#study methodology

[mentalisttraceur-reactions]

Yes @ much of that, but that's not the point.

I'm not even convinced this was a false positive in measurement or BOLD imagining. A dead salmon will absolutely have oxygen changes as its cells finish dying and aerobic bacteria do their thing.

(Especially if the salmon was very fresh, or cooled soon after death and then allowed to reach ambient temperature before/during the experiment.)

So maybe that particular voxel wasn't noise, maybe it was actually measuring a spot where that one (1) salmon had oxygen still going down at that time. Then the only issue is the inevitable result of wrongly trying to fit a real measured change to an independent variable.

So then beyond that, the point is that for any possible method designed to find

differences in raw MRI readings

from living human brains

across situations rightly expected/known to cause a difference

(including, crucially, any conceivable/hypothetical methods that actually reliably produce correct results, including accounting for noise in individual measurements), if you give that method MRI readings from a dead fish, you might get an output which finds some difference to point at.

So that is not sufficient, in itself, to show that those methods are always producing garbage results when given MRI readings from something that behaves in the ways the relevant algorithms were designed to handle.

You could have a method with a stellar track record at reliably producing true results, very few false positives when used as intended - and it would still produce false positives when given input it wasn't designed to handle.

Just one thing to consider: live human brains have a whole lot going on, in different areas, at different levels of intensity, so it would be eminently reasonable for an fMRI implementation to only show differences relative to some average noise floor. Of course, since each brain is different, it would have to figure out the noise floor anew for each pair/series of scans being diffed. So somewhere in the software stack of your MRI machine or your fMRI algorithms, some piece of code is probably automatically adjusting sensitivity or what's considered "significant", for each thing being measured - like a camera adjusting the brightness automatically. But a dead brain is probably a lot less active, and thus has a much lower noise floor, and thus small random variations would be enough for statistical significance. So we can easily imagine a method that would be really good at avoiding false positives in a highly active brain, yet predictably tend to produce false positives with a dead/low-activity brain. Now, maybe the paper itself addresses this. But like I said, what's described above doesn't. And this is just one of several necessary components for this to cast doubt on the overall viability of fMRI to infer changes in live human brain activity.

Another quick elaboration: fMRI trying to find diffs between two or more scans strikes me as an expectation maximization problem, where we assume that there's one latent boolean variable which has changed: that the subject has begun or stopped doing a specific task with their brain. So if you expect one boolean latent variable and try to maximize that expectation over a dataset where there's zero latent variables (because the brain is dead and isn't doing shit), what happens? It produces a false positive, and yet expectation maximization works correctly when the assumptions are correct.

So if application to brain activity inference is truly beyond the scope of the paper, then the paper says next to nothing, To discredit any work claiming to use fMRI for brain activity inference, to show any brain activity studies as shoddy, it absolutely has to show that the dead fish result is somehow representative of a false result when trying to infer brain activity. In itself, the dead fish is just a smaller, reproducible test case of how you can get false positives, but that alone doesn't tell you if those same false positives would've made it through to the final result given a live human brain, or when analyzing findings from multiple brains (vs, say, being under the noise floor, or failing to dominate expectation maximization, or [...]).

Finally, the most important part:

Sample size is approximately always one of the most relevant things in the picture. But I would say it is especially relevant here - even the most relevant thing, precisely because of possible noise in individual readings!

A false positive from one dead salmon doesn't really matter if your methods would rule it out as noise as soon you have two or more salmon. That's why it's standard good study of almost anything is to look for commonalities and differences between the different samples. That's literally the most significant part of separating real trends from noise. That's how you start to figure out which of the differences you picked up are actually related to what you're testing vs coincidence. For fMRI, oxygen depletion differences only matter if they are consistent across multiple brains doing the same task.

You know, I literally assumed in good faith that this dead fish study was done with multiple dead salmon. Like, at least a dozen. Because that's what it would've taken for it to say something actually interesting. And then while writing this post I find out it was done with one salmon!? One!?

The way @derinthescarletpescatarian was talking this study up, I thought it must've used enough dead fish to at least make a strong case for sample sizes larger than typical, leaving only the relatively subtler matter of whether dead fish was sufficiently different to bypass methods that might already be in use to reduce false positives with live humans.

(And when I originally reblogged in agreement, iirc I was even imagining it as a gigachad steelman paper with some robust logical proof showing how in fact they weren't sufficiently different, like "first we show that currently popular methods would produce false results like this for any set of fMRI scans which satisfies the following properties: [...]", "next we show that fMRI scans of live human brains satisfy these properties ", etc.)

But now it sounds like we were just a second dead salmon short of this study clarifying itself as an extremely boring nothingburger: the same voxels just wouldn't have shown up as changing in both fish, and the standard methods of looking for consistencies across multiple fMRI diffs would've filtered out the one voxel that lit up in the first salmon.

(Maybe I'm being too harsh though. I find it really hard to believe that circa this paper, people really were publishing peer-reviewed papers on brain activity with sample size =1; that any serious scientist in the field believed that looking at just one brain was enough for any novel conclusion. But if they were, then clearly an fMRI study with precisely one dead salmon was exactly what we needed.)

one of the best academic paper titles

[reasonsforhope]

"When politicians unveil a new national park or wilderness area, it’s often accompanied by debates about what effect it will have on the livelihoods of people living nearby. In some places, it can be welcomed as a boon, attracting tourists and their dollars. In others, it’s booed as a job killer, squelching the chance for new mining, grazing, logging or other industries.

As nations promise to nearly double the amount of protected land on the planet, from 17% to 30% of the Earth’s surface, these debates are likely to happen more often. Now there is new evidence that it’s possible to have both land protections and a growing economy. But it’s not guaranteed. “Achieving both aims is more common than we previously expected,” said Binbin Li, an environmental scientist at Duke Kunshan University, a Chinese institution affiliated with Duke University. “But that balance depends on socioeconomic conditions near a protected area.”

It can be hard to tease out causal links between two things as complex as the changing condition of a landscape and the economy of a nearby city. Did a town flourish because of a nearby national park, or because an increase in remote work enabled people to move there? Did another town collapse because a forest reserve contributed to the demise of a sawmill, or was it part of a bigger downturn in the timber industry?

To try to clarify the effects, Li and colleagues at Duke University and Shandong University in China compared the fates of “twin” towns and cities, as well as comparable patches of land. They identified more than 10,000 protected areas in countries around the globe, then examined how economic activity changed in nearby settlements between 2013 and 2020, compared to similar settlements more than 20 kilometers from any protected land. They also matched the protected area to similar nearby unprotected areas, to see if they fared differently.

The scientists used satellite images to track changes on the landscape, such as forest turning to farmland. They also tracked changes in the amount of nighttime artificial light as a surrogate for economic activity.

The satellite images revealed that in many cases, more trees and grasslands stayed standing and the lights shown more brightly at the same time. In about half the protected areas, there was simultaneous progress in both conservation and economic development, the scientists reported on June 20 in Current Biology.

Land protection was broadly successful at reducing the loss of forest and grasslands – more than 90% of the protected areas either lost no natural land cover, or less than their unprotected twins, the researchers found. At the same time, 60% of neighboring communities had as much or more of an increase in nightlights than places further from protected land...

Land protection and economic growth went hand in hand most easily in wealthier countries, around smaller protected areas, and in places with some of the infrastructure critical for economic development, such as roads. In places without these features the ecological fate of the land and the economic fortune of nearby towns was more likely to diverge or decline together the researchers found.

“Conservation does not happen in a silo,” said co-author Stuart Pimm, a Duke University ecologist. “We must consider local development alongside biodiversity conservation to know where and how to protect areas to benefit both the environment and humans.” ...

The results underscore the ways in which poverty and environmental degradation can be bound together. If poverty isn’t dealt with, creating protected areas could set the stage for both loss of biodiversity and economic development, the researchers warned. The flip side is that with careful planning, conservation could help set nearby towns on a path out of poverty. As an example, the scientists pointed to Costa Rica’s Corcovado National Park, which has become a hub for ecotourism on the country’s Pacific coast.

“We need to get to a win-win outcome more often, especially in the most biodiverse regions that can ill-afford losing out on economic development or biodiversity,” said Li. “We cannot address biodiversity loss without addressing local development issues.”

-via Anthropocene Magazine, June 26, 2024

[libraryspectre]

I'm realizing a lot of my favorite podcasts just boil down to "yay for exhaustive thoughful and responsible reporting"

[intrinsically-disordered-proxein]

bad and naughty nudibranchs get pinned down to the helmholtz coil and exposed to uncomfortably strong magnetic fields to atone for their crimes

(paper link)

[irhabiya]

this world is so so tiny omg i love when you find connections to people and places at the most random times !!! i love people i love this crazy tiny world !!!!!!

[dijaad]

25.09.2024 🎈

day 2,

well well well, i didn't do much today but hey, slow progress is still progress right? RIGHT?

i'm gonna try to finish up the chapter i started today before going to bed.. so i can wake up all motivated to start a new one tomorrow inchaAllah.. (remember, fake it till you make it xD, i'm faking 'the motivation' hehe, but hey you know what? i don't really think i'm faking it anymore :O?? i do feel motivated!! :O *wink*)

btw i think i love 'Méthodologie' , it makes me use my brain, i actually did enjoy what i studied today, but i have so much more left T^T.. well, i could've had many more things done today, if my auntie and lil cousins hadn't thrown me a surprise birthday party 😎!

I am really so grateful for today, i had a really good time with my loved ones, Alhamdulillah for these little moments for they aren't little to me!

alright! see you! ^.^

oh wait i think i have more things to say..

that peach&passion fruit black tea tasted so good, and those beautiful toasts were a true delight! i also had a good shower, then put on a sheet mask my lil cousin gifted me the other day! and the cat you see in the picture is Shoyo, my buddy <3!

Alhamdulillah once again!

see yaaa! now i really have to go >.< !!

(ps: i think i have some sort of problem in my phone camera? i don't know maybe a stain in the inside of the cam?? it's not bothering me that much and i don't notice it all the time but today i did.. idk if you guys can see it but it's quite noticeable in the 'notebook' pic..)

[itsalwaysjune]

17.05.24

The weather is nice again! I'm glad the rain definitely dampened my mood.

I spent almost the entire day in the library- found 'You will beat this essay' written on the cublicle wall, it gave me the motivation I needed to get a big chunk of my Lab reoprt done.

Today I;

Did the introduction of my lab report

Did the methodology of my lab report

Created the Figures for my lab report

Started to contact the study abroad students I will be travelling with

Studied social categorisation, stereotyping and prejudice

Studied intergroup relations and conflict

I went to the library and forgot my tablet, so I had to walk all the way there and alllll the way back.

[biancasbow]

maybe the plot device was always the use of a living being for anything outside of their agency is disgusting and a choice made against a wall is not a choice

[smile-files]

i'll be completely honest... i don't want to study for the exam i have tomorrow! as it is i've procrastinated enough by spending half the day making collages but i guarantee i'll procrastinate some more

[fanhackers]

The Classics of Fan studies: Matt Hills - Fan Culture

The classic of fan studies I want to introduce today is a theoretical overview of the discipline from 2002. Indeed, in Fan Culture, Matt Hills explores the different theories of fan culture and the methodologies that had been used by scholars before him. 

I particularly like the first chapter in which Hills challenges the idea that there is a dichotomy between passive consumers and resistant fans:

“Conventional logic, seeking to construct a sustainable opposition between the ‘fan’ and the ‘consumer’, falsifies the fan’s experience by positioning fan and consumer as separable cultural identities.”

In this chapter, he demonstrates that fans are also consumers and that depicting them as a separate group ignores the complexities and multiplicities of fandom. 

While I found this book compelling, I would only recommend it to people who have read some fan studies works already as it might be a bit complex as a first introduction to the subject. However, if you are interested in fan studies theory and methodology, this is the book for you!

[evilkaeya]

saiii. sai im not okay after chapter 114.5 . sai

Ali. Ali I have my final exam in 10 hours. My mom is a professor (not in my field) and she gave me 3 questions to solve by the time she gets back home. That was 2 hours ago. I've only written 6 out of 30 pages and all I can think about is how the stray roaches are going to beat Russian jesus. I'm so fucked.

[ineedfairypee]

Data coding gone wrong

[canisvesperus]

Why are mathematicians so sexy

[pinktinselmonstrosity]

wooooo had my second interview for my dissertation!! your girl's a proper researcher now 😌

[xinniazeos]

Xin's 3 Word Character Analysis

This is a simple way for me to study characters while setting up some sort of guide of what they are supposed to represent. It can be used for fiction writing or for playing the characters in RPGs. It's very simple really:

Take a character, any character.

Assign them 3 words that you would use to describe them. It can be any word. Noun, Verb, Adjective, etc... all it needs to be is 3 different words.

Explain individually, in detail, why you associate those words to that character.

That's it. It's that simple. Admittedly, the hard part of this method is choosing the words itself. Also, to keep in mind that the "3 words" the character represents would go unchanged. If its an ongoing story, it's fine if the words that define them changes. If anything, it adds on another layer of study as to why the words even changed.

The reason why it's only 3 words is that giving a character 1 word would make it feel one-dimensional, 2 would tend to fall into some sort of duality (which is a word you could apply in itself) and anything more than 3 feels excessive and looses the importance of keeping things simple.

[zenosanalytic]

All the OTHER aspects of the repilication crisis aside, all psych studies face two major problems:

people know they're being observed and react to being observed which makes it hard to observe "authentic" behavior

roleplaying/acting is fundamental to humans(it's how they learn to be human, afterall), which means most ppl will try to "win" at being in a study if they know they're in a study(something both normal to want and possible to attain u_u), which will skew your results

I don't think psychology and sociology have really come up with a good solution to these problems yet.