Comments on: Kahneman Criticizes Social Psychologists For Replication Difficulties

By: Jim Manzi

Jim Manzi — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 21:25:28 +0000

David,

There have been many, many such well-structured RCTs by retail companies. They are are generally termed “SKU rationalization” experiments.

Duncan,

Thanks. I go into this experiment and subsequent analyses in much greater detail in my book published in May.

Best,
Jim Manzi

By: Duncan

Duncan — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 22:07:32 +0000

Jim Manzi has a pretty good article about the Iyengar experiment:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/198579/non-paradox-choice/jim-manzi

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 04:43:19 +0000

The difference is that they’re not in the business of publishing their data in research journals and probably consider it proprietary business intelligence.

I think it’s more likely that nobody bothered to ask them. Occam’s razor.

By: David Johnston

David Johnston — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 03:49:45 +0000

I strongly suspect that well organized retail companies have large data sets on the effect of choice size on purchasing habits and use that data to decide how many and what type of products to display. The difference is that they’re not in the business of publishing their data in research journals and probably consider it proprietary business intelligence.

By: Tim Beneke

Tim Beneke — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 19:51:28 +0000

I liked your post a lot. The whole issue of the “sociology of knowledge and social psychology” (and psychology and science generally) and how the kind of “external-to-truth” factors influence what are considered to be findings in psychology needs to be understood much better than it is. There needs to be better access to all the research that more or less fails to replicate important claims. There needs to be systematic research on the research so the field can better clean up its act…

It leaves me rather confused as one who is fascinated by findings in social psychology and tries, a little, to theorize them and integrate them into my daily existence. How seriously should we take important claims? I know one important Asian-American psychologist who has been very skeptical of Bargh as well as other highly publicized findings in psychology…

Seth: There’s a saying “everyone believes an experiment except the experimenter.” Let me revise it to “everyone believes an experiment except other experimenters” — who understand how easily the results can be shaped to fit what the experimenter wants.

By: Vic

Vic — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 19:21:45 +0000

Seth – isn’t this the time of year when you criticize the nobel prize in medicine?

Seth: Any day now.

By: Darrin Thompson

Darrin Thompson — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 12:50:59 +0000

We should clarify the saying you are using. It’s better stated this way: “a. Fast. b. Cheap. c. Good. Pick any 2.”

At least that’s the software version of it. It expresses our frustrations with management who drive us to produce quickly and cheaply but are horrified to discover that when it’s done it isn’t any good. Or that we could build it cheaply and have it turn out well, but it’s going to take longer. Or that we could build it well, and quickly, but it will cost a lot.

And beat that system the answer is to invest some resources to improve our tooling or our processes.

Seth: You mean my statement was confusing because I numbered the choices? I’ve heard the “pick 2″ saying in regard to making movies and making physical stuff.