Police Psychology:  Reproducibility

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

So, my 11-year old daughter had to do a science project earlier this year and she decided because her mother was constantly saying that playing on the IPad was hurting her, she would test out whether IPad play really had an impact on her attention span.  So, we set it up with three alternate forms of a neurological test, the Trail Making Test, a connect the dots type of activity, (okay I helped a little), one before, one in the middle and one at the end.  There was an hour and a half of Minecraft in-between each of the trials.  We got her friends over and measured the change from trial to trial, with both time and number of errors as the variables.  The results….well, I’ll get to that.

We start training kids from an early age on the rigors of scientific method and how to make a scientific study.  We train them how to test a theory and how to make a hypothesis.  We train them that science requires experiments to answer questions and learn more about our world.  What I think we forget to train them in is that one study does not provide a definitive answer but only a suggestion.  The ignorance of the statement that it is only a suggestion is how we come up with a bunch of “Fake Science” being reported and guiding our way of life. (more…)