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A while ago I posted a thread asking people about the best study they ever read. Now I was thinking, let's try the opposite....
What study made you yell out loud while reading it? Which one made you wonder what stumbling drunk undergrads are on the journal's review board? What do you think didn't deserve to be published even in a journal owned by NewsCorp?
I'll kick us off. My area of research is plagued by some uniquely bad work, but this one really took the cake for me.
Spitzer, R. L. (2003). Can some gay men and lesbians change their sexual orientation? 200 participants reporting a change from homosexual to heterosexual orientation. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 32(5), 403-417.
The author spent four years finding his 200 participants. He scoured the ex-gay ministries, which aren't exactly suffering for lack of business, to find these people. Then he took the ones who reported a definite change in orientation. Trouble is, their sexual thoughts and feelings didn't really shift along with their self-identification.
So, even with a stacked sample, things didn't turn out very well.
Most of the scales administered were made up for the study. Most of the participants were, at the time of the study, deeply involved in the ex-gay movement (running groups, acting as spokespeople for the ministries, etc.).
After this paper was published, there was a MASSIVE response from researchers. Dozens of letters deluged Archives, saying that the research was incredibly poorly done and should not have been published. There were, I think, two positive letters. Worse yet is that I'm not even sure the paper actually went through peer review--the journal editor describes the decision to publish almost as if it were an executive decision.
Crazy! Read the paper sometime if you want to scratch your head in puzzlement!
Let's hear some more!
What study made you yell out loud while reading it? Which one made you wonder what stumbling drunk undergrads are on the journal's review board? What do you think didn't deserve to be published even in a journal owned by NewsCorp?
I'll kick us off. My area of research is plagued by some uniquely bad work, but this one really took the cake for me.
Spitzer, R. L. (2003). Can some gay men and lesbians change their sexual orientation? 200 participants reporting a change from homosexual to heterosexual orientation. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 32(5), 403-417.
The author spent four years finding his 200 participants. He scoured the ex-gay ministries, which aren't exactly suffering for lack of business, to find these people. Then he took the ones who reported a definite change in orientation. Trouble is, their sexual thoughts and feelings didn't really shift along with their self-identification.
So, even with a stacked sample, things didn't turn out very well.
Most of the scales administered were made up for the study. Most of the participants were, at the time of the study, deeply involved in the ex-gay movement (running groups, acting as spokespeople for the ministries, etc.).
After this paper was published, there was a MASSIVE response from researchers. Dozens of letters deluged Archives, saying that the research was incredibly poorly done and should not have been published. There were, I think, two positive letters. Worse yet is that I'm not even sure the paper actually went through peer review--the journal editor describes the decision to publish almost as if it were an executive decision.
Crazy! Read the paper sometime if you want to scratch your head in puzzlement!
Let's hear some more!
