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JUST DO
IT
During a recent tennis
match, Ferret's opponent praised her excellent forehand play. Her sly
opponent knew about the Bliss-Boder hypothesis, which predicts a
performance decrement when a performer thinks about body movement
patterns or action plans before and during the execution of a
well-learned skill. Ferret's grooved tennis swing did falter, so
after the match she did a literature search on the topic. She found
two references that left many unanswered questions about the strength
of the effect on various skills. More research is needed.
Ferret notes two other cognitive
activities that could affect performance: attention to visual cues,
and visualization of skills. Attention to visual cues occurs during
performance and typically impairs skill execution, whereas
visualization of skills occurs before performance and may result in
skill enhancement. Ferret plans to find out more about these
activities and will keep you posted. In the meantime don't think,
just do it.
Baumeister, R.F. (1984). Choking under pressure:
self-consciousness and paradoxical effects of incentives on skillful
performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46,
610-620.
Baumeister, R.F., & Steinhilber, A. (1984). Paradoxical effects
of supportive audiences on performance under pressure: the home field
disadvantage. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47,
85-93.
Contributed by Trish
Shewokis.
ETHICS OF
SHARING DATA
Ferret recently wanted to
apply a new statistical technique to data from a study that had just
been published. These days journals usually publish group statistics,
but Ferret needed the raw data. So she contacted the authors. "Yes,
we'd love to send you the data," came the reply, "but our ethical
committee won't allow it. We got ethical approval only for
publication of group statistics, not for disseminating data on
individual subjects." It didn't matter that there was no possibility
of identifying the individuals from what was in the data set, nor
that Ferret intended only to derive more group statistics, nor that
there was anything in the data set that you could call personal,
incriminating, or embarrassing in any way. Of course, it would have
been possible to contact every subject in the study and try to get
their consent, but at that stage Ferret and the authors gave
up.
So if you want others to be
able to access your data, make sure you include something to that
effect in your application for ethical approval. And don't take no
for an answer from your ethical committee: sharing data is at the
heart of science, whether it be individual observations or group
statistics.
Ferret thinks ethical committees should
allow data sharing by default, with appropriate safeguarding of the
identities of individuals. The committees should disallow sharing of
sensitive data, such as cases of sexually transmitted diseases, if
there is even a remote possibility that the subjects could be traced
from the data. But in all other cases, surely it's unethical to
prevent sharing of data?
Contributed by Will
Hopkins.
