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Comment by it_learnses | Hacker News Reader

this article also references the Dual-N-Back study which suggested that it could be used to increase cognitive skill that was transferable. But that study was debunked. Here's a Scientific American article on that: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-do...

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It there a term for this phenomenon, where a researcher publishes an extraordinary result, some how gets past peer review, and then avoids pursuing the research further, to avoid embarrassing themselves and losing the fame and credit? Often there is a bonus step where they create a company to commercialize a product based on the conclusions.

The scientific method.

I agree that according to the article you linked it seems that the Dual-N-Back game is no different than any other brain training game which seems to differ from the authors view on it.

However, I don't think that debunks the main points of the authors article (the last 3/4 of the article).

I think it does. If indeed Fluid Intelligence cannot be trained, then you could say that people who seek out Novelty, Challenges, etc. are actually the sort of people who have high intelligence, than the other way around. If these 5 principles he states actually did increase intelligence, then Lumosity would work for people as it exposes you to novel brain training games that are challenging.

Now that I reread the article I see that you are right. The authors whole argument depends on the Jaeggi study which has not been successfully replicated after multiple attempts.

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