This month, there was Inkhaven. A total of 41 residents published one piece of writing of at least 500 words every single day for the 30 days of November. That’s a lot of essays, blog posts, poems, short stories, and long-ass tweets. As a result we cannot claim that the few entries below are the best, or even our favorites. We have not remotely read all of them, or even as many as we would like. So all we will claim is, this is a selection:
For the psychologists in the room, we’d like to first call your attention to croissanthology’s replication of psych classic Loftus & Palmer (1974), or the “do people say that cars were going faster when they hear they ‘smashed’ into each other as opposed to hit/bumped/etc.” study. The materials were put together in just a few hours, and with (special thanks to) Aella helping to recruit participants, croissanthology soon 10x’d the original sample size (446 vs 45 in the original), and did not find any evidence for the supposed effect — in fact, it trended in the opposite direction. This study isn’t perfect, but it sure is evidence against the original claim. And if people do think the original claims were right, we’d love to see other replications.
And then later: Takeaways from “doing science”
I ate bear fat, to prove a point
Robert Hooke’s “Cyberpunk” letter to Gottfried Leibniz
Some ballad meter poetry, to just amuse myself
The time Weird Al Yankovic went too far
after my dad died, we found the love letters
Things I learnt at replication club (read to the end for an image of “best practice” psychophysical input device)
A good software engineer interested in supporting better psychology research could probably do a lot of good work contributing features to these frameworks. PsychoPy for example seems to support all sorts of fancy things like eye tracking however you require custom code or hacks in order to set up a simple “rate this statement from 1-5” multiple choice scale
Ok that’s the fairly random Inkhaven selection. We return to regular links:
In case you missed it: THE LOOP Issue 2
There was a Renaissance natural historian named Ole Worm who had a pet great auk and proved that lemmings didn’t appear out of thin air. (h/t Georgia Ray)
David Chapman publishes an excellent self-experiment: Conquering chronic crud
Also in the vein of self-experiments: The One Simple Trick That Fixed My Relationship With the Space of Nameless Misery
SLIME MOLD TIME MOLD 
[…] Mold Time Mold, on their blog, mentions Ole Worm, a Danish Renaissance naturalist. In 1638, he was one of the first to recognize […]
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The post on “Conquering Chronic Crud” reminded me of my own experience. About five years ago, I suddenly developed periodic bouts of gastrointestinal trouble that occurred three or four times a year and lasted several weeks. The symptoms would appear after meals, especially if those meals contained beans or other legumes. I had bloating, flatulence, and loose stools. There were no obvious triggers for the start of one of these episodes, and also no apparent reason why they would end. In between bouts, my digestive system was normal.
I saw a physician’s assistant who wasn’t helpful at all. She ordered a barium swallow, which showed nothing, and didn’t have any other ideas.
I decided to try to fix it on my own. I experimented with various fermented foods and probiotics, but nothing made any difference. Then I read that inulin (a type of soluble fiber) can help promote the growth of beneficial bacteria, so I started taking two heaping teaspoons of inulin (mixed with warm water) every evening. That was a year ago, and my problem has largely gone away. I say “largely” because I did have one episode of the usual gastric symptoms, but the episode was much milder and shorter than usual. Aside from that, I’ve been free of symptoms for the past year. It’s a good reminder that self-experimentation can help identify solutions that conventional medicine can miss.
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