Most of our measures of a key cognitive process don't agree
A big study with very little beyond negative results still gets published.
A big study with very little beyond negative results still gets published.
The short version
- It’s widely acknowledged that it’s nearly impossible to publish negative results in scientific journals.
- “We didn’t see anything” is a much harder sell than finding that a hypothesis is clearly right.
- Findings of no effect tend to either be shuffled off to low-profile journals or left behind as unpublished lab lore.
What happened
The high-profile journal Nature, however, made a notable exception this week, publishing a study that tells us that a bunch of methods we have been using to try to measure a key emotional ability don’t seem to be measuring the same thing. The results mean that we don’t have a good way to measure the impact of a concept that is the basis of a key method in therapy.
Why it matters
One of the most successful forms of therapy is cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.