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A comment on What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test.

Re:What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test by parfe on Monday April 07, 2014 @04:31PM (#7549263)
From the study's abstract: Differences in taste among individual players, along with differences in playing qualities among individual instruments, appear more important than any general differences between new and old violins.

Another case of science reporting failing miserably at understanding and conveying the results of studies. The three articles all come up short at even reading the abstract:

Daily Mail "Concert violinists can't identify the sound of a multi-million-pound Stradivarius"

Phys.org "Study shows even professional musicians can't tell old master violins from new"

Npr.org - Doesn't even come close to the same universe as the study in the submitted article to the point I wonder if the npr article covered something else entirely?

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Re:What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test by herge on Monday April 07, 2014 @04:34PM (#7549284)
It's the Daily Mail; we should be just happy they aren't claiming playing a Stradivarius causes cancer.
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Re:What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test by Centigonal on Monday April 07, 2014 @05:33PM (#7549683)
Have you seen http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ ?

I think you might get a kick out of it.

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Re:What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test by Tyrannosaurs on Tuesday April 08, 2014 @06:13AM (#7552450)
They've said coffee causes cancer which is worrying.

To counter this I drink coffee in a 1:1 ration which they say cures cancer so I reckon I'm good.

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Re:What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test by golergka on Tuesday April 08, 2014 @01:39AM (#7551603)
It is awesome. At least they don't claim that vaccines are causing cancer.
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Re:What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test by avaku on Tuesday April 08, 2014 @08:00AM (#7552794)
Some other people do!
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Re:What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test by brianmcc on Tuesday April 08, 2014 @04:26AM (#7552123)
perhaps it's on the "cures" side...
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Re:What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test by Fishkins on Tuesday April 08, 2014 @12:48AM (#7551480)
I wouldn't call it "failing miserably." Although it doesn't appear to have been the main focus of the study, the antepenultimate paragraph of the results section does say most violinists couldn't identify whether their violin was new or old (3 got it right, 7 got it wrong, 7 said they didn't know) [0]. There aren't p-values provided for that result, though.

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/760.full

edit: Also, you criticize the publications for not reading the abstract, but I wonder if you read it closely. It says "most players seemed unable to tell whether their most-preferred instrument was new or old," which seems right in line with those headlines to me.

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Re:What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test by saurik on Tuesday April 08, 2014 @04:08AM (#7552063)
There is a fundamental difference between being unable to tell the difference between two things, and having a difference of opinion on which is better; the article titles seem to claim the former, while the paper's abstract only states the latter.
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Re:What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test by mason240 on Monday April 07, 2014 @10:55PM (#7551195)
Daily Mail, Phys.org, and NPR all mess up, DM get singled out.
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Re:What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test by phaemon on Tuesday April 08, 2014 @06:36AM (#7552519)
I know. It's very easy to mock the Daily Mail...so that's what we should do.
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Re:What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test by cmsmith on Monday April 07, 2014 @10:02PM (#7551000)
I didn't read the original study, but based on your quotes it seems like you could append (p>0.95) to any of those headlines and have a meaningful statement which is supported by the data.
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