab experience as basically "designing experiments that bores babies to tears", although now i can't remember if this was in conversation or via facebook quotes, it hardly matters at this point. I have seen it happen and have come to the conclusion that developmental cognitive science just serves as a way to torment children. It a literature built out of looking behaviors, and occasional reachings. Last week i happened to be at a "cognitive science" get-together, which basically meant drunk advisors. At one point i happened to mention that the foam bat i was carrying seemed like the perfect toy, and that i wished i had one of my own. One developmental psychologist bet me that any child would prefer a cardboard toy.
"nah, i mean look at this foam bat, it has everything. You can hit stuff, but it's still soft enough to sleep on, and it's purple so it's not hard on the eyes."
"look i'll prove it to you."
"no, thats okay really."
"No, lets get a 3 year old down here. HEY IRA!"
"We really don't have to do this."
"No, it'll be fun, lets see who is right." Said the almost too insistent DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGIST..... "come on Ira, which do you like better."
When he of course proved the professor right, everyone screamed and laughed. The child, apparently not ready for this scientific break through, ran to his father and started to cry.
I do the same thing, but with adults. Of course, adults seldom cry in front of strangers, so i rarely find myself in that situation, but i often get looks of contempt and hatred. "This will be a simple experiment," I tell them "you are going to press this button whenever a green object appears, and that button whenever a red object appears. Got it? Good, now remember, press the buttons as fast as you can!" What i don't tell them, is that there will be 1300 trials of the same 16 pictures, over and over again. They generally stumble out of the experimenting room after an hour, blinded by the light of the outside world. The few that haven't had their will beat out of them through constant keyboard responses, look at me like i just stole the last hour they had on earth. Others just look confused.
An undergraduate runs subjects for me in another experiment, a hellish little thing that requires people to repeat 4 digits over and over again while colored boxes fly around the screen. It's slightly more complicated than that in design and purpose, but that pretty much tells you what you need to know from the participants point of view. Some people just flat out give up after a half-hour, and just walk out of the experiment. I mean, of course ethically we have to let them leave, but couldn't you just suck it up? I mean, imagine what we go through! we have to listen to you, and your frog voice, repeat numbers for an hour. And it isn't just you, we have 20 of you guys to get through this week. Or rather, we would have 20, if word didn't get out that we have a study that basically tortures people for an hour. Not too many people have been signing up. Those who do, do not show up. Oh, if only there was a vengefully god for this sort of thing.
If there is, i'm fairly sure that i'm the target of its wrath. Yesterday i woke up with a negative balance of 1000 dollars. That's funny, i said to myself, i don't remember those gummy worms costing that much. Apparently when i authorized the school for the "minimum balance" on my tuition at the end of February, some how i had set my "effective day" right, but not my "withdraw" day (through an arcane site that still tells me it's September). Consequently, they arbitrarily decided to withdraw my funds on the 6th, even though the "minimum" balance had gone from 700 dollars to 1900 dollars. What a world, where you can waste a Thursday making sure your rent check doesn't bounce when you are gainfully employed and not on crack, and then go spend 8 hours learning how to use a 3d computer graphics program and be happy with the difference.
It looks like i'm on a five dollar a day budget for a while. Though i did spend over half of my daily allotment to buy a beer at the end of my 12 hour Friday. Maybe it is the fact that it was the first beer i had in a week, or the fact that it costs more than i can legitimately spend, but that bud light tasted heavenly. Well, not really heavenly, more like honey, so they might have just got my order wrong. Yes, that must have been it.