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Comment by vvpan | Hacker News Reader

Yet another study that "explains it" turns out to be false. Good.

I don't think that it's a good thing if a study which seemed promising turned out to be false. The goal is to have explanations of the world, after all. It's better to have learned that something is false than to go on believing the falsehood, but better still is to have something true which explains things.

> don't think that it's a good thing if a study which seemed promising turned out to be false.

It is definitely a good thing.

It is good that the conclusions of a study that was demonstrated to be unsound have been replaced by those of a better study. If some even better study comes along later and replaces this one, that'll be good too. We now know more. It's not fun or convenient, but is generally aligned with the direction science should go.

If people who've made decisions based on their understanding of the results of this study, it's good that they'll no longer labor under a delusion, and can potentially make better decisions.

Good in the sense that hard things which make us incrementally better are good.

Failure to replicate could happen for any number of reasons. The sample populations might not enjoy marshmallows the same way!

But, yes, good to be aware of the possibility of both false positives and false negatives.

In general the original study felt like a more widely accepted Myers-Briggs of sorts. But as always happens with people and personality related theories the reality is either "more complicated" at best or the theory is outright false.

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