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Comment by Tomino | Hacker News Reader

I cannot believe that people are actually paid and getting popular on base of this kind of experiments. I mean, unless I am missing some crucial point, the results are just some random numbers that can point out only the fact that not many people have manners to give up seat for whoever needs it. And even that statistic is useless as it would have to be performed on many more people in order to have some solid ground. I wish I would have gone study psychology really. Lot of money and exposure for something that could be performed by primary school pupils...

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Yeah, they caught something statistically, and then interpret that something according to their grossly oversimplified assumptions, while there are lots of overlooked or plainly ignored factors.

It is a big question whether or not a primitive statistical methods are applicable to such vastly complex system as brain, given that no one could trace the causes of this or that manifested behavior, any other way but popular Freudian memes.

You could say the same thing about most people who make money and achieve some level of fame -- especially artists, designers, many entrepreneurs, and entertainers (including sports stars). Many times, terrific results seem like they could have been "easy" to come up with.

That doesn't take away from the fact that they had the creativity to think of it, did it, and added to our collective knowledge as a result. Sure, the results seem obvious in retrospect, and the process doesn't seem too tough to put together. But I'm grateful for their work nonetheless.

But those do usually not slap the "science" label on their result/products. You would most likely laugh in a similar fashion at some guy who's product works well for 10 out of 20 random clients and now goes around telling the world that he has scientific evidence that his product is the only product that got it right. The social world is complex and anyone pretending things can be explained by a simple cause-effect relationship is just a charlatan.

I am sorry but make a study where you let 10 people meditate and 10 people not (I am aware that the numbers are not correct, just don't want to read it again) and then observe who is willing to give up seat is downright laughable. It has nothing to do with creativity. I imagine that the mentioned professor thought "Ok guys we need to do something new, meditation is now getting popular lets take a hit on it ASAP." There are two things that really irritates me about this:

1) The fact that they based the outcome on giving up seat for someone. They could as well give them a gun and see who is willing to shoot someone. it has NOTHING to do with meditation. What they should test instead is work productivity, energy levels, sleep habits etc. those are factors that are supposed to be influenced by meditation. But why didn't they? Well because it would require a hell of a lot more work. Why not just do the one with taken chair? ... lol

2) The fact that this article is published by New York Times. This "work" should not get attention from big publications in my opinion.

Here is another guy who made a career out of doing touchy-feely 'social psychology' studies with catchy titles that resonated well with his target audience, like 'meat eaters more anti-social than vegetarians': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diederik_Stapel . Until it turned out he fabricated all of it, of course.

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