Re: [Phys-l] Cramster et al.

[Jack Uretsky <jlu@hep.anl.gov>]

Experiments cannot show "whether people tend to cooperate or compete." 
Carefully designed experiments, such as some reported in'08 in Nature, 
might be able to quantify the amounts of competition and coperation in 
certain groups.  No amount of experimentation can tell you what those 
amounts are in all possible groups.

You can drop a ball a trillion times and measure its acceleration, each 
time, to be the current value of g.  That does not guarantee that the next 
time you drop it you will get the same result (calculate the probability 
of barrier penetration).

To see  how physicists actually proceed, when exploring new phenomena, I 
suggest you follow the workings of the Atlas collaboration at the LHC; 
the collaboration's first paper has been accepted for publication in 
Physics Letters B.

					Regards,
						Jack

"Trust me.  I have a lot of experience at this."
		General Custer's unremembered message to his men,
		just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley




On Thu, 13 May 2010, John Clement wrote:

> Experiments can also be used to measure things.  For example they can be
> used to measure whether people tend to cooperate or compete.  And such
> experiments do not necessarily have predictions or hypotheses.  Of course in
> psychology such experiments are not black or white, they usually do not show
> existence or yes/no.  Indeed a large number of experiments never really have
> a prediction, but are of the nature, "I wonder what will happen if" or "Is A
> more significant than B".
>
> Experiments often perhaps even usually do not follow the 5 step method
> taught in school, as they often do not have a hypothesis.  Actually the vast
> majority of experiments are basically parameter measurements, where a
> hypothesis is never considered.
>
> So the phrase is NOT nonsense.  The ideas that experiments are only used to
> confirm or deny predictions is nonsense.
>
> John M. Clement
> Houston, TX
>
> > The phrase "experiments in psychology show" is nonsensical.  Experiments
> > can provide counter-examples to predictions, thus showing that the
> > predictions are false;  they can also provide examples of successful
> > predictions, thus showing that the successful predictions are not false.
> > That is the limit of what experiments can do.
>
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