Fascinating story from the Chronicle here about a widely cited paper in non-linear dynamics approaches to social psychology. According to the author (and Sokal and Nick Brown) the equation used was guaranteed to return the same ratio, no matter what the inputs.
This apparently ties to a broader crises in the field concerning replicability of results and worries about peer review coming out of the Stapel affair.*
The really depressing and scary thing in the article is that one of the co-authors of the original paper is raking in the bucks training counselors in a clinical method motivated by the erroneous research. It's very strange to me how much pseudo-science is allowed in American health-care broadly conceived (e.g. chiropractors, "nutritional" supplements, and also the recent agonizingly depressing TNR piece here about poor football players with brain diseases who are being fleeced by a variety of snake oil salespeople).
[Notes:
*On the Stapel affair, see Mohan's post of 10 Nov 2011, Catarina's post of 29 Nov, 2012, and Mohan's post of 01 May, 2013.]
Recent Comments