I would disagree with you that this study is large enough to consider the small differences they noted as being that significant
Well duh! You have said so several times, you just don't seem to have any actual rationale for saying it, beyond your own prejudices.
but actually I was not referring to the p value when I said the two groups were statistically almost identical, I was referring to the calculations for FA. it seems to me the two groups could well overlap with those margins for error.
Clearly your ability to understand statistics is non-existent. The whole point is that the p-value shows us that despite the overlap in the raw measurements, in terms of standard deviation, the populations are still significantly different in their means at the P<0.05 level. What margins of error are you talking about if not the standard deviations from table 1? Why do you choose to ignore the fact that the standard error is considerably smaller than that.
Is playing a game where you have to choose which is the best way to make points really a test of co-operation? You seem to have completely skipped this fact.
Because this fact is incidental to whether or not this paper is bunk science as you claimed. If they have showed a significant association but you disagree with the interpretation then fine. You want to put it down to intelligence and claim it doesn't really reflect cooperativeness, I'm not much bothered. These elements are interpretation and discussion of the results, they aren't the results themselves. There is even research out there that would support your view since FA has also been shown to negatively correlate with some measures of intelligence (
Burlow et al 1997). I haven't really found any equivalent studies looking at whether IQ correlates with defect/cooperate behaviour in the prisoner's dilemma. The only one I have come across looked at groups playing the game over a repeated series of games rather than individuals in a one off situation, in that case they found that groups of higher intelligence seemed to cooperate more (
Jones, 2008).
That is a fictitious scenario created only in the minds of the authors.
Except that it wasn't, it was created more than 50 years ago by game theorists and is one of the most studied game theory scenarios.
And by the way, I thought scientists had the utmost integrity, so why would there be a bias towards only publishing studies that support their assertions? Naughty naughty.
It may shock you to learn this but scientists don't get to dictate when and where their research gets published. They have to get it through peer review and past journal editors. There are a variety of factors which have lead to what most people would agree is an invidious situation, a large part of which is that scientific publishing is by and large a commercial enterprise.
I want to read those 20 other studies they did that showed no correlation whatsoever between FA and parlor games.
And I want you to stop making things up, but I guess you can't always get what you want.
TTFN,
WK
Edited by Wounded King, : No reason given.