Search results for "scientific practice"
showing 2 items of 2 documents
Statements About the Pervasiveness of Behavior Require Data About the Pervasiveness of Behavior
2020
Despite recent close attention to issues related to the reliability of psychological research (e.g., the replication crisis), issues of the validity of this research have not been considered to the same extent. This paper highlights an issue that calls into question the validity of the common research practice of studying samples of individuals, and using sample-based statistics to infer generalizations that are applied not only to the parent population, but to individuals. The lack of ergodicity in human data means that such generalizations are not justified. This problem is illustrated with respect to two common scenarios in psychological research that raise questions for the sorts of the…
An easy approach to epistemology and ontology in computing theses
2013
In many research fields---notably social sciences but also in those fields where design, experiment-based science, and social sciences are mixed---researchers must often describe their epistemological and ontological commitments in research reports. The research literature describes those commitments in various ways, often grouped under research paradigms such as positivism, post-positivism, and constructivism, and described as "world views." This paper presents the bare bones of the ontological and epistemological questions in scientific practice. Ontologically speaking, subject matters can be mind-dependent or mind-independent. Epistemologically speaking, elements of research may be more …