Be skeptical of those fast, definitive answers

In my blog I sometimes use lots of numbers and refer to the results of studies that draw certain conclusions. But how trustworthy are those studies? Should we accept their findings simply because they are “scientific”?

In an article in Pacific Standard (May/June) called “The Reformation,” Jerry Adler asks these questions, particularly in regard to studies in the field of behavioral sciences.

He notes that “for the last several years, a crisis of self-confidence has been brewing in the world of experimental social science, and in psychology especially.” 

Papers have been retracted, and prominent researchers have resigned their posts, including Marc Hauser, an evolutionary psychologist and acclaimed author, and Diederik Stapel, a Dutch psychologist, “who admitted that many of his eye-catching results were based on data he made up.”

Hoaxes: Some scholars have tried to expose these problems through hoaxes. In 2011, a psychologist named Joseph P. Simmons and two colleagues wrote a paper hypothesizing that listening to The Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four” makes people younger. That paper actually appeared in the journal Psychological Science. It was a hoax.

This isn’t just a problem for the academic community. “A whole industry has grown up around marketing the surprising-yet-oddly-intuitive findings of social psychology, behavioral economics and related fields,” writes Adler. Think of TED talks, Malcolm Gladwell, the Freakonomics guys.

TED Talks: Many of us are complicit in this. We want fast, definitive answers. One person criticized TED talks for being simplistic. He did so by giving a simplistic TED talk.

Why do these scientists fake or manipulate their data? There is much pressure in the academic community for publishing cutting-edge material. There are incentives such as tenure, advancement, grants and prizes. And with fewer dollars available to fund research, scientists are loathe to spend the money and time to do an experiment and not get the results they want.

Often, people begin an experiment with a hypothesis. If their data doesn’t quite support that hypothesis, they may keep at it until it does or simply alter the data.

Simmons points out that “psychologists who deploy enough statistical sleight of hand can find ‘significance’ in almost any data set.”

One research psychologist, Brian Nosek, directs the Reproducibility Project, which reproduces certain experiments to see if they get the same results as those published. This doesn’t necessarily disprove an experiment’s findings, and it may even help refine its point. It may also turn up a failure that is glaring, and the paper must be retracted.

Fraud: Adler notes that problems of fraud, statistical analysis and replication also apply to other fields. Biomedical research is one example. In search of new drugs, researchers at the pharmaceutical firm Amgen “selected 53 promising basic-research papers from leading medical journals and attempted to reproduce the original findings with the same experiments,” Adler writes. “They failed approximately 9 times out of 10.”

Those involved with the Reproducibility Project and other scientists are part of “a whole new approach to experimental social science, emphasizing cooperation over competition and privileging the slow accretion of understanding over dramatic, counterintuitive results,” writes Adler.

He goes on to point out that “pretty much all scientific findings are tentative.” The Apostle Paul said, “Test the spirits.” Scientists need to keep testing their results.

A powerful story of forgiveness

Many of us take forgiveness for granted, accepting and offering it without much thought. But what if we faced a truly horrifying wound? Could we then forgive?

The Railway Man is based on the true story of Eric Lomax, a former British Army officer who was tortured as a prisoner of war at a Japanese labor camp during World War II. The film begins years later, on a train, where Eric meets and falls in love with Patti (Nicole Kidman), a former nurse.

'Railway enthusiast': Eric (played wonderfully by Colin Firth) is a “railway enthusiast.” He knows and loves about everything there is to know about railways. He and Patti marry, and before long he is on the floor screaming, experiencing flashbacks from his experience in the war. But he won’t talk to Patti about it.

She goes to Eric’s friend Finlay (Stellan Skarsgard), who was with him in the labor camp, and he tells her what happened.

Death Railroad: The film flashes back repeatedly to that time, when a young Eric (Jeremy Irvine) and Finlay (Sam Reid) are captured in Singapore and forced to work on the Burma railroad (later known as the Death Railroad).

Eric builds a radio receiver, and when it’s discovered, he takes responsibility for it to save his fellow officers from being punished. He endures terrible torture (thus the R rating), which continues to haunt him years later.

Revenge?: Then Finlay learns that one of Eric’s tormentors is still alive. Finlay tells Eric, who decides to travel to Thailand to confront the man. Will he seek revenge? The tension when he finds him is enormous.

The film takes a while to get going, but once we’re in the labor camp, we’re hooked, even though the torture scenes are difficult to watch.

Firth is outstanding. This could be another Oscar-nominated performance. Kidman’s skills are mostly wasted, as her character does little more than look concerned.

Lust for vengeance: The kind of decision Eric must make is one few of us will ever face. The film ends up confronting our own lust for vengeance as we identify with this character. Though difficult to watch, the film provides a good vehicle for discussing what forgiveness means and how hard it can be.

Reasonable risks are good for children

When I was a boy, I and my friends wandered the neighborhood unsupervised. We walked to school and didn’t worry about strangers. We had a tree house and built forts; we used our imagination to play various games.

Now that seems like a different world from today. I rarely see children playing outside in our neighborhood. And if they do, it’s usually in their own yard.

No, I’m not just being nostalgic. This change in our culture has unhealthy consequences for our children. An article in The Atlantic (April) addresses this reality and calls for change.

In “Hey! Parents, Leave Those Kids Alone,” Hanna Rosin points out that when kids face what to them seem like “really dangerous risks” and conquer them alone, this builds self-confidence and courage.

She quotes Joe Frost, a safety crusader whose influence brought drastic changes to playgrounds in the ’80s but has now become concerned that we’ve gone too far. Adults have come to the mistaken view “that children must somehow be sheltered from all risks of injury,” Frost writes, but “in the real world, life is filled with risks—financial, physical, emotional, social—and reasonable risks are essential for children’s healthy development.”

There has been a drastic change in parents’ supervision of children. Rosin refers to a U.K. study that showed that “in 1971, 80 percent of third-graders walked to school alone. By 1990, that measure had dropped to 9 percent, and now it’s even lower.”

Parents routinely tell their children never to talk to strangers, “even though all available evidence suggests that children have about the same (very slim) chance of being abducted by a stranger as they did a generation ago,” Rosin writes.

In fact, overall, crimes against children have been declining. One exception is family abduction. “The explosion in divorce in the ’70s meant many more custody wars and many more children being smuggled away by one or the other of the parents,” Rosin writes.

Ellen Sandseter, a professor of early-childhood education in Norway, published a paper in 2011 on children’s risky play. She concluded that children “have a sensory need to taste danger and excitement,” at least in their minds.

She identifies six kinds of risky play: (1) exploring heights, (2) handling dangerous tools, (3) being near dangerous elements, (4) rough-and-tumble play, (5) speed and (6) exploring on one’s own.

The last one, she says, is the most important: “When they are left alone and can take full responsibility for their actions, and the consequences of their decisions, it’s a thrilling experience.” And they gain self-confidence.

She writes that “our fear of children being harmed,” mostly in minor ways, “may result in more fearful children and increased levels of psychopathology.”

Today, writes Rosin, “failure to supervise has become, in fact, synonymous with failure to parent.” And this has resulted in a “continuous and ultimately dramatic decline in children’s opportunities to play and explore in their own chosen ways,” according to psychologist Peter Gray.

In an essay called “The Play Deficit,” Gray chronicles the fallout from the loss of the old childhood culture: depression, narcissism and a decline in empathy, “a familiar list of the usual ills attributed to Millennials.”

Rosin concludes: “We can no more create the perfect environment for our children than we can create perfect children. To believe otherwise is a delusion, and a harmful one.”

Fear breeds fear. Raising children without phobias may require letting them play without parental supervision, letting them experience the thrill of reasonable risks.