{"id":1504,"date":"2008-03-02T09:02:41","date_gmt":"2008-03-02T07:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/2008\/03\/02\/evolutionary-psychology-and-science-the-full-error-list\/"},"modified":"2008-03-02T09:18:42","modified_gmt":"2008-03-02T07:18:42","slug":"evolutionary-psychology-and-science-the-full-error-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/sciencesurf\/2008\/03\/evolutionary-psychology-and-science-the-full-error-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Evolutionary psychology and science: The full error list"},"content":{"rendered":"

The appendix of Frey<\/a> includes a list of errors based on evolutionary psychology (EP) – some acquired during development of our species, some acquired during individual ontogenesis. It is certainly the best what I have read since the famous study biases by Spilker<\/a> – certainly a nice enterprise to match both lists and answering the question how any EP error leads to a study error.<\/p>\n

Here it comes – and I already excuse for errors that I may have introduced during backtranslation:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Persistent first hypothesis<\/li>\n
  2. Perseverance on opinions<\/li>\n
  3. Missing attempts to falsify<\/li>\n
  4. Ignoring controversial facts<\/li>\n
  5. Blindness for own errors<\/li>\n
  6. Biased expectations<\/li>\n
  7. Exaggerated tendency for pattern recognition<\/li>\n
  8. “Ghost” causality, overinterpretation of weak correlations<\/li>\n
  9. Classification errors by similiarity<\/li>\n
  10. Framing effect: Ignoring contexts<\/li>\n
  11. Anchor effect: Irrelevant starting point<\/li>\n
  12. Overgeneralization<\/li>\n
  13. Assuming simplicity in a complex system<\/li>\n
  14. Reduction of complexity ny ignoring interaction and feedback<\/li>\n
  15. Networks treated as independent subnets<\/li>\n
  16. Reduction of complexity assuming linear relationships<\/li>\n
  17. Assuming state instead of process<\/li>\n
  18. Problem priority by ostensible conspicuousness instead of importance<\/li>\n
  19. Treating problems with methods of own discipline only<\/li>\n
  20. Linear extrapolation of associations<\/li>\n
  21. Insufficient control of posthoc developments<\/li>\n
  22. Use of strong heuristical filtering and radical break conditions<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \nThe book is a must read for every scientist; it has a lot of practical examples and receipts how to avoid these errors.
    \nSelected links:     confirmation bias<\/a> | other bias<\/a> | research conduct<\/a> | EP<\/a> | essays<\/a><\/p>\n\n

     <\/p>\n

    \n CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 09.04.2026<\/span>\n <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The appendix of Frey includes a list of errors based on evolutionary psychology (EP) – some acquired during development of our species, some acquired during individual ontogenesis. It is certainly the best what I have read since the famous study biases   CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 09.04.2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15],"tags":[1727,497,1731,1728,1730,1729],"class_list":["post-1504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy-of-science","category-science-theology","tag-bert-spilker","tag-biases","tag-clinical-trials","tag-evolutionary-psychology","tag-frey","tag-ontogenesis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}