Misc

[see updates at the end of this article] I disagree with a fair chunk of Griffiths and co's work theoretically and methodologically. That's science. But Griffithsgate  goes beyond that and raises some uncomfortable questions about editorial bias and the very real consequences of carelessly applied research (see  Dorothy Bishop's  blog and Tom Chiver's  article in  Unheard ). In saying that, it is tricky to separate procedures from science because the rushed nature of the work means that it is riddled with contradictions. Like a political party trying to avoid the opposition, it is almost impossible to debate a moving target. For example:   Write about why data should be open , but don't share your own when requested .  Write about students and issues concerning plagiarism , then do the very same thing . That's all just procedural remember and long before getting to the actual science. I've previously written about the problems of publishing on an ...

We recently collected more smartphone usage data to test if pen and paper scales could predict behaviour ( they didn't ). However, in the process we managed to replicate some of our previous results from 2015. Specifically, the average number of smartphone pick-ups per day remains remarkably similar across both samples despite using different software and smartphone operating systems to quantify these behaviours. These results therefore cast some doubt over the idea that Android and iPhone users differ in their usage behaviours ( we previously observed some demographic and personality differences between these two groups ). Mean number of pick-ups from 2015 sample: 84.68 ( SD =55.23) . Mean number of pick-ups from 2018 sample: 85.44 ( SD =53.34) . It's worth remembering that our results in 2015 were already comparable with data collected by others in 2009 ! The idea that people are using their phones more doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.  ...