Photo credit: marcoscastillo/Deposit photos Here's another article from the content farm website, StudyFinds. This one's on the personality correlates of liking spicy foods, and it includes a combination of frequency and association claims. The same poll was also covered by the NYPost and by Yahoo! News (with a video) Below I will post a series of …
Continue reading Personality correlates of liking spicy foods
Is it realistic that the pandemic reduced infant IQ by more than 20 points? Photo credit: Cat Box/Shutterstock Parents of young children might be alarmed if they read coverage of a recent study on baby IQ. According to one journalist who covered it, the study found that babies tested IQ dropped over 20 points: In …
Photo credit: nito103/Deposit Photos Press outlets have been covering a report by the Williams Institute (based at UCLA), a research organization collecting data on demographic information on sexual orientation and gender identity. The quotes in this post come from this summary from PBS. The new study has estimated the number of LGBTQ adults in …
Continue reading Estimating how many U.S. adults identify as nonbinary
Does the study's design support the causal claim the journalist attached to it? Photo credit: R.O.M/Shutterstock Some journalists simply cannot resist attaching a causal claim to a study where it doesn't belong. Here's an example from the trade magazine, Inside Higher Ed, which reprinted a piece from Times Higher Education. The headline reads, "Scientists urged …
One of the positive changes people reported was being able to spend more time with family. Photo: Steve Skjold / Alamy Stock Photo The first peer-reviewed studies about the COVID-19 pandemic are starting to appear in journals, and journalists are starting to summarize them in the popular press. Let's explore this summary of a survey …
Continue reading Frequency claims: Fitter and better rested during lockdown
In 2020, Netflix released an 8-episode series called "100 Humans" in which 100 (American) humans from a variety of ages and social groups participate in a series of studies. It's a gold mine of examples for critical thinking in research methods. You'll find examples of posttest-only, pretest-posttest designs, HARKing, ethics, and more. Most of the …
Here's a photo of a toutouwai (North Island Robin) sporting its bands for identification. Photo: Shutterstock We don't include many animal behavior studies in ERM blog, but here's a great one about animal memory. How long do you think wild animals can remember new skills they have learned? In this report in The Scientist, we …
Continue reading A serendipitous study of long-term memory in birds
The effect of screen time on well-being is likely to depend on moderators such as what's on the screen, when it's used, and who's using it. Photo: Eric Nathan / Alamy Stock Photo I can't promise this is the last article on screen time research that I will blog about. But this long-form piece by …
The fidget spinner IV was manipulated as independent groups in the first study and as within groups in the second. Photo: Marcel Jancovic/Shutterstock Fidget spinners were extremely popular a couple of years ago. When people promoted them, they often suggested that the toys could help people with ADHD focus and learn more. At the time, …
Continue reading Fidget spinners seem to cause worse memory and attention
CSP_rasstock/agefotostock What percentage of Americans would you guess have access to the Internet? How would you know? When you consider whether people have computers at home, computers at work, smart phones, ortablets, you might predict that a large majority of Americans are able to go online. In fact, it's probably around 90%. But, as with …
Continue reading How many have Internet access? Question wording matters