This page was started as a general repository of mistakes I’ve made in posts, updates to things I’ve talked about in other posts, and other concerns I have about things I’ve written in the past. An explanation for why I’m doing this is in this post here and this post here. If you’ve seen an error I made in a post and want to report it to me, go ahead and send it to me here. 

April 2017

Post: Calling BS Read-Along Week 3: The Natural Ecology of BS
Originally Published: March 19th, 2017
Error: While taking a dig at TED, I asserted that Amy Cuddy’s “power pose” talk contained no disclaimer that the research it was based on had failed to replicate. A few weeks later I went to the page again and noticed that there was a disclaimer I hadn’t seen before. Concerned that I had missed it earlier, I decided to investigate.
Investigation results: Since the disclaimer wasn’t in bold and , I wondered if I had just gotten this wrong entirely. Then I realized the disclaimer pointed to an article from October 5th, 2016.  Apparently after one of Cuddy’s initial co-authors questioned the study (here on Oct 1st, 2016), TED added the disclaimer. The reason I screwed up is because I had actually initially made this claim about the TED webpage back when it was true (in June of 2016 ), and had not rechecked it carefully when I said it again in March of 2017.
Outcome: I updated the Calling BS post plus the older one from June “Internet Science: Some Updates“. I reminded myself that things change and that an assertion that’s true one day may be false the next.

Post: Calling BS Read-Along Week 6: Data Visualization
Originally Published: April 9th, 2017
Error: I wrote this up more thoroughly here, but basically I included an assertion that people find stories with graphs more credible than stories that don’t contain graphs. This was based on a study done by a lab that has recently (November 2016) been accused of bad data practices that may have led to a lot of false positive results (at best) and a few accusations of possible falsified data (at worst). 
Investigation Results: Not much I could have done about this one, I had simply missed the accusations that had been brought forward. Even if I had seen them, I’m not sure I would have connected them to the study I was quoting, as I didn’t remember the lead authors name. I had first quoted that study back in January of 2016,  so I would not have come across the accusations then. The study itself is not in question at the moment, so none of the references for it contain any note about this.
Outcome: I updated the initial post and moved the reference to the initial study to the bottom of the page. I also added a note to the January 2016 post. I decided to get the PubPeer Chrome Extension which would alert me if someone had left a comment on a paper had concerns. Interestingly, in this case there are no comments on the paper.

Post: Myriad
Date Published: Innumerable
Error: I use “it’s” when I mean “its”
Investigation: Homonyms have always been my nemesis
Outcome: I use ctrl+f to find each instance of “it’s” I’ve used before I let posts publish with the hopes that I can individually review each use.