Grad School Update/Methodology Rant

Haven't done one of these for a while, so we're about due. Stuff is about to get crazy go nuts around here, seeing as we only have five weeks left in the semester (or something like that). It is about this time that I get swamped with studying for finals, finishing up projects, and running subjects in the lab like an ill-tempered constipated baboon surviving on a diet consisting mainly of mountain dew and pop rocks (WARNING: the preceeding metaphor is neither accurate nor to be taken as a genuine evaluation of my diet which is in fact decent).

Research is taking an interesting twist as my advisor and I have been cooking up a potential new project that would attempt to show some scientific evidence for the idea that "you pay attention to what you want to pay attention to." It sounds simple, but in reality it's going to be like squeezing a camel through the eye of a needle. People often wonder why scientists try to prove "common sense" with scientific research. The reason we do this is because all too often, common sense can be flat out wrong.

Well, that and we're supposed to be skeptical. But in this situation, we (my advisor and I) feel that there may be a legitimate concept behind the idea that our volition (our will) drives and directs our attention mechanism to whatever we want to pay attention to in our environment.

Here's where it gets tough. We have to contend with three very well established theories of attention in the field:

Object-based attention (attention attends only to specific objects as a whole)
Attribute based attention (attention attends to features of an object and then integrates them into a whole)
Space based attention (you attend to a set area of space - sort of like a spotlight - and whatever happens to be there at the time).

Here's the basic idea for the proposed experiment: We create a set of stimuli that we hold constant, and then present it to subjects in three conditions:

1. A condition where we ask them to look for and respond to the object itself
2. A condition where we ask them to look for and respond to a feature of the object
3. A condition where we ask them to look at a field of space and respond to the object there

What we would hope to find is that under the different direction conditions using the exact same stimuli in all three conditions, the responses to the stimuli would change from direction condition to direction condition. According to the respective theories themselves, this should not happen as we are attending to the exact same stimuli, and the three theories are just three approaches to the same basic effect.

So, yeah, if we can show that the participants response times to the objects (which will be our dependent measure) have different means for all three conditions, then BAM! We have some support for our hypothesis that volition directs attention (as the direction conditions told them to attend willfully to different things) and could have a really great publishable paper.

Here's the big, big, BIG problem: My advisor has been thinking about this experiment for years. The reason she hasn't run it? Coming up with a stimulus that fits all three theories yet could fit the requirements of the task is going to be as hard as hell.

It may not seem like it, but there are hundreds of little considerations we have to deal with (more than I care to get in to) that eliminate the useage of certain types of objects.

So, as a result of this, my job is, over the next few months (yes, it will take that long), I have to try and come up with a stimulus design that fits all three theories AND fits the proposed task. What this will entail is a HELL of a lot of reading and research. And I mean a HELL of a LOT of reading and research so I can get a good grasp of what we call Construct Validity (which is a nice way of saying I understand the theory backwards and forwards) for all three theoretical concepts so I can even start to try and build this stimulus.

The cool thing about it is I'm super-excited to get to work on it.

Of course, me having told all of you this means that I can't run ANY of you as participants, so you can feel relieved about that. The reason I can't is because you now all know my hypothesis, so if I were to run you, your expectations on the project regarding what kind of response would best be helpful to us would result in you shaping your responses to help. It's called the good subject effect, and it completely ruins data. (It's also because of this that we eject participants who try to guess the hypothesis/purpose of the study. We try to structure the experiments so that they have no idea in hell what is happening. If they think they've figured it out, right or wrong, and start to shape their responses to fit their idea of what is happening, it also screws up the data as they will tailor their responses to fit what they think is happening. This is the validity threat called Hypothesis Guessing.

Both are good ways to ruin a researchers day and make them hate you with the fire of a thousand suns because:

1. You've just wasted their time, probably about two hours of their day, in which they could have been working on something else OR running a subject who didn't try to sabotage their study

2. You've just wasted your time, because the data you gave them cannot be used and running you was completely pointless

The trouble with hypothesis guessing and the good subject effect, of course, is that you absolutely cannot keep the subject from trying to figure out what the purpose of the study is. In fact, every single subject by virtue of basic human curiosity will try to figure it out at some point. There are , of course, ways we can structure the experiment to prevent them from forming an idea one way or another about what is being measured in the study. If the researcher has done their job right, the correct response when they ask you "what do you think the study was about" should be "I have no freaking clue what just happened and I want to pound my head against a wall." If a majority of the subjects can say anything else to them, then they've goofed up somehow.

These, among many other things, are the ideas and concepts and threats to the validity of our studies that we have to tackle whenever we build an experiment. It takes a LOT of time to get it done right, so you can imagine how frustrating it is for us to have to deal with subjects who either try to wreck it for us deliberately (they do exist, and we hate them) or just don't take it seriously enough to make an effort to respond at all.

There is, of course, one other implication of me telling you all this that I hope is a bit obvious: Because I want to talk to all of you about this, and I know that some of you will find this topic very interesting, I have to maintain anonymity on this blog. If I were to, say, post the hypothesis of my experiment in a public forum with my name attached to the blog, then my students and/or potential subjects could find it, learn the hypothesis, and subsequently ruin the subject pool for my experiment. Ah, but if I remain anonymous, the subject pool is kept in the dark, and I am free to share what I am tinkering about on with all of you happily and freely.

Comedy Central, Bastion of Truth

Two things happened this past week that have me both excited and up in arms... and totally in love with Comedy Central right now.

The first is the whole South Park vs. Scientology controversy. I'm sure you've heard of it by now. If not, here are the relevant links to get you up to speed:


1. Chef quit?
2. Tom Cruise behind pulling of Scientology episode? Seriously?
3. Chef returns?

As many of you may (or may not) know, I am a South Park nutcase. I just can't get enough of it. In my opinion, it is the most relevant animated satire on television, and among the best and most important television shows currently being aired today. When the Scientology episode first premiered, I knew there would be a major fallout as a result. And BAM! Here it is.

If it is at all true that Tom Cruise was behind the pulling of the Scientology episode re-airing, well... I would say that it proves he's a dick, but I guess you really don't need to prove that (FREE KATIE!).

Still, I propose a boycott of Tom Cruises movies in support of South Park. Specifically, I am boycotting Mission Impossible III. I don't care if the allegations are true or not, I will not support that moron's movie endeavors any longer. Hopefully, the episode will get aired at some point in the future anyway and then he will stop promoting MI3 as well. ;)

In other Comedy Central news, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart was a real mind-blower last night. He had a former Iraqi general who worked directly with Saddam Hussein as a guest last night who basically said that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he knows this to be a fact because he commanded the men who moved them to Syria, and he flat out said that Saddam pulled a fast one on the UN.

Here's why I am so impressed with this: This guy just substantiated everything the Bush administration had been claiming and that Jon Stewart (and the rest of the media) had been poking fun at them for. Hell, all of us have, up to a point, probably just given up the idea that WMD's were ever in Iraq. But here's a man who has first hand knowledge of their whereabouts substantiating those seemingly erroneous claims, and he's a guest on the freakin' Daily Show.

To put it bluntly, Jon Stewart has some serious integrity. I am uber-impressed that he would interview a man potentially capable of proving him (and a large number of other people) quite wrong. I mean... a freaking IRAQI GENERAL!!! ON THE DAILY SHOW!!! To me, that was a sign that while Jon loved to make light of and laugh at many things on his show, it was still a far better source of relevant, important news than CNN, NBC, CBS, and FOX combined. Seriously.

My hat is off to you, Jon Stewart. I'm sorry for doubting you after the Oscars.

An Alarm Clock That May Actually Work For Me...

They've invented an alarm clock that actually runs off and hides somewhere in your house after you hit the snooze alarm.

This could, potentially, be the most important technological innovation of the 21st century.

And it could also go a hell of a long way to getting me out of bed in the morning.

Just a hint, but this would make a very good birthday present. ;)

Long Week

I've made a few cosmetic changes around here to reflect my whole new sunken ship theme. Mostly because I do feel a bit like I'm adrift on a plank in a troubled ocean and under attack by sea serpents (I figured the metaphor works well here, as my blog is about a famous boat). Why? Grad school is crazy nuts, that's why!

The past two weeks, I've... well, let's just say its been busy as hell, and I'm ready for a much needed rest over spring break.

Here's the good news:

1. I recently delivered my first full lecture to a class this week, and the only improvements my advisor suggested were that I don't use the overhead projector to hand-write notes and that I drink my water out of a cup instead of a bottle (which is distracting, apparently). In other words, she thought I did an awesome job. This meant a lot to me, coming from her.

2. I totally nailed my stats test today. Well, at least I hope so. I felt really good about it, andI normally don't have a feeling one way or the other about a test (even when I end up nailing them anyway). Well, we will see.

I recently got the 1970's version of The Hills Have Eyes, and I'm excited to watch it before I see the remake sometime this next week.

Oh, did I mention that I'm doing absolutely NOTHING at all for my spring break? It's going to be glorious! I can't wait to get started on all of my nothing! Huzzah!

In the meantime, I hope I can catch up on sleep and get a little reading done. My insomnia has been really bad the past few weeks, and it's cutting in to my work day as I have a harder and harder time getting out of bed in the morning.

A lot of it is that once I get my mind to calm down enough to get to sleep, I just don't want to wake up. I find myself adrift in an ocean of senselessness, where I don't have to think or speak or feel or dream.

Oh, to be a sea serpent silently swimming that sea of solace in serene solitude...

Why Chris Rock was the best Academy Awards host ever

Well, I sat through the last half of the Oscars last night. I didn't give a crap about any of the movies (well, except for Walk the Line... which was pretty good, but definitely not worthy of an Oscar win). I was more interested in seeing what John Stewart of the Daily Show would be saying to piss off Hollywood. I was ecstatic, hoping he had already made them horribly uncomfortable by simply telling them the truth (that is, by telling them that nobody takes them as seriously as they do by just telling a few jokes about them).

Apparently, he did receive a cold reception from the Hollywood "Pantheon".

But I wasn't satisfied.

I've heard mixed reviews, some of the Showbiz elite complimenting him, while others condemning him. But overall, he could have done so much more with the opportunity he was presented. I was hoping to see the sharp-witted Jon Stewart I see every night on the Daily Show ripping in to the problems of this country with the sharp blade of wit and satire. Instead, I found a watered down version of my favorite comedian/pundit, landing what appeared to be pulled punches. Oddly enough, even the pulled punches were more than too much for the horribly frail senses of humor among the spoiled stars, as they froze him out with silence save for the few who actually still had a sense of humor about themselves.

But still, though blows were landed and the spoiled children we call "stars" briefly had to deal with someone who did not take them as seriously as they did, I was still not satisfied at the end of it all.

Why?

I don't think Stewart went far enough.

I tuned in not to see pulled punches, but landed blows on artificial noses. I did not want to see an uncomfortable silence after every joke, but a hostile silence. I wanted to see the same biting anti-establishmentarianism on the Oscars that I saw every night on the Daily Show.

In other words, I was hoping he could actually top Chris Rock.

Chris Rock is, by far, my all-time favorite Oscar host. He seized the opportunity presented to him to slap the Hollywood "Pantheon" upside it's head and used it for all it was worth. He went ahead and mocked Sean Penn. He cracked all sorts of jokes about the various odd habits of the stars. But the best part was when he showed a video loaded with brief interviews with the everyday moviegoer. Hardly any of them had actually watched the movies up for the best picture award that year. Instead, they had all gone to see Harry Potter or Saw. The audience was silent. The point had been made. They were not as important to their "adoring audience", much less the rest of the world, as they thought they were. Chris didn't let them leave without facing that truth.

And I so desperately wish Jon Stewart had done the same.

Movies are powerful vehicles for story telling. They can inspire us to great heights, they can teach us deep truths, and they can anger us in to action. But first and foremost, they are designed to entertain us. Nothing more, nothing less. And an audience that is not entertained will not long be an audience at all. Stars often forget that the average moviegoer is not interested in what they have to say about the way the world works. The average moviegoer just cares about them long enough to be entertained by them. Once the movie's over and the lights come on, they go back in to the real world and face their daily problems. Stars don't seem to understand that any more. They just can't leave their work in the theatres. They've become convinced, not just that they have to make a difference, but that they are making a difference in the world around them, even when the majority of the moviegoing public has absolutely no idea what the hell kind of difference they're talking about.

Throughout the ceremony last night, I heard Oscar recipients drone on and on about how the movies this year were truly something special, and that through them Hollywood continues to have a huge impact on culture and society.

Oh, really? That's a shame.

I mean, it's a shame that they still think that. It's a real, true shame that they're so full of self-importance that they can't even laugh at themselves for one night. Or that they continue to make and reward pretentious films that the average moviegoing public doesn't care about.

But more than that, it's a shame that Jon Stewart, a man I believe actually does have his head screwed on in the right direction and who has a legitimate influence on the younger generation in this country, didn't remind the self-absorbed stars that no one cares about what they think, say, or do outside of Hollywood.

**Brief Edit**

Just to clarify:

I'm not saying I don't like Jon Stewart or anything like that. In fact, I'm a huge fan of his, and he's one of my all-time favorite entertainers. I'm just saying I wish he would have pressed the "shiny red button", so to speak. ;)

Time for another funny website post...

Yes, it's time for something funny.

This time, it's Schadenfreude Interactive, a "company" that "makes" "games." Yes, it's fake. But it's hilarious. Some of their "offerings" "include" a game called Hannibal Crossing (a parody of a game called Animal Crossing for my non-game-savvy readers), in which cuddly little animals go about the business of re-enacting the Second Punic War.

I could go on and on, but it's best of you just go see for yourself.