- Difficulties repeating priming effects
- Unexpected benefits of yogurt in mice. “The yogurt-eating mice were incredibly shiny. . . . These animals had 10 times the active follicle density of other mice.”
- A 13-year-0ld invents a cure for hiccups.
- A business that sells starter cultures for yogurt, kefir, kombucha, and so on — even natto. Here’s a little secret: you shouldn’t need to buy starter cultures. The store-bought product (e.g., bottle of kombucha), if not pasteurized, should function as starter culture for yogurt, kefir, or kombucha.
- Amish farm kids have fewer allergies than Swiss farm kids. Suggesting that something besides growing up on a farm can reduce allergies. Drinking microbe-rich raw milk?
Thanks to Hal Pashler and Bryan Castañeda.
“On measuring the males, they found that the testicles of the yogurt consumers were about 5 percent heavier than those of mice fed typical diets alone and around 15 percent heavier than those of junk-eating males.”
That last adjective is ill-chosen.
Well, I was definitely wrong about priming, thanks.
Even if Bargh’s counter-arguments are sound, I didn’t think about it enough. All those criticisms are ones I could have made, but didn’t. Moreover, Bargh seems to care more about being responsible for new tech than getting the right answer, presumably for the status benefits. Which means that odds are favour of Doyen and Pashler.
Especially Pashler, who actually founded a desperately needed resource in his psychfiledrawer.com site. Standard journals seem to aggressively avoid replications, which means someone needs to even more aggressively pursue them for our culture to even pretend to have a working scientific tradition.
That priming studies are extremely sensitive is evident o anyone following this literature. it is still about drawing attention and making a really efficient but unnoticed manipulation.
Thus, replications that have not done it “all right” are a priori expected to fail.
researchers that do not beleive in the effect, are naturally expected to be the most careful to optimzie primikng effect.
the main focus of the media (the “failed replication” of old walking slowly) is a priori faulty. Using 30 out of 30 words for priming is not only a “no go” for priming, but shows that the researchers had poor knowledge of how priming works. making us expect less than perfect design in other uncontensted aspects.
True, bargh response was not wise in many ways. but at the moment the PLoS paper is no “failed replication”.
typos. second sentence should read:
researchers that do not believe in the effect, are naturally not expected to be the most careful to optimize priming effect.