NewFish

David Pescovitz | BoingBoing

The psychology research field has long suffered from a “replication crisis.” Many peer-reviewed scientific papers report results that others can’t replicate, calling into question the validity of the original research. The “replication crisis” has spread to other scientific fields as well. Worse, a new study shows that “published papers in top psychology, economics, and general interest journals that fail to replicate are cited more than those that replicate” even after the failings have been published. So why is bad science often more appealing, even to other scientists, than good science? Because it’s more “interesting,” according to the UC San Diego study. From Scientific American:

A potential explanation for these findings involves a two-edged sword. Academics valorize novelty: new findings, new results, “cutting-edge” and “disruptive” research. On one level this makes sense. If science is a process of discovery, then papers that offer new and surprising things are more likely to represent a possible big advance than papers that strengthen the foundations of existing knowledge or modestly extend its domain of applicability. Moreover, both academics and laypeople experience surprises as more interesting (and certainly more entertaining) than the predictable, the normal and the quotidian. No editor wants to be the one who rejects a paper that later becomes the basis of a Nobel Prize. The problem is that surprising results are surprising because they go against what experience has led us to believe so far, which means that there’s a good chance they’re wrong.

The authors of the citation study theorize that reviewers and editors apply lower standards to “showy” or dramatic papers than to those that incrementally advance the field and that highly interesting papers attract more attention, discussion and citations. In other words, there is a bias in favor of novelty.

“Nonreplicable publications are cited more than replicable ones” (Science Advances)

Giraffes are socially complex as elephants, but their communication has been misunderstood, a new study reveals.

The largest hoofed herbivorous grazing animal of the African region still living was once thought to have no social structure since they spent a disproportionate part of the day feeding compared to other grazing or browsing animals.

But studies in the last two decades started to suggest they were more complex. A study published Wednesday in Wiley Online Library has further defined giraffe society, outlining the underpinning of social mechanisms of the non-random social organization of giraffes.

Read the rest here:

https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2021/08/03/Britain-study-giraffes-socially-complex-species/6091628002986/

Artificial intelligence may help us decode animalese. But how much will we really be able to understand?

Philip Ball | New Yorker

Disney’s 2019 remake of its 1994 classic “The Lion King” was a box-office success, grossing more than one and a half billion dollars. But it was also, in some ways, a failed experiment. The film’s photo-realistic, computer-generated animals spoke with the rich, complex voices of actors such as Donald Glover and Chiwetel Ejiofor—and many viewers found it hard to reconcile the complex intonations of those voices with the feline gazes on the screen. In giving such persuasively nonhuman animals human personalities and thoughts, the film created a kind of cognitive dissonance. It had been easier to imagine the interiority of the stylized beasts in the original film.

Disney’s filmmakers had stumbled onto an issue that has long fascinated philosophers and zoologists: the gap between animal minds and our own. The dream of bridging that divide, perhaps by speaking with and understanding animals, goes back to antiquity. Solomon was said to have possessed a ring that gave him the power to converse with beasts—a legend that furnished the title of the ethologist Konrad Lorenz’s pioneering book on animal psychology, “King Solomon’s Ring,” from 1949. Many animal lovers look upon the prospect of such communication with hope: they think that, if only we could converse with other creatures, we might be inspired to protect and conserve them properly. But others warn that, whenever we attempt to communicate with animals, we risk projecting our ideas and preconceptions onto them. We might do this simply through the act of translation: any human language constrains the repertoire of things that can be said, or perhaps even thought, for those using it.

Read the rest here:

https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-challenges-of-animal-translation?