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Comment by civilized | Hacker News Reader

These are interesting data, but heavily sensationalized, overinterpreted and editorialized - as per usual from this notorious "tabloid journal", as statistics professor Andrew Gelman calls them.

For example, the methodology for detecting "cognitive distortions" is extremely simplistic, relying on short phrases like "I am a", "everyone thinks", and "still feels". It is far from clear what an increase in people saying "I am a" means, and what it really implies about the rate of genuine cognitive distortions or depressive thought patterns in the population. The reasoning here is basically "X correlates with Y, X is up, therefore Y is up". That's not a strong argument. These data are a starting point, not a conclusion.

The authors also seem to be leaning so far into a desired narrative that they can't accurately read their own graphs. The rapid rise in CDS clearly begins around 2000 - not the late 1970s, which are just the low point of the graph.

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In their defense, I tend to think social science is shoehorned into an academic formula that it can never really fit into.

You kind of have to have a hypothesis, then "test" it with data. A more reasonable approach (IMO) would be "We found this interesting phenomenon" followed by inevitably speculative interpretation. That's realistically how it works in practice, but to be published you need to fit a popperian formula. A more ponderous version of this probably wouldn't have been accepted.

I mean, using a method of diagnosing depressed individuals on a collective psychology of a society is already veering into wtf territory, in terms of interpretation. OTOH, it is interesting and probably significant somehow.

IDK how or what they could have done better, and this does seem like a result worth publishing, assuming the methodology is good. Ultimately, I think people reading the paper mostly read it that way anyhow. Authors found X. Seems interesting. Here's how they're interpreting it. Here's my speculation.

Journalists OTOH, they'll cite the hypothesis verbatim if it fits the article they're writing. I think that's where the shoehorning is a problem. As long as you're reading the paper directly yourself, who cares what order the paragraphs are in.

> In their defense, I tend to think social science is shoehorned into an academic formula that it can never really fit into.

Pesky reproducibility!

Then maybe we should come up with a new term for it and stop calling it science. If it’s not reproducible or falsifiable, it’s not producing scientific conclusions that expand our understanding of the world.

It’s certainly useful data, but otherwise it lacks any meaningful analysis.

You probably can’t stop other people from using words you believe or even know to be inappropriate. Thankfully it’s sometimes easy to spot science that’s not really science. It’s the stuff that seems legit but isn’t that’s a problem. I’d say the problem is actually bigger in harder sciences. Anybody can look at most social science research and see it’s dodgy. Collusion rings in comp sci research are harder to detect, just to pick an example.

I’ve long stopped using the phrase “social sciences” and use “social studies” instead. (I include medicine here, or at least studies with 5% p-value… not science if compared to e.g. 5-sigma physics.)

The process of science needs this useful data - a problem is that we currently have coupled the publication of these useful observations with scientific conclusions, which results in publishing lousy conclusions and not publishing valuable observations (e.g. negative results); perhaps it would be better to decouple these things so that people can (and would be motivated) to publish their primary studies/observations, where there would not necessarily be anything falsifiable, and the conclusions can be done afterwards by others, preferably combining multiple observational studies (thus being not only reproducible but reproduced), like e.g. meta-studies often used in medicine.

How is it useful if it does not expand our understanding of the world? What use does it have?

Reproducibility is not a problem here. Falsifiability is.

That said, this can't be "useful data" unless you are willing to accept non falsifiable interpretations. There's no way of formulating such an interpretation.

Whether or not we call it science is semantics, highly loaded semantics. We could stop calling it science, but then we'd have to also stop being derisive of unscientific methodology.

More realistically, maybe we should rename "the scientific method" to "the Popperian standard." After all, both the term science and its associated culture predate the definition/standard you are alluding to.

The researchers themselves haven't done anything wrong. They're researching interesting things in theory field, and publishing in the format journals demand... ostensibly to satisfy objections such as yours.

You can't have it both ways.

> Authors found X. Seems interesting. Here's how they're interpreting it. Here's my speculation.

Agreed, that is mostly how it goes.

On a similar note, null-hypothesis testing is not a true and tried scientific method. It started sometime in the early 20th century. Aside from p-hacking and mistakes of that kind, there are many philosophical problems with the use of statistical inference itself.

> this notorious "tabloid journal", as statistics professor Andrew Gelman calls them

One professor's statement (citation?) doesn't discredit the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. I would need much more evidence than that. A snarky comment - a common means of discrediting institutions, a popular trend these days - costs nothing to make, and carries little evidence, reason, or meaning.

Andrew Gelman has provided plenty of evidence, though. I'd certainly say that PNAS, though it's a high quality journal, does sometimes go for "marketable" social science content over less shiny, but more substantive work.

Hmmm, maybe it could be called something like "syllogistic materialism?"

It's a predictable badness that these "revelations" are specific sentiments about what follows, aka "the nouns" (more or less). "Still feels X," "I am a Y," "everyone thinks Z," all require that X, Y, and Z all have fixed meanings.

>The rapid rise in CDS clearly begins around 2000 - not the late 1970s, which are just the low point of the graph.

I don't think this is taking full account of their claim. They're saying it's a "hockey stick." If you look at the graph like that you can understand what they mean.

Sounds like you’re saying the authors suffer from cognitive distortions. They’re disproving their point by proving their own point.

Their work is definitely an illustration of precisely what they're talking about.

Maybe we have red entirely different articles. Because the one linked contains whole section indicating the method has limitations and they don't try to establish any causal effect.

For me the study is interesting because I observe the very same change in music lyrics and movies. They become vividly grimmer compared to earlier years.

I have seen a young person explaining it by stating young generation expresses emotions in a more toned down way.

On the other side, if we perceive books and other forms of expression as a way to share stories receiver can not live by himself, it would mean the opposite, that people lives became better. And because of this art fills the void of negativity. An explanation that is close to my understanding.

Either way there is a collective shift in expression and it is interesting to research it.

Really? As I was reading it, I thought that the last decade's music was considerably less dark than the music of my youth, circa 2000.

My follow up questions to this paper would be which books exhibit this depression-associated language? Does it vary by genera? What happens if you weight by sales/popularity. I'd also be curious to know if this is reflected in news media, either print or television. I feel that news was gotten more emotive and emphatic, but not really sure.

If you're thinking of things like gothic rock (do they still make it?) then it's important to understand that it stops being entertaining to create spectacles of the caricature of darkness once the darkness has permeated everything. What we're witnessing is more like a dark age than dark clothing and makeup. Important distinction.

> I thought that the last decade's music was considerably less dark than the music of my youth, circa 2000.

Do you have any data to support that more generally? Necessarily, anyone's experience of a field so enormous as music will be narrow and biased.

"Our sample comprised over 1,000 Top 40 recordings from 25 years spanning five decades. Over the years, popular recordings became longer in duration and the proportion of female artists increased. In line with our principal hypotheses, there was also an increase in the use of minor mode and a decrease in average tempo, confirming that popular music became more sad-sounding over time...."

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-12935-001

I like the methodology in general, but boy howdy does "25 years spanning five decades" set off alarm bells. Which 25? Why not ~50?

(It's not necessarily a problem; every other year for instance probably wouldn't be a cherry picked slice.)

Do you have any data to support that more generally?

No. I threw out all my CDs years ago.

I can't for the life of me find it, but years ago I read that the 1970's had more #1 hits in minor keys than any other decade Billboard tallied. As a child of the late 60's early 70's, it certainly feels like sad songs evaporated over the years. I was too old to enjoy grunge, so I'm not sure if that counted, but it definitely seems like songs were moodier and sadder in my childhood. Funny if it turns out that everyone thinks this regardless of decade!

You agree there is a rapid rise, you just don't agree with the dates: do you have a theory as to why?

Not parent but it's likely to be a combination of several factors:

* Impact of social media on mental health

* Use of CDS by print/online media

* Social divide and tribal thinking

* Perceived instability and uncertainty

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