I was really surprised at the obvious low quality of the study. I only read a summary of it but the interviewer laughing at/with the subject (doesn’t matter which) was a big red flag.
There is also an age bias here. The language in Bleak House is no longer modern English and probably needs footnotes almost as much as Shakespeare does. And there is the classic fallacy of confusing factual knowledge with language comprehension. Yeah it seemed pretty weak but yes it was a magnet for anti-academia confirmation bias.
I was really surprised at the obvious low quality of the study. I only read a summary of it but the interviewer laughing at/with the subject (doesn’t matter which) was a big red flag.
There is also an age bias here. The language in Bleak House is no longer modern English and probably needs footnotes almost as much as Shakespeare does. And there is the classic fallacy of confusing factual knowledge with language comprehension. Yeah it seemed pretty weak but yes it was a magnet for anti-academia confirmation bias.
To me, the wildest thing in this snapshot (as you wrote, much more of a snapshot than an actual study), is the number of the English and English Education majors who don't actually read much.
I'm curious how widespread that is. I'm curious if it's different for English Lit vs. English Ed. majors.
But, of course, this "study" reveals nothing about these, or any other trends. It just shows that of these 85 students, most can't understand/interpret Bleak House at the sentence level—on the spot, the first time they read the passage, and out of context.
When I watched cartoons I thought that stepping on a rake was wildly exaggerated, and it would never happen like that in real life. But I did once step inadvertently on a garden rake that had been negligently left in long grass with the tines turned up. Fortunately I was wearing relatively new sneakers, so the tines did not penetrate my shoe very much, but I did get a significant whack on my nose and forehead. The handle came up surprisingly quickly. I did not see stars. Evaluating studies like the one reviewed in this article obviously takes significant time. I would like to see more, but hope that there are few instances where it is necessary. But the 250 year old Social Security Recipient Scare wasn’t that long ago, so I fear that there is a cornucopia of bad studies to expose. Don’t overindulge.
Thank you Holly, that was a very clear and useful article. The following strikes me as a very important addtional point:
“They don’t even seem curious. They’re not trained to double-check, cross-reference, or dig.
They skim. They SparkNotes. They shrug and move on.”
And this might be the key educational issues right there, for the people in the study anyway:
1. Their intellectual curiosity was either never developed or was suppressed.
2. They were never trained to employ these techniques, which I think are crucial to a thinking being, particularly an adult.
3. They are allowed to get by using measures which will not serve them well later on.
What could be the key factor linking all of these issues? I posit bad or lazy teachers played a big role. Perhaps the authors of this study simply cannot or do not want to see that.
A very thorough and useful set of recommendations. I have to watch myself all the time for being one of those, "I read the headline and I drew my conclusions," people, especially because I haven't the time or the motivation to actually read the story, much less the background information. I usually remind myself that the headline is sometimes contradicted by the actual story it purports to summarize. Even so I'm sure the avalanche of headlines subtly affects my way of thinking. It's always tempting, like the perfect teaser, "The top 10 simple things that will make you an ultra-fit millionaire. You won't believe number 3!"
In college I had a friend who insisted Shakespeare didn't write the plays attributed to him. I challenged him to prove it to me since I had no opinion on the matter, and we spent an afternoon in the university library researching the topic. I was astonished to find how pathetic and lacking in logic the "evidence" was. In fact the whole thing started with a joke in a play to show how stupid one of the characters was. The character claimed that Shakespeare hadn't written his plays because he'd seen that they were all signed at the end by this guy, 'Finis'.
Just a couple of thoughts. First, it's difficult at best to design a study that takes into account the immense variability of humans and do it within a small sample size, as you pointed out.
Second, you are right to point out that the skill of the teacher has a great bearing on what the student learns. There are some who are "born" teachers; with them it seems effortless. My first wife was like that, especially when she was able to work with children in her preferred age group: fifth graders, or 9 & 10 year olds. In my education experience, I had several great teachers, and several who probably should have been selling insurance, or maybe retired.
I haven't seen the study you referenced, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had a conclusion along the lines I often saw when I did look at research, and that was: "These results are tentative; more study is needed." I.e., more funding please.
The very first question anyone doing a study should ask: is this thing measurable? Can I isolate the thing I’d like to measure well enough to make it possible? It’s possible to make observations and even hypotheses without being able to prove anything. It’s how most of us go through life. We all do pattern recognition but some of us learn to leave a big space for margin of error. As a humanities head, I find this kind of study worse than useless. Imagine if these scholars used their own powers of observation to find out what was going on, and then tried things to improve it. Nah, probably too simple minded for the aspiring geniuses in our institutions.
My entire Saturday has been cursed with not just the increasingly common family members' dire predicaments, but periodically checking in on a handful of interesting (and/or sane) Twitter users and having their interlocuters disabuse me of any hope for the future. And that made me wonder what the nice little, deaf math/stats girl who bailed on that hellish landscape was up to. I haven't chacked the mail box that you come in on very much recently, but in light of this articles subject, I will point out that my current frustration was someone using personal anecdotal evidence to dismiss a plethora of constrasting data. Probably too common to even be ironic, I suppose. I need a drink.
Oh, for f-ck's sake! I get several sentences into this piece and i'm reminded that I lost life long friends over pointing out things like the "fine people hoax".
Very thoroughly analyzed. The only thing I would think to add is, that if you're trying to make an observation about your school's English majors, wouldn't it be sensible also to see how the other students do? If they are even worse, that might well indicate that the English majors are decent readers - for that university... and tell you a lot more than you want people to know about your employer.
I almost mentioned this as another thing they could've done, but I didn't feel like I could bring up the possibility of stem majors being better students yet again without inviting a draining, exhausting time in Notes. 😂
This might be one of those cases where people come at the same conclusion from different directions, even when they're not looking for it. Could it be described as triangulation? Probably not, but you get the idea.
Claire Lehmann runs Quillette, a notable, longstanding heterodox "group blog" (with a presence on Substack now). This is the first thing she's written for The Dispatch. She comes to "it's a problem when people don't read" from the Rogan/Smith/Murray imbroglio. The piece has generated a bit of response and comment (and you and others have also obviously written at length on the controversy) and got me thinking about it again.
Here you come to the "it's a problem when people don't read" concept as almost an afterthought - but your examination of the STEM/humanities learning difference (and how it fits here) is (I think) particularly insightful - as a STEM graduate and worker who did well in English and reads A LOT.
And that insight, along with the overlapping Venn diagram of the other pieces, helps me with something I'm wondering about - because I see my kids and their friends read a lot also. But exclusively on their phones - because they're not just looking at videos and pictures, they're reading text, sometimes large-ish amounts. But rarely "long-form", and no tactile media (newspapers, books, magazines etc). And they exhibit the issue Lehman highlights (lack of appreciation of the "hierarchy of method"), and those that you touch on (competence vs confidence, and confirmation bias).
That leads me to think it's long-form, complexity, concentration and, perhaps, real pages that are parts of the recipe that we're missing.
One of the key quotes from Lehmann's piece falls right into your thesis here on "studies":
"Rigor dampens engagement, and uncertainty saps attention. The marketplace of ideas has been subsumed by a marketplace of emotions, where incentives reward those with the sloppiest procedures."
I am going to suggest something for you to consider re: your kids. No, I'm not a parent. My perspective is informed by two things: 1) lifelong attention problems that are very severe. Brain.fm is the only way I was able to break dependence on ritalin to get anything done. I'm not sure if it's proper ADHD or just my particular cocktail of psychological issues, but it's been bad. 2) I have employed, at various times, three teenagers from the same local family. They are polite, poised, excellent students, have long attention spans, and are wonderful company. They can be in the same room with me FOR HOURS helping me with a task -- most recently, cleaning out closets -- with their phones in their pockets and *never look at them once*. (Their phones that they got for their sixteenth birthdays and not one minute sooner, even if they could've paid for a phone themselves.)
Where these two things overlap:
My attention span has improved mightily since I stopped reading Kindle books for the most part (I still get one occasionally if I have a good reason, but it's rare) and started reading only hard copy books.
Those kids and their parents read hard copy books together for an hour, in the same room, after dinner every night.
My suggestion: do whatever you have to do (money usually works, but depending on your kids' particular personalities and interests, earning a weekend trip with Dad or something else very special might also work) to get them to read hard copy books without interruption or looking at their phones. If they cannot do it, they're already handicapped. If you can get them doing it, you'll be turning them into top 1% attention span for their cohort, which is a massive advantage for career prospects.
I appreciate the suggestions - but the youngest is 24 and the oldest 32, so I can try but the horse may have bolted.
Except for one of my sons, Dan, who has largely on his own but with my support, picked up paper books himself. And it has made a notable difference.
After seeing your previous reference to brain.fm, I'm getting my youngest daughter to try it - she's had much more of a problem with reading & learning. We'll see.
Again - thank you for taking the time to respond so fulsomely.
In college, I took a general statistics class that was mostly math, sociology and science majors but at least one third students looking for a math class that wasn't college algebra! On the first day of class, the professor had us write in ink on the inside cover of our notebook for the class the brand of toothpaste we normally used. No explanation. He then gave a general overview of the class and told us what text to purchase from the bookstore. We were also instructed to buy a paperback copy of How to Lie with Statistics and to read the entire book before the next class meeting. The next class, he asked each student what toothpaste they had written on their notebook the last class and tallied them on the chalkboard. Upon completion, he made the statement that a magazine ad said that 4 out of 5 dentists recommended Dr. Molar's Toothpaste and asked if our survey supported the statement. Of course it didn't because there was no such thing as Dr. Molar's Toothpaste. He then asked if we had seen tv ads that stated that 4 out of 5 dentists recommended the other brands on the board and asked us to write an explanation for how those ads could be deceptive and why. This was our introduction into statistical sampling and developed a robust discussion on how the composition of the sample could, by design, sway the conclusion.
As for desired outcomes, we live in a society where "everyone gets a trophy" is far more a reality. The kid that plays the one inning in left field and magically comes up to bat either in the previous inning or the following one (as required by the league so no kid is left out the entire season) yet at the season ending trophy presentation receives a trophy for Outstanding Play in Left Field (maybe it was for catching the most flies--not fly balls but the insects). At this point what are we teaching these kids?
Your statement about the effect of teachers on students is spot on as well. This is especially true in elementary schools where all too often teachers are "a jack of all trades and master at most one". The inherent bias of a teacher in favor of or against a subject can have long-term effects on young learners. This is true in even subtle ways such as the teacher taking a book with him/her to the cafeteria and reading while eating lunch and supervising students. What a powerful image for youngsters. Modeling is important!!
Sadly, most of the surveys people see on tv are political in nature and their interpretations are "adjusted" to fit the narrative of the reporter. There are always people who can read the same passage and get vastly different interpretations of what that person just read. Likewise with surveys. Far too often, the evaluator sees what he/she wants to see and never bothers to look at the vehicle that brought the results to them. No thought given to the sample group, the types of questions on the survey, the existence of outliers which might skew results or even outright deceit in the conclusions drawn by the surveyor. In fact, too many read the headlines without ever considering their origin. If you ever read a government report that had an Executive Summary and you read both, you might question whether this was like a Supreme Court ruling--where the majority of the Court reach a conclusion and write their justification and then there is a rebuttal from the minority of the Court providing their rationale for opposition. Too often, they reach polar opposite conclusions while reviewing the exact same evidence. The point is that unless you look carefully into any conclusion and the data used to reach it, you aren't doing any more than the student who only reads the SparkNotes version of any book!
I love this! One of my statistics professors had a course overload that semester. He was teaching SIX sections of intro stats. So he put a question on Blackboard every night that everyone had to answer and that was our data for the next day, LOL. It was fun.
This study says much more about the educational achievement of the people conducting the study than their subjects. It’s abysmal that this study was even conducted in such a manner. Why, it’s as if they wanted to churn out something to put on a resume rather than find out anything useful. If the students are doing poorly, the poor design of the study demonstrates why.
Honest question: is a “Limitations” section something relatively new? I got my MSc in 1995 and I don’t remember seeing a “Limitations” section in any published paper when I was in college and grad school. It was always “Intro, Method, Results, Discussion.” (Sometimes there was an “Analysis” section too if the stats were complex but usually it was part of the Methods section.)
I graduated in 2020 and I’ve never seen a paper without one, and I was unaware that it hadn’t always been a thing. Maybe it wasn’t always its own section, but surely an admission of a study’s flaws has always been a thing?
I was really surprised at the obvious low quality of the study. I only read a summary of it but the interviewer laughing at/with the subject (doesn’t matter which) was a big red flag.
There is also an age bias here. The language in Bleak House is no longer modern English and probably needs footnotes almost as much as Shakespeare does. And there is the classic fallacy of confusing factual knowledge with language comprehension. Yeah it seemed pretty weak but yes it was a magnet for anti-academia confirmation bias.
I was really surprised at the obvious low quality of the study. I only read a summary of it but the interviewer laughing at/with the subject (doesn’t matter which) was a big red flag.
There is also an age bias here. The language in Bleak House is no longer modern English and probably needs footnotes almost as much as Shakespeare does. And there is the classic fallacy of confusing factual knowledge with language comprehension. Yeah it seemed pretty weak but yes it was a magnet for anti-academia confirmation bias.
To me, the wildest thing in this snapshot (as you wrote, much more of a snapshot than an actual study), is the number of the English and English Education majors who don't actually read much.
I'm curious how widespread that is. I'm curious if it's different for English Lit vs. English Ed. majors.
But, of course, this "study" reveals nothing about these, or any other trends. It just shows that of these 85 students, most can't understand/interpret Bleak House at the sentence level—on the spot, the first time they read the passage, and out of context.
When I watched cartoons I thought that stepping on a rake was wildly exaggerated, and it would never happen like that in real life. But I did once step inadvertently on a garden rake that had been negligently left in long grass with the tines turned up. Fortunately I was wearing relatively new sneakers, so the tines did not penetrate my shoe very much, but I did get a significant whack on my nose and forehead. The handle came up surprisingly quickly. I did not see stars. Evaluating studies like the one reviewed in this article obviously takes significant time. I would like to see more, but hope that there are few instances where it is necessary. But the 250 year old Social Security Recipient Scare wasn’t that long ago, so I fear that there is a cornucopia of bad studies to expose. Don’t overindulge.
Thank you Holly, that was a very clear and useful article. The following strikes me as a very important addtional point:
“They don’t even seem curious. They’re not trained to double-check, cross-reference, or dig.
They skim. They SparkNotes. They shrug and move on.”
And this might be the key educational issues right there, for the people in the study anyway:
1. Their intellectual curiosity was either never developed or was suppressed.
2. They were never trained to employ these techniques, which I think are crucial to a thinking being, particularly an adult.
3. They are allowed to get by using measures which will not serve them well later on.
What could be the key factor linking all of these issues? I posit bad or lazy teachers played a big role. Perhaps the authors of this study simply cannot or do not want to see that.
Yep. Teachers are sacrosanct.
Now I'm really curious about the difference between mathematical competence among mathematics major and among mathematics education majors.
I have my suspicions … but I have no data.
A very thorough and useful set of recommendations. I have to watch myself all the time for being one of those, "I read the headline and I drew my conclusions," people, especially because I haven't the time or the motivation to actually read the story, much less the background information. I usually remind myself that the headline is sometimes contradicted by the actual story it purports to summarize. Even so I'm sure the avalanche of headlines subtly affects my way of thinking. It's always tempting, like the perfect teaser, "The top 10 simple things that will make you an ultra-fit millionaire. You won't believe number 3!"
In college I had a friend who insisted Shakespeare didn't write the plays attributed to him. I challenged him to prove it to me since I had no opinion on the matter, and we spent an afternoon in the university library researching the topic. I was astonished to find how pathetic and lacking in logic the "evidence" was. In fact the whole thing started with a joke in a play to show how stupid one of the characters was. The character claimed that Shakespeare hadn't written his plays because he'd seen that they were all signed at the end by this guy, 'Finis'.
Just a couple of thoughts. First, it's difficult at best to design a study that takes into account the immense variability of humans and do it within a small sample size, as you pointed out.
Second, you are right to point out that the skill of the teacher has a great bearing on what the student learns. There are some who are "born" teachers; with them it seems effortless. My first wife was like that, especially when she was able to work with children in her preferred age group: fifth graders, or 9 & 10 year olds. In my education experience, I had several great teachers, and several who probably should have been selling insurance, or maybe retired.
I haven't seen the study you referenced, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had a conclusion along the lines I often saw when I did look at research, and that was: "These results are tentative; more study is needed." I.e., more funding please.
The very first question anyone doing a study should ask: is this thing measurable? Can I isolate the thing I’d like to measure well enough to make it possible? It’s possible to make observations and even hypotheses without being able to prove anything. It’s how most of us go through life. We all do pattern recognition but some of us learn to leave a big space for margin of error. As a humanities head, I find this kind of study worse than useless. Imagine if these scholars used their own powers of observation to find out what was going on, and then tried things to improve it. Nah, probably too simple minded for the aspiring geniuses in our institutions.
Brilliant, logical analysis. You have impressive skills.
I couldn’t help but note that while stepping on a rake is often a bad thing, there is a way that stepping on a rake could be a good thing.
You just have to knock him unconscious first.
I love the English language. 😂
My entire Saturday has been cursed with not just the increasingly common family members' dire predicaments, but periodically checking in on a handful of interesting (and/or sane) Twitter users and having their interlocuters disabuse me of any hope for the future. And that made me wonder what the nice little, deaf math/stats girl who bailed on that hellish landscape was up to. I haven't chacked the mail box that you come in on very much recently, but in light of this articles subject, I will point out that my current frustration was someone using personal anecdotal evidence to dismiss a plethora of constrasting data. Probably too common to even be ironic, I suppose. I need a drink.
Oh, for f-ck's sake! I get several sentences into this piece and i'm reminded that I lost life long friends over pointing out things like the "fine people hoax".
Thank you for liking this.
(ps. i tried a bunch of replies to this, lol. If you had some JS catching every keypress, it would be cool to cycle through them all)
Very thoroughly analyzed. The only thing I would think to add is, that if you're trying to make an observation about your school's English majors, wouldn't it be sensible also to see how the other students do? If they are even worse, that might well indicate that the English majors are decent readers - for that university... and tell you a lot more than you want people to know about your employer.
I almost mentioned this as another thing they could've done, but I didn't feel like I could bring up the possibility of stem majors being better students yet again without inviting a draining, exhausting time in Notes. 😂
Thank you for walking us through this study. I was holding my opinion until I got a better explanation.
It sounds like they messed it up, no big surprise there.
For what it's worth, it's Bleak House. I haven't even read that one yet.
Christmas Carol✅
Oliver Twist ✅
Tale of Two cities✅
David Copperfield ✅
I could have probably paraphrased Bleak house, based on what i remember of the others.
This might be one of those cases where people come at the same conclusion from different directions, even when they're not looking for it. Could it be described as triangulation? Probably not, but you get the idea.
I hope this isn't paywalled:
https://thedispatch.com/article/feelings-facts-and-our-crisis-of-truth/
Claire Lehmann runs Quillette, a notable, longstanding heterodox "group blog" (with a presence on Substack now). This is the first thing she's written for The Dispatch. She comes to "it's a problem when people don't read" from the Rogan/Smith/Murray imbroglio. The piece has generated a bit of response and comment (and you and others have also obviously written at length on the controversy) and got me thinking about it again.
She referenced an article in The Atlantic (I know, I know - The Dispatch AND The Atlantic!? NeverTrumper Alert!! - but stick with me) [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/] which covered similar ground.
Here you come to the "it's a problem when people don't read" concept as almost an afterthought - but your examination of the STEM/humanities learning difference (and how it fits here) is (I think) particularly insightful - as a STEM graduate and worker who did well in English and reads A LOT.
And that insight, along with the overlapping Venn diagram of the other pieces, helps me with something I'm wondering about - because I see my kids and their friends read a lot also. But exclusively on their phones - because they're not just looking at videos and pictures, they're reading text, sometimes large-ish amounts. But rarely "long-form", and no tactile media (newspapers, books, magazines etc). And they exhibit the issue Lehman highlights (lack of appreciation of the "hierarchy of method"), and those that you touch on (competence vs confidence, and confirmation bias).
That leads me to think it's long-form, complexity, concentration and, perhaps, real pages that are parts of the recipe that we're missing.
One of the key quotes from Lehmann's piece falls right into your thesis here on "studies":
"Rigor dampens engagement, and uncertainty saps attention. The marketplace of ideas has been subsumed by a marketplace of emotions, where incentives reward those with the sloppiest procedures."
I am going to suggest something for you to consider re: your kids. No, I'm not a parent. My perspective is informed by two things: 1) lifelong attention problems that are very severe. Brain.fm is the only way I was able to break dependence on ritalin to get anything done. I'm not sure if it's proper ADHD or just my particular cocktail of psychological issues, but it's been bad. 2) I have employed, at various times, three teenagers from the same local family. They are polite, poised, excellent students, have long attention spans, and are wonderful company. They can be in the same room with me FOR HOURS helping me with a task -- most recently, cleaning out closets -- with their phones in their pockets and *never look at them once*. (Their phones that they got for their sixteenth birthdays and not one minute sooner, even if they could've paid for a phone themselves.)
Where these two things overlap:
My attention span has improved mightily since I stopped reading Kindle books for the most part (I still get one occasionally if I have a good reason, but it's rare) and started reading only hard copy books.
Those kids and their parents read hard copy books together for an hour, in the same room, after dinner every night.
My suggestion: do whatever you have to do (money usually works, but depending on your kids' particular personalities and interests, earning a weekend trip with Dad or something else very special might also work) to get them to read hard copy books without interruption or looking at their phones. If they cannot do it, they're already handicapped. If you can get them doing it, you'll be turning them into top 1% attention span for their cohort, which is a massive advantage for career prospects.
I appreciate the suggestions - but the youngest is 24 and the oldest 32, so I can try but the horse may have bolted.
Except for one of my sons, Dan, who has largely on his own but with my support, picked up paper books himself. And it has made a notable difference.
After seeing your previous reference to brain.fm, I'm getting my youngest daughter to try it - she's had much more of a problem with reading & learning. We'll see.
Again - thank you for taking the time to respond so fulsomely.
Ah! When I hear “kids” I think of actual kids, LOL. Theory-of-mind problem.
Great analysis full of amazing points!
In college, I took a general statistics class that was mostly math, sociology and science majors but at least one third students looking for a math class that wasn't college algebra! On the first day of class, the professor had us write in ink on the inside cover of our notebook for the class the brand of toothpaste we normally used. No explanation. He then gave a general overview of the class and told us what text to purchase from the bookstore. We were also instructed to buy a paperback copy of How to Lie with Statistics and to read the entire book before the next class meeting. The next class, he asked each student what toothpaste they had written on their notebook the last class and tallied them on the chalkboard. Upon completion, he made the statement that a magazine ad said that 4 out of 5 dentists recommended Dr. Molar's Toothpaste and asked if our survey supported the statement. Of course it didn't because there was no such thing as Dr. Molar's Toothpaste. He then asked if we had seen tv ads that stated that 4 out of 5 dentists recommended the other brands on the board and asked us to write an explanation for how those ads could be deceptive and why. This was our introduction into statistical sampling and developed a robust discussion on how the composition of the sample could, by design, sway the conclusion.
As for desired outcomes, we live in a society where "everyone gets a trophy" is far more a reality. The kid that plays the one inning in left field and magically comes up to bat either in the previous inning or the following one (as required by the league so no kid is left out the entire season) yet at the season ending trophy presentation receives a trophy for Outstanding Play in Left Field (maybe it was for catching the most flies--not fly balls but the insects). At this point what are we teaching these kids?
Your statement about the effect of teachers on students is spot on as well. This is especially true in elementary schools where all too often teachers are "a jack of all trades and master at most one". The inherent bias of a teacher in favor of or against a subject can have long-term effects on young learners. This is true in even subtle ways such as the teacher taking a book with him/her to the cafeteria and reading while eating lunch and supervising students. What a powerful image for youngsters. Modeling is important!!
Sadly, most of the surveys people see on tv are political in nature and their interpretations are "adjusted" to fit the narrative of the reporter. There are always people who can read the same passage and get vastly different interpretations of what that person just read. Likewise with surveys. Far too often, the evaluator sees what he/she wants to see and never bothers to look at the vehicle that brought the results to them. No thought given to the sample group, the types of questions on the survey, the existence of outliers which might skew results or even outright deceit in the conclusions drawn by the surveyor. In fact, too many read the headlines without ever considering their origin. If you ever read a government report that had an Executive Summary and you read both, you might question whether this was like a Supreme Court ruling--where the majority of the Court reach a conclusion and write their justification and then there is a rebuttal from the minority of the Court providing their rationale for opposition. Too often, they reach polar opposite conclusions while reviewing the exact same evidence. The point is that unless you look carefully into any conclusion and the data used to reach it, you aren't doing any more than the student who only reads the SparkNotes version of any book!
I love this! One of my statistics professors had a course overload that semester. He was teaching SIX sections of intro stats. So he put a question on Blackboard every night that everyone had to answer and that was our data for the next day, LOL. It was fun.
This study says much more about the educational achievement of the people conducting the study than their subjects. It’s abysmal that this study was even conducted in such a manner. Why, it’s as if they wanted to churn out something to put on a resume rather than find out anything useful. If the students are doing poorly, the poor design of the study demonstrates why.
Yep. I also suspect they didn't test other majors because they didn't want the headline to be "Math Majors CAN Read," LOL.
Honest question: is a “Limitations” section something relatively new? I got my MSc in 1995 and I don’t remember seeing a “Limitations” section in any published paper when I was in college and grad school. It was always “Intro, Method, Results, Discussion.” (Sometimes there was an “Analysis” section too if the stats were complex but usually it was part of the Methods section.)
I graduated in 2020 and I’ve never seen a paper without one, and I was unaware that it hadn’t always been a thing. Maybe it wasn’t always its own section, but surely an admission of a study’s flaws has always been a thing?