Re:Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases d...
by closed on Thursday January 25, 2018 @04:21PM
(#16234784)
You hit on a lot of important points. The key here is that they are making a claim about memory, a psychological construct, that is being represented by some of their measures (batteries). But their batteries also purport to measure other psychological constructs, too.
To connect this with the slot machine analogy, it might be like if groups of slot machines had different colors, and they chose the color that yielded the best results.
> but would coming back and saying "these five designs have a higher than chance level of winning!" be an incorrect conclusion?
It would be if you didn't take into account that you analyzed 20 machines in your analysis .
The researchers took a group of people and submitted each of them to an "extensive neuropsychologist test battery".
That's not just testing 20 different slot machines, that's testing 20 different designs of slot machines.
(Also, each person does each test on their own, which is the equivalent of having them not only play twenty different models, but a unique production per person unit per model)
In that light, the claim that all slot machines have a high pay-out chance is obviously suspicious, but would coming back and saying "these five designs have a higher than chance level of winning!" be an incorrect conclusion?
If each slot machine types is unique, no. But if one slot machine design is known to have a flaw, and if it shares this flaw with another design, and if that other design does not show the same increased performance, then things get really suspicious.
So the question becomes: do we know how strongly correlated the results of these tests typically are? If that is a lot (which I would expect to be true with at least some of these tests), the absence of the other tests is suspicious. If it is low, it might be less of an issue.